Contingent belonging: Chelsea Manning,transpatriotism,and iterations of empire

From grass-roots struggle to war participation?

Arguably, the exigencies of the LGBT movement have changed substantially in the past 50 years, as sexual politics have devolved from a grass-roots struggle for liberation into an increasingly liberal program of assimilation. ‘Queer’ was once understood to describe activism that critiqued a range of institutionalizations, normalizations and exclusions while arguing for more radical forms of social justice. The term is now often used in conjunction with a particular type of gay and lesbian politics narrowly aligned with economic interests in neoliberalism and whiteness. SF Pride, for example, which has been held annually since 1970 and is one of the country’s largest and most renowned pride festivals, has become increasingly commodified and corporatized over the past few years, straying from its roots of proud political dissent as voiced in the Compton’s Cafeteria riots in 1966 (see Stryker, 2008). Potentially losing key SF Pride’s corporate sponsors, such as Clear Channel, Bank of America, and Hilton Hotels and Resorts, may have played a role in the decision to drop Manning as a grand marshal in 2013. Indeed, it may seem as if Pride is really all about ‘selling as much Absolut vodka as possible’ as one commentator on Facebook responded to the Pride board’s retraction of Manning.

Unfortunately, with an agenda dominated by same-sex marriage and military inclusion – the Few, the Proud, the Gays to adapt the US Marines’ famous recruitment slogan – the en vogue language of gay rights distorts and erases the historic struggle for sexual freedom. Thus, the emergence of homonormative, assimilationist single-issue politics since the 1990s ⁴ and the ‘gains’ achieved for US LGBT citizen-subjects via increased media representations of and niche marketing for LGBT people, the passing of the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009, the repeal of DADT, or the nationwide legalization of gay marriage – must be read within larger neoliberal and imperial contexts. Reddy identifies this contemporary political moment as a freedom with violence – a unique structure of state violence integrated with social emancipation. According to Reddy, in arguments for citizen rights LGBT advocates have appealed to the liberalism of the state under the rubric of equality, positioning the state as the ultimate enabler and guarantor of equality: ‘Even if this standpoint identifies the state as the source of grievance, injury, or horrific exposure to arbitrary violence, its epistemological assumptions ultimately affirm the value of that very state formation’ (Reddy, 2011: 8). Eng (2010) aptly describes the confluence of political and economic conditions that form the basis of liberal inclusion, rights, and recognition for particular gay and lesbian US citizens as a ‘queer liberalism.’

In their efforts to overturn the military’s DADT policy, ⁵ national LGBT groups such as GetEQUAL and the HRC emphasized that the discriminatory policy actually damaged military readiness, effectiveness, and national security (see HRC, 2011). They maintained that openly serving personnel would have no negative effect on unit cohesion, recruitment, and retention, which a report conducted by the Department of Defense in 2010 had concluded as well. The arguments advanced in favor of repealing DADT are emblematic of a queer liberalism, invoking narratives of inclusion and progress, promoting domestic and international security, and implicitly affirming imperialist US foreign policy.

The public discourse surrounding DADT has changed substantially over the last decade with 67% of Americans supporting gay and lesbian open service (Morales, 2010). Numerous LGBT groups such as the HRC and the SLDN increased their lobbying efforts and monetary investments to push for the passage of the DADT Repeal Act. Their campaigns effectively employed strategies to humanize and personalize DADT as discriminatory by emphasizing the narratives of gay and lesbian service members facing discharge under the policy. However, what was left unaddressed in these campaigns was the fact that due to the involvement in two costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military was facing recruitment shortfalls and in desperate need for more personnel in the expanding global war on terror. In their zealous efforts pushing for DADT repeal, many LGBT groups as well as gender and sexuality studies scholars failed to acknowledge important oppressive intersectionalities entrenched in military service. For example, the military remains the nation’s largest employer and job program for poor and working-class people, and is oftentimes the only means of access to better living standards; African American women were disproportionally discharged under DADT; and military enlistment is advertised as an expedited ‘pathway to citizenship’ for marginalized immigrant groups (see for example, Cacho, 2012).

