Chelsea Manning Quotes
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Joy, confidence, and security can't begin until we are able to just be ourselves.
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I knew that I was different. I gravitated more toward playing house, but the teachers were always pushing me toward playing the more competitive games with the boys. I spent so much time wondering, 'What's wrong with me? Why can't I fit in?'
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Suffrage is not a right afforded to everyone. Rather, voting is a privilege in the United States - and a hard-earned privilege at that.
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Shortly after arriving at a makeshift military jail at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, in May 2010, I was placed into the black hole of solitary confinement for the first time.
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Privacy is not a luxury in America: it is a right - one that we need to defend in the digital realm as much as in the physical realm.
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We can work to get queer and trans people out of the prisons and jails and off the streets, and to improve our access to housing, education, employment and gender-confirming healthcare.
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We need to send a powerful message to the world in a unified voice: that we can fight for social justice for everyone, everywhere, and change the world, not just get married. We can continue to build our communities and address the root causes of queer and trans poverty and deaths.
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Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine.
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Our society's dependence on imagery says a lot about our values.
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I've been a huge fan of Marc Jacobs for many, many years, even going back to when I was wearing men's clothing. He captures a kind of simplicity and a kind of beauty that I like - projecting strength through femininity.
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In the years preceding my imprisonment, I worked as a software programmer, designing and developing web interfaces, secure databases, and communication software; later, I was employed as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army. Throughout each of these jobs, we used different kinds of encryption to keep prying eyes out of information we handled.
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Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy - the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps - to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
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Though there are plenty of reasons to critique U.S. foreign policy and the way in which the U.S. military enacts it, serving your country has long been a way for economically marginalized Americans to get an economic step up - and could be for trans people as well.
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The U.S. intelligence community is in a very poor position to be trusted with protecting civil liberties while engaging in intelligence work.
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When I wanted to serve my country, I was forced to hide the most basic and human aspect of my life and my identity from the people to whom I was supposed to be the closest - and with whom I had to trust my life. I also had to hide from myself.
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I came out publicly as transgender and began hormone replacement therapy while in prison. When I was released, however, there was no quantifiable history of me existing as a transwoman. Credit and background checks automatically assumed I was committing fraud.
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The fight for justice for the transgender community is largely invisible to our fellow citizens, despite the rampant systematic discrimination of trans people - those whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
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The past will always affect me, and I will keep that in mind while remembering that how it played out is only my starting point, not my final destination.
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I loved being in my sister's room. I really admired her and wore her clothes to play in, played with her dolls, played with her makeup. She had a mirror with settings to see what you would look like in different lighting. I thought that was amazing.
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I am Chelsea Manning. I am female.
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Health care is something that prisoners have a right to, you know? They don't get to pick and choose whether or not you get this health care plan and this health care plan. It's provided to you by the prison. The prison has a responsibility to provide you with necessary health care, and trans health care is necessary.
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There are very few distinctions between el bueno and el malo en la prision militar. Instead of the good and the bad, there is the boring and la repeticion - the repetitive. The routine is as endless as it is numbing.
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The evidence is overwhelming that it should be deemed as such: solitary confinement in the U.S. is arbitrary, abused, and unnecessary in many situations. It is cruel, degrading, and inhumane and is effectively a 'no touch' torture.
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By the time I enrolled in the military at 20, I had spent years in denial about who I really was. I was openly gay and would go through periods of cross-dressing, and had even thought about transitioning, but I was in such complete denial.