This is long overdue. Chelsea will probably be doing interviews soon, and since [she's already been pretty outspoken about internet freedoms][1], she may even bring some much needed attention to issues like net neutrality, government surveillance and the never ending erosion of our online rights.
No one is going to ask her anything about net neutrality. They'll ask her how she was treated, what she's going to do next and how she feels about the previous and current administration. She'll say something mildly negative about Trump. Trump will tweet about it, and everyone will start talking about Trump's tweet.
Unfortunately, many of the people that need convincing with regards to net neutrality and online rights also view her as a traitor with mental problems and thus "normal, patriotic Americans" should not worry about these things, except to prevent "liberals" from creating more "regulations" for companies and putting up barriers to keep our law enforcement from finding the "terrorists'" plans.
So there, that's what about one third of the country are led to believe about net neutrality. Just like with all the fake news recently, facts and rebuttals don't help one bit, and make the believers believe even more in their own "facts".
Good luck getting Breitbart and conservative radio on board with NN, they are fundamentally opposed to anything Obama did, plus are skeptical of govt regulations and there is a lot of money to be made from the cable industry fight on NN.
This is so bass akwards, but of course as a non tech based septuagenarian it's not like I expected him to have an actually informed decision on this important issue.
But if anything net neutrality protects the voices of smaller media which, other than fox, many conservative media e.g. breitbart fall into that category. CNN wouldn't like it but they could pay for a network fast lane, Alex Jones or TheBlaze wouldn't nearly be able to compete!
Also unfortunately, those pro net neutrality are never willing to accept they may be wrong or may not see the complete picture and therefor assumptions they are correct follow with no chance of changing it. I suggest you and those like you get your ego in check and quit trying to convince people that what you believe to be correct is in fact the only truth because it's pure opinion, on both sides of the argument and the "I'm smarter than you" liberal/left-leaning attitude is way beyond old already.
It's really not. Some people do feel this way and pointing it out isn't vitriol.
The worst thing that can happen to a cause is some crazy jackass being held up by the media as the spokesperson.
I was on board for the tea party until the media grabbed a few nut bags and made them the de facto spokespeople for the cause. It was purely about limited government until it got co-opted.
I feel as though I am gathered at the feet of a dispirited grandparent, being told tales of the purity they would have espoused if they hadn't been so rudely interrupted by the persistent existence of the world undermining their certainty.
I think you're falling prey to the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. All political groups have multiple goals (as they have multiple people in them, it is inevitable). Politics is the coordination of these goals.
Perhaps. But I would argue that the media plays a large part in undermining any movement they don't like.
They get to pick the person who they hand the microphone to and they will pick the craziest bat-shit insane person for that role if they don't like what your selling.
And in my case, quite false as a conservative with many conservative friends that disagree with your anecdote. This is always the problem, personal anecdotes rarely equal data.
The problem here (and the reason you are getting downvoted, I believe) is you think your anecdote of your friends' opinions trumps falcolas' anecdote about his/her family as untrue, instead of imagining the colorful world it is with various shades of conservatism living side by side.
For what its worth, I have family that believe like grandparent's family. Your anecdotes cannot convince them or me what their beliefs really are. This line of opinion does exist.
The original comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC didn't characterize conservative views or conservative ideology on this issue; they characterized what many people believed.
Empirically, this is true.
If those many people are wrong on net neutrality because they do not understand the issues, why is it that HN commenters are the biased and unthinking ones?
You can not change what you do not try to understand, you cant deconstruct something you keep from trespassing in your mind.
If you put the fingers in your ears and sing lalala i cant hear you- you end what might have been a discussion. I found most conservatives i met not to reactionary dictator supporters. They are just people with reasonable concerns, finding and in constant fear of some radical social discussion dominance bombers showing up shutting any chance on discussion with a warcrime down.
Well unfortunately, you and your conservative friends differ in opinion from the conservatives elected into power, which is who we're talking about. People's anecdotes don't matter; it's the prevailing opinion fed to the masses through conservative politicians and media that needs to change.
Effecting change still takes time and effort. That requires people putting the time in, regardless if they themselves aren't a persuasive spokesperson with a mainstream audience. There's much work to be done to push the ideas out to a wider audience.
For one thing she is certainly more credible not being in prison.
I'm hoping she takes some time (at least a few months) to visit friends and family and unwind from her time in prison before the media ensnares her, even a little.
(warning - not intellectually gratifying)
For selfish reasons I hope she sort of fades from public attention, just so I don't keep having Elvis Costello stuck in my head every time she's in the news.
While I'm very pleased that President Obama commuted the sentence of Ms. Manning, I'm also disappointed that he did not do more to change the policy about classifying information that allows classification to be used as a form of propaganda (by classifying the stuff that contradicts the message we're meant to believe about a war).
Don't mean to be a pendant, but he didn't pardon her. Officially her punishment was commuted. The former forgives the crime and the latter simply reduces the penalty for the crime.
Don't mean to be pedantic, but the word is pedant (a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning), not pendant (a piece of jewellery that hangs from a chain worn round the neck).
There's actually a running joke on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast about this very thing. Several years ago they received an ironic pedantic correction from a listener who, in the correction, mistakenly used the word "pendatic". It's been a joke there ever since.