On 20 September 2011 President Obama announced the end of DADT. Because the promotion of homonormative enterprises and strategies, such as the SF Pride Celebration or the repeal of DADT, do not challenge the interdependence of the homophobic, racist, sexist, classist and imperialist operations of the US military-industrial-complex, or seek to alleviate economic injustice, it is essential to ask: What is really to be gained from LGB(T) military inclusion? Manning’s case, as analyzed in the next section, demonstrates that this supposed inclusion in the service of US imperialism is contingent and often fleeting. Moreover, these discourses of sexual, and, as I argue, gendered, exceptionalism that promote inclusion actually serve to maintain the oppression of marginalized communities both within and outside the United States.

Chelsea Manning: Pathologizing a ‘traitor’

Observing the LGBT media’s reception of Manning, Brownworth (2014) notes that her story never became a cause celebre for major LGBT publications. Covering Manning’s case for the Advocate, Brownworth frequently heard from publishers that ‘there’s no real LGBT/local angle here’ (2014: 108) and that Manning’s initial ‘gayness’ had nothing to do with the leak of classified information. But while LGBT media mostly remained silent, the mainstream media coverage surrounding Manning painted a severely pathologized image of the soldier’s actions (Bean, 2014; Cloud, 2014). Manning enjoyed her work as an intelligence analyst and denied leaking the documents because of ‘pacifist’ or ‘anti-war motivations’ (Pilkington, 2013), instead she hoped to stimulate debates about freedom of information and transparency. Media outlets, however, frequently tied speculations about why Manning sent WikiLeaks the nation’s ‘most closely guarded secrets’ to her struggles with her sexuality and gender identity. Initially, the media focused on Manning as a troubled, unstable, and bullied gay soldier coming from a broken home. An article in the New York Times (13 July 2013) titled ‘Loner Sought a Refuge, and ended Up in War,’ alleged Manning was

the child of a severed home, a teenager bullied for his conflicted sexuality whose father, a conservative retired soldier, and mother … who never adjusted to life in Oklahoma, bounced their child back and forth … [and] he never fit in. (Broder and Thompson, 2013)

After Manning’s August 2013 announcement expressing her desire to transition, the media further belittled and psychopathologized her. News reports undermined the credibility of her actions as a product of her mental health, portraying her as a sexual deviant. Fox and Friends (FOX News, 27 August 2013), for example, introduced a segment on Manning by playing Aerosmith’s ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’ in the background while they ran a photograph of Manning in her military uniform alongside a grainy black-and-white photograph of her dressed in a wig and makeup. CNN showed the same photograph contending, ‘Manning is apparently a cross dresser … a misunderstood, very confused young man who had some serious psychological issue’ (Legal View, 15 August 2013a). While mainstream media commentators repeatedly alleged that Manning had ‘dropped a new bombshell’ (Bob Schiefer, 2013 – CBS Evening News, 22 August), for those closely monitoring her case, Manning’s struggles with her gender identity were anything but new. In the 2010 chat logs with Lamo (which Wired had fully published online by July 2011) Manning had already revealed: ‘[I have] questioned my gender for several years’ (Hansen, 2011).

Several media outlets focused on whether Manning wanted sex-reassignment surgery and whether taxpayers would have to cover the costs for her desired transition. CNN ran numerous headlines announcing, ‘Manning Wants Sex Change,’ (Legal View, 22 August 2013b). In an interview with NBC’s Today Show (2013 – 22 August), host Savannah Guthrie repeatedly asked Manning’s lawyer David Coombs: ‘… you don’t think she wants sex-reassignment surgery or she doesn’t think she’ll be able to get it?’ These news commentaries not only revealed the tendency to conflate Manning’s sexual orientation with her gender identity, but reflect the media sensationalism around public support for transgender health care.

