Reducing the Joy Deficit in Sociology: A Study of Transgender Joy

Abstract

Joy is a crucial element of people’s everyday lives that has been understudied by sociologists. This is particularly true for scholarship about transgender people. To address what we term a joy deficit in sociology, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with trans people in which they were asked what they find joyful about being trans. Their responses demonstrate the methodological and theoretical importance of asking about joy. Four main themes emerged from the interviews. First, interviewees easily answered the question about joy. Second, contrary to common assumptions, we found that transgender people expressed joy in being members of a marginalized group and said that they preferred being transgender. Third, embracing a marginalized identity caused the quality of their lives to improve, increasing self-confidence, body positivity, and sense of peace. Finally, being from a marginalized group facilitated meaningful connections with other people. Our findings demonstrate a vital need to address the joy deficit that exists in the sociological scholarship on transgender people specifically, and marginalized groups more generally. Bridging the sociology of knowledge and narratives, we show how accentuating joy offers nuance to understandings of the lived experiences of marginalized people that has been absent from much of sociological scholarship.

If emotions are, as Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta (2000:65) suggested, the “ultimate Rorschach test for sociologists, revealing their basic theoretical assumptions about social life,” then one might assume that most sociologists are killjoys. The typical convention in sociological scholarship about marginalized groups is to focus on negative experiences and inequality (Cieslik 2015; Thin 2014). This makes intuitive sense, as sociology is often thought to be the study of social inequalities (Lamont 2018). However, sociology is actually the study of society and negative experiences are only part, not the whole, of social life (Veenhoven 2018). Despite the limitations, this focus on the negative remains dominant, because, as sociologists of knowledge have documented, once a way of thinking becomes established, it gains legitimacy and becomes difficult to change (Bourdieu 1977; Foucault 1973; Kuhn 1962). In sociology, as in all other academic disciplines, knowledge systems, or epistemes (Foucault 1973), eventually take on a life of their own (Berger, Luckmann, and Zifonun 1967; Connell 2020), which makes them difficult to break away from. Moreover, when only certain kinds of questions are asked, the possibility for producing new knowledge is barred, resulting in epistemic foreclosures which perpetuate the status quo (Cetina 1999; Henricks 2016; Moody 2004).

Like knowledge systems, the narratives academics tell about marginalized groups create particular realities. Academic writing substantiates what is known about a topic, models the “proper” way of telling stories with data, and emphasizes certain topics (Franzosi 1998; Polletta et al. 2011). In sociology, marginalized groups are often only depicted as suffering negative life experiences, including discrimination, stigma, and bias. In these canon-building storytelling practices, sociologists have (unintentionally) left out a core component of the lives of marginalized people. That is, sociologists do not know much about the joyful aspects of being a member of a marginalized group, which has created what we term a joy deficit in sociology.¹ This deficit is particularly troubling as joy is vital to human well-being (Emmons 2020; Thin 2014), can sustain people experiencing and mobilizing against oppression (Wettergren 2009), and helps make life worth living (Westbrook 2021). As such, joy is sociologically relevant to fully understanding people’s lived experience.

Although the lack of focus on joy is pervasive throughout sociology, it is particularly prevalent in trans studies. Much of the sociological research on transgender people has documented the myriad ways in which trans people experience extreme inequalities across all domains of social life. As the literature demonstrates, transgender people face rejection, discrimination, violence, uneven access to major institutions such as education and the law, bullying, stigma, and restrictive gender norms (Schilt and Lagos 2017). Contributing to the pervasive inequality that trans people experience is a durable dichotomous system that positions cisgender people as “normal” and transgender people as “other” (Schilt and Westbrook 2009). This dichotomy is solidified in dominant systems of language that boxes trans people into normative gendered expectations in social interaction (Shuster 2017). There are also power struggles between binary and nonbinary transgender people over who is “authentically” trans (Garrison 2018). Moreover, transnormativity, the belief that there is one correct way to be trans (Johnson 2016; Vipond 2015), insists that all transgender people should, or should want to, engage in medical “transitions” to a binary and normative gender expression. Undergirding these narratives of trans experience is the trope of the transgender person in misery, which we suggest is, within itself, a normative narrative about trans experience. Sociologically, when scholars equate oppression with misery in the study of social inequalities, this way of thinking becomes culturally entrenched (Bourdieu 1977; Harwood 2004) in how cisgender people understand trans people and how transgender people come to understand themselves.

In response to the joy deficit in the sociology of trans studies, we ask: What if sociologists asked different kinds of questions about marginalization? What new insights might be found if we shift our attention away from exclusively focusing on the negative outcomes of being transgender and asked, instead, about the joyful aspects? To address these questions, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with transgender people to demonstrate the methodological and theoretical importance of asking about joy.

Our focus here is on joy, but we are mindful of recent critiques about the commodification of happiness (Cabanas and Illouz 2019) and how it has become linked to conceptions of the ideal citizen. We do not advocate for disregarding the oppression that transgender people experience. Nor are we suggesting that if trans people (and sociologists) simply practiced positive thinking, inequalities would diminish. Instead, our questioning of the episteme around marginality extends insights from the sociology of trans studies by analyzing aspects of transgender life that have been consistently overlooked in the scholarship. We found that those interviewed expressed immense levels of trans joy—the joy of being transgender. Transgender people’s quality of life improved, and they developed meaningful and vibrant connections with other people, as a result of being trans. In addition, although we focus on transgender people specifically, our findings demonstrate a vital need to address the joy deficit that exists in the sociological scholarship on marginalized groups in general. Narratives about marginalization are exhaustively told through the lens of negative outcomes, as sociologists have a tendency to study social harms (Cieslik 2015; Thin 2014). Examining joy adds nuance to understandings of the lived experiences of marginalized people that has been absent from much of the sociological scholarship. Thus, the findings presented here offer sociologists new ways of thinking about social problems, transgender people, and marginalization in what we hope will be a catalyst for a joy revolution in sociology.²

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF EPISTEMIC FORECLOSURES

Although transgender joy has increasingly become a topic of public discussion, appearing in publications such as The Washington Post and The Guardian, among others, transgender joy is rarely addressed in the academic literature (Burt 2019; Connor 2019). Joy, happiness, and pleasure are almost never mentioned in the foundational The Transgender Studies Reader and do not appear anywhere in its index (Stryker and Whittle 2006). Similarly, joy, happiness, and pleasure are not explicitly discussed in the Annual Review of Sociology article on transgender studies in sociology (Schilt and Lagos 2017) or in “The Transgender Issue” published by GLQ (Stryker 1998). What causes this lack of attention to joy in academic analyses?