For those wondering, WikiLeaks claimed[0] that they'll agree to Assange being extradited to the US if Obama grants clemency to Manning, but later on Assange's lawyers said[1] that this was only applicable if Manning gets released immediately, and that the deal Obama gave was still not enough for Assange to agree to be extradited.
> "Amended his requirements" aka "Oh shit, I didn't think you'd actually do it. I was only kidding!"
?
He was never going to do it in the first place. Do you really think that a president would reverse a pardon if Julian Assange did not stand by his words?
We don't know if the US would call for his extradition and neither does he. I understand why he would try to play it safe. I still think he should be on trial for that alleged rape.
'Alleged rape' is a term loaded with propaganda for what he is accused of, especially taking into account what the witnesses have to say about the incidents.
Can I get a timecode? That is a long audio file and I apparently can't quess the right keywords to find it in the transcript.
Edit:
I have now listened to the whole thing and there seems to be no mention of that offer as far as I can tell. So either I missed it, you mistakenly linked the wrong interview, this is anti-Assange Propaganda you hope nobody is going to check too closely, or it is guerilla marketing for the intercept.
Do you seriously think that this half-measure is sufficient to call him out on it though?
It seems to me to be too little (clemency instead of a pardon) too late (she already spent a horrific amount of time under torturous conditions in prison).
This is what I was going to remark on and maybe someone can clarify, but I don't believe the Army has any such thing as "unpaid active duty". The military doesn't just make up stuff like that. If you're on active duty, you're getting a check and accrueing time in service. Seems like sloppy reporting. Also considering:
> After the 2013 sentencing, the ex-intelligence agent changed her name to Chelsea Manning and identified as transgender.
There certainly are methods of punishment the Army uses which includes taking one's pay while they are on active duty. It's not clear to me though how it's done in Manning's case.
That's not entirely true, there are plenty of CI positions with the enlisted ranks within all branches of service. Many of the enlisted service members are also billeted within other government agencies (NSA, CIA, etc) where there titles are considered "Agent" roles. This would also include job roles with the "operator" designation, which are not solely SOF based.
I signed the petition. I am cynical and really don't take much civic action; but this helped. This taught me to be less cynical; she taught me to be more courageous.
I think she served a more than adequate punishment for her crime (if anything, she should have only had serve something less than 5 years).. and I wish her all the happiness that life has to offer.
I don't think putting someone in extended solitary confinement is reasonable in almost any circumstance (and very not reasonable in this case). But I don't think what she did is protected whistleblowing (she basically aired the 'sausage making' of US foreign and military policy, not highlighted a specific violation of US law) - on the other hand, I think the length of the sentence ought to be proportional to the gravity of the crime.. 35 years is overkill by an order of magnitude, she should have gotten 1-5 years.. with 2 being an ideal.
She's been in prison for ~7 years, and I'll bet it was a pretty strict prison. I'm prepared to let her recovery and heal first. She is under no obligation to be under the spotlight from tomorrow.
I think the "having been a whistleblower in the most powerful government on the planet" part of Chelsea's story is considerably more risky than the "is transgendered" part. There aren't many people running around "gunning for" trans people in the same sense that there are people "gunning for" informants. Primarily in the sense that in the latter case they use actual guns.
You might be surprised at how dangerous it is to be trans. Wikipedia maintains a list of unlawfully killed trans people at this page[1]
I guess there are more trans people than informants so maybe there's some statistical point to be made there, but frankly I'm not sure why you picked this nit to begin with. I think it's important to recognize, rather than downplay the risks faced by marginalized groups in the US and elsewhere.
I wasn't downplaying anything - and suggesting that I'm "downplaying the risks faced by marginalised groups" kind of poisons the well doesn't it? I was just questioning the idea that there are people out there "gunning for" trans people in a sense that is comparable to the rate that informants and whistleblowers are killed. I also have to point out that quite a small proportion of the linked murders seem to be hate crimes - and that trans women in the sex trade are at an even higher risk of murder or violence due to their work. I have every sympathy for victims of hate crimes, but to suggest that the average trans person is somehow at comparable risk of violent death to a government leaker is fallacious and that's what I was pointing out.
If you publish an unedited photograph, you could reasonably say that your photograph contains only the truth, and you can't be criticized for it. But if all of your photographs are of immigrants committing crimes, the fact that you've used your discretion to focus on this issue is nonetheless a political statement that's subject to criticism.
Similarly, if you go on social media to make posts about how being trans is not as dangerous as people seem to be implying, even if it contains a grain of statistical truth, you are making a certain point. Again, I think it's important to "photograph" the oppression faced by marginalized groups than to highlight ways this oppression is supposedly exaggerated.
Your point about my poisoning the well suggests you think I was trying to "call you out" or attack you, but that's not the case. I think we have a reasonable meta-disagreement about whether there is a political knock-on effect of highlighting different statistics or narratives. It's a disagreement two people of good faith can have.
As a Dutch person I was very confused for a minute, but then I remembered there are indeed lawfully killed people in other countries.
(And while writing this, I remembered euthanesia is legal here, but that's not killing in my mind because the person chose it for themselves and the given reason cannot be an external, solvable condition.)
