By Ed Pilkington for the Guardian. Chelsea Manning has made an impassioned critique against the US military’s new rules allowing transgender people openly to serve in the armed forces, arguing that the reforms fall short of true equality.
As the highest-profile transgender individual in the armed services today, Manning’s criticisms carry particular weight within the debate around opening up the military. The army soldier said she responded to the defense secretary Ash Carter’s announcement of the rule change on Thursday with initial relief, followed by a dawning concern.
Writing for the Guardian from her prison cell in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking US state secrets to WikiLeaks, Manning raised two main objections to the revised policies. Since 2014 she has been suing the US government in federal court to be allowed to live fully as a woman while in custody. So far, her wishes have only been partially granted.
She has been given access to hormone treatment, cosmetics and speech therapy. But the military is continuing to hold her in a male lock-up within Fort Leavenworth, and insists that she must wear her hair at regulation length for male personnel.
