Daniel Strongman

Thank you for putting this into words. It’s something more of us (especially cis people like me) need to sit with.

What you said about the casual conversations, those half-acceptances that people toss around when they think no one trans is listening, that hits. It’s like watching the door crack open, but knowing you’re still not safe to walk through it.

I really feel this. Visibility is powerful, but it comes at a personal cost, and that cost is rarely acknowledged. It’s hard knowing that just existing can change someone’s opinion, while also knowing it’s not your job to educate or be someone’s “turning point.”

That’s the highest compliment, thank you! If it lingers, it’s alive. And maybe that’s where morality lives too: not in the answers, but in the questions we can’t shake.

Totally agree. The Cogito centers the self so completely that it risks erasing the other. Morality can’t live there long. It needs a world beyond the self to mean anything.

Thank you for your insights!

I love this statement! Thank you for your kind words.

So morals come from many places: the body, the tribe, the home, the nation. Some we inherit. Some we learn. Some we question. Some we outgrow.

They evolve as we evolve.
But they all start with a simple question:
What kind of world do I want to live in?

Family reflects culture. What’s moral in one home may be immoral in another. In one country, duty to elders is sacred. In another, independence is praised. These differences are cultural relativism in action.

But not all morals are built-in. Many come from family. We absorb rules before we understand them. If we’re taught that obedience is good, we internalize it. If we’re taught rebellion, we learn that, too.

Evolution shaped this, too. Groups that valued fairness, loyalty, and care survived longer. Morals weren’t just kind, they were adaptive. They kept us alive. That instinct still guides us.

Some are innate. We’re born valuing our own lives. From that self-awareness comes a basic rule, if I don’t want to be hurt, I shouldn’t hurt others. Empathy begins with the body.

We all think.
We all are.
But the world doesn’t treat every “I am” the same.

#philsky #lgbtq

So here’s the question:
Do I exist in my mind, or in yours?
Is queerness what I know, or what you refuse to see?

Being queer is more than being.
It’s being misread.
It’s being rewritten.
It’s surviving the space between truth and distortion.

#philsky #lgbtq

Cogito affirms that I exist.
But not who I am.
Identity isn’t born in a vacuum.
It’s shaped by thought, mine, and theirs.

If we all think, are we the same?
In essence, yes.
In experience, no.
We do not all walk through the same world.

#philsky #lgbtq

“I think, therefore I am.”
But what happens when others think you are something else?

If my queerness is known to me as truth, but framed by others as deviance,
am I still myself?
Or am I a projection in their world?

#philsky #lgbtq

Is acceptance real if it disappears when you ask for rights?

#philsky #book #writer #lgbtqia #queer

Thanks for the good faith discussion too! I really appreciate you pushing back on the historical details and keeping me honest about the CNT-FAI. These conversations are how we actually learn from each other, even when we don’t see everything the same way. Solidarity.

To become who I am without needing the world to agree.

The betrayal was clearly the knockout blow, but the internal fractures didn’t help their resilience when it came.

So maybe both things were true: they faced genuine ideological contradictions about inclusion vs. revolutionary purity, AND they were ultimately crushed by external betrayal rather than those internal contradictions.

You’re right about the betrayal being the decisive factor, the Stalinists turning on them mid-war was devastating. At the same time, they did have internal tensions that weakened them beforehand, expelling moderates like Pestaña, conflicts over militarization with groups like the Iron Column.

It’s a hard tension: how do you build inclusive justice while dealing with genuinely harmful ideologies? Maybe there’s no single answer, just ongoing experiments in building power from below while learning from what worked and what didn’t.

The CNT-FAI showed incredible solidarity and creativity, but they also excluded groups they saw as counter-revolutionary, which contradicts the “liberation for all” ideal and arguably weakened their movement.

The ethics of dupes might come down to intention. Is it about access or assimilation? A dupe that nods to the original isn’t the same as a fake trying to pass, one says “I belong,” the other says “let me in.” Maybe the real question is: what are we trying to prove, and to whom?

There’s a real moral question here: what is authenticity, and who gets to define it? If a “dupe” offers the same aesthetic experience without the luxury price, is it any less real, or just less exclusive?

The optimistic scenario requires either clear economic failure that’s politically attributable to the tariffs, or a major external shock that forces reconsideration. Neither seems likely enough to bet on.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The business community’s response will be key. If downstream industries organize effectively around supply chain disruption and consumer price impacts, that could create counterpressure. But concentrated benefits usually beat diffuse costs in American politics.

You’re probably right. Once tariffs create their own constituency of protected industries and workers, the political incentives flip entirely. Even a Democratic president would face intense lobbying from newly-protected sectors, and “bringing back jobs” messaging works across party lines.

True freedom requires collective liberation from systems that harm any of us. When we tolerate brutality against the most vulnerable, we all live in its shadow.

But how do we actually get there? What does moving toward justice look like in practice?

Lest we forget you once said “Noah, grab the boat, I’m drowning everyone.”