#Ari Drennen

[our-queer-experience]

if you’re cis and dont know what you can be doing right now, or even trans but not sure what you can do, this article is great

[nerdygaymormon]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ari Drennen at Ari's Threads:

When authoritarian regimes collapse, it often looks sudden—leaders flee, governments dissolve, and the state unravels in real-time. But collapse is rarely spontaneous. More often, it’s the result of a slow, self-inflicted erosion of power, set in motion when leaders overestimate their own support and push too far. This was the case in Afghanistan in 2021, where the U.S.-backed government, built on external military support rather than genuine legitimacy, crumbled almost overnight. It was also the case in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where a war meant to demonstrate strength instead exposed military and political weakness. And it was the case in South Korea’s 2024 martial law crisis, where a government that assumed it could impose military rule without consequence was swiftly removed from power. Again and again, regimes that assume their grip on power is unshakable discover—too late—that their own overreach is what brings them down.

Overconfidence Leads to Overreach

Authoritarian regimes don’t collapse because of one bad decision. They collapse because of a pattern of miscalculations—each one widening the gap between the government and the people until the state is too hollow to stand.

[...]

Not all resistance looks like street protests or armed insurgencies. Some of the most effective opposition happens quietly, in ways that authoritarian governments struggle to contain. During World War II, the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual outlined ways that civilians could disrupt enemy governments—not with bombs, but with small, deliberate inefficiencies. Workers were told to misfile documents, delay projects, introduce small errors that, over time, would make the entire system grind to a halt. That same principle applied to Hong Kong’s 2014 protests, where a leaderless, encrypted messaging-driven movement made it nearly impossible for authorities to arrest key organizers. Every time police tried to crack down, new protest flash mobs would appear elsewhere. Digital resistance allowed the movement to stay ahead of law enforcement for months. In South Korea’s 2024 crisis, protesters flooded government hotlines, overloaded digital reporting systems, and created so much bureaucratic noise that state enforcement became nearly impossible. The government couldn’t keep up with digital disruptions, and by the time authorities responded, resistance had already moved to a different platform or tactic. Once a government loses the ability to enforce its own rules, even in the most basic ways, its power begins to slip—sometimes faster than even the people resisting expect.

[...]

Regimes Collapse from Within as Much as from Without

Governments don’t just fall because of external pressure. They fall because of their own mistakes. They push too hard, alienating even those who once supported them. They purge too many people, creating enemies where there were none. They assume military force can solve political problems, only to find that wars are easier to start than to win. They mistake silence for support, failing to see that silence is often just the absence of a safe way to speak. And then one day, the silence shatters, and the regime collapses so fast that even its leaders are caught off guard. Regimes that look stable on the surface often collapse the fastest. Russia hasn’t fallen, but it has been plunged into a financially ruinous war, losing soldiers and resources at an unsustainable rate. What was supposed to be a quick military victory has instead forced the country into a long, grinding conflict that is weakening its global influence and economic stability. Iraq was supposed to become a stable democracy, but de-Baathification fueled years of insurgency. South Korea’s government thought it could impose martial law, but within weeks, mass resistance forced it out.

Ari Drennen wrote a solid column on how autocratic regimes accelerate their collapse as a result of their drunken hubris, as we have seen in South Korea and Russia. This also applies to regimes that seemingly look stable.

[cynicalclassicist]

I suppose take what little victories you can.

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, uaing the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

[thatstormygeek]

“The New York Times did not quote any transgender people in a majority of their articles about anti-trans legislation in the past year,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President & CEO of GLAAD, in a statement posted to GLAAD’s website. “One of the first recommendations we make during the hundreds of LGBTQ education briefings we hold with national and local newsrooms is to include LGBTQ voices in LGBTQ stories: interview the people impacted by your coverage and include their perspectives. The New York Times failed that basic reporting lesson 101, and replaced it with a pattern of obfuscating sources’ anti-trans affiliations and allowing their misinformation to go unchecked. Our coalition of more than 150 organizations, community leaders, and notable LGBTQ people and allies remains steadfast in our calls for the Times to improve their coverage of transgender people.” “The paper of record has an obligation to present its readers with the full human toll of the anti-trans legislative assault,” added Ari Drennen, LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters. “Trans people are more than theoretical curiosities to be debated from afar. Each and every anti-trans bill affects living, breathing people whose voices deserve to be heard and whose stories deserve to be told.”