Media outlets exposed a deep-seated transphobic attitude toward gender non-conforming people and continued the longstanding tradition of pathologizing and medicalizing transgender as a psychological disease. ⁶ The erasure of Manning’s transgender subjectivity and the prevalence of pathologizing and marginalizing discourses, confirm the reduction, if not the outright denial, of gender fluidity. The press’s focus on Manning’s ‘gender identity disorder’ drew attention away from her questionable treatment in detention as well as her harsh sentence paralleling the state’s own conceptualization of Manning as a traitor and threat to national security.

Since her confinement in June 2010 in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, the then 22-year-old was repeatedly deprived of human contact and put on a ‘reverse sleep cycle’ as part of ‘administrative segregation’ (the military does not use the term ‘solitary confinement’). In July 2010, Manning was transferred from Kuwait to Quantico, Virginia, and put on ‘suicide prevention’; to ensure that she did not harm herself, Manning had to sleep without sheets and pillows and strip down to her underwear at night. She was allowed only 20 minutes a day of ‘sunshine call,’ meaning she could exercise in a yard or a small rec room. Guards checked on her every five minutes, 24 hours a day (Rothe and Steinmetz, 2013: 285f.).

In 2011, a UN special report concluded that the US government was guilty of ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment’ against Manning (Pilkington, 2012). Several legal scholars denounced her treatment as ‘illegal and immoral,’ violating both the Eighth and Fifth Amendments (see Benkler, 2013). After months of mounting public pressure, Manning was transferred to a correctional facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Manning’s actual court-martial proceedings began on 3 June 2013 after she had spent over 1000 days in pretrial detention.

The case of Manning vividly illustrates how the increased use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and prolonged detention practices since 9/11 are grounded in discourses of US exceptionalism, ensuring that the state does not have to adhere to the limits of juridical power through the creation of a permanent ‘state of exception’ (Puar, 2007: 3). It is the widespread acceptance of such techniques and practices employed against ‘brown bodies’ abroad that enables their use against US citizens at home and allowed Manning’s ‘domestic treatment’ to mirror that of foreign ‘terrorist Others.’ Perhaps even more importantly, Manning’s case demonstrates that the process of sexualizing the Other is always implicitly entangled with processes of racialization. As a white (initially perceived as) gay, intelligence analyst serving in Iraq, Manning could have been incorporated into narratives justifying the defense of the imperial nation. Yet Manning’s betrayal of the state and her inability to embody the prized characteristics of heteromasculinity designated her as an alien enemy. Manning’s whiteness was, in part, reliant on her ability to act as the ‘manly man’ – an example of how whiteness is constructed through the logic of gender. Her treatment at the hands of the state and representation by the media reveal how contingent and fragile exceptionalist modes of belonging actually are. Manning’s leaks and her ‘sexual deviance’ rendered her an Othered alien enemy who was denied access to civil and human rights.

Fractures in homonationalism

Manning’s story illustrates that the inclusion of particular subjects into what Puar (2007) terms ‘homonationalism’ is always provisional. As we find ourselves at a juncture in contemporary sexual politics where certain racially and economically privileged, homonormative, able-bodied, middle-class gays and lesbians are now gaining access to rights associated with citizenship and their ‘humanity’ is recognized, a whole group of non-subjects is simultaneously created. The granting of constitutional rights to certain queer bodies and identities comes at a time in which the United States is in a condition of perpetual war, waged predominantly against bodies of color at home and abroad: while killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in recent conflicts and ongoing counterterrorism operations, prisons at home function as the ‘new Jim Crow’ (Alexander, 2012) for the containment of the ‘detritus of contemporary capitalism’ (Davis, 2003: 16). Given this context, the question is: Whose bodies must be criminalized and obliterated in order to produce the good, homonormative, queer subject at home? (see Agathangelou et al., 2008: 123).

