Pronoun Trouble

Jon Stewart is still away on a movie-making sabbatical. The Daily Show has gone on its end-of-summer vacation. These were the pieces of information that came into my head as I read this headline: "Bradley Manning plans to serve WikiLeaks sentence as a woman." Well okay. I needed some sort of reality check, so I went to my wife with this news, and she laughed aloud. "This is from The Onion, right?" No, I assured her, this is real news. The kind that would be easy pickings for Jon Stewart and friends. Just a few moments of reflection made my head hurt.

This person, the previous Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning would like us to now address him as her. Furthermore, she would like to have hormone replacement therapy while she is in prison. Military prison. The military, for its part, is dealing with things as they tend to: straight down the middle, with the emphasis on "straight." “The Army doesn’t provide sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy,” says George Marcec, a spokesman at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. As for this whole "Chelsea" business, Marcec says, “The Army doesn’t let you be called by whatever you want to be called.” Not exactly the safe and caring environment that one might hope for while suffering from a “gender identity disorder.” 

I have no doubt that this is a real thing, and that Chelsea is experiencing a wide range of emotions, not the least of which is guilt, having confessed to the crime for which she has been found guilty: leaking classified military and diplomatic materials to the previously mentioned WikiLeaks. The punishment for this crime is thirty-five years in jail. He wasn't brought before a firing squad, as traitors have been in the past. Happily, we live in more enlightened times, and the thought of executing someone because they sold some government secrets seems hopelessly antiquated. For most. And there will be those who will insist that Chelsea should be given her rights, as a woman, as a human being, to live her life the way she feels fit. In federal prison. 

I'm still stuck on that whole timing thing, however, since Bradley chose to sell those classified documents in some fit of pique that, according to his lawyers, was brought on by an ugly breakup with a boyfriend back in early 2010. If Chelsea had chosen to address her gender dysphoria at that time, she would have been "chaptered out" of the Army and then would have been left with the difficult path toward living her life as the woman she always believed she was. Instead, she lied, stole and lied some more from the very people she would now like to provide relief from her predicament. Corporal Klinger associations aside, I believe she made an error in her timing. At least she's got some time to figure this mess out.