Convicted felon Bradley Manning has announced that she’d like to spend her confinement as Chelsea Manning.
Today (“Bradley Manning: I want to live as a woman“):
Bradley Manning, the Army private sentenced to military prison for leaking classified documents, revealed 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 on TODAY Thursday. “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 sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday after having been 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. “I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.”
Manning signed the letter “Chelsea E. Manning.”
If the movies are any indication, it’s way more fun in women’s prisons than their masculine counterparts, so this is a sound strategy.
As to Manning’s requests:
- I haven’t the foggiest how one goes about gender reassignment while in military confinement. Surely, the taxpayer doesn’t have to foot the bill?
- I’m not sure what the protocol is in military confinement. In civilian prisons, Manning would be referred to by a prisoner number rather than a first name.
Let’s dispense with prison rape jokes in the comments section. They’re not funny.
UPDATE: For a more researched, substantive treatment of this issue, see my follow-up “Chelsea Manning and the Law.”
