Slashdot Mirror
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."
Will they really provide that in prison?
No offense to transpeople, but why is this on Slashdot? I don't give a fuck if he wants to be a man or a woman in jail.
As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Anonymous Cowardess, I am a female.
Getting popcorn - I fully expect this discussion to be mature and informative.
Who cares if he wants to live as a woman, a man or a chipmonk?
This inane crap belongs on Digg not here.
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 .
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Saul: A man has the right to change his name to vatever he vants to change it to. And if a man vants to be called Chelsea, godammit this is a free country, you should respect his vishes, and call the man Chelsea!
Morris: His mamma call him Bradley, imma call him Bradley.
Saul: Then you're a putz. All of you are putzes. They should change the sign outside from My-T-Sharp to 'ze Three Putzes.
I do believe he was struggling with gender identity issues before this whole ordeal.
Didn't work for Klinger in MASH, won't work for him either.
Much to his distress.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
All accounts I have seen indicate that he was starting to feel this way long before any of this happened. I have some Tranny friends (will be camping with them this weekend in fact) and it isn't something one just suddenly one day decide, or that people go crazy and decide to do....its usually accompanied by lifelong feelings of not really being "right".
Hell, I met one woman who lived as a man for years, never felt right, transitioned, and not till the age of about 50 did doctors find some small ovaries inside her. Had apparently really been part woman the whole time, never knew it.
This transition creates an odd conflict. Bradley Manning is a household name. He leaked secrets, he is either a hero of villian. He is a symbol.
Who is Chelsea Manning? She is just a woman going to jail. Nobody knows her. She is not a household name, not a symbol.
Maybe that works out in her favor in the long run? I don't really know, it is a bit of a toss up.... but we have been talking about the plight of Bradley Manning so long, I wonder that maybe this is bad timing, but, maybe there is no good timing.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I read about this on WaPo about half an hour ago, where I noticed they did an incredibly intelligent and thoughtful thing: they disabled comments. Now if only that were possible on /.
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.
Kind of an absurd turn of phrase, isn't it? It's a bit like saying that someone "suffers from" being an asshole.
(Whether Manning deserves to be called a narcissist at all... that is, of course, a whole other question).
unless they involve prison. Am I politically correct yet?
Speaking as a straight, cisgendered ( transgender people's word for "normal" ), white, and quite handsome man.........please lets not make fun of Manning.
He is a human being, some who consider to be a hero, who just happens to have problems.
Bradley Womanning?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'd ask to be put in a woman's jail as well.
Never do. Gender identity people generally feel so much deeply foundational shame that they go their entire lives, telling no one. Wasn't there news media coverage of a 40 year old married man that finally decided (after raising the kids was done and they were well on their way) that she couldn't take it anymore and needed to transition. I think a lot of regular Joe's natural reaction to hearing something like this is that the TG individual must be incredibly selfish and perverse to put their family through the pain of having their family fractured in such a way (familial identity especially is immutable!) But I think the reality is that a TG is experiencing pain which equals the combined expected pain and discomfort of their loved ones -- why else would they wait so long?
In my anecdotal story my brother only told me, but didn't mention it in their suicide note, so I've told no one.. (... quadruple check that I'm posting anonymously..)
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is narcissism taken to unhealthy extremes; it describes only about 1 percent of the population. One might argue that "being an asshole" affects a far, far larger percentage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
Koans and fables for the software engineer