431–440 of 797 posts
> “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.
With apologies to William Burroughs. (To the whistleblowers, in hope that they stay alive.) Thanks for systemic corruption and disregard for the rule of law. Thanks for the transparent lies and carefully framed talking points. Thanks for the profitable arms sales to be used against us in next year's war. Thanks for manufactured consent. "You all saw him. He had a gun." Thanks for the American dream, placing profit fi…
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> 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.
Chelsea Manning's gender and pronoun are arguably among the most well-known in the world, since she has very publicly made them explicit! The only reason anyone in this situation is using "they" is because of a desire to avoid saying the correct pronoun "she."
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 have mixed feelings on this. Manning did commit a crime. They were entrusted with classified information and they released it on purpose. For all of the corruption and wrongdoing the release of those cables uncovered, didn't it also do things like give away the positions of some undercover agents? And harm US diplomatic relations with other countries? Look at it from the POV of the government: How could they not pu…
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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.
There are so many good resources about trans people online, and i expect a bunch of Smart and Rational and Educated people (like HN commenters collectively think they are) to actually fucking educate themselves.
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HN is one of the few places left for open political discourse with little partisanship or blundering hostility. Your comment/account suggests that you have no intention of continuing that trend. Down-votes represent a reaction to that, not your particular pov.
You have it backwards. I have this account because HN is not very open to political discourse unless you toe a very specific line. The Overton Window around here is very small.
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That can be changed
I know these days we're all treating it as an established fact that Sweden's extradition request for Assange is actually a cover for him to be further extradited to the United States, but it has never actually been proven.
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…
> At the time of the leaks Chelsea Manning identified as Bradley, a male.
Manning's first discussion with a gender counselor about identifying as a woman was a couple months before her first contact with WikiLeaks; presumably there was some time lapse between recognizing the identity and talking to a counselor. So, from the evidence available, I don't think it's correct that Manning identified as male at the time of the leaks.
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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.
I'm well aware, which is why it's totally inappropriate usage here. Chelsea Manning's gender and pronoun are arguably among the most well-known in the world, since she has very publicly made them explicit! The only reason anyone in this situation is using "they" is because of a desire to avoid saying the correct pronoun "she."
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"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…
Sorry, I don't agree. Gender should not be retconned. Please do your activism in a different forum.