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Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

nytimes.com

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Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#421

Post by Prophasi »

rthomas6 wrote: post #180
arbitrage wrote: post #109

She. Not they. Chelsea Manning identifies as female.

Sorry. I didn't know which pronoun to use because I didn't know if gender changes apply retroactively, grammatically speaking. I'm having trouble knowing which one to use to write this post, too. At the time of the leaks Chelsea Manning identified as Bradley, a male. Is it politically correct to use 'she' for all past references, including the times where Chelsea Manning identified as male? Or would it make more sens…

There's obviously no objective truth to whether pronouns apply retroactively; it's just social convention.

Clearly, it's polite to respect someone's wishes when talking to or about them, whether it's pronouns, nicknames, personal space, or umpteen other things. If you're introducing Chelsea to another friend, it seems only civil and natural to say "she [not he] was stationed at Fort Drum!"

However, I don't think a person can unilaterally require that the world around them retroactively change all references to a historical event, particularly when it renders some of those details nonsensical or wrong. History is written: documents were released by a person calling himself "Bradley Manning" and identifying as (and meeting biological criteria of) a male. Other aspects of the story -- from Manning's all-male combat team to his quarters in the USDB -- hinge on that fact. Manning's presence doesn't imply that the military unit was mixed-gender. One version reports the story as it was known to everyone involved; the other modifies it after the fact according to the unilateral wishes of the subject being reported on. That's not a good pattern, I don't think.

As an outsize example, if George W. Bush transitions to a female this year, the US will not celebrate that we've had our first female president.

I'm completely sympathetic to interpersonal civility, but empathy goes both ways; I think it's beyond the pale to expect society writ large to scramble, under penalty of being called bigots, to conform to what's frankly an unverifiable declaration of internal personal change on the order of a religious awakening (which oddly doesn't enjoy the same umbrella of unquestioned sanctimony).

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#422

Post by adrienne »

rabidrat wrote: post #288
adrienne wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manning is a woman; is there some reason you're calling her a "they"?

"He" is the pronoun that was used in their past, "she" is the pronoun for the present. When we're talking about the past+present for this person, I think "they" is not unreasonable. At least, it's more reasonable than trying to call someone out for their pronoun usage when the discussion is about a much more serious topic.

No, the correct way to do this is to use the individual's pronouns. Please note that the AP and the NYT have basically adopted the GLAAD style guide on this issue: http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender

The NYT correctly stated in the parent article, "Ms. Manning was still known as Bradley Manning when she deployed with her unit to Iraq in late 2009." See how that works? She was always a she, even though she was presenting as a man at the time.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#423

Post by mcv »

DonHopkins wrote: post #374
hendersoon wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no record of any individual being physically harmed, but the leaked diplomatic cables were highly embarrassing, hurt the interests of the US, and were completely unjustified. They weren't exposing malfeasance or war crimes. They should not have been released. Manning did it wrong, Snowden did it right.

The fact that the US murdered innocent civilians was highly embarrassing and hurt the interests of the US, not the fact that Manning leaked that information itself. Punish the murderers, not the messengers. The only people were actually harmed were the innocent children and journalists on the receiving end of US machine guns.

This exactly. Governments do need to be held accountable for secret crimes, secrecy should not be allowed to enable continuing those crimes. Exposing them was necessary, even if it was illegal.

I do think Manning was naive and sloppy for handing the whole thing over to Assange, though in her defense, Assange seemed fairly reasonable and responsible at the time. It's only after this enormous leak that he seems to have gone mad with power.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#424

Post by k-mcgrady »

djsumdog wrote: post #32

Seven years is still a long time for whistle blowing. I'm glad to see she is still getting released though. It's important to note commuting the sentence is not a pardon. Chelsea will still have this conviction for the rest of her life. I know there is a lot of controversy with Manning compared to Wikileaks et. al. as far as not redacting documents or using a discriminating news source to filter them. Still, I oppose…

>> I wish people would see this manipulation

Is it really manipulation? Most/all world leaders have done a lot of good and a lot of bad. You can be angry at both the outgoing and incoming administration. There is no need to pick sides. Hopefully commuting this sentence will decrease any deterrence the administration has given to whistleblowers, because we need them to hold our governments accountable more than ever. Any checks and balances we think we have don't seem to be working.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#425

Post by dogma1138 »

GVIrish wrote: post #219
mhurron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classifying material should not be a way for the Government to hide corruption and wrongdoing. Whistle blowing is the only way that prevents that. Chelsea Manning acted on her conscience, which is the best we can expect anyone to do. The governments punishment was to prevent that happening again.