Epistemes, Accepted Narratives, and Conventional Questions

The social study of knowledge has demonstrated that once particular ways of thinking are established, they accrue legitimacy, are hard to change, and often perpetuate inequality (Foucault 1973; Kuhn 1962). Foucault’s (1973) now classic work on the development of ideas and knowledge suggested that normative values are assigned not only to what we know, but also how we know and who is doing the knowing (see also Collins 1989). For example, Connell's (2020) work on the neoliberalization of higher education and knowledge production found that educational administrators are increasingly concerned with ranking systems such as journal impact factors and citation counts that mark only certain forms of knowledge as legitimate. Disregarding knowledge from the Global South or that is published in certain venues contributes to the canonization of restrictive ways of thinking. These epistemes, or knowledge systems, are taken-for-granted and often invisible to knowledge producers (Foucault 1973) as they come to take on a life of their own and are propagated without question (Berger et al. 1967; Hacking 1999). As such, epistemes produce serious consequences in the production of, and lasting gaps in, knowledge by encouraging a focus on certain types of problems and particular methods used to study them (Cetina 1999; Moody 2004).

Legitimated knowledge systems encourage scholars to tell particular narratives when reporting their findings. Although academics do not usually think of themselves as storytellers, scholars who study narratives argue that all researchers construct narratives about their data (Ferber 2000). Like knowledge systems, narratives convey values and construct a particular version of reality (Franzosi 1998). As Polletta et al. (2011:113) noted in their review of the literature, “what passed as universal categories, neutral standards, scientific facts, and objective progress were actually stories: moralizing accounts whose claim to truth rested on their verisimilitude rather than their veracity.” As such, narratives are one of the tools used in academia to maintain claims to “truth” and “objectivity.” However, narratives are not objective; instead, they are shaped by epistemes.

The questions researchers ask shape what is known about a topic. When only particular questions are valued, possibilities for producing knowledge are blocked, resulting in epistemic foreclosures that perpetuate the status quo, reproducing inequality (Henricks 2016). If, for example, scholars include only the binary option of female and male on surveys with no additional question for indicating cisgender or transgender, it restricts the data to particular kinds of people and maintains binarist and cisnormative assumptions in the survey design and data reporting (Westbrook and Saperstein 2015). Notably, those who perpetuate epistemic foreclosures often benefit from doing so. Those who uphold the status quo tend to reap more rewards than those who challenge long-standing positions, knowledge, tastes, and preferences (Swidler and Arditi 1994).

Concerns about a Focus on Happiness and Joy

Sociologists may shy away from studying joy due to concerns about reproducing dominant ideologies such as the “tyranny of happiness.” Recent critiques of the tyranny of happiness have astutely recognized how happiness has become the “incarnation of today’s ideal image of the good citizen” (Cabanas and Illouz 2019:3). In these pop psychology renderings rooted in American exceptionalism and consumerism, if one works hard enough and is virtuous, they can attain happiness (Ehrenreich 2009). Thus, beliefs about happiness can be used to justify oppression (Ahmed 2010). Pointing to images that circulate in the public imagination, such as the “happy housewife,” Ahmed (2010) found that happiness has cultural currency that normalizes heteronormative relationships and gender hegemony.

Moreover, sociologists may fear that focusing on joy will take attention away from social problems. Skepticism about the relevance of positive feelings can be traced to classical sociologists. Marx (2015), for example, believed that happiness was an elixir to quell mass revolt and authentic ways of living. Positive feelings, such as happiness, are often perceived as superficial and fleeting emotional experiences, and, therefore, viewed as problematic by sociologists because they distract from more significant and underlying processes that shape social lives (Cieslik 2015:422). However, there may be conceptual confusion in the difference between feeling joy and buying happiness. For example, many social movement scholars (e.g., Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina 1982) have theorized that anger, frustration, or humiliation are necessary to catalyze collective action. However, recent work has documented how joy, laughter, and fun are crucial for sustained movement mobilization (Wettergren 2009) and how feeling good most of the time may be a precursor to feeling angry about social injustice (Kushlev et al. 2019). Moreover, joy can be an important outcome of collective action. The recent #BlackBoyJoy movement cuts against the grain of popular narratives by uplifting the joyful aspects of being a Black boy and helping to instill a sense of pride (Moody-Ramirez 2019).

The Consequences of Not Attending to Joy

The status quo in sociology now encourages scholars to ask questions, gather data, and then construct narratives about negative life experiences and structural inequalities (Veenhoven 2018). As sociology tends to focus on social problems, particularly inequality, there is a joy deficit in sociological research. This deficit is concerning, as joy is vital to human well-being (Emmons 2020; Thin 2014), a topic of central interest to sociologists. Moreover, experiences of, and the search for, joy and pleasure shape behaviors (Higgins and Hirsch 2007). As such, joy can be studied in the social sciences as both an outcome and an explanatory variable (Emmons 2020). Some academic disciplines, such as psychology (Johnson 2020), have begun to include joy in their analyses, and a few sociologists have called for attention to happiness, well-being, and pleasure (e.g., Cieslik 2015; Jones 2020; Kroll 2014). However, there remains a missing joy revolution in sociology.

