but poesy is important. And when unexpected allusions jump out at you, it's important to take a hint.
so let's talk about Bradley Manning.
What we know is that Manning:
- holds the rank of Private First Class in the US Army
- served as an intelligence analyst
- is being held without charge, as of late May, at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, after allegedly leaking the Collateral Murder raw video, and potentially more than 200,000 state department cables and details of hundreds of thousands of incidents from the iraq war, along with other sensitive files, to Wikileaks
- was implicated in the Wikileaks matter by what appears to be unencrypted instant message correspondence with Adrian Lamo, a former hacker with "links to the LGBT community" turned threat analyst, journalist, and FBI informant, who was diagnosed last month with Asperger's.
- The "informant" part comes from Lamo turning over his chat logs with Manning to the federal government. This after Lamo assured Manning that he was both a journalist and an ordained minister, and thus would treat anything Manning said as the words of a confidential source and as confessional.
While the inadvisable nature of telling a snitch where they can shove it is a matter of historical record, it is also a matter of historical record that snitches have no friends, terrible sex lives, never experience true love, are unbelievably boring, die alone, and deep down even their pets don't actually like them.
Also, cismen who snitch experience chronic persistent erectile disfunction. Alone.
(A note on the link: Ms. Kibby was found not guilty.)
(Mostly unredacted portions of the chat logs and further links can be found here. As for the "few words regarding specifics of personal issues not directly related to the whistleblowing/national security concerns at hand," keep reading.)
What we absolutely do not know, and what is pure speculation, but at this point increasingly pervasive speculation, is that some of Manning's non sequitur asides during chats with Lamo were not, in fact, non sequiturs at all, but were "portion[s] of the exchange... tightly packed with trans code words and lingo and analogies." This from an anonymous "source with deep ties to the LGBT community" providing a quote to Boing Boing.
Just to say again: we don't know that Manning is trans. The logs show "bradass87" as distraught, overwhelmed by the magnitude and powerul dirtiness of the government dirt in question, and (this is something other than pure speculation) lonely and scared shitless.
Bradass87 says some muddly things about not wanting pictures of them "as a boy" plastered all over the internet, along with some comments about how "the cpu is not made for this motherboard," wanting "time to figure myself out," figuring out "transition" (which could mean getting discharged from the army for having an "adjustment disorder." Adjustment Disorder NOS, in the civilian world, is the blanket diagnosis your shrink puts down so they can get paid for their time treating you, without giving you a specific diagnostic label that your insurance provider could find out about.)
If you go to the Boingboing piece, it's worth noting that over there, they treat personal matters of identity with equal or greater reverence (or something) than they do classified government documents. I appreciate that Xeni Jardin is trying to be respectful. I'm also assuming she's not queer or trans, because she relies on an anonymous source to tell her whether things are queer or not. But if she can find "a source with deep roots in the LGBT community" who's willing to speak for All Trans People regarding the secret codewords we use, then she could really go the extra mile and find someone willing to identify themselves as a Trans Person Who Thinks They Can Speak For All Trans People.
As it stands, doing it this way has the effect of making "a source with deep roots in the LGBT community" analogous to "a source in the intellgence community." Saying our names is like that Valerie Plame thing, but, y'know, gayer.
As it stands, doing it this way has the effect of making "a source with deep roots in the LGBT community" analogous to "a source in the intellgence community." Saying our names is like that Valerie Plame thing, but, y'know, gayer.
So, as a named source within the LGBT (sort of) community, with codeword clearance, I am issuing a directive to allies and well-meaning cispeople. CCed to Trans Folk Who Think They Can Speak For All Trans People. I'm also forwarding the directive to Xeni Jardin of Boingboing, for the sake of redundancy.
----------------------------------
Directive begins:
Be it known that Global Gender Command has never, and does not at this time possess an encryption system decipherable by all active gender operatives, but opaque to the cispublic. Any claims to the contrary by any gender operative must either draw that operative's security status into question, or indicate an ongoing intelligence exercise whereby the operative is making fun of you.
Be So Advised,
Field Operative Beatrix Dang,
Subaltern First Class
Gender Command Group Delta (operations classified and ongoing),
authorization passphrase LOOK NOW SERIOUSLY
Directive ends.
---------------------------
I'm queerer than a football bat, I have been diagnosed with "Adjustment Disorder (not otherwise specified)" and have a letter in my wallet explaining how I have GID and the only treatment is for people to treat me like my gender means something. If I got no freakin idea whether Manning's trans or not, then none of the rest of these homos do either. The special information queer and trans folks might have boils down to the particular odor with which the whole thing stinks to the highest of the heavens. This ranges from (a) the way Manning may have been outed by well-meaning techie "allies" while already in military custody overseas to (b) the fact that a techie diagnosed with mental troubles and with possible queer status was turned over to the feds by a queer techie diagnosed with mental troubles.
To recap: I don't know if Manning is trans or queer, and neither do you.
To recap: I don't know if Manning is trans or queer, and neither do you.
Having gotten that bit of nonsense off my chest, let's return to the matter at hand.
If there is substance to the groundless speculation that PFC Manning is trans, then a member of the family was betrayed to the feds by someone they thought they could trust. We can assume that they will be mistreated in a manner unfamiliar to most middle class, cisgender, heterosexual white people. We can further assume that the matter of gender identity will be used as leverage against PFC Manning, as an insult, a humiliation, and a means of manipulation during the course of the interrogation.