It looks like it's particularly dangerous to be trans and black, and also very dangerous to be trans and hispanic, at least in the US over the past few years. It looks like Manning doesn't have much to worry about, at least for being trans.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-introduce... gender identity and expression has been added to Human Rights in British Columbia. But even here it's a recent development and the so called BC Liberals (in reality, they are conservatives, hello weird Canadian politics where the provincial parties have nothing to do with federal parties) voted down Mr. Chandra Herbert several times before turning around and introducing the bill themselves.
Fear, confusion, rejection, hostility, being cut off from your family...
I worried about all these things and all I was doing was coming out as gay. And I live in the UK, which has strong legal protection against discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender, and a relatively accepting culture.
I can only imagine it was a thousand times worse to come out as trans. Or even to understand it in yourself - again, this took me years and I was "merely" discovering that I was gay.
Recent studies seem to peg the rate of regret of sex reassignment surgery as below five percent--a rate that has declined over time, which I presume is due to less ridiculous prejudice and hatred aimed downrange at them. I don't have journals access where I am at the moment, but one that I was able to track down on the Google machine:
(This study also omits the large proportion of transgendered folks who never get reassignation surgery and instead opt for HRT, or even no treatment whatsoever.)
But you don't care about that, of course. This post is for the people you would otherwise offend and hurt out of some peculiarity.
I'm going to have to ask for a citation confirming that trans people (there are trans men too) are killed on a daily basis in the USA. That sounds like hyperbole.
"including the USA" can be read as a qualifying statement that those murders include people in the USA, not necessarily that trans people are murdered on a daily basis in the USA.
Can you elaborate on that, datatan? I'm not saying lawless is necessarily correct, but from the confidence of your statement, it sounds like you have data to show otherwise. Would you mind sharing that? I feel it would make a good talking point in this thread.
I'd argue that the Collateral Murder videos triggered considerable controversy and criticism against the US military's attitude to airstrikes. The cable leaks also caused a fair amount of political embarrassment. So it depends on what you consider to be valuable - I'd say direct evidence of airstrikes being triggered against civilians with minimal oversight alone is valuable to a citizenry that wants to keep tabs on military accountability and push for change.
If Manning had only leaked the video in an attempt to bring light on what she perceived as a war crime, she would've had a case as a whistleblower. Indiscriminately leaking thousands of documents where she had no idea of the contents, is not whistleblowing. That's why she ended up with the sentence that she did.
Yeah, thats quite the wrong sort of airstrike. The good sort of airstrike is, where you sneak in the middle of the night in some village, where one bad guy sleeps - kill him, get caught - wake everyone up, and get in a chaotic shoot out with a medieval village, where raids by neighboring warlords are the norm.
Then when you get wounded you call a airstrike and eliminate the village.
One has to give it to the drone warriors- at least they send the commando duke of hazards to the unemployment office.
I think he meant exactly what he meant. Wasn't Manning still identifying as "he" when the leaks were done? Or was she already transitioned at that point?
I hate this whole walking on eggshells around gender/identity politics. It detracts from the discussion for no valid reason.
There aren't really any eggshells to walk on unless you're inventing them (and the person you replied to was not impolite about the correction). Chelsea Manning identifies as a woman. This isn't something that happens overnight; it's impossible for you or I or the great-grandparent to know when Manning decided to come out to family, friends, that sort of thing. As such, it's incumbent upon us to use the most currently, and thus least likely to inadvertently offend, pronoun and referents. (This is also why it is poor form to use a trans person's pre-transition name when referring to them in the past tense. In my experience, if a trans person would rather be described using that prior name or prior pronouns for his or her prior self, he or she will let you know.)
We're just gonna have to respectfully agree to disagree on some of this.
I don't go out of my way to be insensitive, but I'm not going to flush my DVD of The Matrix down the Memory Hole because it has "Wachowski Brothers" stamped on it. If the Wachowskis put out a new movie today, I'll reference them appropriately as the Wachowski sisters who produced it, but they simply weren't sisters when they created The Matrix, and I'll continue to reference the creators of that movie as brothers.
I saw a similar rewriting of history upstream in this thread, and I just can't let that slide. In fact, this is an edge case where nobody is right or wrong, so there can really be no "correction" to call out. Someone (Manning) changed the rules mid-game, so it must be expected and tolerated that not everyone will parse the output of the remainder of the game to their liking.
Just out of curiosity, what happens to your perception of the importance of what someone should be called when a change of gender is taken out of the mix?
For instance, when Muhammad Ali won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics and the heavyweight title in 1964, he was still going by his "slave name" of Cassius Clay; do you think it is reasonable - either for anyone or for someone who watched the matches at the time - to refer to the 1964 heavyweight champion as Cassius Clay, or should they just call him Muhammad Ali?
Women also frequently change their name, sometimes more than once, throughout their lives; if a woman marries and takes the name of her husband, or divorces and resumes use of her maiden name, would you continue to refer to her by her former name, even in reference to events that took place during her use of it, or would you simply update your nomenclature without complaint?
If Manning comes out and says that she is comfortable with the use of her prior name (there is a reason that in the trans community that prior name is referred to as one's "dead name", you get me?) and prior gender assignation, then sure, go for it.