The absence of joy in the academic literature has important consequences. It is not only what is known that shapes the trajectory of scholarship—what we do not know also matters greatly. Researchers at the intersection of knowledge and narratives have demonstrated the advantages to unmooring epistemes by flipping the standard script and asking what is unknown and why we don’t know what we don’t know (e.g., Almeling 2020), which enables scholars to tell different kinds of stories and ask different kinds of questions about taken-for-granted “facts” of lived experience and social life. As discussed earlier, knowledge and narratives about groups of people shape realities, including beliefs about, and lived experiences of, those people (Polletta et al. 2011). However, only certain sorts of stories tend to be told in sociology about marginalized groups. Sociologists often take social inequality as the centralized focus of scholarly work. In so doing, we have foreclosed possibilities to fully understand the experiences of marginalized groups. This has led to glaring omissions across all major areas of inquiry in sociology.

Not only do sociologists not focus on joy, pleasure, or happiness, they also disproportionately tell narratives about pain and suffering. The consequences of this focus on misery, particularly when studying marginalized groups, do not stay contained within academia. Instead, these narratives travel, shaping everyday understandings and experiences of being part of that group (Ferber 2000). If the main story told about a group is that their lives are filled with trauma, discrimination, and violence, then that is likely what most people believe about the group, including members of the group itself (Harwood 2004). This occurs because as individuals become a part of thought communities, “they enter spaces of shared meaning and knowledge bases and certain items are emphasized and prioritized over others” (Cerulo 2008:10–11; see also Bourdieu 1977). Without balancing an academic focus on oppression with one of joy, “we are as likely to be shackled by the stories we tell (or that are culturally available for our telling) as we are by the form of oppression they might seek to reveal” (Ewick and Silbey 1995:212). This can result in unlivable lives filled with stress and fear (Westbrook 2021).

Given these negative consequences, sociologists of narrative have examined how to tell different, more liberating stories (e.g., Polletta 2009). Although it is difficult to break out of standard ways of thinking, paradigms can shift. New paradigms emerge when there are doubts about prevailing approaches or grievances with dominant intellectual practices (Frickel and Gross 2005; Kuhn 1962). Moreover, “stories that are capable of countering the hegemonic are those which bridge, without denying, the particularities of experience and subjectivities and those which bear witness to what is unimagined and unexpressed” (Ewick and Silbey 1995:220). We do not deny that transgender people experience oppression. Yet, positioning trans people as always-already subject to discrimination and violence precludes scholarly attention to elements of trans people’s lives beyond the typical trope of misery. Furthermore, stories about joy may help reduce stigma and violence against trans people (Westbrook 2021). Thus, we ask, what knowledge would be gained, and what social problems may be addressed, by attending to joy?

METHODS

As a part of a larger project on the lived experiences of transgender people, stef conducted forty in-depth interviews in a Midwestern metropolitan area. The call for participants specified an interest in speaking with trans people, so anyone who saw themselves as within that category responded. All identity labels and pronouns used in this paper correspond with how participants self-identified in the interview. All names are pseudonyms.

To find interviewees, stef used a purposive snowball sampling method, which began with personal networks in gender justice organizing across the Midwest. After completing an interview, interviewees were asked to forward the study information to three to five other people. Snowball sampling has challenges reaching groups outside of the networks of origin (Berg 2004; Noy 2008). To reduce these limitations, stef made additional contacts through attending community groups and events across the city, as well as posting the call for participants in places such as LGBTQ+-owned coffee houses and bars and LGBTQ+ resource, health, and community centers.

Interviews ranged in length from one to three hours. The average interview time was two hours and occurred in whatever location the participant had requested to meet. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim for data analysis purposes. Interviews were structured to resemble a conversational tone, rather than more formal question and answer exchanges, which enabled detailed accounts of lived experiences and collaboration in the exchange (see Gerson and Damaske 2020).

Interviewees were asked broad questions to explore their transgender identity formation, relationships to communities and with others (i.e., friends, family of origin, coworkers, and relational partners), experiences with inequality in everyday life and interactions, as well as how they navigated gender-segregated spaces. To balance the typical conventions of sociological methods that emphasize negative experiences with oppression, the question that concluded the interview was: What do you find joyful about being trans? This was a spontaneous question that stef began asking during the first interview to end the interview on a positive note. This was not a naïve desire. It was clear that asking about joy might be a small, but important, way to undercut the dominant narrative that being transgender equals pain and misery and intended to open space for reflection on how being trans might also bring joy into their lives. It was a question that resonated for many, but few had ever been asked.

Data Analysis

Trans joy was a topic that came up one evening when we were sharing vegan pizza and discussing lasting gaps in the sociology of trans studies. Laurel had just completed a book on how anti-violence activism is done on behalf of trans people and stef was finishing a book on lasting uncertainties in trans medicine. Both of us were troubled by the fact that joy was rarely discussed in trans studies or sociological scholarship. Through this conversation, we felt compelled to examine the data from the joy question and to see what patterns might arise and what we may learn about joy that could speak to broader sociological concerns.

To analyze the interview transcripts, we used an inductive approach - a recursive process of moving back and forth between the data, coding schema, and existing literature with the goal of looking for patterns in the data (Gerson and Damaske 2020). Each author began by coding the full transcripts on their own without a coding schema. We wanted to see how two sociologists who work in trans studies but attend to different topics and theories within the field would approach coding the interviews. Although the words we used to name a particular pattern were slightly different (i.e., one person’s “know yourself better” code was the other’s “self-knowledge” code), we had substantial overlap. After the first round of coding, we discussed and resolved the remaining discrepancies, re-coded the data, and cross-verified our coding schema one last time. From the final coding stage, four major themes emerged: 1) the value of asking about joy; 2) the joy of being from a marginalized group; 3) the improvement of quality of life; and 4) the increased connections with others.

