Chelsea Manning critiques US military reforms for transgender personnel

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Chelsea Manning critiques US military reforms for transgender personnel

Ed Pilkington in New York
Friday 1 July 2016 16.45 BST

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.

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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.

First, Carter said that new recruits would only be accepted if they had been deemed by a doctor to be “stable” in their gender for the previous 18 months, and had completed any medical treatment.

Manning objects to the requirement of a doctor’s stamp of approval in a gender certification process, warning that it will sustain a system in which control over trans people and their bodies is wielded by doctors and bureaucrats. Gender identity should be the prerogative of one person, and one person alone – the individual concerned.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/01/chelsea-manning-us-military-transgender-rule-change

[Lance Bass esquire]

1. I think the 18 month wait is so GOV won't be paying

For procedures. Would be a PR nightmare.
More needs to be done but it's a start.

We Americans need to be spoon fed change.



JMHO