When you hear the term, “Wikileaks,” what pops into your mind? Classified information becoming available to the public? Threats to national security? What about the name, “Chelsea Manning”?
For those who don’t remember all of the details, Chelsea Manning is a transgender U.S. Army Intelligence analyst. While living as Bradley Manning, she sent hundreds of thousands of classified to WikiLeaks in 2010. She was arrested the same year.
But there is more to the story – of Wikilinks and the controversial figure tied to it. Here are six personal and Wikilink-related facts that you don’t know about Chelsea Manning!
While Bradley Manning’s 2013 announcement that he identified as female might have surprised the general public, Chelsea actually this knew from a young age. According to an interview with Cosmo, Manning started “secretly” dressing as a girl in her older sister’s room; however, she never “knew how to talk about it.”
While Manning’s attorneys are still working on an appeal to the Wikileak charges, she has won one battle: an Army court of appeals found that the military needs to acknowledge Manning’s chosen gender identity with female pronouns or neutral terms like “Private First Class Manning.” The military does not, however, need to change the name of the case that refers to Manning as both “Bradley” and “Chelsea.”
Although Manning has received letters in prison calling her an inspiration, Manning believes that these letters have it backward. She tells Cosmo, “I think it’s the other way around: They inspire me more than I think they might realize.”
According to Heavy.com, Manning described the military’s lifting of the ban against transgender individuals as a “relief.” However, she believes the military still has a way to go toward equality because they require trans people to be “stable” in their chosen gender for at least 18 months (and reported as such by a doctor) before enlisting.
Why do people enlist in the armed forces? To make a difference in the world? To learn new skills? Manning told Cosmo that she enlisted for various reasons, including her father’s encouragement and her own desire to help out during the Iraq war. However, she had another, secret motivation: to focus on something besides living as woman.
Several newspapers, including the New York Post, shared last July that Manning attempted to commit suicide The prison spokesman did not confirm this rumor, but said that officials would “monitor” her condition when she returned from the hospital.
Now, Manning has reportedly received two weeks of solitary confinement as punishment for the suicide attempt and for having a prohibited book in her cell. Manning’s lawyer claims, “Essentially she is now being tortured as punishment for an act of desperation.”
Is her lawyer right? And is Manning an inspiration or, as the government charged her, a traitor? That’s for you to decide – especially now that you know a little more the woman at the middle of the Wikileak controversy.
