What you need to know about the intersectionality of joy.

This post originally appeared in The Joy Thief newsletter. To get more articles like this straight to your inbox, subscribe.

Power systems are a joy thief.

We live in a world dictated by power and wealth. Both bring a *very* minute number of people joy. The expense of joy gained through power and wealth is usually distributed through society as joylessness and misery.

Systemic joylessness at the intersections

The horrible truth is… There is a lot of misery in the world and much of it is systemic. Misery is joylessness in action. When joylessness is systemic, that is joy being stolen from us and this theft is an act of violence. These injustices sit at intersections of power structures that steal joy by causing harm where people don’t have the access, or even the legal rights, to equality and freedom.

Systemic, structural and persistent joylessness and misery are acts of violence and injustice against people as individuals and collective groups.

Social injustice.

Racial injustice.

Cultural injustice.

Climate and environmental injustice

Class injustice

Disability injustice.

Gender Injustice.

The list of systematically stolen joy feels endless.

I sit at the intersections of being working class and growing up on a council estate (which is a specific ilk of working class-ness), disabled, neurodivergent, a woman, bisexual. I am 30, but it’s only in the past few years that I’m starting to really understand how society has othered me to steal my joy.

Shame, blame and guilt were projected from society onto me because of the intersections I sit at. I soaked it all up, took each disgusting spoonful as though they were my burdens to swallow. I digested this joylessness most of my life. But I have realised that these are not my burdens, that there is no shame in any of the intersections I sit at. No blame that is mine. No guilt that I need to feel. It is only discrimination, bias, prejudice and stereotypes, carried by a society that wants to guilt and shame us into being productive cogs in the injustice machine. This same machine further guilts and shames, and finally blames us, when we don’t or can’t or won’t live up to various generic standards of productivity, beauty, power and wealth.

So, at 30, I have decided to take joy back, to steal joy back, piece by joyful piece, because it was MINE to begin with and society and power and economy take it from me, from us, every. single. day.

Let that sink in.

Every single day that we have drawn breath these structures have stolen joy from us. And they will continue to do it until we draw our last.

Joy is the antidote

We can prevent our joy being stolen if we dismantle the current system and build new systems that prioritise joy. But, how can we celebrate, create and fully embrace what joy means without knowing what it means for others? What does joy mean for the indigenous people fighting oil and gas pipelines in Canada and the USA, for the indigenous people fighting deforestation in the Amazon, for farmers facing drought, floods and desertification, for factory workers and garment workers in China, Bangladesh and Taiwan?

If joylessness is created by sitting at intersections then joy must be intersectional. We must embrace joy as individuals and as a collective to enable systemic joy. And what is systemic joy if it is not removing barriers and inequalities. Systemic joy that is collective in essence is liberation and freedom for all. It is stealing back joy not just for ourselves, but for everyone who has had joy stolen from them.

Joy is an act of political, social and economic resistance to the powers and economies that seek to create systemic joylessness and misery through the theft of our joy.

So as always, my call to action — or rather my call to arms — is this…

Embrace your joy AND hold joy thieves accountable for the joylessness they create.