You don’t have to love everything that Andrea James, Autumn Sandeen, Jamison Green or Michael Munson has ever said to respect how much effort it takes to lead discussion and provide resources to the trans communities. I have argued with Andrea off and on for years going back to the AOL forum days. She puts herself on the line every day to help improve access and understanding of transgender issues. Have you?
Not everyone needs to be a leader. Not everyone needs to be a follower. Not everyone even thinks there is community. And there seem to be plenty of voices piping up here on Boing Boing.
Where do you find a reason to call anything presented here, or in other arguments that Andrea James has put forward a pro-CIA or NSA stance? I’m just not seeing it. I don’t mind being corrected.
Thanks for the opp to reply; well-framed question. As I originally stated, I think that he’s trying his best to stay in the news and get into a better prison environment. is that wrong? No, absolutely not. At this point I’m sure it’s a survival move.
Do I think that he deserves praise for what he did RE WikiLeaks? Absolutely. Does he get some extra-special praise, lionization, or absolution for breaking the law (however much we may disagree with it) for being trans? No.
That’s what I’m trying to say, and so did the author of the original piece.
Chelsea Manning fits another dangerous profile. Young, principled, technically proficient, and mostly male, the hacker or the creatively destructive startup ceo. Like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Anonymous, etc etc. Surprise, she has a principled stance on gender identity too. And also just wants people to write letters to her in a way that feels like they’re actually addressed to her.
My target was never to be “normal”, but to be understood by others, and able to occupy my own body. Normal relating to transgender issues is a subjective and moving target that has changed has changed radically since I transitioned 20 years ago. For every person who finds support and resources, there are 100 more that don’t figure things out, or are in horrible situations because of social and cultural pressures to conform.
Even in liberal places that one may live, it isn’t easy to develop healthy relationships with neighbors, coworkers and friends based on respect that don’t devolve into discussions about whether you are a “real” man or woman. fill in your choice of blank. Or try dealing with bathroom access. Post transition life isn’t all peaches and cream.
Manning’s decisions to leak information that is changing a national level discussion are likely related to the unbearable pressure to not have to live a personal lie. That combined with watching a whole lot of lies pass through your watch makes for a very volatile situation, which seems to have happened.
Ultimately, trans folk are only a sideshow for mainstream culture. Manning’s revelations will be noted at a similar sidenote that other trans celebrities like Wendy Carlos, Renee Richards, and Chaz Bono have been.
Access doesn’t equal proficiency for hacking. Neither Manning nor Snowden have ever been equated with serious skills to actively create disruptions of their own. Both appear to be observers with good seats to “business as usual” that should not be “business as usual”.
I’m reminded of the bit in Charlie Stross’s Laundry series (fiction, but may be based on fact somewhere and could certainly work) where gay people are allowed to have a security clearance, as long as they’re out to everyone. You can’t blackmail someone with common knowledge. There’s a gay character who works for a fictional secret government agency and gets paid to go to the Pride parade in order to make sure he’s not blackmailable.
And people can be denied security clearances over things that aren’t moral judgments but can be used as leverage against them.
Who has said that Manning deserves absolution for being trans? I’ve always seen that as an explanation to some of her actions, but not an excuse.
And though it varies from state to state, and I’d imagine is pretty much terrible in federal or military prisons, identifying as trans doesn’t get you placed with your identified gender. They tend to look only at genitalia and place you with the general population matching said genitalia at worst or solitary at best. You don’t get special, wonderful, magical unicorn treatment. If anything you’re often treated worse.
Did you happen to see in the chat logs where Manning said that one of her greatest fears would be to be discovered and have her name, picture, etc., plastered everywhere saying she was a man? And you think she’d want MORE coverage, not drawing attention to the information she leaked, but drawing attention to her gender identity? I can see her possibly wanting to change the way the public refers to her, making sure they use the right name and gender, but that’s hardly attention seeking and doesn’t have the ulterior motive you suppose.
You’re correct that it’s usually about secrets that can be used to blackmail you. Interestingly enough, if you have a secret, but make sure you are upfront and honest to those investigating you for a security clearance, it doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue. That may change once people venture into Top Secret / SCI stuff, though.
Jenonymous wasn’t ‘shouted at’ for saying “he”. It was mentioned. There were no all-caps, no snark, no cussing. (Maybe a little incredulity.) Large segments of society haven’t gotten the message yet about pronoun use. If every correction is going to be responded to by invalid claims of shouting, censorship, hysteria, etc, then how are we supposed to get the message to them?
Did Chelsea choose to be trans? No. She identifies as a woman and has for years. She knows deep down inside that she’s a woman, in likely the same way that she knew deep down that what was happening in Iraq was wrong. She chose to act on both those instincts as best she could, and those actions were limited and messy and dangerous and yes, possibly irrational. But this isn’t a story about gender so much as it is about truth: whether it’s leaking the Baghdad airstrike or coming out to the public at large (after doing so with doctors and family members years earlier). At no point has her stance been inconsistent. It’s always been about truth.
Honestly, this piece sounds like it’s blaming Chelsea for her identity, while also talking about the very real challenges that people in transition face. Trusting the wrong people is one of those challenges. Chelsea was was manipulated and betrayed by Adrian Lamo, who saw a vulnerable person (who James admits was obviously having problems, based on the chat logs) and rolled over on her. Lamo is no different than the men who find girls with low self-esteem online and gather information on them only to bully and blackmail them with it later.
So long before her formal transition, Chelsea was already having a quintessential female experience. And now she’s having another one: being shit on by other women for not being the “right kind” of girl. Having decided to live as a woman, Chelsea is facing the same (internalized) misogyny most women do. Surprise, surprise. Someobdy get Chelsea debutante gown: she’s a real woman, now, with all the bullshit that comes with the title.
Miasm you hit the nail on the head. The article implies that there was something wrong with what Chelsea did. Maybe someone should asked the families of the innocent people murder by U.S. Military helicopters what they think of her. It sickens me how easily people are willing to push her under the bus.
George Bush and Dick Cheney get away with murdering close to a million people but reveal state secrets and you’re put in jail for 35 years.
Having been in the military, I can pretty much state that most of the people that join are some combination of the three. Joining the service can either help them tremendously or be one of the worst things they can do. It’s a bit of a crap shoot, really.
Outrage gets stale pretty fast and pedantic outrage over nuances of language is all too often about twisting someones words to gin up an accusation. Even when done with the best of intentions, making it the norm opens the door to very unproductive people and behaviors.
(edit) And self righteous pedantic outrage is just the trifecta
Manning did have regard for her future. She used proper anonymisation to do her leaks however she made 3 critical mistakes. 1 - she talked to an untrustworth person - Lamo. 2- she used software that kept records, 3 she did not complete the cryptographic wipe of her laptop. I use her mistakes to teach other people how to better anonymise themselves. Her plight is very sad but at least it serves as a good example of what NOT to do.
Yep. …but trans identity has little to do with this story. While i share a trans history with chelsea i claim her as being a fellow ethics enthusiast, hacktivist and information openness activists.
These trans ‘leaders’ are just embarrassed that Chelsea gave their masters a black eye. Good for her !!!
It was not chelsea’s mental state that made her a threat to the government. It was the fact that she had a very strong conscience. She could not abide torture so she exposed the crimes in the most painfull manner to the government.
When i was young the CIA came to my college to recruit some people. I had the chance to apply but my concience would not let me be involved with an organization that helped kill Salvator Allende, propped up the Indonesian government, created the war in vietnam.
The access to information and knowlege was tempting as is the confident statecraft of the agency. Probably all for the best that i did not go down that fork.
