Opinion | Why Im Ambivalent About Chelsea Manning

I tried, in my own meager way, to follow the example of Brooklyns 42. As I embarked on my own career as a public person, I too tried to be above reproach, smiling forgivingly as a student at a university in Ohio attempted to compliment me by saying, You know, Professor, before I heard your lecture, I used to think people like you should be, you know, exterminated.

I laughed along with a studio audience when Oprah Winfrey sang to me, Yes, she has a vagina, she has a vagina today!

Later, off camera, Id curl up into a ball and weep, thinking of the words of Clarence the Angel: There must be an easier way of winning my wings. What I did not do was fight back.

Ms. Manning is an angrier public figure than I am, but she has good reason to be angry. For violating the Espionage Act, she served seven grisly years in prison, much of it at Fort Leavenworth a military facility for male offenders, in spite of having publicly declared her female identity on the day after her conviction. During her incarceration, which ended after President Barack Obama commuted most of her sentence in January 2017, she endured a hunger strike and a suicide attempt. I cant imagine the horrors she has experienced, and my heart truly goes out to her. If Id been through all that, Id be angry too.

At the same time, Im not sure shes the senator Maryland needs right now. And its not just me some of the people most ambivalent about Chelsea Manning are other transgender people, and our veterans not least. Kristin Beck, a former Navy SEAL who took an unsuccessful run for Congress herself two years ago, said in 2013 that Ms. Manning was a traitor: What you wear, what color you are, your religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity has no basis on whether you are a criminal or not.

It is possible to have opposed George W. Bushs war in Iraq and to nonetheless condemn Ms. Manning for leaking classified documents in the effort to end that war. It is possible to enthusiastically advocate equality and justice for L.G.B.T. Americans and to nonetheless wonder whether Ms. Manning is the best messenger for that fight.

In spite of my suspicion that Ms. Manning is not the ideal candidate, I nonetheless admire her willingness to put herself out there in the rough world of national politics. And I also worry for her, in the same way I worry for anyone who places their transness at the center of a public identity. Since coming out as transgender, I have often wondered whether being trans was the thing that hindered my career as a writer, or the thing that made it possible.

In part, I wish for Chelsea Manning the thing I sometimes wish I had chosen for myself a life of privacy and quiet instead of a life in which you have to sit there smiling on television while a celebrity sings a song about your vagina. But maybe Ms. Manning will also find what Ive found that progress is its own reward, and that the loss of a private life is a small price to pay in exchange for justice.

Im not sure she has my vote. But whether she wins her wings, or not, she has my respect.

An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the crime that Chelsea Manning was convicted of. She was convicted for violating the Espionage Act, not treason.

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Opinion | Why Im Ambivalent About Chelsea Manning