Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year (brava!), you’re probably familiar with this person the press is referring to as Bradley Manning, whose hearing began on Friday for charges related to sharing several thousand classified documents with Wikileaks.
The defense informs us that Manning preferred the name Breanna, and had established a Facebook profile and email account with that name. We previously knew that Manning was coming to terms with a female gender identity, and was planning electrolysis and other steps to transition. Is this still the case? Has anyone asked Manning before classifying “him” as a gay soldier “all over the world press… as boy“?
The reporting around the issues of Manning’s gender identity is lazy and irresponsible. All the evidence that a person is transitioning and wanting to be known as a different name is before you (and posted throughout your sites), but no one will stand up and say “I support Breanna Manning”? Are we being complacent in the misgendering of a transgender woman? Are we erasing her experiences under military policy prohibiting trans people from serving when we stop the conversation at DADT?
I’m not denying that it seems Manning was under extreme emotional stress at the time, but I’m concerned that this defense will further equate being trans/gay/or a woman with being untrustworthy and unstable. I also worry that the media around this case will make it seem more acceptable to erase an individual’s trans history and refer to them as gay. Neither treatment of trans women is acceptable.
Until I read otherwise, I think Breanna Manning has made it abundantly clear that she is female-identified, and so I cannot in good conscience participate in the misgendering of her as a gay soldier named Bradley. I don’t particularly know how I feel about what she stands accused of, but I’m reading as much as I can, and think she deserves a fair trial and life as herself without the suggestion that her sexuality or gender itself makes her unsound. If this is the direction the defense plans to take however, then let us draw media attention back to the continued hostile environment the military creates towards minorities either serving or being murdered in war crimes Manning and others have sought to expose.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she is concerned that revelations about Manning’s gender identity could be incorrectly interpreted as the cause for his alleged wrong-doing.
“It’s totally unrelated,” she said. “I don’t know him and all I know about this is what I’ve read in the papers. But whether he’s trans or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether he committed treason or whatever he’s accusing of doing.”
Misgender much Mara?
Posted by Nancy F.N. Drew | December 20, 2011, 11:07 pm