Joy in a marginalized body has always been a form of resistance entwined with the politics of queerness. After all, Pride, before its corporate takeover, was a parade to celebrate the anniversary of a riot. Today, because of the internet and the ubiquity of social media, queer people of all gender identities have access to a range of images and stories of trans people. For years now, we’ve had earth angel Laverne Cox telling us and everyone who will listen that #transisbeautiful. We’ve got Janet Mock making history as a director and writer on FX’s Pose, which is fundamentally a show that repositions trans bodies as glamorous, regardless of the brutality that surrounds us. We are taking back the narrative that has defined us in the collective imagination for decades now: Sad, tragic, deceptive, and (often in the case of trans men) invisible. And, mostly, we are doing that with our humanity, and our joy.

If I pay attention, happiness because of and not despite my trans status is embedded into every aspect of my life. I am a happy trans man. That’s a sentence I couldn’t have imagined writing even a few years ago. But the truth is, while the rise of social media has made trans people more visible, it hasn’t kept trans women of color safer from violence. And despite the incredible efforts of women like Mock and Cox, trans people are still navigating many of the same myopic cultural narratives around gender and our bodies that have defined binary standards of beauty and “acceptability” since Christine Jorgensen became a transgender celebrity in the 1950s. She was celebrated for passing just as she was also treated as a spectacle, which is still what seems to draw cisgender people to trans stories today.

This makes our public expressions of joy particularly potent. Trans joy is about insisting on our humanity — and I don’t mean the trans-person-as-metaphor framing, the one where we are heralded for our enviable relationship to “authenticity” or “bravery” (which are true enough words, but still more about the culture’s perception of us than anything else). There is very little humanity in being a spectacle or a saint.

The harm of a narrative built on overcoming obstacles can be difficult to quantify, but this week I received a question that captured it perfectly — and also so startled me that I had to reread it three times. “Part of me recognizes that the trans experience isn't rooted in suffering, but doesn't it seem like it?” asked an 18-year-old nonbinary trans person (I’ll use they/them pronouns for this person, as I’m not sure what pronouns they use). Doesn’t it, though? They went on to write that they’re “not denying” the incredible hardships of living in a trans body, but then detailed their induction into online trans spaces with a strikingly beginner’s mind.

“On FTM facebook groups full of hypermasculine guys, I see that transness is all about self-hatred,” they wrote. “I feel like the way I explored my identity was not right. I do not have enough distaste for my body. My chest is not big enough, I should not be dysphoric. I have not attempted suicide yet. The voice of internalized transphobia is not constant. I do not hate myself enough.” They are stuck in a new binary, they said. “I do not want to be a trans person who fits perfectly into the cis ideal of beauty and has suffered enough to be ‘brave.’ Or do I?” they continued. “What is your experience navigating such restrictive boxes?”