Where Manning went wrong was the indiscriminate nature of the leaking. Had Manning just divulged only the information regarding specific acts of wrongdoing, she would have had a much stronger case as a whistleblower. Dumping troves of classified material without regard to their contents is not the same thing. If someone working in medical records uncovered insurance fraud, but put thousands of people's full records o…

Manning was in the military regardless of what and how it was released there is no possibility for "public interest" defense in this case. Neither does Snowden since he will be charged with espionage.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#426

Post by kjbflsudfb »

adrienne wrote: post #417
kjbflsudfb wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask this seriously and not cynically: What are you trying to achieve with these comments? Are you hoping to educate people? Are you trying to scold people for not knowing better? The content of the article isn't about Manning's gender association, but your comments are only about that. I would suspect any downvotes are simply because it is off-topic..?

Even if you assume my comments are pointless pedantry - since when has pointless pedantry been uncommon or unwelcome on Hacker News? It is wrong to misgender people. It is unacceptable . Why is it somehow more terrible to point that out than it is to do it in the first place ?

"Even if you assume my comments are pointless pedantry..."

Where did I use those words?

Responses like this make it hard for me to learn from the other person. Maybe you feel like we should all already know these things, but that simply is not reality. It is not always because the person is "transphobic", as you put it, but simply uneducated on a particular topic.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#427

Post by adrienne »

etjossem wrote: post #394
na85 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what? Ms. Manning doesn't get to dictate how the English language works. "They" works just as well for her as it does for me or you. If Chelsea doesn't like it, well, she can take it up with the dictionary. A person can express a preference but their choice (oops, I used "they" again! be sure to downvote!) has no bearing on my choice of words.

> If Chelsea doesn't like it, well, she can take it up with the dictionary. On her behalf, let's call up Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi... The only correct use of the singular-they is as "a pronoun of choice for someone who doesn’t identify as either male or female." You could use singular-they for "a person whose gender isn’t known or isn’t important in the context," bu…

Dictionaries are reflections of usage rather than arbiters of it -- but yes, generally speaking, singular "they" is for use in situations where people's gender is ambiguous or unknown. And in particular, calling trans people "they" is often a tactic that is used to implicitly deny that they are "really" their gender.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#428

Post by nilved »

cdubzzz wrote: post #254

> “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.” What an amazingly loaded statement that is. Russia is just a straight up "adversary" now? Infuriating.

No, not "now," they've been considered an adversary for a very long time.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#429

Post by pvg »

manarth wrote: post #414
pvg wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to argue with me about something you're apparently unfamiliar with and also want me to direct you to basic information about it you can trivially look up yourself? Please, for your benefit and for the benefit of basic politeness, do a bit of the legwork.

I'm still unclear about which particular Wikipedia page you would like to direct me to. You've posted: The incident had been reported and covered by the press, there was no 'government cover up'. The new bit was the video itself. You've then stated: you can just read the wikipedia page You've gone on to say: As to the page, the page about the incident. You've then stated: You want me to direct you to basic informatio…

You should read the beginning of the thread. Or type 'collateral murder incident' into google. That's all that it would have taken instead of 19 different ways of telling me how you don't know anything about this but I should sort you out. Let's call it a day.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#430

Post by adrienne »

grzm wrote: post #418
adrienne wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If i cared about convincing techbros i would probably use different language, yes. As it is, i think this community has a whole lot of really horrible people in it who think they are Very Rational And Smart and can't be taught. And i'm a woman, so they're doubly not going to listen to me. So i don't bother wasting my energy, mostly. Like, i genuinely don't believe most of the people here are actually educable. I thin…

Yet you continue to post. In all honesty, why do so? This is not meant in any way as a criticism. You've expressed this opinion of the HN community many times, so I'm genuinely interested why you continue to do so.

Think of me as a particularly disapproving Greek chorus.
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