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Manning began questioning his sexuality at the age of 13 and came out quietly to a few friends in 2000. “He just didn’t feel it was necessary to tell his family,” explained one of his childhood friends.
Soon after he arrived in Iraq, Manning began to grow troubled by his gender identity. He later wrote that the stress of deployment led him to question whether he truly identified as a man, and he reached out to a gender counselor online in November 2009.
Manning later revealed that he had dressed up as a woman during his trip home, with a “wig, breastforms, dress, the works.”
Manning emailed a letter to an Army superior confessing his gender identity disorder and sent a photo of himself dressed as a woman to one of his commanding officers.
This is my problem. I’ve had signs of it for a very long time. I’ve been trying very, very hard to get rid of it. It is not going away. It is haunting me more and more as I get older. Now the consequences are getting harder. I am not sure what to do with it. It’s destroying my ties with family. It is preventing me from developing as a person. It’s the cause of my pain and confusion. It makes the most basic things in my life very difficult. The fear of getting caught has made me cover up. It is difficult to sleep and impossible to have conversations. It makes my entire life feel like a bad dream that won’t end. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what will happen to me. But at this point I feel like I am not here anymore. Everyone is concerned about me, and everyone is afraid of me. I am sorry.
Signed, Bradley Manning.
Manning wrote that he was establishing a digital presence for “Breanna Manning,” the name he planned to assume after transitioning.
Manning, who planned to transition from male to female, worried about being caught and there being photos of him “as a boy” in the media.
Originally posted by wrabbit2000
I'm sure this will be a very interesting time for him if his choice of timing for transition doesn't buy him a ticket to insulated protection.
I can't imagine a military prison, of all the prisons and types there are, being a friendly environment to folks like him. Is there a more ultra-Alpha environment than where they send the guys too violent or wacko for even the military?? That is saying something about his future neighbors and....intimate friends. I doubt he'll be asked whether he wants intimacy or not. I can sympathize with him....doing anything the human mind can come up with to avoid what surely awaits him among that group.edit on 24-8-2013 by wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by wrabbit2000
reply to post by FlowThruSpace
I'm not sure that would be true in civilian prison. The shows that film inside the prisons don't necessarily look much happier for life in the female units than the male ones. A whole different nature to the misery, perhaps, but no better.
I'm just thinking, for a moment, how I'd feel in his position and having been inclined the way he was to act in the first place (T/G aside). Now, in his shoes, you're looking at 3 1/2 decades with people like the fine examples of U.S. Solders who featured in the movie :"Casualties of War". I think one of them is still in Leavenworth Prison today.
This is totally outside anything I feel about Manning for his deeds that got him here. I'm just thinking of the human side of it now. There are some...like SSGT Bales, I think earned his time and oh..abuse would be something I don't feel bad to hear happened. Not generally so. He also looks like a big man who can handle himself. Manning looks like bait fish on the hook, being dropped into a pool of sharks.
The Transgender announcement chummed the waters....and now, heck, they almost HAVE to give him protection status. He may well get abused to death, literally, otherwise?edit on 24-8-2013 by wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)