Reflections
Community Voices Ignite Change
Reflections is the heart of Queer Reflection—a space where queer stories ignite connection, challenge injustice, and honor those who came before. Through truth and imagination, we build community and spark change—with purpose, pride, joy, and of course, reflection.
Mapping Empathy to Rewire the World: Introducing the Queer Reflection Empathy Map
Queer Reflection’s new Empathy Map worksheet is a powerful tool for creators, educators, activists, and anyone seeking to better understand the emotional experience of queer lives. Ground your storytelling, design, or outreach in lived truth—and help build a world that truly listens.
How AI Can Be Queer-Affirming (Yes, Really)
AI isn’t here to replace queer voices—it’s here to reflect them. At Queer Reflection, we’re using AI to deepen empathy, not dilute it. This post explores how technology, when guided by lived experience, can become a mirror for emotional truth.
Echoes of Erasure: Trump Shuts the ‘Press 3’ LGBTQ+ Hotline
On July 17, 2025, Trump dismantles the ‘Press 3’ LGBTQ+ youth lifeline. This poetic, furious reflection demands action as we stand guard over our queer souls.
Who Queer Reflection Is For (and Who It’s Not)
Queer Reflection isn’t for everyone—and that’s the point. We built this platform for those ready to listen with their hearts, not argue with their politics. If you’re willing to feel what we feel, this space is for you.
Original Sin: How Religion Created Homophobia
Before religion codified it, homophobia didn’t exist. It was taught, enforced, ritualized. This blog post unpacks how religious institutions transformed diverse human expressions of love and gender into sources of shame, and how queer liberation demands that we confront these sacred roots of oppression.
Stripped: The Cowardice Behind Renaming the USNS Harvey Milk
In a blatant act of queer erasure, conservative Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USNS Harvey Milk renamed. From deleting trans identities in the military to whitewashing Stonewall, this is more than symbolic—it’s war on our history.
From Screen to Sidewalk: Why AR Is Our Next Move
We’re bringing queer stories into the real world—layered into the spaces where empathy is needed most. Here’s why Queer Reflection is moving from the screen to the sidewalk, and how AR can help us feel these stories more deeply.
“Learn to Be Brave”: How An Erasure Song Gave Me the Courage to Create Queer Reflection
Queer Reflection founder Bryan Alexander reflects on how Erasure’s “Hideaway” gave him the courage to come out—and inspired the creation of an empathy platform for those still learning to be brave.
The Color Purple Taught Me to See Myself—So I Built a Place Where Others Could Too
Queer Reflection founder Bryan Alexander shares how Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” shaped his identity, inspired his NYU essay, and planted the seeds for his empathy-driven platform.
We Were Born For Love: What Neuroscience Taught Me About Empathy, Queerness, and Building Something Better
Inspired by Dr. Bruce Perry’s “Born for Love,” Queer Reflection explores how empathy shapes queer identity, why it’s endangered—and how immersive storytelling can revive it.
More Than a Story: The Technologies Powering Queer Reflection
Queer Reflection blends AI, AR, emotional branching, and narrative design to build the future of empathy. This isn’t just tech—it’s a feeling engine.
Why Now Matters: Building Empathy in a World That Wants to Forget
In a world where queer rights are under renewed attack, Queer Reflection explores why building empathy through immersive experience is more urgent than ever.
The Day I Disappeared: On Queer Invisibility and Why We Build
Queer Reflection founder Bryan Alexander shares a personal story about queer invisibility, emotional design, and why we must build spaces where no one disappears to survive.
The Shoulders We Stand On
The torch they carried lit the fire that fuels us still.
The Shoulders We Stand On is more than remembrance—it’s invitation. These are the stories of those who carved light from shadow, who stood tall in their truth so that we might stand taller in ours. To read them is to deepen your sense of history, widen your capacity for empathy, and root yourself in a lineage of courage. Their lives are not just echoes—they are instructions.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Alice Walker and the Radical Power of Love
Honoring Alice Walker — writer, activist, and unapologetic voice for queer love and liberation. Her courage reminds us that survival is an act of defiance.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Margaret Cho – Loud, Fearless, and Unapologetically Ours
Margaret Cho turned anger into art and survival into revolution. She showed us that being loud, queer, and unapologetic is its own kind of power.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Vito Russo and the Fight to Be Seen
Vito Russo understood that representation is survival. This post honors Russo’s fight to tell the truth about queer lives on screen and off—and the power of visibility when silence becomes deadly.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Andy Bell – a Voice That Refused to Hide
A luminous tribute to Erasure frontman Andy Bell, whose fearless voice and radical authenticity reshaped queer visibility in pop culture. From stadium anthems to HIV advocacy, his legacy is one of joy, resilience, and unapologetic truth.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Jimmy Somerville – Falsetto, Fierceness, and the Sound of Defiance
Jimmy Somerville didn’t just sing—he soared. From “Smalltown Boy” to queer disco defiance, his voice gave power to the vulnerable and rage to the silenced. We remember the icon who turned falsetto into a battle cry—and the day I met him at a flower stand in San Francisco. Charming. Unforgettable.…
The Shoulders We Stand On: Bayard Rustin and the Quiet Power of Radical Strategy
Bayard Rustin was the architect of the March on Washington—and the conscience of a movement that often tried to sideline him. This post honors Rustin’s radical strategy, quiet leadership, and fight for justice at every intersection.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Leslie Feinberg and the Right to Name Yourself
Leslie Feinberg didn’t wait for permission to exist. They claimed it. This post honors Feinberg’s radical call for gender self-determinism—and the right we all have to name ourselves, fully and on our own terms.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Sylvia Rivera and the Fierce Fight for the Forgotten
Sylvia Rivera fought for the queer people the world tried to forget—trans women, unhoused youth, drag queens, street workers, and the most vulnerable among us. This post honors her fierce, uncompromising activism and her legacy of never leaving anyone behind.
The Shoulders We Stand On: José Sarria, The Widow Norton, and the Royal Art of Queer Defiance
Before Harvey Milk, there was José Sarria—the drag queen, activist, and self-proclaimed Empress Norton. This post honors José’s royal defiance, political courage, and the dazzling power of queer pageantry as resistance.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Harvey Milk and the Power of Visibility
Harvey Milk believed that visibility was survival—and that hope could never be silent. This post honors his legacy as a leader, an activist, and a symbol of the power that comes from simply being seen.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Quentin Crisp and the Power of Unapologetic Self-Expression
Quentin Crisp refused to hide. His life as an artist, writer, and self-described “stately homo” challenges us to consider where we trade authenticity for approval—and what we might reclaim by letting go of that need.
The Shoulders We Stand On: Audre Lorde and the Power of Voice
Audre Lorde taught us that silence is not safety—it’s complicity. This post honors her work as a poet, activist, and truth-teller, and asks what it means to transform silence into language and action.