Manning was legally Bradley and legally male when the leak happened and during the trial. As long as those two things remain true the NYT isn’t doing anything wrong. It’s not a matter of human rights; it’s a matter of reporting news clearly. If/when Manning legally changes the name to Chelsea and the gender to female then the NYT would be obligated to use the new terms. If your name is Herman it doesn’t matter that you prefer being called Trey. If you commit a crime the media is going to use your legal name.
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I have decided to identify as Irish, and my name is now McLovin.
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And the NYT is wrong.
If they’re that obsessed with medical accuracy, and knowing more about someone’s gender than the person themselves does, they need to apply this relentless demand for body/pronoun matches across the board. Want to be in a NYT story? Strip.
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I’ve declared myself a chicken and demand to be referred to as Mr Rooster
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And you got a C in undergrad biology
Cabalist was speaking of sex in genetic terms. Cabalist is absolutely correct.
There is a difference between speaking in biological terms and speaking in normative or social terms, which some circles deem as “gender.” This definition of gender is not universal, however you are insinuating that it is.
Please learn the biological definitions of sex and gender, which is what Cabalist was referring to.
One of the reasons this problem confronts the Times is that they’re weirdly traditionalist in the media universe for continuing to refer to people as Mr./Mrs/whatever. Most print outlets would just refer to Manning as Manning or Pvt. Manning and call it good.
All this said, she says she’s Chelsea, so she’s Chelsea. It’s obviously confusing to readers, but as noted above, the title is not for the reader’s sake. Though for the reader’s sake, I think it’s fair to use a parenthetical “, who was previously known as Bradley Manning,” or something like that.
I went through a long period where I was confused and put off by trans issues (some would have called me transphobic, but I’m going to go with ill-informed), but damned if I didn’t eventually realize that going through that, however it works for someone, is really hard, and I’m not making someone’s life any easier by not just calling them what they want. I’d say that goes triple here.
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This stuff confuses me very much. Help?
If Manning decided to constantly present himself as a woman, and have “the surgery”, but to still stick with his birth name and make no assertion that he is a woman, then his gender would still be male, right?
And if Manning grew a beard to his knees, got a tattoo that says “I am a man” on his forehead, and said that he identified as a woman, he would be female?
Is that the whole of gender these days? “call me female/ male”?
Is there a requirement that the person meet a standard of commitment, and not switch back within an allotted timeframe? If so, are we fit to judge that commitment?
I guess it’s logically sound, but it seems to pose a lot of conceptual problems for feminism. (not enough female board members? “Mike and I are female now.”)
I know this sounds very skeptical. I am skeptical – skeptical that this is really a simple thing with simple solutions, and skeptical of the suggestion that everyone who doesn’t immediately hop on board is worthy of criticism.
(edit to add: Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that the Manning case is especially tricky, no more so than any other case of transition. Nor do I want to imply that calling Manning “she” at this point is wrong, or should necessarily be considered controversial. Just saying that treating this linguistic quirk as a totally settled affair with no room for ambiguity seems premature and tad zealous.)
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Very easy to say, hard to substantiate.
The NYT is still one of the premier news organizations of the world in that they have real, long-form investigative reporting (e.g. the excellent article on Poitras, Greenwald and the Snowden leaks), try to be accurate and actually publish corrections that line out how, when and what was changed. This is something that blogs don’t do consistently (especially Boing Boing) and that makes them much more credible than other, non-“mainstream” media, to use your words.
You’re right, in a sense. This stuff is really, really complicated. And the idea of a universal right to self-identification doesn’t actually work as an ethical norm, because sometimes you do get people who are actually delusional (and I’m not primarily talking about gender here).
Here’s how I approach it.
Nobody actually understands gender. It’s too complicated. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of most other forms of identity politics. Therefore, instead of trying to find universal norms with respect to identity, we should instead look for heuristics.
The person who’s in the best position to judge someone’s identity is that person themself. Therefore, if someone makes a claim about their own identity, this should be treated as evidence that their claim is correct, and the claim should be considered correct unless clear evidence exists to the contrary. (And I can’t think of anything that would constitute evidence that a person is mistaken about what gender they are. The definition is just too hard to nail down.)
This won’t give you the right answer 100% of the time. But it’s the best heuristic I’ve been able to come up with.
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And in case the replies below haven’t inspired you to do an internet search, there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is, by definition, the biological property of being male or female or, in a few cases, intersex. Gender is, by definition,t he social and cultural property of being identified as masculine or feminine.
This problem is exacerbated by the peculiarities of NYT style, which insists on courtesy titles everywhere except in sports stories. An AP reporter (or a reporter at one of the myriad publications that use AP style) would only have to worry about pronouns and whether to use the name Bradley or Chelsea on first reference, since every subsequent reference will just call her “Manning.”
That said, the Times has an easy way to deal with this. They already have a convention for pop or hip-hop stars with stage names. For example, to avoid referring to Snoop Lion as “Mr. Lion” over and over again, they call him “Snoop Dogg, born Calvin Broadus” on first reference, and “Mr. Broadus” subsequently. It shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to use “Chelsea Manning, born Bradley Manning,” and then "Ms. Manning " on further references, perhaps with a few brief words about the change in gender identification somewhere in there.
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Dear Dave,
I don’t know what pronoun to use for you because I can’t see if you have a penis.
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Thought experiment: If a mob of theoretical Trans-activists broke into your home and performed an operation on you and pumped you full of hormones of the opposite gender, and did some new gene therapy that changed your chromosomes, would you have actually changed genders? Can a gender be forced on someone? It seems you think it can, because you are now forcing Chelsea to be male.
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Bradley. Until he completes the legal paperwork to change the name given to him at birth. If he wants to be called Chelsea, then that’s fine, but it’s merely a nickname.
He/Him. In the sperm + egg equation of procreation, if such an act were to occur, we’re at least reasonably confident which part he would provide
Pulls pin
Tosses
So which prison will Manning go to?
Y’know, for acting all high and mighty toward the New York Times, Boing Boing sure did hold on to “he/him/his” as long as was conceivably possible, instead of the more respectful/respectable approach of ditching gendered pronouns until we knew more (because it was obvious that he wasn’t cis a long time ago).
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There was no official statement on this for a long time. Now there is.
Official statements matter. It’s not a good idea to guess based on hearsay and conjecture.
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It’s not a good idea to guess based on hearsay or conjecture.
And yet Boing Boing (and everyone else in the media) “guessed” that they should use male pronouns and “Bradley” instead of no pronouns and “[then] Pfc. Manning.” There’s no guessing involved in writing about Manning gender-neutrally, as opposed to guessing that Manning wanted to be treated as cis (because, gosh, doesn’t everyone?).
