Bradley Manning Wants To Live As a Woman

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier sentenced to 35 years in military prison for the biggest breach of classified documents in the nation's history, says he is female and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea. 'As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female,' Manning, 25, said in the statement read by anchorwoman Savannah Guthrie on NBC News' "Today" show. 'Given the way that I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible,' Manning said. 'I also request that starting today you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun.' A psychiatrist, Navy Reserve Captain David Moulton, testified during Manning's trial that Manning suffered from gender dysphoria, or wanting to be the opposite sex, as well as narcissism and obsessive-compulsive disorder."

Comments

No, because it's not insanity

[QilessQi]

Self-identifying as a woman is not a sign of insanity. There are quite a number of transgendered people in the world today, from young to old, pre-op or post-op, leading perfectly normal lives.

While we used to refer to the condition as Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM-IV, it was replaced with Gender Dysphoria in the DSM-V because we now don't think of it as a disorder. In fact, the general "treatment" is not to make the mind match the body, but to make the body match the mind. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity_disorder .

The Full Statement

[Iridium_Hack]

Actually, I heard that the following statement was made by Bradly Manning and picked up by the Associated Press. He made it to the President in a request for a pardon. In my opinion, these two statements don't sound like they came from the same person. With as much embarrassment and/or trouble as the Bradley Manning case has caused the government, adding a little spicy twist on the story in the end doesn't sound unlikely.

Associated Press — FORT MEADE, Md. — The text of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s statement that will be sent to the president, as read by defense attorney David Coombs following Manning’s sentencing Wednesday, below:

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Manning's statement, in full:

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing.

It was at this time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability. In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy — the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps — to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

I understand that my actions violated the law; I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.

If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society.

I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

Re:Hormone therapy?

[Anonymous Coward]

He says he's felt this way since childhood, seems to have discussed the issue at length with a psychologist while in the military, and even suggested that he had joined the military in the hopes that it would somehow cure him.

Re:Hormone therapy?

[Velex]

Came here for this.

Yet when they ask to have their genitals mutilated and hormones thrown so far out of whack to the point of permanently handicapping them to a degree, it is viewed as a human right

So delicious.

Because she (Manning) was presumably born in the USA, her genitals were likely already mutilated at birth. Secondly, the organ between your ears also has gender just the same as the organ between your legs. The process of HRT brings one's hormone levels in line with normal female levels, so I don't understand why you think anything is going "out of whack."

I used to experience very painful headaches on a weekly basis before I started estrogen HRT. Apparently, that's not an uncommon experience. There's definitely something going on, although research is admittedly lacking (there was a study I can't seem to find again that was able to use MRI to determine brain sex in 75% of individuals in the study).

Worse is that today there is very little in the way of counseling done, and some half of them end up regretting it after the fact.

Sorry, a link to Experience Project isn't evidence, and there have been many flawed, biased studies on the subject to boot, sort of like the studies that back up the practice of routine infant male genital mutilation in the USA.

I'm not taking issue with transsexualism BTW, I'm taking issue with the idea that surgery is the answer.

Yes, you are, because not all trans women undergo bottom surgery. Bottom surgery is a personal choice and not a requirement to live as a woman or get an ID as a woman, although it may be a requirement in certain states in order to amend or change one's birth certificate.

If you're really as rational as you're trying to present yourself as being, I'd recommend the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.

Re:Hormone therapy?

[kno3]

Only two US prisons were on it.

I think you need to work on your counting skills. I counted 4 current US prisons and one closed (Alcatraz) out of a total of 20.
25% is extremely bad given the US's self perceived high ground in all things moral. Remember this includes the entire world, most of which is comparatively very poor and lacks the resources to do much better.
That said, imgur is hardly a reputable source and the list has clearly been skewed by US prison's notoriety in the west. I'm sure there are far worse out there.

No prison thinks much of human dignity.

I refer you to Norway: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00.html
Only fools support prisons that ignore the dignity of the prisoners. If you actually want to help society, you support and protect those that need it the most.

Re:Hormone therapy?

[Firethorn]

some deep rooted psychological scar from being in the armed forces.

I'm going to say that he was screwed up before ever entering the military; being in the military certainly didn't help though. One of the signs was that he was placed in a discharge unit. If his commanding officers had made the call he would have been kicked out and be free to transition today.

Please note: I'm active duty and have an openly gay married* commander. I won't say that he hasn't had problems in his career, it having very much started during 'don't ask don't tell', but he hasn't been having problems with us.

But at the same time I'm NOT going to make like the military is some utopia for trans people. It's much better for gay people, but I would state that as a category the US military is currently NOT a place you want to be if you want to transition. Bradley Manning will probably not be allowed to transition during his time at Leavenworth. The DoD just doesn't have any measures to allow it, which means that people would have to take the effort to do so.

As a general matter, if you want to transition and you're in the military, your best option is to keep quiet and let your enlistment run out. If you're really desperate, there are a number of ways to get out quicker. A bit tougher since DADT ended, but there are still ways. You might lose some benefits, but there's plenty of things you can do where the military will decide to discharge you to be rid of you and not do much else.

(BTW, I go by a '2 out of 3' standard: mental, physical outward, and DNA; he hasn't started transition yet so he's still a he).

*I wrote it this way because I've known gay people who married the opposite gender for various reasons.