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Chelsea Manning, national security, and the cishetero/homonormative logics of protection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2023
Abstract
‘I feel like a monster’, typed Chelsea Manning, referring partly to her gender identity but mostly to her job in the US military. Morally conflicted by what she saw and read while serving in Iraq, extremely isolated from her unit and experiencing emotional distress in relation to her gender identity, Manning would act on these stressors by leaking hundreds of documents to Wikileaks, and coming out as a (trans) woman. While she was quick to be classified as either a hero or a traitor, her case evades such dichotomisation and calls for more sophisticated readings. While a lot has been written on Manning in queer and transgender studies, surprisingly little has been published on this case in International Relations, not even in the quickly growing field of Queer IR. Yet Manning’s case helps highlight many of its core concerns in relation to issues of power, security, and sovereignty. In fact, what is often lost when reading the Manning case are the queer and trans logics of protection that were disrupted by Manning’s disclosures and that made such disruption possible. These dominant logics rely upon a culture of secrecy that must be preserved for performances of national security to hold true.
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association.
References
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43 It is estimated that 13,000 people left the military because of the regulation, although the increased demand for troops to fight the Afghanistan and Iraq wars saw the decline of discharges under the policy in the 2000s. While the focus of both mainstream LGBT rights association, and media and political attention has been placed on (white) gay male soldiers affected by DADT, women and minorities were disproportionally targeted by the regulation, making women of colour the front-line casualties of the policy. Gates, Gary J., Discharges Under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy: Women and Racial, Ethnic Minorities (Los Angeles, CA: Williams Institute, 2010)Google Scholar.
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51 See Fischer, Terrorizing Gender, p. 4.
52 While the ban on transgender military personnel was lifted in 2016, President Trump passed a controversial policy in 2019 restricting access to most transgender people, what many have seen as in effect reinstating the ban. President Biden as now lifted the policy. Ironically, Chelsea Manning might have indirectly contributed to this latest lift: Commission member Gen. Thomas Kolditz argued that allowing trans people to serve openly would enhance national security because ‘When you closet someone, you create a security risk, and we don’t need another Chelsea Manning’, cited in Fischer, Terrorizing Gender, p. 76, echoing earlier lines around queer psychopathology as a security risk.
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54 Ibid.
55 The ‘toleration’ of trans people within the military did occur, however, as some were accepted by their units and superiors who turned a blind eye to military regulations, while others had a very difficult experience. See, for example, Fiona Dawson, ‘“Transgender, at war and in love”’, The New York Times (4 June 2015), available at: {http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/opinion/transgender-at-war-and-in-love.html}. Also, as shown by Sjoberg and Shepherd, gender non-conforming people have always taken an active part in Western militaries and wars even though their historical presence is often erased or made invisible. Shepherd and Sjoberg, ‘Trans-bodies in/of war(s)’.
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59 This was true of Chelsea Manning who also claimed to have joined the military in the hope that it would help her get rid of ‘her problem’. Chelsea Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’, Chelsea Manning Support Network (28 February 2013), available at: {http://chelseamanning.org/news/bradley-mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-documents-to-wikileaks/}, as will be developed later.
60 Judith Butler, ‘Doing justice to someone: Sex reassignment and allegories of transsexuality’, in Stryker and Whittle (eds), The Transgender Studies Reader, pp. 183–93.
61 Fischer, Terrorizing Gender.
62 Ibid., p. 8.
63 The GID/GD diagnostic paradoxically reinforces/naturalises the gender binary by assuming that everyone is, feels like, wishes to, and/or should be either male or female. See Spade, Dean, ‘Resisting medicine/remodeling gender’, BERKELEY WOMEN’S L.J., 18 (1 January 2003), p. Google Scholar.
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68 Evan Hansen, ‘Manning-Lamo chat logs revealed’, WIRED (13 July 2011), available at: {http://www.wired.com/2011/07/manning-lamo-logs/}.
69 Ed Pilkington, ‘Bradley Manning’s Internet chats with Zach Antolak: The full text’, The Guardian (7 July 2011), available at: {http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/07/bradley-manning-chat-logs-zach-antolak}.
70 ‘This is my problem. I’ve had signs of it for a very long time. It’s caused problems within my family. I thought a career in the military would get rid of it. It’s not something I seek out for attention, and I’ve been trying very, very hard to get rid of it by placing myself in situations where it would be impossible. But, it’s not going away; it’s haunting me more and more as I get older. Now, the consequences of it are dire, at a time when it’s causing me great pain it itself.’ Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’.
71 Hansen, ‘Manning-Lamo chat logs revealed’.
72 Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’.
73 Hansen, ‘Manning-Lamo chat logs revealed’.
74 Ibid.
75 See Glenn Greenwald, ‘Bradley Manning: The face of heroism | Glenn Greenwald’, The Guardian (28 February 2013); or Madar, Chase, The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History (New York, NY: OR Books, 2012Google Scholar).
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77 Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’.
