An image of Manning sent in a April 24, 2010, email coming out to her supervisor (Photo: Chelsea Manning, via U.S. Army file).
Chelsea Manning, the transgender soldier behind one of the largest leaks of classified information in history, has begun a hunger strike to protest the military’s refusal to let her grow her hair as part of her treatment for gender dysphoria.
Manning began the hunger strike just after midnight on Saturday, Sept. 10, according to NBC News. She is currently serving a 35-year sentence at the all-male U.S Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for leaking classified information to the online site Wikileaks.
“I need help. I am not getting any,” Manning said in a statement. “I have asked for help time and time again for six years and through five separate confinement locations. My request has only been ignored, delayed, mocked, given trinkets and lip service by the prison, the military, and this administration.”
In addition to refusing any food or beverages other than water and her prescribed medications, Manning has also vowed not to cut her hair as the male inmates do. Although the Army began providing Manning with hormones last year after her lawyers sued, it has consistently refused to allow her to grow her hair beyond the length recommended for male prisoners. For many people with gender dysphoria, growing out one’s hair as part of embracing one’s gender identity is often considered a part of treatment, just as any hormone therapy or gender confirmation surgery would be.
The U.S. Army has not responded to requests for comment on Manning’s hunger strike.
Manning also revealed that she had submitted a “do not resuscitate” order, effective immediately, should she die in the course of her hunger strike. In a statement, she acknowledged the possibility of permanent incapacitation and death that could result if she continues the hunger strike and the Army refuses to budge from its position on allowing her to grow out her hair. Nonetheless, she insisted that the strike was a “peaceful act.”
“I intend to keep it as peaceful and non-violent, on my end, as possible,” she said in a statement. “Any physical harm that should come to me at the hands of military or civilian staff will be unnecessary and vindictive.
“Until I am shown dignity and respect as a human again, I shall endure this pain before me. I am prepared for this mentally and emotionally,” she continued. “I expect that this ordeal will last for a long time. Quite possibly until my permanent incapacitation or death. I am ready for this.”
A transgender asylum seeker from Mexico, identified in court filings as O.J.M., has been released after spending 43 days in immigration detention. She was arrested in early June, just after attending an asylum hearing at the Portland Immigration Court, and was held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington.
O.J.M. is one of many asylum seekers arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration -- a policy critics argue subverts due process. In one related case, a gay makeup artist seeking asylum was deported and imprisoned in a maximum-security facility in El Salvador after being wrongly accused of gang affiliation. He has since been released.
D.C. police are searching for three men who allegedly hurled anti-trans slurs at 43-year-old Cayla Calhoun before brutally attacking her and leaving her with serious injuries.
Calhoun, a sommelier and bartender at Annabelle restaurant, left work around midnight on June 29 and stopped at the Golden Age, a nearby bar, for a quick beer, according to The Advocate.
After leaving Golden Age, Calhoun rode a Onewheel electric board through Georgetown and along Rock Creek Parkway. Near the National Mall, three men on scooters emerged and began shouting anti-LGBTQ slurs at her.
Luke Ash, a Baptist pastor who worked at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, says he was fired after refusing to use a trans co-worker's preferred pronouns.
Luke Ash, lead pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, says he was fired from his job as a library technician at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library after refusing to use a co-worker's preferred pronouns. He was reportedly dismissed after referring to the colleague by female pronouns during a July 7 conversation with another library employee.
"That co-worker corrected me, said that the person she was training preferred to be called 'he,' and I refused to use those preferred pronouns," Ash told anti-LGBTQ activist and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins during an interview on the conservative Christian political show Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.
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