So Bradley Manning wants to be called Chelsea Manning, with feminine pronouns.\u00a0 Call me skeptical.\u00a0 His lawyer intends to fight, and it\u2019s my understanding there are mixed court rulings about whether sexual-reassignment surgery is a \u201cmedical treatment\u201d that a prison (and in particular, a military prison) is required to provide, but I suspect that this is largely connected to aiming at better conditions in prison, whether it\u2019s perceiving a woman\u2019s prison as offering better living conditions or just being removed from the general (male) population.\u00a0 (And I get it \u2014 whether\u00a0he is a \u201cwoman inside\u201d or not, I can certainly understand him preferring to be among women than among men, given what we read of the violence and sexual assault\u00a0in a men\u2019s prison.)\u00a0 He won\u2019t be able to \u201clive as a woman\u201d in any case \u2014 even in a woman\u2019s prison, he wouldn\u2019t be permitted to wear make-up or dresses or, really, do anything that makes him feel affirmed in his proclaimed femaleness.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
I admit to being quite skeptical over the entire issue of transsexuals\/transgender people.\u00a0 The news articles about transgender children leave me most suspicious \u2014 when a child is at an age where sex is binary and determined by external characteristics (girls have long hair and like pink, boys have short hair and play with cars), its entirely understandable that a boy who likes pretty things would announce, and truly believe, that he\u2019s a girl.\u00a0 One gets the impression that the parents and other adults around these children are more comfortable having a \u201ctransgender\u201d child than letting their boy remain a boy, who just happens to like pretty things and decorate his room with princesses.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And rulings such as the recent one out of California, where children identifying with the opposite sex are allowed to \u201cbe\u201d that opposite sex in all ways \u2014 including boys (you know, the ones with penises) using girls\u2019 locker rooms and being on the girls\u2019 sports teams (regardless of their physical advantage)?\u00a0 <\/p>\n
In any case, there are adults who of their own free will make the choice to \u201ctransition.\u201d\u00a0 (Apparently, some re-transition \u2014 I\u2019ve read some links to suggest that, for many, the sex reassignment process is not the \u201cinstant cure\u201d that it\u2019s promoters claim, but I don\u2019t know how isolated these instances are.)\u00a0 What seems \u201coff\u201d, at least as far as the men-becoming-women are concerned, is that they become exaggerated caricatures of women, heavily made up, always wearing dresses, rather than \u201cnatural\u201d women.\u00a0 In Manning\u2019s case, of course, we\u2019ve only ever seen the one picture, in a wig, but even the name \u2014 Chelsea \u2014 seems to fit with this exaggeration.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m most likely preaching to the choir.<\/p>\n
In this case, what\u2019s striking is that it\u2019s become something of a litmus test of whether you\u2019re right-thinking on social issues as to whether one complies with this request\/demand.\u00a0 What if he had announced his name was Peter Pan?\u00a0 Other than celebrities, whose names are basically stage names and, in a sense, the name of their act (e.g., Lady Gaga), we generally use an individual\u2019s legal name in reporting.\u00a0 Bradley Manning is his legal\u00a0 name, and I can\u2019t imagine a judge approving a name change in the middle of a prison sentence, regardless of the reason.\u00a0 He certainly won\u2019t be able to begin the process of \u201ctransition\u201d as experts have defined it, wearing women\u2019s clothes for a year before any treatment is started.\u00a0 (In similar cases of imprisoned transgender people with legal cases, they\u2019ve already started the process \u2014 a man with artificial breasts, for instance.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As for the he vs. she, by convention, regardless of one\u2019s opinion, it\u2019s reasonable to use the pronouns corresponding to the individual\u2019s legal sex. If that makes me a Neanderthal, so be it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So Bradley Manning wants to be called Chelsea Manning, with feminine pronouns.\u00a0 Call me skeptical.\u00a0 His lawyer intends to fight, and it\u2019s my understanding there are mixed court rulings about whether sexual-reassignment surgery is a \u201cmedical treatment\u201d that a prison (and in particular, a military prison) is required to provide, but I suspect that this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n