78 Fischer, Terrorizing Gender, p. 68.
79 Nathan Fuller, ‘Govt’s Closing Arguments; Judge Allows Charge Sheet Change: Trial Report, Day 21’, Chelsea Manning Support Network (25 July 2013), available at: {http://chelseamanning.org/news/closing-arguments-over-major-manning-charges-judge-allows-charge-sheet-change-trial-report-day-21/}; Bean, ‘U.S. national security culture’.
80 These narratives avoided using the term whistleblowing and mostly used ‘leaking’ instead, which is itself negatively connoted: ‘rhetorically speaking, national security “leaking” is espionage’s close cousin, as both evoke images of anonymity and disloyalty.’ (Bean, ‘U.S. national security culture’, p. 56). It is also profoundly gendered: while whistleblowing invokes an active and intentional act linked to ‘grand and masculinized gestures of speaking truth to power’, leaking invokes an unintentional failure to contain a spill and is usually associated with female and queer ‘leaky’ bodies, unable to control their bodily functions. Daniela Agostinho and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, ‘If truth was a woman: Leaky infrastructures and the gender politics of truth-telling’, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 19:4 (November 2019), pp. 745–75.
81 See Lida Maxwell, ‘Truth in public: Chelsea Manning, gender identity, and the politics of truth-telling’, Theory and Event, 18:1 (2015), available at: {about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmuse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.sussex.ac.uk%2Fjournals%2Ftheory_and_event%2Fv018%2F18.1.maxwell.html}.
82 In the DSM5, the Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis has been replaced by Gender Dysphoria in an attempt to depathologise transgenderism by removing the term ‘disorder’, while recognising the psychological distress it can cause. However, the DSM5 was published in May 2013, just before the trial began and after Manning had been ‘diagnosed’/come out. Hence this article uses both terms, according to context.
83 Both the prosecution and the defence followed such lines. In fact, at the beginning of the trial, Manning’s attorney tried to use the GID/GD diagnostic as proof that she had ‘diminished capacities’ for suffering from a psychiatric disorder and therefore could not be charged in line with the ‘Aiding the enemy’ statute, punishable by death or life imprisonment. This line of defence was strategically trying to shift the blame from Manning to her supervisors for not acting on evidence of Manning’s mental health issues and calls for help. Later on, a defence’s expert on forensic psychiatry said that Manning ‘displayed some “narcissistic traits”, such as “grandiose ideations”, and “arrogant and haughty behaviour”’ when stressed and suffered from ‘“post-adolescent idealism”, a relatively normal focus on making a difference in the world and enacting social change, for those aged 18–24.’ Nathan Fuller, ‘Bradley Manning, Family, and Doctors Take Stand: Report and Analysis: Trial Day 34’, Chelsea Manning Support Network (14 August 2013), available at: {http://chelseamanning.org/news/bradley-manning-family-and-doctors-take-stand-report-and-analysis/}.
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85 Adam Klasfed, ‘Gender Politics in Manning-Wilileaks Case’, Courthouse News Services (13 March 2012), available at: {http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/13/44632.htm}.
86 Cited in Mia Fischer, ‘Contingent belonging: Chelsea Manning, transpatriotism, and iterations of empire’, Sexualities, 19:5–6 (1 September 2016), p. 578, available at: {https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460715613332}.
87 Many of these accounts refuse to recognise Manning’s gender identity, or present it as unstable, self-interested, and unreliable, thereby policing whose gender gets to be recognised as legitimate.
88 Michel Foucault, ‘How much does it cost for reason to tell the truth?’, in Sylvere Lotringer (ed.), Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961–1984 (New York, NY: Semiotext, 1996), pp. 348–62., cited in Wilchins, Riki Anne, ‘What does it cost to tell the truth?’, in Stryker and Whittle (eds), The Transgender Studies Reader, pp. Google Scholar.
89 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet.
90 Elspeth, Van Veeren, ‘Secrecy’s subjects: Special operators in the US shadow war’, European Journal of International Security, 4:3 (October 2019), p. Google Scholar, available at: {https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2019.20}.
91 Ibid., p. 405.
92 Ibid., p. 409.
93 Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’.
94 ‘I feel connected to everybody … like they were distant family. I … care?’. Hansen, ‘Manning-Lamo chat logs revealed’.
95 Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’.
96 As she told a friend she chatted with online when she first joined the military: ‘I feel a great responsibility and duty to people … I’m more concerned about making sure that everyone, soldiers, marines, contractor [sic], even the local nationals, get home to their families.’ And ‘what’s even better with my current position is that I can apply what I learn to provide more information to my officers and commanders, and hopefully save lives … I figure that justifies my sudden choice to do this[.]’ Pilkington, ‘Bradley Manning’s Internet chats with Zach Antolak’.
97 Manning, ‘Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to WikiLeaks’; Hansen, ‘Manning-Lamo chat logs revealed’.
98 Spade and Willse, ‘Sex, gender, and war in an age of multicultural imperialism’, p. 19.
99 Beauchamp, Going Stealth, p. 128.
100 Bean, ‘U.S. national security culture’; Beauchamp, Going Stealth.
101 Her legal team is appealing this decision.