Pride was birthed in the need for resistance, and this is ever more true today. Pride will always be relevant. As we dream of true inclusion—not just tolerance—we center our queer ancestors’ intentions, uplift those in the community who are most vulnerable, and remember those who fought and sacrificed for the rights that allow us simply to exist today.

There are numerous reasons to fight today, but it would be remiss not to center our own joy and livelihood. Queer joy must be a centerpiece to our resistance. We’ve asked three illustrators to show and speak their truth with the following prompt: What does queer joy look like to you in this political moment.

So much of the conversation about queer joy comes through a lens of community, the importance of which cannot be overstated. This joy is sometimes not available—not to all of us, not all of the time. For this reason I choose to focus on how self-love is a radical act of queer joy—the idea of touch, emotional intimacy, and mindful exchange of energy is available to us in the relationships we have with ourselves as well as with others.

The ecology of queerness sees beauty in the wounds and imperfections of our world and cares for it anyway. As a queer, multiracial, neurodivergent trauma survivor, I exist like so many others in a world that insists I should not love myself as I am. If queerness is an essence that exists only in opposition to what it defies, it follows that radical self-love is deeply queer when my body is the context. My self-regard is hard-won, and therefore deeply precious.

So queer joy to me right now is quiet, and often solitary. It looks like the meticulous practice of rest in order to access pleasure, care, abundance, and liberation. It looks like the exhilaration of radical embodiment. It looks like intentionally building an inner scaffolding of symmetry and balance to support the tension and darkness. It looks like tending to potential, so I may eventually transmute it into action. It looks like safeguarding the soft boundaries around my heart when the world feels burdensome. It looks like a refusal to give my body to a capitalist engine that still owes my ancestors a debt.

Read the full article about queer joy by Michael Luong at YES! Magazine.