Still in military prison, Manning has won a gender-identity battle

Thursday March 12, 2015 02:07 AM

The Associated Press

(c) 2015, Bloomberg News.

Last December, when Chelsea Manning turned 27, she received birthday greetings from Michael Stipe, JM Coetzee, Slavoj iek, Terry Gilliam, Edward Snowden and Lupe Fiasco: not a bad group of friends for any young woman. Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood sent her a card, too, marked up with scribbles of support. Manning received it in Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas, where she is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks as a soldier in the U.S. Army. She replied to Westwood, "I am working a lot, studying, working on the appeal and a lawsuit on fundraising, writing articles and trying to stay healthy."

In February, Manning landed a new gig: contributing opinion writer at The Guardian US, focused on"war, gender, freedom of information." Days later, the U.S. military approved hormone therapy for Manning's gender transition, a first. And last week, in Washington, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals issued an order saying that references to Manning in all future decisions, filings and orders should use female or gender-neutral pronouns. The U.S. government is unlikely to champion her as a whistleblower but Manning and her attorneys have made the government see things her way when it comes to her gender, which is its own accomplishment.

Manning has long presented herself as a kind of public moralist. When she pleaded guilty, she read a statement explaining her actions. It ran some 35 pages, and took more than an hour. After her sentencing, she made a formal request for a presidential pardon. She wrote that the decision to leak secret documents was made "out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in." Her time in Iraq made her "question the morality" of America's military activity since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. "I realized that in our efforts to meet the risks posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our Humanity," she said.

Last September, after publicly coming out as transgender, Manning sued the U.S. military, charging that the denial of her medical treatment for gender dysphoria was a violation of her constitutional rights. The suit said that, without treatment, Manning each day "experiences escalating anxiety, distress and depression. She feels as though her body is being poisoned by testosterone."

In December, Manning wrote an op-ed in The Guardian about her identity and the violations of her rights as a trans person. She wrote of "unfinished business when it comes to protecting civil rights for many people," from immigration reform to police brutality and racism to rampant discrimination faced by people like her. "We're banned from serving our country in the armed services unless we serve as trans people in secret, as I did," she wrote. She argued for self-recognition, the "absolute and inalienable right to define ourselves."

Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney who represents Manning in her gender dysphoria case, said Manning the prisoner is not allowed to browse the Web. But she consults print news, remains "a voracious reader" and has access to new gender theory texts, too.

Manning's relationship with The Guardian is another kind of recognition. (The Guardian, which won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the NSA mass surveillance program revealed by Snowden has a special relationship with leaks.) She will not be paid for her contributions, Strangio said.

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Still in military prison, Manning has won a gender-identity battle