ivan’s Reviews > All the Things They Said We Couldn't Have: Stories of Trans Joy > Status Update

"Trans joy is so often forgotten. It exists despite systems that seek to destroy us. It exists in the relationships we have and in our courage to be and create. ... It is the turn of the seasons, always driving, always pushing things to grow and change, always gloriously, achingly beautiful. Always on its way, across and beyond. Trans joy exists because we exist. Trans joy is resistance."

"I truly love that about my friends — their desire to keep tangible our joy. To preserve it and keep it present in our everyday lives. I have coasters and embroideries and walls full of artwork and poetry and notes. ... We are like living museums of our love for one another and our community. Our protection, our preservation, lives among us."

"[During Covid-19] people began to organize, to remember how to live in community and support one another. For my community, and many other oppressed communities, this was not new. We were already surviving through mutual aid. So then it was us leading, teaching, passing on our wisdom. Trans people have so much to teach, about how to build safety networks, about how to redistribute, about how to care for people."

"...sureness is a trap. Nobody can achieve the level of certainty that is demanded of us, not really, but any admission of this may be used in evidence against you. The sureness is a deterrent, it makes you too afraid to take action. It makes people too afraid to wonder, to explore, to try things out. It creates a world in which you can't trust your own body, your own thoughts, your own pain."

"I have spent long periods of my life feeling hopeless, like nothing could change. When I look back now, I can see that I survived all of these times by trying anyway. I didn't always believe that I could change things, but I kept trying. I never thought I could be happy, but I kept moving as if one day it might happen."

"Being trans is not something I need to diminish, it is what pushes me to imagine, to create, to build. We are dreamers and makers because that is how we forced ourselves."

"Even in the worst and bleakest material circumstances, there can be joy. Even under great threat, at the hands of systemic violence and harm, while suffering deep personal trauma and pain, joy manages to make space for itself."