If, on the other hand, the speculation about Manning's gender identity turns out to be both groundless and wrong, then a 22 year old kid, already at wit's end and scared shitless, was betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. We can assume that he will be mistreated in a manner unfamiliar to the standards of domestic civilian courts and constitutional protections. We can further assume that the matter of gender identity will be used as leverage against PFC manning, as an insult, a humiliation, and a means of manipulation during the course of the interrogation.
Now that The Trans Speculation has begun, Manning's story should be broadcast far and wide, so that the military will feel sorta self conscious and follow something approximating their own particular variety of due(ish) process. Because this is an opportunity to support someone who needs it, while clearly articulating the ways that homophobia, transphobia, and gender policing are real and potentially very dangerous things for everyone.
So go back and watch the collateral murder video, just the short one. It's horrifically violent, and shows helicopter gunships killing Iraqi civilians while the gunners and pilots laugh. several of those civilians were journalists and none of them were armed. We can assume this because there is no reason not to use your gun when you are being shot by a helicopter.
If Manning did what has been alleged, then that video exists as a public document only because of the PFC's actions. Manning encountered this video, and possibly many thousands of other documents, and was so affected by their contents that conscience, disillusionment, and visceral revulsion drove them to Wikileaks, hoping that exposing the documents "might actually change something."
I don't know what Manning's "adjustment disorder" is providing cover for, or what the "transition" might consist of. But that's not to say I don't care. The story that's already starting to emerge from this is familiar.
Communists-And-Fellow-Travelers familiar, and it goes like this:
Communists-And-Fellow-Travelers familiar, and it goes like this:
Queer folk are unstable, and the paranoia that someone will expose their queerness will drive them to betray state secrets. (the solution is to explicitly bar overt queerness in the military, so all queerness will be covert, and the paranoia will be powerful enough to keep mouths shut.)
Or Bayard Rustin familiar, and then it goes like this:
Sure, queer folk do great and heroic things of great historical import, but they do those things because they're great and heroic PEOPLE of great historical import, and queerness has nothing to do with it. Mentioning queerness cheapens their heroism and allows them to be marginalized and ignored. (the solution is to marginalize and ignore the queerness of great and heroic people, which will prevent any queer people in the future from imagining that they might be great or heroic, or do anything of great historical import.)
Orbiting all of this is a narrative of trans experience, and most especially transfemininity, that is textbook Cold War Lavender Scare caricature of the homosexual:
The Homosexual Transexual, Operational Security threats of:
Pathological, unstable, incontinent in the ability to retain sensitive information and to restrain their bizarre urges. A member of a pervasive-yet-elusive secret society present in the very foundations of our hallowed military-industrial complex, the homosexual transexual is nonetheless vulnerable for exploitation as an intelligence asset by our enemies because of the perpetual loneliness and emotional excess intrinsic to the condition.
Anyone who's gone to high school can tell you that queerness is far from invisible. Everybody thinks about us all the time, and sees signs of us everywhere, in their friends, in their rivals, in the unpopular kids, in themselves. Thanks to Don't Ask/Don't Tell, the military has finally gotten a chance to extend the high school experience, and incorporate a lot of ambient violence and firearms. But I'd like to propose that the previous, HUAC-esque formation isn't completely or totally wrong about queerness and its role in undermining national security. The "invisibility" of queerness (which I am intentionally using to encompass gender deviance, because as referenced above, antagonism towards either is really about the same thing.) isn't invisibility at all, it's a constant proving ground fueled by some of the ugliest of heteronormative social impulses. But what might be true about the Lavender Scare mythos is this: the isolation this engenders can allow us, as queers, access to different ways of forming community, which produce multiple, complex allegiances.
When the operation of the machine systematically excludes you and stigmatizes you, kills and mistreats people like you with impunity, when it calls you sick and odious, then you are constantly confronted with the mismatch between your prescribed role and the person you think you might be. Having an adjustment disorder not otherwise specified or PTSD, are not things that destabilize people such that they go crazy and disclose military secrets. PTSD and adjustment disorders are the sorts of things we might expect to develop in people who are trying desperately to incorporate the violent and dehumanizing day to day realities of military life into a sense of who they are. A queer or trans identity just might sometimes give you some wiggle room to take a look at your situation, separate your orders and job description from what you can live with, and do something subversive, because you feel that you have to.
So if Manning isn't trans, which is likely, and leaked the files, which is possible, then thanks, kid. I think you did the right thing in an unbelievably scary situation. You're way too young to be a martyr to anybody's cause, and I hope like hell that the leaks really do change something. In the meantime you have my support.
And if Manning is trans, which is possible, then welcome to the family darlin! Join our pervasive-yet-elusive secret society just so fast as ever you can, it beats the hell out of the loneliness, and we're here for you. Just don't think that "we" are the people you meet in support groups or that pathetic, sad, emotionally unfulfilled Lamo douchebag. few of us might be, but the powerful community lies elsewhere. find the queers and we will love the shit out of you. You're still way too young to be a martyr to anyone's cause. And if you're behind the leaks, which is possible, then damn you are one fierce whatever-you-wanna-call-it. come home quick, come home safe, tear shit up and be your beautiful self.
I'm not asking. i'm just telling:
One way or the other, PFC Manning, You have rocked the world.
(edited for typos and cohesion.)
