The Erasure Of Breanna Manning.
By laurelai Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer or a law expert and my views here are from a layman’s perspective. While i do “name some names” this is not intended to single out anyone, just intended to provide perspective and an example. Please honor that intent and no not try to engage with anyone.
This is a mass callout of every single human being on the planet who ever willfully misgendered Breanna Manning.
As many of you are now aware an email has been published regarding PFC Manning where she confesses the fact she is a trans woman to one MSG (master sergeant) Paul Adkins. Included was this photograph.
What’s painfully obvious now to white cis people is that Manning is trans, even though I have personally been shouting it from the rooftops since 2011 when we discovered that she had chosen a female name and created social media accounts with that new name, combined with the chat logs with Adrian lamo where she stated (and i am paraphrasing here) that her worst fear was to be drug around the public and media as a man.
While i get her lawyers tactical choice to have manning deny her gender ID issues for the trial, that doesn’t change the reality of the fact that manning is in fact transgender. Bullshitting the army to keep her from being executed is one thing, the american public buying that bullshit is another so knock it off.
Even with this revelation cis people seem to not grasp the simple reality that they should probably use some female or at the very least gender neutral pronouns when discussing her in the public for the simple fact that every time you refer to her as “him” and “he” in the public you are causing real psychological trauma.
Let me put this into perspective for you.
Imagine *your* worst fear. Visualize it in your minds eye, feel the anxiety creeping up as you imagine it.
Now imagine millions of people did it to you every single day, multiple times a day and nobody gave a shit about it. Not only that but anyone who even *tried* to say “hey perhaps we should not be dumping spiders on people who are utterly terrified of them for years” they get shouted down and told, no no this other third party says its ok, that, were all cool with bathing in eight legged demons, don’t worry about that person covered in spiders. Ignore the screams of terror. Oh and you are just a pedantic anklebiter for even bringing it up.
Imagine how terrified and broken you would be by the end of it all.
Thats what you all did to her. All while the army tortured her in other ways.
You took a political move designed to appease a small number of bigots and used it to bring a poor woman’s worst fears to life, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
There is no solution to this either. The trial is over, soon the sentencing will be too. Its already done, you can’t fix it now. Sure you can change the pronouns you use *now* and you should but you cannot undo the 2 years of hell you put that poor woman through because you couldn’t pick up on the fact that they were playing politics, and you conveniently ignored every trans voice who tried to correct you. This is a burden you will have to carry for the rest of your natural life. You contributed to the torture of another human being. Willfully. We told you, she told you. You didn’t care. You listened to white cis men instead about trans identities. You ignored our cries for justice. You ignored her words in favor of a political lie.
Congratulations you committed an evil act worse than anything i’ve ever been accused of. That takes some doing.
Torture is considered a crime against humanity
“Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, “are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of human beings.”They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape; political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.”
Widespread or systematic practice….yeah we have systemic and widespread oppression of transgender people in the US, and legalized discrimination of trans* people in the US Army. And we had a large number of people insisting Manning was male against all evidence. That oppression lead to Mannings torture, and the public misgendering over years was itself torture ergo it is a crime against humanity itself. And shes not the only one being oppressed, we are raped and beaten and murdered and silenced and this is either legal or laws are simply not enforced for trans victims in most places. Because of this oppression what might appear to be an isolated incident really isn’t, it is instead another sign of systematic oppression of trans* people and if you don’t think the fact manning is LGBT has anything to do with this trial, then you need to pull your head out of your backside.
So, lets break this down shall we.
Manning releases proof the US Army committed war crimes to the public.
Manning arrested and charged with crimes, then tortured by the US Army, and the general population of the US.
Our collective response to learning about the truth about secret war crimes was to commit crimes against humanity in full view of the world.
Oh and if you think this article hurts your feelings, or it offends you I really dont give a shit, you helped torture a human being you have no room to complain.
Now hang your collective heads in shame.
*drops mic*
This is an appallingly-written article – incoherent, self-contradicting, scattergun and absolutely riddled with typos. It’s not going to convince anyone.