[dreamy-conceit]

It's important not to lose sight of how much the anti-trans "movement" is just angry adults bullying children whose peers will not.

— Ari Drennen (Twitter, 23 Sept 2023)

[everetterice]

The gop House of Representatives has decided to wage war on the transgender community and new representative who is a transgender female! ER.

[zwoelffarben]

me too twitter user Ari Drennen. Me too.

[pashterlengkap]

Candace Owens says TikTok is socially engineering men to be gay

Candace Owens’ slide into irrelevance continued on Wednesday as the far-right member of Blacks for Trump simultaneously condemned TikTok for America’s decline and sat worshipfully consuming its content. “I believe women are being socially engineered to hate men, and men are being socially engineered to be gay,” Owens blurted about the video sharing platform. Related Candace Owens thinks Munchkins performed “satanic ritual” in “The Wizard of Oz” “It’s the only reason you’d have a dead person and dance around them.” “Don’t at me,” she told her followers, including the over half a million users on the app that she “finally” joined in July and began castigating soon after. “It’s just what I see,” she added. Stay connected to your community Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Owens’ analysis portrayed the popular platform as “a partnership between the media, Hollywood, and psychoanalysts” to socially engineer the American public into “unnatural” behaviors that will ultimately advantage the app’s Chinese overlords who pose an existential threat to the United States. “They’re not socially engineering us to do good things,” Owens claimed. Candace Owens, whose podcast is currently #6 on the Spotify news rankings, thinks that "women are being socially engineered to hate men, and men are being socially engineered to be gay" pic.twitter.com/19qF0D3L0L— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) August 29, 2024 The former Vogue intern described a diabolical process whereby TikTok is able to “speed up” evolution and make “us behave in ways that are not natural to humanity — it’s just not natural to our human existence to behave in these ways.” Those include “making men more and more effeminate” and women “having a strange relationship with children” … oh, and also feminism. On TikTok, “you see some people that, like, took on feminism and were like, I don’t want to have children at all, which, again — against evolution.” “Even in circumstances where the biological overrides and women are going, ‘You know what? Suddenly, I feel my biological clock ticking. I want to have a child,’ they are social engineering women to want to do that without men,” she claimed, echoing right-wing rhetoric about single mothers, “broken” homes, and alleged “anti-family” attitudes among left-wingers. That part of the conspiracy explains why “men are being socially engineered to be gay,” Owens explained. “I’ve picked up on it. They’re just making men more and more effeminate, encouraging effeminate behavior.” She arrived at her conclusion because feelings, Owens assured her followers. “It’s interesting that people are now waking up to this,” the online host said to no one who would take issue with her rabid paranoia. “Don’t hate me,” she added. “Hate what’s actually happening.” Of course, Owens has spouted similar baseless conspiracy theories in the past. Recently, she claimed that French President Emmanual Macron’s wife is actually a transgender man. http://dlvr.it/TCkJDK

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tweet from Ari Drennen (@/ AriDrennen) reading: If you don't think "we have to ban transgenderism entirely" counts as genocidal rhetoric, I would encourage you to swap in another group for trans people and see if a lightbulb goes off for you and then consider that trans people are also people. /End ID]

Republicans think genocidal rhetoric is OK, but the word 'woke' is deadly.

[newswireml]

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pretends he’s all about ‘leave people alone and mind your own g*ddamn business’ – twitchy.com#MSNBCs #Chris #Hayes #pretends #hes #leave #people #mind #gddamn #business #twitchycom

Earlier this week, Media Matters LGBTQ news specialist person Ari Drennen called out The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh for their comments on trans people: Michael Knowles’ speech about eradicating transgenderism and Matt Walsh’s rants about Dylan Mulvaney are gifts to the movement for trans equality. Normal people watch these angry maniacs with revulsion. — Ari Drennen…

[aromanticbastards]

[ID: a tweet by Ari Drennen (@/AriDrennen):

If you don't think "we have to ban transgenderism entirely" counts as genocidal rhetoric, I would encourage you to swap in another group for trans people and see if a lightbulb goes off for you and then consider that trans people are also people.

end ID]

Do you know how weak it makes you look when you call for the genocide of trans people????

