#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

[justinssportscorner]

Ari Drennen at MMFA:

Right-wing media spent years demanding that President Donald Trump ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports. He complied. But rather than declare victory, conservative outlets immediately demanded even stricter measures, expanding their campaign to include intersex athletes and calling for invasive genetic testing. Their goal isn't fairness; it's perpetual outrage and ideological policing of women's bodies. After Trump signed an executive order to ban trans women from women’s sports, right-wing media figures quickly pivoted to a months-old controversy centered around Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, a cisgender Algerian athlete who was falsely accused of being transgender last summer. Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, even though she was assigned female at birth. Despite this, conservative media have revisited Khelif’s case as justification for excluding intersex women, labelling the boxer as “male” in order to claim Trump's ban isn't strict enough, and once again moving the goalposts in their ongoing obsession over who counts as a woman in 2025.

The reality: trans athletes are a tiny fraction of competitors

The portrayal of transgender women as dominating forces in women's sports is a deliberate distortion. Exemplifying the kind of misinformation driving this narrative, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) recently claimed without evidence that “we’re getting to a point now where women and girls’ sports are getting ready to be extinct,” because, he said, “Already in states across this country, we have high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls.” In reality, the number of trans athletes is even smaller than you might imagine. But conservative outlets have amplified isolated cases in order to manufacture fear, portraying transgender athletes as an existential threat to women’s sports.

Right-wing media push for broader bans and genetic testing

After Trump’s executive order took effect, right-wing media quickly escalated their demands. On February 19, Fox News' America's Newsroom highlighted supposed “loopholes” in the NCAA’s regulations that critics claim would allow transgender athletes to compete. That same day, Fox host Harris Faulkner raised fears about the NCAA’s policies, saying that “if birth certificates don’t count … we are in a world of hurt.” Later that evening, host Laura Ingraham carried the topic into the Fox opinion block, attacking pro-trans policies in Maine and suggesting a loss of federal funding could follow as a consequence. By February 24, Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo suggested that the NCAA could lose its nonprofit status if it doesn’t comply with anti-trans restrictions — framing the issue as a financial threat. Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines escalated further the same week, calling for financial penalties to be levied against non-compliant schools and states and warning Fox viewers, “The war on woke has certainly not been won yet.” The Daily Wire echoed Gaines, highlighting an ad campaign for a t-shirt company accusing the NCAA of deliberately undermining Trump's policy. By March 6, City Journal began explicitly including intersex athletes in its push for expanded bans, advocating for chromosomal tests to exclude women with differences in sex development. Its writer asserted that “in rare cases, though more commonly in developing countries, doctors may misidentify a male newborn’s sex due to female-like or ambiguous genitalia caused by a developmental condition. … Just this summer, a loophole of this kind allowed two male athletes, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, to compete as women and win gold medals in boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.” If evidence exists for this claim about private and personal details of Khelif and Lin’s bodies, it is entirely absent from the article (seriously, go take a look). According to BBC, the International Olympic Committee has stated that “Lin and Khelif were ‘born and raised as women.’”

[...] On March 11, a group of two dozen House and Senate Republicans signed a letter calling for the International Olympic Committee to change their eligibility criteria for the 2028 Summer Games in accordance with President Trump’s executive order. “President Trump affirmed the position of the American people and those around the world,” the letter read. “Commitment from the I.O.C. to protect women’s sports is paramount.” Trans women were already effectively banned from the 2024 Paris Games. 

Right-wing media influencers revive manufactured nontroversy over Imane Khelif’s gender identity to further expand bans on trans athletes.

[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.”

[marithlizard]

GOOD JOB. There are still some elected representatives willing to challenge open bigotry. "Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?"

McBride wasn't going to make a fuss, she calmly misgendered him right back and moved on, but her colleague stood up for her. Very satisfying to watch.

[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

[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.