An image of Manning in an April 24, 2010, email coming out to her supervisor (Photo: U.S. Army file).
The Department of Justice filed a brief on Nov. 10 arguing that a lawsuit filed by Chelsea Manning against the department should be dismissed. Manning is suing the department for its refusal to allow her to follow female grooming standards consistent with her gender identity.
Manning, a former U.S. Army private, came out as transgender in 2013, one day after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing more than 700,000 government files containing sensitive information to the online government watchdog site Wikileaks. It was one of the largest leaks of classified documents in American history.
Since that time, Manning and her lawyers have battled with government officials over Manning’s recommended treatment for gender dysphoria.
As a result of a lawsuit filed in September 2014 against then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel — and other officials from the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army — the government agreed to allow Manning to receive hormone therapy, speech therapy and cosmetics, but has refused to allow her to grow out her hair. Manning has promised to fight the decision, arguing that it is part of her necessary treatment for gender dysphoria.
The DOJ has argued that Manning must comply with the same grooming standards as other inmates at the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) in Leavenworth, Kansas. The USDB is a maximum-security facility for men, meaning all prisoners must have hair no longer than two inches in length.
“As described in Manning’s Amended Complaint, Manning is currently receiving a significant amount of medical treatment for her gender dysphoria. Specifically, Manning is receiving weekly psychotherapy, including psychotherapy specific to gender dysphoria, the provision of female undergarments, permission to wear prescribed cosmetics in her daily life at the USDB, speech therapy, and cross-sex hormone therapy,” the DOJ writes in its request to have Manning’s lawsuit dismissed.
“Notwithstanding all of these treatments, Manning claims that Defendants have violated the Eighth Amendment by not permitting her to wear a feminine hairstyle…consistent with what is permitted for inmates at the military’s female prison,” the brief continues. “Separately, Manning also claims that the USDB’s enforcement of its hair restriction violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection, because inmates in the military’s female prison are permitted to have longer hair.
“The issue before this court is quite narrow — whether the USDB, a military prison for men, is required to stop enforcing its military grooming standards and allow Manning, an incarcerated transgender female, to grow her hair longer than what is permitted for the rest of her fellow prisoners,” the DOJ argues. “This narrow issue is fundamentally intertwined, however, with preserving core prison-security and military values at the UDSB, such as uniform treatment and good order and discipline. Manning asks this Court to second-guess the considered determinations of military and corrections professionals as how best to protect those interests.”
The brief also argues that preventing Manning from growing out her hair is for her own good, as a way to protect her from potential assaults that she might be subjected to due to her feminine appearance.
“I believe that defining ourselves in our own terms and in our own languages is one of the most powerful and important rights that we have as human beings,” Manning said in a statement in response to the DOJ brief. “Presenting myself in the gender that I am is about my right to exist. What the government is basically telling me is ‘you cannot exist,’ that ‘you are wrong,’ and that ‘you do not exist.’ What they are doing is taking away our right to exist. I think this is the kind of situation that justifies all kinds of terrible things like ignorance, maltreatment, torture, murder, and genocide.
“Nobody knows your gender more than you do,” added Manning. “You do not know my gender better than I do. A doctor doesn’t know it better than me. My parents don’t know it better than me. No one experiences my gender in the way that I experience it. Gender presentation should reflect the person that you are. When you lose control of your gender presentation you lose an important aspect of your identity and existence.”
Chase Strangio, Manning’s lawyer from the ACLU’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project, argues that the government is complicating the matter while also violating his client’s right to be “free from cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Chelsea’s demand is simple: that she be treated with her medically necessary treatment and like all other women in military custody,” Strangio said in a statement. “Her fight is central to the pursuit for justice for transgender people and for those who are incarcerated and we are honored to fight alongside her.”
A video shows a Burger King manager -- who also owns the franchise -- ordering an irate female customer to leave after she tried to get an employee disciplined for allegedly misgendering her, despite the fact that she had repeatedly misgendered the worker first.
It’s unclear when the video was recorded, but it has been circulating widely in recent days.
The video, filmed from the customer’s point of view, opens with her at a Kansas Burger King demanding to speak with the manager. A male employee goes to get the manager, prompting the customer to demand the manager’s full name. The employee tells her he doesn’t know the manager’s last name.
A transgender teaching assistant at the University of Oklahoma has been placed on leave after a conservative student accused both the assistant and the course's professor of discriminating against her for citing the Bible in an essay that received a zero.
The student, OU junior Samantha Fulnecky, a psychology major, had been assigned a 650-word essay reacting to a study on whether children's popularity correlates with how closely they conform to prescribed gender norms, reports Oklahoma-based NPR station KOSU.
The study -- Gender Typicality, Peer Relations and Mental Health -- found that popular children are more likely to be described as "gender-typical" by their peers than children who are frequently teased. Among those who are teased, young boys show the worst mental health outcomes.
San Francisco has named Per Sia, one of the first performers to read at a Drag Queen Story Hour event, as the city's new Drag Laureate.
Appointed by Mayor Daniel Lurie on October 29, the 44-year-old Per Sia is only the second person -- and the first transgender individual -- to hold the title.
D'Arcy Drollinger, owner of the Oasis nightclub, was San Francisco's first Drag Laureate. The position -- one of only two in the country, alongside West Hollywood's -- comes with a $35,000 annual stipend for a three-year term funded by the San Francisco Public Library, which also supports the city's Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs.
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