[plethoraworldatlas]

Just months after mega-billionaire Elon Musk launched what he termed a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against Media Matters for America, the nonprofit media watchdog outfit announced a round of punishing layoffs Thursday which it in part attributed to the financial strain imposed by the legal battle it now faces. What triggered Musk's initial outrage in November was MMFA reporting about "pro-Nazi content" on the social media platform X, owned by Musk, appearing alongside ads by prominent corporations in the content stream shown to users.

In his post threatening the lawsuit, which was later filed in Texas, Musk vowed to target "Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company." Noting the scope of his retribution, Musk then added: "Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them…" would be included in the suit's scope.

In the organization's Thursday announcement of layoffs, Media Matters' president Angelo Carusone said: "We're confronting a legal assault on multiple fronts and given how rapidly the media landscape is shifting, we need to be extremely intentional about how we allocate resources in order to stay effective. Nobody does what Media Matters does."

Due to the pressures, Carusone explained, the group was "taking this action now to ensure that we are sustainable, sturdy and successful for whatever lies ahead." More than a dozen staffers, including researchers and digital producers, were among those terminated.

"Many of my best colleagues at Media Matters lost their jobs today," Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, said Thursday on X alongside individual posts from many of those laid off. "However you feel about our work, it should worry you that any billionaire could do this to any outlet at any time for any reason. It's a sad day for free speech."

Media Matters for America (MMFA) is a 501(c)3 registered nonprofit—which describes itself as a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"—founded in 2004 at the height of the George W. Bush administration

[transarsonist]

Ari Drennen @AriDrennen.

It's important not to lose sight of how much of the anti-trans "movement" is just angry adults bullying children whose peers will not

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ari Drennen at Ari's Threads:

I have always been terrible at jumping through bureaucratic hoops, but the incoming Trump administration was enough to make me finally take action. Like many trans people, I felt an urgency to update the name and sex on my Social Security card. The stakes felt high, and the timeline felt even tighter with Trump’s promise to enshrine into law that there are only two genders, assigned at birth. My first attempt to navigate the Social Security Administration (SSA) process was through their phone system. After calling multiple times and enduring hold times of over an hour and a half, I found myself frustrated by the lack of options. There was no way to speak to a human without waiting indefinitely, no callback system, and hold music that made me want to claw my eyes out. It was a bureaucratic nightmare, and I still hadn’t even made an appointment.

Thankfully, my friends who had recently updated their Social Security cards reassured me that you could simply walk into the local office to get it done. So, on Friday, I headed down to the Social Security office, paperwork in hand, hopeful that this would finally be the end of the ordeal. When I arrived, I was met with an unexpected roadblock. The security officers at the door informed me that the SSA no longer processes any changes without an appointment. They said I could take a number, but it would be a four-hour wait just to speak with someone—and even then, all they could do was schedule me for a future appointment. [...] With less than one week left before Donald Trump takes power, armed with a legislative agenda that explicitly targets trans people, this new policy is creating unhelpful barriers for those scrambling to update their legal documents. Even though the actual process to update a name or sex marker on a Social Security card can be done by a single employee in about a minute, there’s no online option to schedule appointments, and appointments made over the phone or in person could be weeks into the future. President Biden has often said that he has trans people’s backs. Changes like this suggest otherwise.

[...] By standing my ground, I was ultimately able to update my Social Security card. But this experience shouldn’t have been this difficult. It shouldn’t require navigating byzantine policies or advocating for oneself in a system that feels designed to wear you down. To my fellow trans people: if you’ve been putting off updating your documents, now is the time. Go today, tomorrow, or Friday. Print out the announcement so that you can cite the language. If you have not updated your passport with your new name or gender marker, do the paperwork and drop the application in the mail before this weekend. The process can be frustrating and exhausting, but getting it done before these barriers grow higher is crucial. Trump could easily introduce even more roadblocks to updating this paperwork, making the process even harder in the future. The process can be frustrating and exhausting, but getting it done before these barriers grow higher is crucial. Resources are out there to help, and with persistence, you can make it through. There’s still time, but don’t wait—protect yourself now.

Ari Drennen recounts the horror story she faced while updating her legal documents in the wake of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and how trans and gender nonconforming people can change their gender markers before it becomes even more onerous.