The figure of Chelsea Manning presents a clear contrast to Lieutenant Dan Choi, an infantry officer with a deployment to Iraq, who was discharged under DADT in 2009 after coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show:

… I am gay, those three words are a violation of Title 10 of the US Code … It is an immoral code and goes up against every single [thing] that we were taught at West Point with our honor code [which] says a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal … Being an Iraq combat veteran, an Arabic linguist … I come back to America as a second-class citizen. (The Rachel Maddow Show, 20 March 2009)

In public interviews lobbying for the repeal of DADT, Choi frequently insisted, ‘ … war is a force that gives us meaning. War is a force that teaches us lessons of humanity … ’ (cited in Goodman, 2010). He asserted ‘I know my country’s mission is not to make an entire group of people into second-class citizens’ (cited in Nair, 2011: 21). Despite lamenting, ‘It’s hard to know that all of a sudden, I’m the terrorist,’ Choi maintained a strong devotion to the country he once pledged to die for: ‘I still love free speech, and I still love America. Those feelings don’t go away because you were betrayed’ (cited in Bennett-Smith, 2013). The story of Dan Choi mirrors other narratives of patriotic gay and lesbian service members that have proliferated in homonationalist discourses used to reinforce national authority and coherence in the wake of 9/11’s imperial policies.

Given the disproportionate use of violence enacted by the military against poor people and people of color, both within the United States and abroad, the public discourse surrounding Choi erases the paradoxes of an Asian American gay soldier who considered himself a second-class citizen of the US living under ‘the oppression of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”’ (cited in Goodman, 2011), while his sexuality was deployed to support the global war on terror. Unreflectively seeking such institutional inclusion represents a commitment to an uncritical agenda that fails to see how traditional logics of sexuality and gender are strategically deployed in the service of colonialism, racism, and militarism (Spade and Willse, 2014). While Choi’s exemplar status as a model minority and gay patriot was celebrated and provided a brief incorporation into US exceptionalism, Manning’s lack of such gendered patriotic devotion and her ‘ultimate betrayal’ of the homeland and (homonormative) whiteness, meant that she was ostracized as the alien enemy.

However, since his crusade for DADT repeal, Dan Choi has had to reckon with intersecting oppressions that have isolated him from family members and the mainstream LGBT movement. Choi’s ‘fall from grace’ shows the contingency of his acceptance into the nation. In an article for The American Prospect, Gabriel Arana (2013) alleged that by conflating activism with celebrity, Choi ‘had fallen in love with his own martyrdom.’ Arana chronicled Choi’s struggles with mental breakdowns and burnouts since the end of the DADT campaign, accompanied by drug use and treatment for bi-polar disease. According to the media, Choi’s sexual identity still causes him to be shunned by his Southern Baptist family. While Choi was initially included in homonationalism, his story is much more complex than the discourses surrounding him during the DADT repeal campaign suggest. Choi’s temporary inclusion based on his sexual identity through the challenge to DADT was limited because of the oppressive intersectionalities he is subject to – racism, homophobia, and ableism. Choi’s claim to inclusion, through an assertion of his homomasculinity, still left him open to extraction from that narrative and, thus, excluded from the nation state. In other words, Choi professing his gayness does not necessarily lead to a pathway for cultural citizenship. The discourses encompassing Choi make explicit that people in and of themselves are not homonational, but are articulated as such through powerful, mediated, discursive formations; a process that is never quite complete and always conditional.

Importantly, Dan Choi has been a staunch Manning supporter. When Choi was attending a pretrial military hearing for Manning in December 2011, he was pinned down by military police because he was allegedly disrupting the court hearing. In an interview with Democracy Now, Choi (cited in Goodman, 2011) later explained that his court attendance in uniform as an Iraq veteran and someone who had proudly served was meant to show support for Manning. Choi praised Manning’s ethical righteousness that demanded support from ‘patriotic Americans’ and emphasized that he did not stand up for her because they shared an ‘identity as gay Americans,’ but rather because Manning was ‘a good soldier—in fact, the only soldier in his entire chain of command who did the right thing’ (Goodman, 2011). Choi’s reflections attest to an interesting moment of affinity between the discourses of liberal inclusion, equality, and Manning’s actions, which disrupted the imperialist workings of the military-industrial-complex. Choi also pointed to the fact that none of the national LGBT organizations had spoken out for Manning.