Until then, I'm afraid that there's not really a whole heck of a lot that's respectful about your disagreement. Trans folks as a whole overwhelmingly evince preference for not having their prior name or gender identity thrown around and trans folks very regularly remain in the closet publicly even when they are out to friends and family, making your assumptions based on...well, not a whole heck of a lot. Unless you've read something I haven't (totally possible, but you'll forgive me if I doubt it), you have no idea of timing or the propriety here and so the presumption of her gender identity at that point is kinda actually really mean. You may have good intentions, but you're pissing in the pool and you should stop.
>this is an edge case where nobody is right or wrong
It's not some sort of edge case, the "right," (polite) way to refer to someone is the way they prefer to be refereed as. If someone named James introduces themselves as "Jimmy" and you refer to him as "James" and he says "it's Jimmy" and you say "Nuh uh your name on your birth certificate is James, you're wrong I'm right!!" you are just being a dick.
People change what they like to be called during their life all the time, that's not new nor is it an edge case. Kid nicknames go to the wayside of adult names/nicknames. I've known a "Peggie" who changed to "Margaret," an "Anthony" who changed to "Tony," and a "Robbie" who is now "Bob." In fact, many/most women change their name at some point in the future. It's normal/accepted/polite to call someone by their current name/pronoun even when referring to past actions.
If I recall a childhood story about my friend Tony I'm going to call him Tony in the story even if he went by Anthony at the time. It's weird/confusing/stupid to do otherwise and certainly not "rewriting history" or "changing the rules."
Do you believe that a person's gender is irrevocably tied to their biology? Do you believe in gender dysphoria? If so, how do you think it should be handled by society?
>it's incumbent upon us to use the most currently, and thus least likely to inadvertently offend, pronoun and referents
This only follows if the value of "not saying something that would be offensive to someone who isn't even party to the conversation" (a value which we violate without a second thought, sometimes even gleefully, when it doesn't involve an anointed "social justice" issue) outweighs the value of "communicating clearly and accurately". Chelsea Manning was named Bradley Manning. She was male, at least as far as anyone else was concerned.
It's one thing to request that people call you by a certain name and pronoun now - it's quite another to insist that everyone pretend it has always been thus.
> Chelsea Manning was named Bradley Manning. She was male, at least as far as anyone else was concerned.
Nobody is disagreeing with that. But using 'he' as a pronoun, even for things in the past, is weird and confusing. Do you call Marilyn Monroe 'Norma Jeane Mortenson' when talking about her childhood? No, of course not, because that confuse people.
Manning has been Chelsea and used 'she' for 4 years now, people now know her as a woman, and it makes sense to use that pronoun. Back in 2013, when Manning first came out as trans, maybe it would be alright to say 'Bradley' for a day or two when talking about her transition. But not now.
> it's quite another to insist that everyone pretend it has always been thus.
Quite frankly, it feel like you're just doing this to be transphobic and invalidate her identity.
Yup, since nothing he revealed indicated anything to whistle-blow on. All he did was unlawfully share material which turned his stomach — none of it was illegal, none of it was criminal, none of it was even unethical.
It's the second part of his question that's the important one -- lots of people are murdered for lots of different reasons. There are estimated to be over a million trans people in the USA, do they have a disproportionately high rate of murder?
> Though a federal hate crimes law requires the collection of some statistics related to violence against transgender people, experts are dubious about the numbers they're getting. “A lot of jurisdictions report zeroes, even in places where we know there are hate crimes," Keisling says. Most state laws don't require the collection of such statistics, according to Minter.
Because of the media, power balances, legalities etc of US life, they obviously wouldn't be doing them in an open Third World/Banana Republic style (where, depending on the country/political climate, the state doesn't hesitate much to semi-openly get rid of enemies and more or less everybody knows they did it).
Because people who would be targets of political murders don't die at a statistically unusual rate. Unless you think they are also being secretly replaced with more pliant clones/cyborgs or we are all just copied over to a less unruly simulation. Then it would be harder to know.
>Because people who would be targets of political murders don't die at a statistically unusual rate.
They don't have to be well known people that you would identify as targets. In fact those would be the worst to target. They could be potential whistleblowers you never learned of, for example.
That said, sticking to well known people that could be targets, there's a large variety of those to e.g. MLK Jr, Malcom X, JFK, Robert Kennedy -- to name but a few in a single decade's span.
These are political assassinations but they are assassinations by crazies. If you think these are government plots or that the man is secretly sending ninjas to rub out potential whistleblowers, you have to come up with some evidence otherwise it's just conspiracy theorizing. We might as well talk of alien abductions.
>These are political assassinations but they are assassinations by crazies.
Some of them, we don't know who did them at all (e.g. MLK).
But even if that was the case, it's not difficult to manipulate a "crazy" to do something, especially if you have both crazies and guns in abundance in a country.
It would be a nice way to avoid blame for the whole thing, and you can even have some mafia figure/ex-cop collaborator kill them afterwards, before said crazies ever get to go to trial for the first murder.
