Also, a lot of transgender people who try to present themselves as their true gender get beaten up or killed. It’s very dangerous to make any kind of transition, and that puts even more stress on top.
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OK,this is an honest question that isn’t intended to disparage transsexuals or their experience at all: how does this gel with the idea that gender itself is a largely cultural construct? What areas of people’s physical gender are typically seen not to match their “mental gender” (for (my) want of a better term)?
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To answer your last question first: no one. No one said it should be mandatory. No I’m not transgender and I only know one transgender person. But if you want a discussion about me, you should start a new thread. As for transgender people committing suicide, I agree we should do anything to avoid that. When we find a way to make every person treat every other person with respect, that will be great. Obviously the problem there is not the transgendered people, but their attackers.
I would agree, except that Manning is now famous for two things. One brings attention to an important minority, and it’s sexy, and it’s going to dominate the discourse. The other is the greatest betrayal of democracy since Julius Caesar, and the powers would do anything to distract us from those issues.
I predict they’ll give Manning gender reassignment surgery. Heck, they’ll turn it into reality TV. Anything to make us not talk about PRISM.
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I don’t intend to start a discussion about you. You said that being transgender does not include any loss of function. I was attempting to determine how much experience you had with transgender people that qualifies that statement since I think a very large number of transgender people would disagree with your assertion.
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Oh.
I think it becomes a really confusing topic and one that likely fuels a great many debates. It may simply be that the origin of gender is somewhere in between. I don’t think it’s as simple as it being 100% biological or 100% cultural.
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In the last decade or so there have been 8th amendment challenges (prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment) to US state and federal prisons denying hormone replacement therapy and sexual reassignment surgeries. I think (and someone mentioned this above) that just last year a Federal judge told a state prison in Mass. that it had to allow a prisoner to undergo surgery. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/04/health/massachusetts-sex-change-surgery-inmate)
Whether this applies to the “military” prison (or is it the “brig”?), I don’t know. I would bet it does not yet apply as they have a separate body of case law. So I would bet that if the warden at whatever prison Manning ends up at denies whatever treatment she seeks, I imagine that Manning’s lawyer Coombs will have to take this up through the appellate courts. Perhaps ultimately taking this before the Supreme Court.
Manning will probably be held in the regular male population. Final say on that is usually up to the people who administer the day to day at the prison, but practice at other prisons indicates that birth gender is what the prisons go on. Manning would be segregated from the general population if her safety is demonstrably put at risk by other prisoners. That however doesn’t necessarily mean solitary confinement.
Law professors and others more knowledgeable are weighing in on this and there’ll likely be more detailed reporting over the coming days and weeks.
Manning has already been sentenced to a long stretch in prison. It’s possible that Manning had concealed her identity as Chelsea as it might prejudice her trial. It is also possible that once in military prison she would not have the freedom to even make her intensions known.
I think it’s about who you identify with. Your mind works a certain way. You see who around you have minds that work that way. You observe what they do, how they make decisions, how they interact with other people, how they dress, everything. You learn from them what is right. You feel the need to emulate them. It’s the same way a boy learns to be a man from his father or a girl learns to be a woman from her mother, except you have to work out for yourself which one is like you instead of just checking out your color-coded onesie.
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Relax. I’m dissappointed that this is unnecessarily going to create more distracting rhetoric for a serious national/global issue. But you can’t see that and want to quickly judge and attack.
Gender roles and gender classifications are culturally constructed.
Gender identity however appears to be an expression of subconscious sex, part of a sense of how our bodies should be and should work. Gender markers can sometimes be a way to express subconscious sex, or can sometimes be a requirement to access medical care.
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It’s dealing with the folks that don’t understand what has occurred, don’t understand what this all means on a larger scale, and now they are simply going to use the gender proclamation to belittle Manning and remain ignorant of the larger problems.
Of course, I do not wish for her to have remained silent and I’m continually amazed at her courage, but it is inevitably going to diminish the immediate impacts and understanding of what has occured (wiki related). No win situation really.
And here I thought I was playing the devil’s avocado today 
you know, in the article you say “we will refer to manning as female from here on out”. and then never actually refer to her as female
It really does make a powerful story. The conflict between her loss of physical freedom one day, and taking her freedom to be who she is on the next, both driven by the courage to speak openly despite consequences. You couldn’t write a better heroine for a drama.
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Following up on this, does anyone know what exactly Manning is trying to do here-- is she asking the military system to fund her hormone therapy/sex reassignment surgery, or merely to allow her to undergo the surgery with her own money?
My opinion probably changes depending on the answer to that question. I recognize that there’s a lot we don’t know about gender identity, but I’m a bit leery of declaring a fundamental right to have others pay for expensive surgery to become the gender that you feel associated with. No, there’s no real danger of opportunists saying “free sex change!” and willingly jumping into the military justice system. But I’m not convinced that it is incumbent on society to provide these services to treat a condition that is only vaguely biological. I’m willing to be educated and to change my mind, however.
I also think we should be able to separate our opinions about Manning’s actions and conviction from our opinions about transgender rights in military prison. One could oppose his/her conviction and sentencing (using both pronouns as the transition spans the time Manning spent in the court system) without approving of her right to sexual reassignment surgery, and vice versa. Obviously many many people, especially in the media, will endlessly mix the two issues, but that doesn’t mean we have to.
If it’s any consolation, I agree wholeheartedly with you.
Honestly, though, although if Manning is transitioning to being Chelsea, I see no issue with that. If Manning feels like she’s Chelsea, it’s not for me to say otherwise. However, not only do I see this as something the government is going to love happen, because it distracts people away from issues of justice, I just don’t understand why our tax dollars have to go toward what is, in all honesty, elective surgery. I know some of you see it as a basic human right. TBH, even if I woke up tomorrow and decided I wanted to be known as Shirley, I could never afford to do it, and again, TBH, while some might argue that the psychological grief might do me harm, physically being a man is not life-threatening, even if a person is one of those genetic anomalies that makes a person, say, XXY. Framing it as an 8th Amendment issue, to me, unfairly marginalizes the plight of prisoners who really do suffer cruel and unusual punishment in the form of torture, or life sentences for first-time possession. Chelsea, if it comes to that, could raise funds to get the surgery in 10 years when she will likely get parole (if Assange is right on that, which he probably is.)
I don’t have $20,000 to spare; do you? Please, if you do, let’s set up, oh, I don’t know, an Indiegogo campain to get Chelsea treatment. It woudn’t be the first Indiegogo campaign to pay for assignment surgery, nor would it be the first successful one.
Yes, I realize that the AMA sees it as basic healthcare and that a district judge ordered the Massachusetts prison system to allow a prisoner to receive treatment. I’m sure, after saying that, someone will find cases of Federal prisoners getting other elective surgery. Please, bring them to our attention.
i’d rather our tax dollars go to SRS than another hellfire missile drone system that can take out “Two primaries” and ignore the 14 collateral children because the big bad evil terrorist intentionally built his compound next to a school.
A single hellfire missile drone costs … hell… a SINGLE HELLFIRE MISSILE costs $68,000. That’d pay for SRS and hormone treatment for 20 years.
I know it’s equivocation and that there are different factors at play , but let’s not pretend like the army suddenly gives a flip about wasting money.
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The doublespeak nowadays is outrageous. I agree. People go, hold on, let me respectfully submit my opinion, and then go on with their hateful froth and vitriol. …And expect people to listen to them because of their little preface.
Actions. Actions speak louder than words. Trolls, be damned.
