Pride: Unlicensed Joy, Ungoverned Love

Why queer joy still gets punished—and why we shine anyway.

As Pride continues, I reflect on joy, danger, and the brittle psyche of a country that fears trans love more than violence. What kind of truth are we living—and who taught us to be afraid of tenderness?

Introduction: a room full of love

Pride continues ...
And the country, as ever, picks sides.

On the news: another law, another march, another attack. Another man with a microphone saying that people like me are dangerous. Another morning spent reading that a teenager in Texas was outed by his school and took his life. Another bill that says our bodies are too much. Or too little. Or not real at all.

Every June, this happens.
Not because we’re loud, but because we dare to be visible.

Because the same country that calls itself the land of the free has never been comfortable with the freedom of trans people to live, to love, to be seen. Freedom here is conditional: yours, if you behave. Yours, if you disappear.

And so we learn the rules.
We learn to scan a room before speaking, to modulate our voices on first dates, to study someone’s pupils for signs of disgust or danger.
We learn to soften the truth so we don’t scare them away.
We learn to weigh love against survival.

What on earth could be wrong with wanting to be loved?

And yet for us, dating is risky.
Affection is political.
Desire can turn fatal in a single breath.

Because we still live in a world where violence against trans people is explained away—
“She tricked me.”
“She’s a trap.”
“She didn’t tell me.”
As if our existence is a deception. As if we’re not supposed to want connection like everyone else.

But we do.
Gods, we do.

And we build our sanctuaries in the meantime.
Our late-night walks, our group chats, our side glances of recognition. Our dancefloors.

And still—still—they raid them.

They were the intruders.

The cops didn’t stumble into danger; they brought it.
They walked into spaces that had been carefully, defiantly crafted by people already pushed out of everywhere else.
People who had learned how to survive surveillance, side-eyes, slurs—and still somehow believed in joy.
Still somehow believed in each other.
These weren’t dens of deviance. They were sanctuaries. Improvised cathedrals. Family, sweat, mascara, consent.
And the police shattered them, not because harm was happening—but because it wasn’t.

Because joy—unlicensed, unshamed, ungoverned—threatens a system built on control.

What kind of system trains people to fear a room full of love more than a room full of guns?

One that’s afraid of softness.
Afraid of fluidity.
Afraid of bodies that don’t ask permission to exist.

A queer bar at midnight? That’s a threat.
But a militia with automatic weapons? That’s “freedom.”

It’s not logic. It’s legacy.
It’s the long tail of colonisation, patriarchy, whiteness, and empire—each one obsessed with dominance, allergic to delight.

Because a room full of love can’t be policed.
You can’t regulate gender euphoria.
You can’t extract profit from chosen family.
You can’t predict what happens when people actually feel free.

So instead, they criminalise it.

“Is it really your truth?”

Or is it inherited shame, dressed up as preference?
Is it purity culture with a fresh coat of neoliberal “choice”?
Is it fear, etched into your nervous system by a country that taught you softness was weakness, and intimacy was dangerous unless it came pre-approved?

What kind of psyche does it take to fear lipstick more than live ammunition?
To teach boys that love makes them less, but domination makes them men?
To declare drag a danger, but call mass shootings “the cost of freedom”?

If the answer to “Would you love a trans woman?” is no—
then why?
Who told you it was dangerous?
Who convinced you that authenticity is shameful if it deviates from the script?

And who benefits when you believe them?

Because the same system that trained police to see joy as a threat
is the one that trains you
to treat your own desire as a liability.

That’s what makes this country so brittle.
It teaches people to fear the very things that might make them whole.
To punish what they long for.
To closet their tenderness and call it virtue.
To call disconnection “maturity.”
To call rejection of difference “normal.”

And that’s why the question matters.
Because when you ask someone “Is it really your truth?”—you’re not accusing. You’re inviting.
You’re asking them to trace the origin of their own beliefs.
To see whose voice is actually speaking through them.
And to consider, maybe for the first time, what it might mean to be free—not from others, but from the lie.

---

And so we come back to the question:
Is it really your truth?

Is your discomfort with trans people your truth, or something you were taught to fear?

What kind of country teaches its people to recoil at authenticity?
To punish vulnerability?
To feel shame in the presence of someone who simply wants to be held?

Pride isn’t just about being seen.
It’s about asking who gets to feel safe doing so—and why.

And I keep thinking of what Magda wrote:

As a trans woman, safety means showing up in my own voice, my body, my style without shrinking to fit someone else’s comfort.
And when I feel that safety? I shine.

✨ Safety is co-created
✨ Openness is brave
✨ When we feel safe, we show up fully

That’s it, really.

I want a world where no one has to shrink to be held.
Where nobody’s joy is a risk.
Where trans women don’t have to weigh each act of love against the possibility of harm.
Where safety isn’t something we earn by hiding—but something we build together.

And until that world comes, we keep dancing barefoot in the street.
We keep asking the question.
We keep shining, even in the dark.