The values of integrity and ethical responsibility that Choi repeatedly evoked in the interview, and that guided Manning in her decision to release the documents, were omitted from mainstream media coverage. Moreover, Manning’s failure to enact homonormative whiteness rendered her unworthy of attention by other national LGBT groups, such as the HRC, SLDN, or Lambda Legal. Despite John Pilger’s (2012) aptly titled commentary in the New Statesman (21 May 2012) – ‘Never forget that Bradley Manning, not gay marriage, is the issue,’ – none of these groups, who had been so actively involved in the DADT repeal, issued a single statement concerning Manning’s case during her trial proceedings.

Shortly after Manning announced her desire to transition, HRC’s vice president Jeff Krehely released a statement urging the media to treat her transition with dignity and respect and advocated for appropriate medical care and protection in prison. However, he concluded by emphasizing that

 … there are transgender service members and veterans who serve and have served this nation with honor, distinction and great sacrifice. We must not forget or dishonor those individuals. Pvt. Manning’s experience is not a proxy for any other transgender man or woman who wears the uniform of the United States. (Krehely, 2013, my emphasis)

Transpatriotism

Other transgender veterans’ responses to Manning’s actions and her coming-out bolstered support for US empire and revealed complicit participation in its expansion, predicated on narratives of diversity and colorblindness. Brynn Tannehill, a transgender woman and former Lt Commander in the Navy who serves as a spokesperson for SPART*A, a group representing active-duty LGBT service members, exclaimed that ‘Our view is Manning’s gender identity – no matter what it is – does not justify what he did’ (cited in Chibbaro Jr, 2013). Similarly, Autumn Sandeen, a Navy veteran and transgender activist wrote on the TransAdvocate blog (24 August 2013):

 … Chelsea didn’t respect the trans community—the trans community of which I am a part—in how she came out … There is no honor in harming the community to which you are entering.

Despite Manning’s assertion that ‘Although a considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions. I understood what I was doing and the decisions I made’ (cited in Savage, 2013), the foregoing statements questioned Manning’s gender identity as legitimate, they sutured her agency to her transgender status, and they further revealed a broader contempt for identity politics in this current moment. However, this disavowal of Manning’s gender identity precisely calls attention to the norms of ‘the trans community.’ The construction of this community relies on the logics of the gender binary as well as the implicit whiteness bestowed on those who help to further the hegemony of US empire. The trans community that Beck articulated and that Manning is excluded from is an expression of transpatriotism. In what can only be described as a tirade, Beck (2013) branded Manning as a liar, thief, and traitor, who came out as transgender in order to stay alive in prison – in order to be shielded from those who had been given ‘minor sentences, but [were] still loyal to American interest[s].’

Not only did Beck’s accusation dismayingly match those of right-wing conservative talk-show hosts that consistently misgendered Manning, her claim that transgender people receive ‘special accommodations’ in prison presents a problematic and flawed belief in the military and in the realities of the prison-industrial-complex. By alleging that solitary confinement is a benign means to protect Manning from other inmates, Beck ignored the fact that prisoners frequently face violence at the hands of correctional guards, that prolonged isolation poses significant mental and psychological harm to prisoners, and that trans people of color are disproportionally criminalized and incarcerated to begin with (Hanssens et al., 2014: 25ff.). Beck’s (2013) assertion that Manning’s actions sullied ‘many other transgender people who are beacons of righteousness’ and the ‘hope of a truly FREE America’ as she ‘is a tarnish on Dr. King’s Dream,’ signals the emergence of transpatriotism.

The evocation of a ‘truly free America’ and Dr Martin Luther King demonstrates how the discourse of transpatriotism is predicated on a narrative of American progress and equality that signals the entry into an allegedly colorblind society. Transpatriotism functions to legitimize US empire by supposedly including marginalized communities into the national imaginary through legal recourse. Such comments from transgender veterans like Tannehill, Sandeen, and Beck contend that in order to be recognized as a member of the trans community it is essential to perform nationalism and proudly display patriotic devotion. For transgender veterans, patriotism indicates not only a cultural and social belonging within the nation, but the right to represent and exemplify the nation itself as a patriot. Both homonationalism and transpatriotism allow subjects to become part of US sexual exceptionalism, a discourse that is firmly grounded in the gender binary, heteronormativity, heterosexuality, and US imperialism. Both homonationalism and transpatriotism ruthlessly police boundaries of acceptable racial, gender, sexual, and class formations by exceptionalizing certain subjectivities vis-à-vis modes of racialized, sexualized, and pathologized Othering. But, while homonationalism is primarily concerned with reiterating heterosexuality as the norm, transpatriotism specifically functions to (re)assert the gender binary, negating any fluidity. To be a true transpatriot one must adhere to and pass within the binary.