FINDINGS

“Oh. Damn. That's a good question.”: The Value of Asking about Joy

Although the academic literature and mainstream cultural narratives focus on the miseries of being a member of a marginalized group, less than a fifth of the people we interviewed (7 out of 40) struggled to answer the question about what they found joyful about being transgender. For those few, most first responded by mentioning challenges they had faced because they were trans, including family rejection and the constraints of transnormativity. However, after briefly mentioning those challenges, all quickly turned to describing how being trans brought them joy. For example, Tomás, a 34-year-old Latinx trans man first responded by saying, “Oh. I mean. I told you that stuff with my family is fucked up. My brothers won't speak to me. My parents have disowned me,” but then he went on to detail the support he experiences from friends and the “sense of calm” he feels now because he does not “have to pretend anymore, to be a woman.” He concluded his answer by stating, “Yeah, I think for me the joy is being able to be me.”

The fact that everyone interviewed was able to answer the question and that only a few struggled at first demonstrates that questions about joy can easily be incorporated into interview schedules. There were no notable patterns in terms of race, gender, or age for those interviewees who struggled to answer. Moreover, the vast majority (over 80 percent) answered with relative ease. Despite its being the last question in an extensive interview, many gave long, detailed responses. As we demonstrate below, those answers reveal aspects of transgender people’s lives that are often overlooked by academics. As Seth, a 29-year-old Latinx genderqueer person, stated when asked what they found joyful about being a trans person, “Oh. Damn. That's a good question.”

“It's not a curse to be transgender. It's a gift.”: The Joy of Being a Member of a Marginalized Group

Scholarship consistently reaffirms the narrative that being from a marginalized group means that one’s life is full of misery. This narrative is supported by much of the research on social inequalities that draws attention to the negative consequences of marginalization (Lamont 2018). As such, a tacit assumption is that if one’s life is permeated with inequality, one cannot possibly find joy in being a member of a marginalized group. Yet asking about joy created new opportunities to hear about how, as Elsa, a 23-year-old Latinx gender fluid person, stated, “I really like being who I am” and, as Austin, a 23-year-old white trans man, put it, “I love the fact that I’m trans.” Indeed, about half of the interviewees explicitly stated that there is intense joy in being members of a marginalized group. In this section we flip the script on the dominant narrative that marginalization equals misery. Our findings add more nuanced understandings of the everyday experiences of marginalized groups that has been absent from the scholarship by emphasizing the joyful aspects of being transgender.

Due to discrimination and stigma, the common belief is that members of marginalized groups experience high levels of shame. Liam, a white 30-year-old trans man, challenged this belief:

The more I move into being trans, this is just a part of who I am, and I like it. I'm not going to sit in that shame framework. I feel really grateful. After years and years and years and years, it's almost like fighting for my own self-definition of my existence. Now that I feel pretty solid, this is who I am. I am who I am.

As Liam described, he initially had a sense of shame about being a trans man because that is a typical narrative of how one ought to feel about being trans. However, he was able to defy that narrative by finding joy in himself and on his own terms. In so doing, he “felt solid” in who he is and recognized other ways of being trans that do not depend upon self-hatred. Seth similarly said, “One of the joys is finding solace in my identity rather than trying to fight it. And that was a huge fucking relief.”

Related to the belief that marginalization equals misery is the common misunderstanding that, if given the option, no one would choose to be from a marginalized group. For example, many people believe that no one would choose to be gay (Pickhardt 1998). Consequently, as historian John D’Emilio (2002) documents, “Beginning in the 1990s, the idea that homosexuality is biological and that lesbians and gay men are ‘born this way’ spread through American culture with amazing rapidity” (154). There is a similar belief that no one would want to be transgender. Aaron, a white 53-year-old trans man, countered this narrative by sharing:

I mean, I think overall my trans experience has been joyful. I wouldn't trade coming out or coming to terms with gender stuff. I've never really thought about like, “Oh, life would be so much easier if I was cis.” Because I think about all the stuff I would miss, all the questions and opportunities and people and experiences it opens up for me. So, while it's been hard and we could focus on the negative things like the discrimination, the fucked-up situations, all that stuff, there is so much good that comes out of being more actualized around yourself.

As Aaron, and many others stated, there is intense joy in being transgender, including being able to have experiences and perspectives that they would not have if they were not part of a marginalized group.

A few people (5/40) said that what they found joyful about being transgender was that they were different from the norm. These interviewees treasured how their identity and embodiment called gender norms into question and encouraged themselves, as well as those around them, to question things that others often take for granted. As Matt, a white 59-year-old trans man, put it:

I feel like I transcend gender and I've actually come to see that as a gift; being able to be on the outside of American culture not by choice but by circumstance. I really had to learn to reframe that for myself because it's only been within the last couple of years that I've thought in terms of it's not a curse to be transgender. It's a gift… . As transgender people, as people who transcend gender, we have always fought for the right to self-expression. No matter what society said to us, they couldn't hold that back. In a sense, that is our gift. That is what we have to give to not just our communities, but to our cultures.

Thus, by living lives outside the norm, members of marginalized groups can find joy in challenging, and possibly changing, those norms. These interviewees expressed hope that this would increase freedom and decrease inequality. As Nico, a Black 31-year-old genderqueer person, said, “There's a freedom to it that feels joyful. There's a joy in feeling like there's an opening up that's not just personal but is bigger than that for everybody, whether they identify as male, female, or something other. It opens things up for them and that feels really exciting.”

Being outside of the norm also enabled our interviewees to access deeper self-reflection and understanding. Felix, a 30-year-old white genderqueer person, shared:

Because of my experiences with gender and my questioning of gender, my disenfranchisement with gender, I feel like it has caused me to learn more about myself and the world around me because I'm constantly coming up with answers that have more questions. So, I'm constantly asking more of myself and more of the world; how to understand and how to be in it and how to know myself more. That, to me, is really great. I feel really lucky in that aspect because I don't feel like as many people are pushed to know themselves. You know? … I'm very grateful that I am the way I am. There's definitely no regret or shame or desire to be different. Not at all. I'm very grateful.

