That's what I'm fucking talking about.

As she was leaving the ice after her gold-medal winning performance this week, figure skater Alysa Liu turned to the camera that was inches from her face and, beaming, yelled "That's what I'm fucking talking about." It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. The joy of accepting who you truly are, of no longer conforming to the boundaries that have constrained you. The joy of being free.

Liu's story has been told so many times now that I probably don't need to repeat it here, but the short version is that was one of the best figure skaters in the world as a child and at just 16 she shocked the skating world by announcing her retirement from the sport. She wasn't happy, she was burnt out, she was done. A few years later she came back to competitive skating, but she came back transformed: hair dyed, face pierced, and completely out of fucks to give. Her performance at the Olympics was a culmination and a celebration and a reminder that, as poet Toi Derricotte once wrote, "joy is an act of resistance."

I'm not an ice skating guy—in fact I'm pretty sure my last time in skates was on a date when I was 22 and I slipped so hard that I split open the entire inseam of my pants. I do not know a triple lux from a double whatever. But I know what joy is. I know what it feels like to put it all out there and leave nothing behind. I know what it means to see the path you're supposed to walk and to walk another way. I know what it means to be free.

This wasn't the first time this month that we got to see something this radically joyful, performed in front of millions.

After Bad Bunny's infectious Super Bowl halftime performance, essayist Soraya Nadia McDonald commented that he "makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous."

Art is radicalizing in the revelations it creates.

I was unable to walk away from that halftime show and not want to know everything about the story Bad Bunny was telling in the same way that I couldn't watch Liu's joyful gold medal-winning skate and not want to dive deep into what made her throw it all away and build it back up on her terms.

That there have been two high-profile examples of this kind of radicalizing joy on the largest possible stages in less than a month feels like a balm for the relentless shit we have been living under as ICE has destroyed our communities. It is a reminder that even right now, even as the fight rages on, there is time for joy, there is time for art, there is time to celebrate difference and self, and to insist that you too can be free.

Because they want you to forget that.

There is a reason why the administration has cracked down on the arts and humanities alongside its brutal assault on migrants. It knows that art is dangerous, that knowledge leads to asking questions, and that those questions don't always lead where they want you to go.

One of the pillars of fascism is conformity. In this country we see it unfolding in front of us every day. Those that don't speak English, those that are brown and black, are being rounded up by masked thugs. Those that speak up are labeled traitors. Universities are being blackmailed. History that doesn't line up with the administration's white supremacist views is being erased. Those that teach, those that make art, are called radicals and their livelihoods are threatened.

An ice skating performance at the Olympics or a Super Bowl halftime show may not seem like much in the ever-lengthening shadow of fascism, but they are a reminder that change is possible, that our lives are worth fighting for, that freedom is achievable, and that joy—real joy, the kind of joy that you want to surround yourself with and bask in its transformative glow—is one of the most radical things there is.

Because in spite of the administration's crackdowns, in spite of the masked bastards, in spite of everything, people are still speaking up, people are still making art, people are still teaching real history, people are still fighting back against the abduction of their neighbors. People still know what it means to feel joy. People still know what it means to be free.