Enabled through US imperial warfare since 9/11 and drawing on hetero- and homonormative ideals of securing citizenship rights, transpatriotism allows for the inclusion and recognition of certain privileged, white normative trans bodies into assimilationist frameworks of liberal equality and US exceptionalism at the expense of marginalized trans communities, particularly those of color; a process that is inherently raced in a putatively free and equal society. Agathangelou, Bassichis, and Spira (2008: 3) argue that the (re)consolidation of empire works through the constant demonization of the racially and sexually aberrant: while certain subjects are invited into the folds of empire (for example, Dan Choi or Kristin Beck), there are always Othered (non)subjects (for example, Chelsea Manning) ‘whose quotidian deaths become the grounding on which spectacularized murder becomes possible’. Although these patriotic transgender veterans denied Manning a right to her subjectivity, it is important to acknowledge that Manning’s whiteness still provides her with privileges, recognition, and media visibility compared to transgender women of color who are disproportionately victims of violence. 2015 saw an unprecedented rise in the violence against trans women of color in the United States without any attention or scrutiny from mainstream media. I therefore want to differentiate Manning’s racialization through her gender non-conformity by the media from other processes of racialization that trans people of color face.

The story of Manning reflects how contemporary neoliberal societies link freedom to the notion of legitimate state violence and produce narratives of liberty that tie rights and citizenship to institutionalized violence ‘at home.’ As transgender veterans ostracized Manning for threatening national security she was rendered the treacherous black sheep of the trans community that deliberately used her struggles with gender identity as a pretext for her deeds. Manning was not deemed worthy of inclusion in US exceptionalism nor the rights and privileges – for example, to a fair and speedy trial – granted to other US citizens. She became the non-subject against whom the liberal state enacts legitimized violence. Her case vividly demonstrates how transpatriotism reasserts the hegemony of white heteromasculinity, heteropatriarchy, and US imperialism.

The few, the proud, the gays – final lessons from assimilationist LGBT politics

Despite multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and the reception of the prestigious Sam Adams Award, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013. Manning’s sentence represents the longest ever handed down for a leak of US government information and will put her behind bars for most of her adult life. An editorial in the Guardian (Manning, 2013) called the sentence ‘both unjust and unfair’ as her prison term far exceeds other military convictions, for example, that of Charles Garner, who received a 10-year sentence for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal. In September 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit on behalf of Manning demanding that she receive treatment for her official diagnosis with ‘gender dysphoria’ including psychological care, hormone therapy and gender-confirmation surgery. The case is currently still pending in a federal court. On 13 February 2015, USA Today obtained an internal memo by the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks, which approved Manning to receive hormone therapy treatment (Vanden Brook, 2015). She is, however, still prohibited from engaging in ‘female hair grooming.’ In March 2015 an army appeals court also ordered the military to stop referring to Manning as male and employ either gender-neutral language or feminine pronouns. The military’s tentative decision to finally recognize Manning’s gender identity presents a small victory in her continued fight for receiving appropriate health care and points to the state violence and bureaucratic hurdles that many incarcerated transgender people face.