As Felix recounted, being transgender enabled them to gain personal insights that they may not have had if they were cisgender. From their perspective, identifying as genderqueer instigated continual reflection of how to be in the world. Aaron similarly said, “For me, trans doesn't mean—I know some people talk about being trans is like coming out as your true self—but I think it is about exploring the depth and breadth of possibilities for yourself.” Thus, for these interviewees, being part of a marginalized group was joyful because it enabled them to question the world around them and their own lives and use those questions to enable personal growth and positive social change.

As our interviewees demonstrated, there are joys in being from a marginalized group, even if that group experiences discrimination and inequality. In highlighting those joys, they do work towards unspoiling identity (Winder 2017). Social scientists too often have focused on the negative aspects of marginality (Fine 2016). However, it is vital to attend to positive marginality, or the benefits of being from a marginalized group (Smith 1986). This reframing adds to sociological knowledge of marginalization and can, itself, add to the joys experienced by members of marginalized groups.

“You look so happy! You were so miserable before.”: How Quality of Life Can Improve through Embracing a Marginalized Identity

A dominant narrative that populates our social imagination is how being from a marginalized group not only brings an extraordinary amount of shame, but also that even if one can overcome the self-hatred and embrace the marginalized identity, the person will still have a low quality of life. For transgender people, this is often assumed to mean resigning oneself to a life of desolation and dread (Grossman and D’augelli 2006). We do not dispute the structural and interpersonal inequities that transgender people, and marginalized groups generally, experience. In reflecting on joy, however, our interviewees described how embracing themselves as trans people improved their quality of life by boosting self-confidence, allowed for body positivity, and resulted in an overall sense of peace. In so doing, trans people offered a marked contrast to the popular narrative that being from a marginalized group equals anguish.

There are two main types of members of marginalized groups: those who are seen as lower on the social hierarchy from birth, such as cisgender women and people of color, and those who adopt or acquire a stigmatized identity over time, such as LGBTQ+ people and some people with disabilities. As transgender people, our interviewees fell into the latter category. Going through a process of coming out as a member of a marginalized group created opportunities for them to note the differences in what life was like before and after. With these temporal references, interviewees shared that there was much joy to be found in oneself after coming out and they were significantly happier after they embraced their marginalized identities.

Almost half of those interviewed explicitly expressed that life was better now than it had been before they identified as transgender. Notably, no one said that their life was worse. Laura, a white 23-year-old trans woman, reflected, “You know, my friend always teased me because I have this glare that I give to everyone. But that’s the thing. I don't have to glare at people anymore because I don't feel threatened anymore.” Earlier in the interview, Laura had described how partners and family members tried to box her in as a feminine gay man and her experiences with constant harassment on the street. However, as Laura suggested, her life has improved because she does not feel as vulnerable as she did before coming out as a trans woman, and being able to “embody all of me because that makes me so much more powerful of a person.” Isaac, a 23-year-old mixed race transfag, shared that other people also noticed the improvement in quality of life: “I came out to my coworker, and she was like, ‘You look so happy! You were so miserable before.’ And I was like, I know!”

Numerous studies have documented the link between low self-esteem and heightened health risks, such as self-harm and suicidality for trans people (Austin and Goodman 2017). We do not negate the seriousness of these heightened risks. However, we contend that, like other facets of social life and popular narratives about marginalized groups, these public health concerns may gloss over a significant portion of people who have never, or who no longer, use self-harming coping strategies. We found that transgender people had a lot to say about how being trans increased, rather than decreased, their self-confidence. As Isaac stated, “[I’m] feeling more confident in who I am and feeling comfortable with myself. That's really the joy that I have since I realized that or started identifying as trans.” Reflecting on joy and improvements in quality of life, transgender people described how their self-confidence was bolstered by embracing a trans identity and eschewing the typical conventions in public discourse that consistently link being transgender with hardship.

Interviewees described having a noticeably stronger foundation on which they could thrive once they embraced a marginalized identity. This sense of being anchored or grounded was invaluable for people to feel less fragmented. As Jax reflected:

I'm doing all these things and balancing all these things, holding all these things that I tried to hold before and fell through because my foundation was cut into so many pieces but now I have at least a large slab of who I am so it's ok that these things are solidly planted on them.

These statements document how transgender people can build self-confidence, both in spite of, and because of, persistent inequality and trans oppression. These findings are significant because they challenge an academic narrative that may, in fact, be causing problems in transgender people’s lives. As psychologist Michelle Fine (2016:349) has noted, “Despair and self-harm may worsen when gross inequities are made to seem natural and irreversible.”

In addition, many interviewees spoke about how coming into one’s identity meant finding a sense of inner peace, which greatly improved their quality of life. Some described this feeling as connected to spirituality. Others expressed how, despite the challenges they had experienced as trans, they knew that they would be ok. Liam shared, “It's almost like because it's felt like swimming through mud that at some point, I just feel grounded and I'm at peace.”

Identifying as transgender meant that our interviewees could “be with themselves” and not just, as previous scholars (e.g., Garrison 2018) have importantly documented, “be themselves.” As trans people suggested, embracing being in a marginalized group meant that they felt more comfortable in their own skin. Nico said:

You know how there's the saying when people come into their own? I feel like there's this line and all these pieces are taken out of it. As they start coming in and making the line there's just a different way of walking in the world, a different way of seeing the world. Sitting with yourself [in a way] that feels powerful and right and peaceful and bold.

As Nico describes, having deeper self-knowledge was tethered to a sense of empowerment. In feeling more comfortable in their own skin, transgender people experienced an improvement in their quality of life.

Trans interviewees also identified increased body positivity after coming out, challenging mainstream beliefs that trans people are “monstrous” (see Nordmarken 2014; Stryker 1994). Rather than perceiving their bodies as grotesque, abject, or unrelatable, our interviewees described finding pleasure in their bodies, humor in bodily changes for those engaged in medical interventions, and the capacity to, “feel comfortable in my body and feel attractive. I no longer have to edit the way I look,” as Avery, a 22-year-old white genderqueer person, shared. Some of the body positivity narratives were invoked when interviewees remembered a moment when they anticipated how they might appear if they could transition. Ava, a 30-year-old Black trans woman, delighted in how she appreciated her appearance:

Being pretty. I know [Laughs] it's bad. But when I look at my picture, I get happy. I remember being that little boy who always wanted to look like this. Sometimes I look at my pictures and am like “Oh, my god, you look so pretty.” And that makes me happy… . It just makes me feel really proud I became that girl that I always thought of in my head.