>you have to come up with some evidence otherwise it's just conspiracy theorizing
You think there's much evidence in e.g. banana republic political murders too, even those where still everybody knows the government or some mogul with special interests ordered them?
it's not difficult to manipulate a "crazy" to do something
It's not difficult to say it's not difficult. Again, it's a completely evidence-free claim.
You think there's much evidence
There isn't any evidence the government is taking out hits on politically inconvenient figures in the US. "There can't possibly be any evidence, look at some other (vaguely described, non-specific place/event) where there is also no evidence, QED" is pretty much classic conspiracy-theorist logic (if you can call it that).
It's worth noting that Brad Bauman, who is acting as spokesperson for the Rich family, is a PR expert with a long history with the DNC and supporting Progressive causes.
If he's being paid by someone closely affiliated with the Democratic Party - and I don't know that he is, I'm building an air castle here - then distancing the Rich family from WikiLeaks would be in his best interest.
This seems likely to me, as per the CNN article you linked:
> Wheeler was put in touch with the Rich family through Dallas businessman Ed Butowsky, who told CNN he had offered to pay any bills associated with the investigation.
> "You have a family who can't afford a PI. Their son was killed. So I offered to help out," Butowsky said.
If they truly couldn't afford a PI, then I doubt they could afford a top-tier PR professional to speak on their behalf.
While not rotting in prison is great - isn't it strange that Manning was pardoned, while there are a lot more pardon deserving persons among the other whistleblowers of the era.
Nothing good or interesting came from those leaks. And they were legitimate threat to US security. And Snowden ones were responsible, curated and only in the areas where rights of US citizens were infringed.
And yet he is stranded in Russia (1/6 of the world, so not bad).
What is the lesson - if you leak, leak more severe?
> While not rotting in prison is great - isn't it strange that Manning was pardoned
Manning was not pardoned, her sentence was commuted. She is still considered guilty on all grounds on which she was convicted.
> And Snowden ones were responsible, curated and only in the areas where rights of US citizens were infringed.
> And yet he is stranded in Russia (1/6 of the world, so not bad).
> What is the lesson - if you leak, leak more severe?
Snowden has not been sitting a in a US prison for years (in pretty difficult conditions) after a sentencing which many found excessive and unfair.
So the lesson is rather more "get sentenced to rank reduction to E-1, forfeiting of pay and allowances, dishonorably discharged and 35 years in prison and you may see the last part reduced to only ~6 years afterwards".
Oh don't forget the 6 years include a significant duration as POI at Quantico:
* checks by guards every five minutes
* not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am on weekends) and 8 pm
* required to remain visible at all times, no sheets, pillow built into mattress, and blanket designed for unshreddability
* sleeping attire limited to boxer shorts
* 6 × 12 ft (1.8 x 3.6 m) with no window, containing a bed, toilet and sink
* allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals in the cell, shackled during lawyer visits
Not to disparage Snowden, and his reasons for not coming back seem sound, but political asylum in Russia isn't exactly Manning's last 6 years.
To be able to get the same treatment as Manning, Snowden would first have to get to the US, go through a trial, get convicted, serve a couple of years in prison, and then get his sentence commuted.
Snowden thinks (and I personally agree) that the second step (of him going through a trial) would not work, because he wouldn't get a fair trial, and I agree with him.
And, as was pointed out to you, Manning hasn't been cleared of claims that she made. She still made a crime according the court and was still convicted of that crime. It's just that her punishment got reduced and she is now free.
It's nowhere even near the similar situation. Snowden's case is basically in the same stage where Manning's case was when she leaked the documents, so somewhere around 2011. Manning pleaded guilty to the charges in court in early 2013. Snowden still didn't go through that process.
I responded to a different thread with this, but she wasn't actually pardoned. Her sentence was commuted, or shortened. Formally this means she hasn't been forgiven for the crimes.
1. Manning thought she was doing the right thing and didn't realize what she would cause. Snowden knew exactly what he was doing.
2. Manning leaked the docs to something that is probably a Russian front but something she didn't realize was a Russian front. Snowden, if he didn't turn over the leaks to the Russian and Chinese governments, certainly put them in great risk of being turned over.
I think people are getting a little tired of the Seth Rich conspiracy claims with nothing but circumstantial evidence. It's becoming some kind of rallying cry for trump supporters (who still can't seem to drop the hillary conspiracies for some reason) and what's especially annoying about it is people seem to be taking it as de facto truth despite no real evidence to back up the claim. So I don't think this as much about HN being an echo chamber. You're really not adding to the discussion other than propagating the conspiracy unless you're going to provide some evidence. Conspiracy theories don't really fly on HN.
I agree with you, but I could say the exact same thing on the "Russia hacked the election" conspiracy. And yet, if you do a search on HN, people who get down-voted and flagged are those who don't support the theory.
Let's see: one is a transparently ginned-up story in the mold of the Vince Foster nonsense.
The other has and is playing out partly in public, with the man at the center of the controversy going out of his way to confirm some of the suspicions.
I'm certainly not going to claim that HN doesn't have collective biases. But thankfully, one of those is a bias towards looking at reality. Certainly not a perfect one, but in general facts work a lot better here than hot air does.
If you say so, then by definition that's the way it is.
