Chelsea Manning

Manning as she was in the Army (S)

Wikileaks had access to over 1.2 million pages of information in its first year alone - ranging from the inane (the US ambassador to Britain writing back to Washington to say "Dickens described the squalor, overcrowding and poverty in Britain's cities over a century ago”) to the very important (proof that two American military helicopter strikes on a group of people who were armed also targeted two Iraqi journalists after their cameras were mistaken for guns). But with Julian Assange still hiding from his extradition to Sweden in the UK Ecuadorian embassy and Edward Snowden chilling (pun mostly intentional) after being granted asylum in Russia, most people seem to be getting off lightly.

So why is this relevant to this blog? That’s simple – a US soldier called Bradley Manning was charged on Wednesday for leaking a lot of classified documentation. Well, the day after being sentenced, Bradley Manning came out and stated “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female”.

According to her court martial defence testimony, Chelsea joined the army in 2007 to help pay her university bills, and also hoping that the overly-masculine environment would help her to get away from her feelings of gender dysphoria. After training as an intelligence analyst and deployed to Iraq in 2009. There, she became disillusioned with the war and began to feel increasingly distant from friends and family.

In May of 2009, Manning initiated what eventually became one of the largest leaks of classified US government documents in US history.

So, Chelsea Manning releases hundreds of thousands of classified, embarrassing and incriminating files on the US military and government, leaks videos, reports of the Afganistan and Iraq wars, information on prisoners at Guantanamo, and hundreds of thousands of State Department cables which made the relationships between the US and allied nations more than a little strained, is subsequently charged and sentenced with 35 years in prison, and then afterwards expresses her intentions to not remain in the closet and to transition. 

There are a few issues that have come up from this. Firstly, she is being placed into an all-male prison, as unfortunately US prisons usually pace inmates based on gender assigned at birth regardless of how long an inmate has been living as their actual gender – unless the inmate has had full sex reassignment surgery. The United States Disciplinary Barracks, in charge of the prison that Manning will be serving her sentence at, says that I has procedures in place to protect trans* inmates from violence and abuse. In a statement they said "The USDB has implemented risk assessment protocols and safety procedures to address high risk factors identified with the Prison Rape Elimination Act.” Manning can also request to be separate to the other inmates if she feels at risk, although this also excludes her from other prison activities that are conducted in groups.

Secondly, a civilian prison – according to the official Bureau of Prisons’ policy – will administer hormone treatments at the level that was maintained prior to incarceration. The policy’s exact wording is as follows:

“It is the policy of the Bureau of Prisons to maintain the transsexual inmate at the level of change existing upon admission to the Bureau. Should responsible medical staff determine that either progressive or regressive treatment changes are indicated, these changes must be approved by the [Bureau of Prisons] Medical Director prior to implementation. The use of hormones to maintain secondary sexual characteristics may be continued at approximately the same levels as prior to incarceration, but such use must be approved by the Medical Director.”

So, even if she was at a civilian prison, Manning would have to fight hard for her right to hormone treatment, as she was not on the treatment before now. However, she is in a military, rather than civilian prison, and "The Army does not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery for gender identity disorder," Kimberly Lewis, a spokeswoman for the army prison stated on Tuesday, before Manning made her official statement.

The front of Fort Leavenworth, where Chelsea's sentence is
to be carried out (S)

There is slim hope on this front – on the one hand Fort Leavenworth, where Chelsea will be serving out her 35 year sentence, has already denied her request for hormone therapy. On the other hand, the American Civil Liberties Union has suggested that not allowing hormone therapy is unconstitutional. For anyone interested, the part of the constitution it violates is the 8th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments, including torture. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause applies to the states, and in several cases courts have found that not providing the necessary treatment for gender dysphoria counts as a cruel and unusual punishment. It is possible – although unlikely – that Chelsea Manning will receive the care she needs during her prison sentence.

Thirdly, her public statement about her gender has hit headlines in many major newspapers, all wanting to put a different spin on the story. It has highlighted a glaring inequality in the education of journalists about minorities like trans* people. In particular, the little memo about misgendering people appears to have given a lot of people the slip. Here’s the simple advice on the matter: if you are unsure of someone’s preferred name or pronouns and you really definitely absolutely need to know, politely ask them. If they have told you their preferred name or pronouns (like that one moment when she told everyone she wanted to be called Chelsea and referred to by female rather than male pronouns) regardless of whether or not they have fully transitioned, regardless of how recently they told you, and especially regardless of whether or not you personally have difficulties seeing them as that gender for whatever reason, you call her Chelsea and you refer to her as “she” because as far as anyone is concerned she is definitely female and it is not anyone but her own business.

Take two examples of news publications in the UK: the BBC and the Daily Mail. The BBC is a politically neutral (but slightly left-leaning) news outlet that runs stories on LGBT rights issues fairly and showing both sides to any debate while being respectful of any opinions (for a good example, see any of BBC News’ stories on the marriage equality UK debates). The Mail, on the other hand, has always erred on the side of the far-right conservative view, running various stories that scapegoat or otherwise target minorities. Most recently they were implicated in the suicide of Lucy Meadows, a male-assigned-at-birth primary school teacher who had planned to transition over the Christmas holiday period with the full support of her students and school, after they ran a reactionary and transphobic article about her. 

Imagine my surprise, then, when I checked the news stories looking to see the way it was received and found that the BBC mentioned that she had come out, acknowledged that she wanted people to use female pronouns and spent the rest of the article using “he”. By contrast, the Daily Mail only misgendered her once – during a quote which they would not have been able to alter – and failed to bring out the mysterious “expert scientists” that they like to call upon during articles just like this. Clearly some strange and unusual happenings have been going down at the Mail’s office.

Regardless, the important thing here is that the major papers – who would do good to treat Chelsea with respect considering a lot of them used documents that she published to create articles – almost exclusively consistently misgender her and ignore the fact that not only did she take a great risk in providing these classified documents in the interests of exposing war crimes, but she is now taking a great personal risk in coming out as trans* while in such a public position – and especially right before going to prison.

To read Amnesty International's statement about Manning (specifically in regards to how she will have to serve a greater sentence than anyone she has exposed for illegal activities), go here. There is also a petition undersigned by Amnesty International asking President Obama to offer clemency to Manning, which can be found here, for anyone who wishes to sign it. A more detailed explanation of what Chelsea Manning leaked can be found here.