Others reflected on how they felt more positive not only about their bodies, but about other people’s bodies too. Alex, a 23-year-old Latinx genderqueer person, described this:

I've been moving into a space where, yeah, bodies do crazy things and bodies are all kinds of weird ways, and they like have all these fluids that come out in different ways, and like it's great and it's really reaching a point where I sincerely feel and believe that on a level that's never been true before, and just being like super body positive and able to embrace other people and really other people's bodies, and I don't know, all the imperfect and weird and gross things that they encompass [Laughs].

These narratives of embodied pleasure counter the transnormative narrative that mandates that access to medical interventions may be granted only if a trans person feels disgust with their bodies. The medical establishment’s inability to understand how trans people can both embrace their bodies and seek to change them through medical interventions perpetuates trans oppression (Shuster 2016). Rather than offering gender-affirming care only for trans people who proffer stories of bodily disgust, our interviewees suggest that the medical community’s assumptions about why people may seek gender-affirming care needs to be updated. Moreover, that trans people were able to find pleasure in their bodies, both as they are and as they might become through physical interventions or social transitions, underscores the importance of empowering marginalized people to inhabit their bodies based on their own self-definitions.

It is imperative to note that, although our interviewees expressed that their lives improved after embracing a marginalized identity, they also mentioned that they did not hate themselves before coming out as trans. This runs counter to the medicalized transnormative discourse that a “true” trans person is supposed to hate themselves and that the only way to overcome self-hatred is through medical interventions. In these bleak portrayals, scholars suggest that trans people’s discomfort with their sex assigned at birth spills over into poorer mental health outcomes, including generalized depression, distress, and unhappiness with one’s life (Castañeda 2015). From this rendering, trans people are supposed to understand themselves as having been born into “the wrong body” and medical interventions alleviate this “error.” Countering this, Summer, a 68-year-old white trans woman noted how, after seeking gender-affirming interventions, that “All of those things that I liked about me before are still here.” Vic, a 23-year-old Latinx trans man, also reflected on this medicalizing narrative and highlighted how he found joy in who he was before the use of gender-affirming medical interventions:

And another thing that just makes me really happy is to think of my former self and my female self, and be ok with that and to feel like I don't know. I feel really at peace with that connection, and I don't resent it, and I never hated myself. You know? I didn't feel right, I didn't feel like I was comfortable the whole time. But I never, wanted to get rid of that whole part of my narrative. Like, “Man, I really hated myself and I felt like I was trapped.” No, I didn't feel like I was trapped and I didn't feel like I was in the wrong body. I just felt like my body needed to be matched up with something else. Looking back, that makes me really happy.

Vic’s story might make some medical providers uneasy. The medical establishment has historically, and contemporarily, justified the use of medical interventions by understanding gender-affirming medicine as a public health intervention that alleviates self-hatred and self-harming behaviors among transgender people (Shuster 2021). However, as Vic, Summer, and other interviewees shared, they had an appreciation of who they were before seeking gender-affirming care, while also finding joy in being who they were after medical interventions.

Reflecting on what they have noticed after adopting a trans identity, our interviewees suggested that embracing membership in a marginalized group improved their lives. Several interviewees explicitly rejected the narrative that “good” trans people hate themselves before transitioning. The majority of interviewees also said that their lives were better because coming into their trans identity increased their self-confidence, body positivity, and sense of peace. Thus, asking about joy provided a much more nuanced narrative about trans lives than often appears in social science research.

“I love being in the trans community.”: Connecting with Others

Social connections offer access to vital resources, better health outcomes, and social support (Campos-Castillo et al. 2020; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Brashears 2006). Traditionally, scholarship on marginalized groups has focused on how discrimination hinders these valuable connections with others, particularly for groups like transgender and LGBQ+ people whose families of origin do not usually share their identities (Acosta 2013). Indeed, the social isolation of trans people has been well-documented (see Stewart, O’Halloran, and Oates 2018). Due to the focus on exclusion and discrimination, scholars often fail to attend to how being from a stigmatized group can facilitate connection, including through gaining membership to a community of those who share one’s identity (for exceptions, see Crenshaw 1991; Stone 2013). Moreover, experiencing marginality and embracing one’s identity may deepen emotional relationships with a wide variety of people. Many of our interviewees described feeling isolated when first coming out as transgender. However, the majority of our interviewees shared that the story of coming out does not end in social isolation and 70 percent (28/40) explicitly mentioned connections with others as one of the joys of being trans. When asked about joy, interviewees detailed how being trans allowed for membership in supportive communities, deepened their emotional connections with family and friends, and enabled them to find intimate partners. Thus, rather than resulting in exclusion, being trans helped them connect with others.

Community membership was a joyful aspect of being transgender cited by many. As Austin stated, “I mean, I love being in the trans community. I love the community.” Moreover, several interviewees spoke explicitly about how they would not have the community they have if they were not transgender. River, a 20-year-old mixed race genderqueer person, explained:

I know a lot of trans people, but I had never been close to them. Now being in the community, I have noticed that they're really great people. I probably wouldn't have spoken to them as much or been in the same spaces with them as often [if I were not trans]. So, I have met a lot of really great friends lately.

Paige, a 26-year-old Black trans person echoed this, arguing:

I feel like I have met some amazing people over the years of doing social justice work. In the last 5 years, as I was really coming into an understanding of myself, it has provided more room for me to be open to other people in ways that I perhaps never was before. That really has led to establishing strong ties with beautiful amazing people. I wouldn't have a trans community if I wasn't trans, you know?

Thus, rather than hindering connections with others, having a marginalized identity facilitated connection in unexpected but rewarding ways.

