by Patrick H. Moore
In a rather amazing development, Bradley Manning, who was just sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in federal military prison for leaking classified documents, revealed Thursday he intends to live out the remainder of his life as a woman.
“I am Chelsea Manning. I am female,” the Army private wrote in a statement read by his attorney Thursday on NBC’s Today show. “Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition.”
Manning, 25, was found guilty of 20 charges ranging from espionage to theft for leaking more than 700,000 documents to the WikiLeaks website while working in Iraq in 2010.
“I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility),” he continued in the statement posted on the show’s website. “I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.”
Manning signed the letter “Chelsea E. Manning.”
Manning will actually have to serve about one-third of the 35 years he was sentenced to minus the 3 and 1/2 years he has already been is custody. Therefore, if he gets maximum “good-time” credit during his period of incarceration, he should be a free wo(man) before the age of 35.
Manning’s gender issues as a gay soldier apparently played a role in his decision to leak the documents. During his trial, his attorneys presented an e-mail to a former supervisor from April 2010 in which he said he was transgender and joined the Army to “get rid of it.”
The e-mail, which had the subject line “My Problem,” also included a photo of Manning in which he is wearing a blonde wig and lipstick. During Manning’s nine-month detainment at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., following his arrest in 2010, he sent two letters to his counselor using the name “Breanna,” Master Sgt. Craig Blenis testified at his trial.
In the statement read on Today, Manning thanked his supporters. “I want to thank everybody who has supported me over the last three years.
“Throughout this long ordeal, your letters of support and encouragement have helped keep me strong. I am forever indebted to those who wrote to me, made a donation to my defense fund, or came to watch a portion of the trial. I would especially like to thank Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network for their tireless efforts in raising awareness for my case and providing for my legal representation.”
Manning will likely serve his sentence at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, the only military prison for service members sentenced to 10 or more years. According to a Fort Leavenworth spokeswoman, the facility does not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery for gender identity issues but does provide psychiatric care.
In the U.S. prison system, transgender prisoners who have not had genital surgery are generally assigned to live with their birth-sex peers, but the military policy is a bit cloudy.
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So what is the connection between Manning’s gender identity issues and his decision to leak the classified documents? In his mind, he must have compared the fact that he was living under false pretenses (i.e. a transgender man “hiding” in the military) to the military’s tendencies to “hide” their activities under the cloak of secrecy by classifying sensitive information. By “outing” the military, Manning was symbolically “outing” himself. Now things have come full circle, and although Manning is going to prison for a considerable period of time, he is no longer hiding the truth about himself. The military, however, with him out of the way, will no doubt return to their usual policy of “classifying” sensitive material that they do not want made public.
Ironically, was it not for the fact that homosexuality and transgender identification is still stigmatized to some degree in the U.S., Manning would probably have never joined the military and the “leaks” would never have occurred.