I cannot help but notice, though, that apparently all subthreads critical of Manning and/or commenting on the gender thing have been not only heavily downvoted but marked as 'flagged', while some fairly vitriolic ones in Manning's favor have not.
Not trying to be polemical, and not out to kindle further unproductive discussion, but I would be interested to see the unofficial political guidelines of HN moderation spelled out a bit more explicitly.
There's no need for "unofficial political guidelines" here: that comment breaks the official guidelines and doesn't belong on a site whose purpose is to gratify our intellectual curiosity. There are other places on the Internet for the tedious back-and-forth of "you don't get it" "no you don't get it" etc., but that sort of conversational purgatory is not what we're after here.
To some, it certainly is a valid point of intellectual curiosity whether the current trend of naming people and ideas something they're not is a healthy and a proper one.
But you are right about the 'tedious back-and-forth' (which I called 'unproductive discussion'): Further down, you very appropriately link to dang's ruminations on cognitive bias. Just please remember that none of us are guaranteed to escape the dangers of CB. I certainly know that I don't, despite a decent level of awareness on the issue.
My comment has sparked a lot of responses, many of them apparently assuming that I am somehow attacking Manning. I am not. I most clearly am not. I didn't say a word about Manning or the case. I stated (in perhaps unnecessarily pointed words, I'll grant you that) my sincere opinion on the objective validity of subjective gender change. If that point and its attendant controversiality is not worthy of intellectual curiosity, I see dark times ahead indeed (and for the record: I do).
The "issue" here being which gendered pronouns to use in reference to Chelsea Manning. The "side" that's getting warned is the one that uses her transsexuality to launch petty hostilities at her.
> This person is male. Could we please avoid the biologically nonsensical charade of referring to him as"she"?
What is your definition of male? "Has the XY chromosome pair?" "Was born with testicles?" "Was born male-looking?" All these have complicated causes and effects, and you will get contradictory answers for some individuals.
Are you aware that fetus development is driven by hormones as much as by genes? "This person is male" is a generally useful simplification. Prevalence of people with out-of-ordinary combinations of genetic and hormonal developmental factors strong enough to get into the intersex category is so low that it's normally perfectly sufficient point of view. That does not mean we should dismiss people with these minority genetic/hormonal makeups.
Refusal to respect another person's body/personality mismatch and insistence on calling them something they do not identify with is hostile and petty.
You've been posting mostly ideological and/or unsubstantive comments, often to the point of outright trolling. We ban accounts for that, so please stop.
> If I told you to call me a King, would you do that?
These other replies miss the mark. It's not that, "calling a commoner a king is inaccurate, whereas a biological male could accurately be called female". Because that just brings you full circle back to arguing over whether biological gender and gender "identity" can be separated.
The more practical answer is that it doesn't hurt anything, and being a dick about it just makes you a dick. If you told me to address you as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, then I might privately harbor some doubts about your mental health. But I'd likely do it just to make you go away, m'lord.
I would not, however, feel bound by any commands to defend The Wall or anything.
No, since that implies a certain amount of respect and deference to you over other people that I don't have. But if Tom told me to call him John instead I certainly would...
That's a bit of a false equivalence, really. There's no good reason why someone should call you King, but Chelsea Manning's gender identity is female, so it makes sense to refer to her as female.
Simple: A person's gender is a part of their personal identity. Chelsea Manning says that their gender is female, even if their biological sex is male.
As a consequence of respect for their personal identity as a member of society (and NOT fixating on their sex organs, which is frankly creepy), most people will refer to a trans* person as the gender they identify as, not the sex they were born with.
Or, if uncertain (because of genderfluidity and new pronouns like Xe/Xir/whatever), just using "singular they" and moving on with your life.
When we refer to things, we use words that convey our perception of them. People identify themselves a certain way, and I can identify them a certain way too. The notion of someone's gender has relevance to others. It doesn't make sense to go purely based on their own self perception.
For me, I tend to assign gender by sex. I don't want to disrespect myself by saying something I don't believe. On the other hand I don't want to disrespect others either. So for now my approach is to sidestep the issue and refer to all trans people with "they".
> When we refer to things, we use words that convey our perception of them.
We are not talking about cross-dressers. We are talking about transgender individuals. You wouldn't even be able to notice them standing in front of you once their transition is complete.
Then they might lead me to believe something I wouldn't believe if I knew more. It's not just about what I can see. (I see your point about the word "perception", probably a bad choice of words) But sure, maybe I'd even internalize it and accept it if I knew it but they appeared very convincing, at least for everyday interaction purposes. I probably am more resistant to that than I otherwise would be given the social climate.
> I'd even internalize it and accept it if I knew it but they appeared very convincing, at least for everyday interaction purposes
I don't understand that part. I think there are some concepts that are confusing you. All of the transgender individuals that I have known from before their transition pass as their new gender without any issues. The only way anybody would know if you told them.
Story time:
You know how men always like to boast and compare their masculinity while drinking? Well, one time we were out drinking with friends. A man from my high-school (who was a girl last I saw him) was with us. He is quite manly, has a beard and looks like what you would expect a fashionable young man in his mid twenties to look like.