Membership in a community can provide many sources of joy and support for those with marginalized identities. Several interviewees discussed how the transgender community functioned like a family for them. As Bailey, a 24-year-old white gender fluid person, stated, “I fucking love my community… . They [the trans community] are like my family… . I find joy in having this community who has brought me in and fed my soul and helped remind me that I am cared for.” Reaffirming this idea, Julian, a 31-year-old Latinx genderqueer person, said, “Kindness, looking out for people, and almost like family. That shows up in a lot of queer community and I have access to that, that I wouldn't if I didn't have this experience.” Moreover, for some interviewees, membership in a community provided them with the sort of care that they were denied by their family of origin. For example, Ben, a 22-year-old white trans man, stated:

I kind of feel like a lot of my life is a source of joy. I was really lucky; if I hadn't come out to my parents at a young age, I wouldn't have met these amazing people who are now my family… . I am so appreciative that I have gotten to meet so many of the people in my life, and I wouldn't have met any of these people without this aspect of my identity.

As such, even if being part of a marginalized group may reduce access to some sources of love and support, such as from one’s family of origin, it can provide access to others, such as through participation in queer and transgender communities.

Being a member of a marginalized group can also facilitate connections with others outside of identity-based communities. Many interviewees said that being trans helped them have deeper emotional relationships, as their experiences of discrimination and stigma made them more open to understanding others. Oliver, a 34-year-old white trans person, stated that what he found joyful was “finally having some sense of peace and feeling grounded in a way that I could actually be open to other people and establishing deep connections with people that I don't know otherwise.” Morgan, a 25-year-old white genderqueer person, echoed this, answering the question about the joys of being transgender with:

Trying to help other people. That's what I got, a lot, from coming out. Like being able to just not look at myself but everyone else in a new light and in ways people are awesome. Let's try to make everyone awesome. Awesome in that awe-inspiring way of being able to be so powerful. I think it opens up this connection and willingness to hear others that can be very close to, if not the same thing as, a spiritual definition of peace.

These experiences contrast with the myth of damaged goods that circulates about being a trans person, which positions trans people as so “broken” by systemic oppression and/or internalized shaming that they are unable to be emotionally available (Levitt and Ippolito 2014).

Finally, in describing the joyful aspects of being transgender, many pointed to how coming into one’s identity and feeling more connected with people also facilitated romantic relationships. Some shared that they previously did not trust that others would be attracted to them as transgender people inhabiting trans bodies, but they found how the unanticipated joy in settling into their bodies gave them the confidence to have healthy, affirming romantic relationships. As Megan, a 32-year-old white trans woman, noted, “A joy in my life is being a trans person and finding love and all that stuff [Laughs]. It sounds so cheesy. But I really thought that being a trans woman would mean never having a partner. And certainly not one as hot and thoughtful as mine.” Counter to dominant understandings that being part of a marginalized group decreases one’s sense of self-worth, many interviewees noted how embracing their identity did the reverse. Laura, a 23-year-old white trans woman, explained:

I really struggled to date and I haven't wanted to be by myself and I think a large portion of that was always wanting someone to legitimize me and make me feel like I was important and valuable and worth loving and all of that. And I now know that I already am, and nobody else needs to do that for me. So I feel free to date, or have friends, or do whatever I want because I'm right.

Matt, a 59-year-old white trans man, related, “I think what transitioning did for me more than anything else was allow me to be the man that I am. Because I can accept that in me, I can say, okay, now I love myself and I'm ready to love other people as well.” Although scholars tend to focus on the challenges transgender people face in forming or maintaining romantic partnerships (see Iantaffi and Bockting 2011), our interviewees suggested that being trans created opportunities for love and companionship. This finding is a poignant reminder of how focusing on the hardships of stigma precludes understanding the breadth of human experience for marginalized people.

The answers given when asked about the joyous aspects of being trans demonstrate that the relationship between social isolation and being a member of a marginalized group is an empirical question that has, thus far, been insufficiently addressed. Currently, the literature tends to assume relative isolation for stigmatized groups or inquire only about isolation (Link and Phelan 2001). However, when asked about joy, many interviewees spoke about the social connections made possible by being transgender. Thus, rather than assume that members of non-stigmatized groups connect with others easily and those of stigmatized groups do not, future research should examine how marginalization facilitates connection, including forms of connection that are either unavailable to, or more difficult for, those with more privilege.

CONCLUSION

Joy is a fundamental aspect of social life. However, it is an understudied topic in sociology (Cieslik 2015; Thin 2014) and is rarely mentioned in research on the experiences of marginalized groups. Instead of joy, pleasure, and happiness, sociologists tend to focus on problems, inequalities, and misery. Sociological scholarship on negative aspects of society is rewarded, as it upholds the status quo in how to frame social problems (Henricks 2016; Thin 2014; Veenhoven 2018), and this epistemic foreclosure is self-perpetuating, resulting in a joy deficit in sociology. Although attention to joy, pleasure, and happiness may seem frivolous to some, particularly when society faces so many problems, we argue that the failure to focus on these aspects of social life is, itself, a problem. If scholars do not attend to joy, they cannot contribute to knowledge about how to foster it. This is perilous even for sociologists interested in only problems, as joy can help combat issues such as stigma and negative self-esteem (Lamont 2018; Riggle et al. 2014). Moreover, focusing only on the adverse aspects of being part of a marginalized group may actually harm members of those groups as it perpetuates beliefs that marginalized people live in misery. Telling narratives only of negativity contributes to the construction of unlivable lives (Westbrook 2021).

To address the joy deficit in sociology and in transgender studies more generally, we presented an analysis of how interviewees answered the question, “What do you find joyful about being trans?” Our findings demonstrate that transgender people were easily able to identify what they found joyful about their marginalized identity. Counter to beliefs that people who regularly experience discrimination would rather be part of a more privileged group, interviewees argued that, despite high levels of oppression, they preferred being transgender. Indeed, many interviewees talked extensively about how their lives became better once they embraced their marginalized identity due to increased self-esteem, body positivity, and a sense of peace. Moreover, most pointed to the connections they were able to make with others because of their transgender identity, including community membership, deeper emotional ties, and forming romantic relationships. Asking trans people about joy enabled them to express parts of their lives that are often overlooked in academic research.