As Manning’s gender-nonconformity continues to be positioned as a threat to the nation-state and national security, what, then, is the real emancipatory value of a gay rights agenda that seeks recognition by and entrance into subordinating state systems? While her framing as the sexualized alien enemy whose treacherous and shameful acts warrant the enactment of legitimized violence by the state shows how easily one can be removed from the tenuous liberal models of inclusionary politics, Manning’s story does provide constructive grounds to envision a queer politics that moves beyond assimilationist frameworks. There are several peace and social justice activists who have supported Manning since her incarceration in 2010, among them Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, Tommi Aviccoli Mecca and Lisa Geduldig, as well as the anti-war group Courage To Resist and The Chelsea Manning Support Network. These activists are voicing that they ‘are fed up with marriage and military concerns sucking the oxygen out of what used to be a queer movement’ (activist Michael Petrelis cited in Anderson-Minshall, 2013).

Addressing the case of Manning from a critical queer studies perspective forces an acknowledgement, not only of the specific discriminatory policies of the military, but also of the very purpose of the military and the repeal of the DADT policy. It demands a willingness to critique LGBT politics that are wrapped up in acquiring citizenship rights for certain queers through participation in the military in the name of equality. In recent editorials, Manning has expressed continued concern about the undemocratic practices employed to strengthen US hegemony. Commenting on ISIS’s advances in Iraq necessitating a potentially renewed US intervention, Manning (2014) specifically blamed limitations on the freedom of the press and excessive government secrecy ‘for making it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance.’ Despite Manning’s concerns and the call for a more critical queer politics by other activists, the recent push for transgender inclusion in the military seems to be the next big issue for LGBT organizations. ⁷

Considering open trans military service a ‘worthy fight,’ Tannehill (2013), for example, proclaimed that

… military service is one of the most time-honored ways to better yourself in America. For many LGBT folks, the military is a pipeline out of poverty, violent homes, homelessness, and hostile communities. Service gives people access to a livable wage and education. Right now these are paths that privilege white, straight, cisgender males. Working on equality issues in the military does not harm civilian movements for equality; it provides greater options for trans persons.

As trans inclusion in the military is tackled as the next step in advancing queer normalization and equality, such advocacy demands a more critical engagement with the patriotic and inclusionary rhetoric of ‘equal rights.’ Aaron Myracle, a former service member of the Army National Guard, affiliated with the group Iraq Veterans Against the War, has been one of the few transgender veterans who has publicly supported Manning and explicitly spoken out against the recent (re)allocation of resources for trans inclusion in the military. Myracle considers transgender inclusion in the military a misguided step that ‘is not a push for trans inclusion[, but] a push for binary-identified trans people inclusion’ (cited in Meronek, 2014). Transpatriotic discourses demanding to end the ban not only rely on a nationalist and patriotic rhetoric but seek to integrate gender-nonconforming individuals into the military by neatly (re)boxing them into the traditional gender binary. Instead of arguing for trans inclusion in the military, there are numerous other, urgent social justice issues facing trans communities, for example, disproportionate rates of criminalization, imprisonment and violence, the denial of urgently needed medical care, and placement in gender inappropriate facilities.

In April 2014, Gary Virginia, the new SF Pride board president, publicly apologized to Manning and reinstated her as an honorary grand marshal. It is possible for Manning’s reinstatement to serve as a starting point for a productive conversation between grass-roots social-justice activism and the more established branches of the LGBT movement to consider the future direction of queer politics; one that hopefully weighs the costs of seeking equality, inclusion, and recognition by state institutions more carefully. Manning’s reinstatement has also forced several mainstream gay organizations to re-evaluate their claims of inclusivity toward transgender individuals. Despite being nominally included in the LGBT acronym, gay rights organizations have remained narrowly focused on certain gay and lesbian identity politics over the past three decades, while treating transgender issues and communities as a constituency outside of LGB politics.

Too often queer struggles for a ‘right to serve’ become co-opted into promoting an American militarism that elides any attention to the implementation of questionable US foreign policy and power structures that are embedded in and inextricably tied to hierarchies of oppression. Manning’s reinstatement should encourage us not to sit comfortably on these ‘victories of equality’ but to dismantle a prevailing ‘how-can-you-not-want-rights’ logic to continue voicing dissent against racist immigration policies, imperialist warfare, trans- and homophobia in the military, as well as the disturbingly high numbers of sexual assault and harassment incidents that affect male and female service members, queers and straights, alike.