After a few beer one of the guys turns toward the man in question and, without having a clue that this is a transgender individual and tells him: "We know how it is with you lucky guys who hit the genetic lottery and are so manly. With a beard like that I bet all the girls must be throwing themselves at you. I must be half the man you are." ... My jaw dropped.
It was a ridiculous situation to witness but it shows just how easy it is to be next to someone who has gone through a complete transition without having a clue. If you live in a city, I'm sure that you have called at least one or two transgender individuals by their new pronoun without being aware of it.
Amusing story. It wouldn't particularly bother me if they were that convincing and I ended up calling them by their new pronoun without realizing they were trans.
Gender is defined as: the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).
For most people, your gender and your sex are congruent. For others, it isn't.
The definition of gender is not universally agreed upon. And it's pretty obvious that that definition is not the one the person you are replying to uses.
Definitions are also not fact, by definition.
There are plenty of valid arguments for calling trans people the gender they want to be. This isn't one since it isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
Edit: The why do you care part is a valid argument, was addressing the rest of your comment
There are 7126 subscribers to the subreddit you linked. A notable feminist subreddit that is actively not transphobic (that I am not going to link to because I love it and I do not want it to be brigaded) has 214400 subscribers. So your sample is about 3% of the internet population if we believe that reddit is a representative sample.
I sincerely believe that the vast majority of women are tired of being used as an excuse for bigotry.
Absolutely not. The OP linked to reddit to demonstrate their viewpoint was shared by women, and I was countering their argument by demonstrating that it is relatively unpopular among women on the site that they linked.
I definitely understand the downvotes now that the comment has been flagged and is not able to be seen.
Nobody here has argued anything about biological sex. We're talking about personal identity, which is psychological and cultural instead of microbiological.
Gender Dysphoria is not classified as a mental illness by the DSM. Dysphoria means distress, and Gender Dysphoria is a label for the distress that transgender people may experience, not for any supposed mental illness. You could experience dysphoria from a stressful work environment. It wouldn't mean you have a mental illness.
It is important
to note that gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria
is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition.
We've asked you repeatedly not to inject partisan politics or post unsubstantively, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post within the guidelines in the future. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358419.
> Extremely rare and almost exclusive leftists killing people on the right.
Interesting claim. I'm not sure many people on the left killed doctors for performing abortions, for example. That was mostly "pro life" conservatives, from what I recall.
Why are we even talking about this? Partisan politics isn't relevant.
Chelsea Manning is free. This is cause for celebration.
I am genuinely curious why you think it is cause for celebration that bratty solider who made a massive blind data dump of classified information to sabotage the US military had their punishment drastically reduced.
I'm not interesting in explaining myself to nationalists.
I will, however, say that 7 years of prison can be devastating for anyone but 35 years can totally ruin their life with virtually no chance of recovery. Most people have support systems, but will they still be intact after nearly half the average life span?
Regardless of your opinion of what Manning did, the fact that she is no longer in prison means that at least one more person has a chance at life. Isn't that worth celebrating?
I'm not the grandparent, but yes, a senseless destruction of lives that doesn't serve some extremely important purpose is barbaric and evil.
As such any imprisonment beyond ensuring suitable deterrence (which would certainly be the case with seven years) is plenty.
Rehabilitation has to be the central goal of all and every imprisonment. Sometimes that might not be possible, but even in those cases it has to be attempted.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
[…]
If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link.
Nice editorialization of the guidelines... Directly below that describes what is off topic:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
No, but the guidelines do say that political news stories are generally considered off topic and I'm not sure there's any interesting discussion to be had or new insight to be gained from this article. It just seems to have invited mostly vitriolic, off-topic debate.
She was an intelligence analyst, which meant she sat in front of a computer and queried U.S. intelligence databases all day.
She copied a lot of that data onto a CD and passed it to Julian Assange, who is the head of Wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes digital data it receives from whistle-blowers, both summarizing and analyzing the data itself. It also provided access to other journalists (Der Spiegel, The Guardian, etc.) in order to incentive scoops and increase the impact of the leaked material. Some of the material includes the "Afghan War Logs", which is essentially raw military data on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, including estimates of civilians killed in raids. The data itself is available to the public as an SQL or CSV database.
One of the pieces of data was the so-called "collateral murder" video which shows a U.S. apache helicopter firing on unarmed civilians, including a Reuters journalist who died and two children who were injured. Reuters had filed a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act) to get public access to the video, but was unsuccessful. Since Manning had access to database, and because digital data has a marginal cost of $0, he was able to copy the video onto the CD passed along to Assange, thus bypassing the stall tactics of the U.S. government in releasing the video.
Manning was caught after the FBI had apparently enlisted Adrian Lamo-- himself a former hacker (or I guess cracker to be exact) who apparently Manning trusted and chatted with over IRC.
Also-- and I admit this is a digression from actual "hacker news"-- the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture publicly stated that the U.S.'s treatment of Manning while awaiting trial was "cruel, inhuman and degrading." In fact, when someone from the press finally got the nerve to ask about this, a U.S. state department official called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." (He then resigned.)
Anyway, we're talking about the release of a computer analyst who got caught confiding in a well-known hacker, and who was sent to prison for passing the largest collection of digital documents to someone who is at present probably the most well-known hacker in the world.
If this subject isn't relevant to a site called "Hacker News", what is?