As our findings reveal, much knowledge is lost when academics fail to ask about joy. The lives of members of marginalized groups are multifaceted (Westbrook 2021). However, when scholarship focuses exclusively on negative experiences and outcomes, the facets related to misery and oppression become erroneously magnified, while the aspects that make lives livable become obscured. These partial truths about lived experiences then become perceived as the whole of marginalized existence. This cycle of knowledge construction runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy; if one searches only for inequalities, one will likely find only inequalities.

The costs of asking only about negative aspects of marginalized peoples’ lives are not limited to academia. Methodological choices, such as the types of questions scholars ask in interviews and on surveys, have consequences for research participants. The interaction between a researcher and research subject is not a one-way knowledge street in which the researcher garners information. Instead, the subject also learns in this interaction. For example, scholars have demonstrated that survey respondents can internalize the implicit norms in surveys, as well as beliefs about social categories embedded in surveys (Lee, Wilton, and Kwan 2014; Norton 2013). Just as taking a survey teaches respondents norms, so does being interviewed.

Furthermore, the knowledge produced by academics filters out to the public through news coverage and the educational system. If research states that shame, misery, and isolation are central to being a member of a particular group, that is more likely to become established as “truth” (Waidzunas 2012). Similarly, if scholarship highlights these negative aspects, members of marginalized groups may be more likely to notice despair and less likely to attend to the joyful aspects of their lives. Moreover, those who are not part of the marginalized identity may come to believe that there is nothing desirable about being part of that group, resulting in pity. Although feelings of pity often evoke the desire to “protect” group members (Sajir and Aouragh 2019), pity does not inspire people to lift up the oppressed and celebrate the group. For example, poster children are frequently used to entice viewers to donate money out of pity in publicized events to raise funds for people with disabilities, such as the “Jerry’s Kids” telethon. As Shapiro (1994) documents, crafting pity narratives perpetuates stigma and disempowers people with disabilities (see also Sunderland, Catalano, and Kendall 2009). Finally, if scholarship portrays members of a group as lonely and isolated, those with that identity may be less likely to try to connect with others, particularly if early attempts at connection are met with discrimination.

By contrast, overlooked aspects of being from marginalized groups may be revealed if we start asking about joy. And, like findings that focus on violence and inequality, findings about joy would also filter out to the public. This sharing of findings about joy, pleasure, and happiness may help reduce inequality by uplifting narratives of joy and well-being (Thin 2014; Veenhoven 2018). For example, imagine the difference of being a student in a classroom who studies the joys of being Black, rather than only focusing on slavery, poverty, and racially-motivated violence. Or imagine reading similar news coverage. Celebrating Blackness has positive effects for both Black and non-Black people alike (Moody-Ramirez 2019). It may increase self-esteem and reduce racism. Scholars who have attended to joy in disciplines other than sociology have noted that Black joy is a form of resistance and that centering Black joy is vital to anti-racist pedagogy (Dunn and Love 2020; Lu and Steele 2019). It is widely believed that the way to reduce inequality is to bring attention to misery (Santiago 2015). However, our society has long told narratives about suffering, and yet we still have high levels of inequality. What if part of the solution to social problems is also to tell narratives about joy?

The findings we present here offer some insights into what knowledge is gained when interviewees are asked about joy. Our call to attend to joy also opens many avenues for future research. Most transgender people are not raised believing they are transgender. As such, the interviewees for this project often focused on the joys in their lives now that they identify as trans and used previous times in their lives for comparison. Future research could examine how the joys of being a member of a marginalized group is similar or different for groups that do not have a “before and after” narrative, such as most cisgender women and people of color. Questions about joy can also be asked of members of relatively dominant groups, such as heterosexuals, cisgender men, and white people. Answers to these questions may afford insight into why people are invested in maintaining these categories and systems of social stratification.

Given the advantages of attending to joy, there needs to be a shift in the sociological episteme that would encourage, or at least allow, studies of joy. Calls for shifts in sociology have a long history. As scholars have realized gaps in knowledge, they have demanded change. In 1985, Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne noted the marginalization of feminism within sociology and called for a Feminist Revolution (Stacey and Thorne 1985). A decade later, Arlene Stein and Ken Plummer (1994) followed in their footsteps and advocated for a Sexual Revolution to encourage sociologists to value the study of sexuality. Here, we echo those bids for sociological change in our call for a Joy Revolution. As the status quo within sociology does not value or reward scholars for studying joy, such a revolution may feel like a daunting task. To accomplish it, we must engage in a paradigm shift such that scholarship on positive outcomes is valued as much as that on inequality, discrimination, and violence. Methods courses should encourage scholars to ask questions about joy, and students should learn how to ask about joy both in interviews and in survey research. Similarly, large social surveys, such as the GSS, should be encouraged to include more questions about joy and grants should be made available for scholars interested in the topic. These shifts may be more likely to happen if it is emphasized that scholarship on joy and inequality are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, one can study inequalities in joy, happiness, and pleasure (Westbrook, Budnick, and Saperstein 2021). A focus on joy does not mean ignoring inequality or catering to recent (troubling) trends in the commodification of happiness and promotion of positive thinking (Cabanas and Illouz 2019; Ehrenreich 2009) which exacerbate inequalities (Ahmed 2010). Sociologically studying joy offers opportunities for advancing a more nuanced approach to how marginalized people live and experience social life. Moreover, attending to joy can help reduce inequalities and offers solutions to social problems.

Footnotes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their generous and insightful feedback on this manuscript. The authors share equal authorship. The first author collected the data for this project, and data coding, analysis, and writing were divided equally between us. Please direct correspondence to Stef M. Shuster, Lyman Briggs College & Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, 919 E. Shaw Lane, East Lansing, MI 48825, USA; email: [email protected].

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