After President Donald Trump announced his sweeping ban on transgender people from the armed services in July, he said that he was doing the United States a “great favor.” Contrary to any existing evidence, he announced that transgender topics had been “a very confusing issue for the military,” which purportedly burdened the nation’s defense with “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”

Actual accounts and data regarding transgender military personnel contradict the president’s statement. “We are liberty’s light,” said transgender Navy SEAL hero Kristin Beck to Business Insider shortly after Trump’s announcement. “If you can’t defend that for everyone that’s an American citizen, that’s not right.…You’re talking about .000001% of the military budget.” With 20 years of service—including 13 deployments to nations like Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—Beck herself is living proof of transgender strength.

Trump’s commentary forwarded a well-worn false narrative about queerness built around a stereotype of softness: the femme afraid of war, the homosexual who’ll be a liability on the battlefield. What Trump neglects is the harsh reality of queer life, the struggles for social acceptance, and the increased threat of violence that unfortunately accompanies too many transgender and genderqueer lives. Such violence forms a hurt locker, testing the strength and resolve of LGBTQ individuals far past a person’s normal breaking point. Bias like Trump’s infects social conscience, spreading throughout the world. Shortly after his election, hate crimes in some cities across the United States rose 20 percent . In the United Kingdom, attacks against LGBT people have surged almost 80 percent over the last four years, according to the charity Stonewall and YouGov polling.

Perhaps in response to the rising tides of hatred and abuse, queer artists are increasingly wrestling with themes of strength and violence. Specifically, transgender and genderqueer artists are reversing those so-called “soft” stereotypes of queerness. They’re finding strength in their identities, and marshalling visions of power that simultaneously manifest and subvert traditional ideas of macho masculinity. In the process, these artists are posing vital questions: What makes someone strong, and how do we quantify strength? And is there room for queerness within traditional notions of physical prowess?