The subject of the hacking (aka copying docs to a CD in this case) was certainly hacker news.
The CNN mainstream news was that she is being released from prison and she wants to grow her hair. Okay. My opinion is that this isn't really hacker news... more pop-culture about someone who once was convicted of copying intelligence data to a CD and giving it to someone. The story of the hacking was a while ago.
To add to this and respond to sibling commenters (though the GP has withdrawn their comment):
I would really love to live in a world where Chelsea Manning's transgender identity and her very public transition would not affect how much some people might vilify her. But there are many people that are still very uncomfortable -- violently uncomfortable at times -- with transgender people (and generally people with non-binary/fluid gender identities).
Further, Manning's transition was very public, and her transition was likely for many people the first time we/they read a newspaper article or heard a news report that used a different pronoun for someone than they had previously. For people new and resistant to the idea, that might breed resentment.
Manning is not merely a transgender person, but a very high-profile transgender person. I think that this, by itself, and separate from her still-hotly-debated role in leaking classified material, articulates significant dangers that she faces in returning to civilian life.
it's on a different scale of threat though. It seems like a weird inclusion - the idea that being trans considerably increases the risk profile of someone who was an informant on the US military complex.
I think it does. It's a scenario where the whole is greater than the sum of parts.
Bradley (now Chelsea) was seen as a whiny dude who was not a team player, would not take his lumps, and lashed out irrationally against an institution he felt had wronged him. An attack on the entire concept of military thinking and discipline. The epitome of "bleeding heart liberalism".
Being trans into the bargain is fairly explosive. Now it's not just her actions that are offensive, but her very existence.
Think of it this way: I've perused enough local news comment sections to know that people who are inclined to find Chelsea Manning to be a traitor are also generally more inclined to hate trans people. So, maybe this doesn't increase the risk of her being targeted by trained assassins or government spies, but it does probably increase her risk of being targeted for a hate crime.
It's a bit much to expect science-journal standards of rigour in a Hacker News comment. Do you disagree with "people who are inclined to find Chelsea Manning to be a traitor are also generally more inclined to hate trans people"? It seems, at the very least, plausible.
Can you please provide some data to support this? I am unaware of any crime statistic that has transgender as an attribute. It is very easy to make broad sweeping statements like yours but to be taken seriously the majority of people prefer data to support those accusations.
> Statistics documenting transgender people's experience of sexual violence indicate shockingly high levels of sexual abuse and assault. One in two transgender individuals are sexually abused or assaulted at some point in their lives. Some reports estimate that transgender survivors may experience rates of sexual assault up to 66 percent, often coupled with physical assaults or abuse. This indicates that the majority of transgender individuals are living with the aftermath of trauma and the fear of possible repeat victimization.
It should be noted that Trans people aren't yet fully covered over hate crime laws so they get lumped in with general LGBT stats. This should change contingent on if the murder in Texas gets successfully prosecuted as a hate crime
While demanding data isn't necessarily a bad thing, you can take it overboard. If you state that the world is round, and I demand that you back up your claim with data, am I not being a bit ridiculous?
I don't think this is obvious at all. At least it isn't for me. It's a bit ridiculous to get so defensive and compare it to asking for evidence the world is round.
Gee, with attitudes like that, I wonder why trans folks often have to resort to jobs on the fringes of society with little safety, security, or legal protection?
As far as I'm concerned this is the first thing that Obama did that was a real progressive act. Thank God he did this. If only he did the same for Snowden.
Functional governments have a vested interest in not forgiving blatant disregard for their laws, regardless of the morality of the acts that led to the disregard. It's possible (but probably unlikely) that he could have been pardoned, found innocent, or had a sentence commuted had he turned himself in, but escaping the reach of American justice? There's very little incentive for a country to reward "Break the law then run from our jurisdiction," independent of the details.
Snowden's successfully attained a life probably free of American legal influence. His reward is a life free of American legal influence.
I wouldn't characterize it as pretty good. He's living day to day, and at any point Russia could change their minds. Snowden basically sacrificed his life and freedom for the rest of us.
I disagree with what she did, she probably made the world a much less safe place and caused thousands if not millions of deaths through wikileaks role in inciting the Arab spring. Still I'm convinced she did it with the best of intentions and the genuine belief that she would make the world more peaceful and open. I guess she was naive so I'm glad to see her released early.
This works all that well from an idealistic perspective but when the result is having these nations over-run by terrorists like ISIS and oppressive theocratic regimes, I question the benefit of these revolutions. The world is more complex than simple "it's bad, let's revolt." There are better ways to bring about change than inciting violent revolutions.
Chelsea didn't incite the revolutions. She only released the information. The information that was previously hidden was found to be egregious enough for others to incite the violence. That's enough reason for me to believe she was right that people had the right to know.
Yeah, I'd have preferred the Arab Spring to be resolved more peaceably myself. It's not under Chelsea's control nor mine how that played out after the information was released. It's difficult to blame the person who released true information for the impact of the information. The content and the creators or subjects of the content are to blame for the revolutions. Chelsea just let the rebels and revolutionaries know what they had every right to know.
Let's hope the media doesn't tear her apart.
[1]: https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/847264510247190532