In late 2011, as Chelsea Manning awaited trial at the military corrections complex at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, she received a book from an anonymous sender called “Captive Genders,” an anthology of writings about the impact of the carceral system on queer and trans people. Two years later, on August 22, 2013—the day after she was found guilty of multiple charges related to her leaking of classified government documents, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison—Manning publicly came out as a trans woman.
This past November, a second edition of “Captive Genders” was released, with a new essay by Manning about the ways in which the military and the corrections system police gender expression. Manning has felt female since childhood; while in the Army, she was diagnosed with “gender-identity disorder.” But reading “Captive Genders” gave her newfound awareness of institutionalized gender-based violence. The book brings together the work of activists, artists, and academics, many of whom are current or former prisoners; it challenges hierarchies of expertise, presenting recollection, poetry, and theory as equally legitimate mediums for political critique. Communicating through her lawyer, Chase Strangio, of the A.C.L.U., Manning told me that the book “had a forceful and immediate impact on my understanding of myself.” She continued, “It walks readers through the reasons why … the vast majority of us are totally screwed. We don’t have money. We don’t have stable careers or families. We don’t have our own voice in the community. We don’t fit into—and don’t want to fit into—the gendered stereotypes of modern society.”
[For more of this story, written by Grace Dunham, go to http://www.newyorker.com/books...em?intcid=mod-latest]
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