I’m sorry, I don’t see any contradictions. Laurelai is obviously angry, but that’s fucking justified; I’m angry. There are some technical syntax issues in the article, yes, but if that’s all you got out of it and not the anger and the clearly and multiple-times-stated point being made, you really need to take a long, hard look at yourself and ask you what kind of person you are.
Really? i’ve already convinced quite a few people. Sorry you didn’t like it.
Sorry, ‘appallingly’ was overstating the case, and I should give you credit for writing about this important issue; you are educating people and I should have acknowledged that. An hour of editing would have considerably improved it though.
Well now I’ve seen the #fuckcispeople hashtag and the stories attached, and it makes me feel less marginalised and alone. So I’d like to thank you for that and apologise unreservedly for my negative comments above.
Apology accepted. No harm done.
Perhaps it would have, this is a deeply upsetting topic for me.
I don’t think I would put misgendering in the same category as torture.
I don’t think this is as black and white as you think it is.
I think something that is really important to me is that people respect how I want to be identified. I don’t want them to decide how to identify me based on how they feel or what I look like. I want people to ask me my pronouns and use the ones I ask for.
As it happens people use female pronouns with me and those are the ones that I want.
When I read about Private Manning I get really upset, I’m a computer programmer, a woman who was assigned male at birth and as I read their story I feel like it could have been me, so easily, if I had been born in the United States.
Private Manning said in the chat logs that the worst part was going to be that everyone would see pictures of them presenting as male, not the prison, not the fact that any chance of a normal life, the worst part was going to be everyone thinking of Private Manning as male.
I don’t want to reduce that, especially as I understand that feeling quite intimately, but I think Private Manning learned that they were wrong about what the worst part was. I’m guessing that Private Manning would change their name to genital warts if it would get them out of prison, I think they are desperate and I think they decided to identify as Bradley Manning.
I want to say no, this is too important, girls like us are too important, but Private Manning is a person first, a symbol second. I think we need to respect that decision. I’m just going to stick to neutral pronouns because I can’t stomach using male ones.
As i stated before, neutral pronouns i believe are appropriate or female ones. As for misgendering in and of itself its not torture, but in this context it is. Because it was her greatest fear thrust upon her for 2 straight years.
Just because something is a person’s “worst fear,” it doesn’t mean that when they actually experience it, it is therefore the worst thing they could actually experience. Sometimes people are wrong in their predictions of what they will feel when something happens. There was a point in my life when my worst fear was that my partner would move away. That doesn’t mean he tortured me when he ultimately did, and in fact, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened for both of us. So to me, that’s where this line of reasoning really breaks down.
I agree with Eva Lacy on this. Until Manning him/herself makes some sort of public statement about how they would prefer to be called, I would rather follow the example and request of Manning’s defense consul.
Is it a political move? Yes, of course it is. As I understand it, the prosecution wants to down play any sort of culpability they had in putting an emotional stressed individual into a high stress situation where they were denied basic psychiatric care. The defense wanted to downplay any potential stigma being Transgender might bring when you’re looking at potential life in prison or worse.
I understand that what documents we have from Manning discussing their identity woes were private communications released publicly. Is identifying publicly on such a world stage really something that Manning wants? Given the lack of resources in the Army did Manning even have the time and mental space to really think about, explore, and come to terms with an identity? I don’t know. Maybe there’s some aspect of the case I’ve missed, but I haven’t seen it.
I agree that being presented as male to a world wide audience is probably a nightmare for Manning, but I don’t feel having everyone switch to female pronouns is the unquestionable gesture of respect this article is presenting. I feel it’s more important to acknowledge and respect this aspect of Manning then to quibble over what pronouns to use. Use of male pronouns and a lack of acknowledgement are pretty intertwined in this case, yes, but I don’t think it’s the one-to-one connection being painted here.
I can hardly believe I only learned about this yesterday. Ugh. Media uber-fail.
didn’t have a single clue she identified as female, jesus christ. wish i knew sooner guh