“I Am Chelsea Manning”: Comparison of Gendered Representation of Private Manning in U.S. and International News Media

Abstract

On August 22, 2013, Bradley Manning released a statement requesting to be referred to as female. In the following days, the news media discussed whether language should shift toward a female representation. Using quantitative content analysis and qualitative contextual analysis, this study analyzed whether U.S. and international newspapers (N = 197) acknowledged Manning's request to be referred to as "Chelsea" in the two weeks after the statement. Results suggest that the mainstream press was hesitant in shifting toward a female representation. A comparison of international and U.S. newspapers suggests that the U.S. press lagged behind international coverage using a female depiction.

Representations of Trans People in Swedish Newspapers

“…This misuse of gender definitions and pronouns echoes the findings of others (see Barker-Plummer 2013;Capuzza 2016;Hackl, Becker, and Todd 2016;Parks Pieper 2015) and can thus be considered a larger issue in news media's reporting on transgender issues that contributes to structural oppression, delegitimising lived gender expressions, as established by the dominant cisnormative group (Billard forthcoming). Ryan (2009) argues that framing trans people as deceiving encourages a view of the trans community itself as insincere.…”

“…These, often sensationalising tabloid depictions, led transgender expressions to be trivialised as dress-up. Echoing previous research, where transgender expressions are often delegitimised through offensive language use (Capuzza 2015(Capuzza , 2016Gupta 2018;Hackl, Becker, and Todd 2016;Parks Pieper 2015;Willox 2003), different trans related terms were used interchangeably, without regard to their meaning, contributing to the reinforcement of stereotypes and heterosexual hegemony.…”

“…Mainstream news media have a history of marginalising, stereotyping and pathologizing representations of trans people (Barker-Plummer 2013). Ever since the public "transformation" of American trans woman Christine Jorgensen in the 1950s was among the first to cause headlines, trans people have often been covered in a sensationalistic way by news media (Arune 2006;Cloud 2014;Hackl, Becker, and Todd 2016;Meyerowitz 1998). Often figuring in soft news stories (Capuzza 2014(Capuzza , 2016, research has found tabloids to cover trans issues in a particularly delegitimising manner (Billard 2016).…”

“…The way in which pronouns are used is one way of communicating gendered identity values (Parks Pieper 2015), and contributes to how trans people are perceived by news consumers. A large body of research has documented media's insensitivity towards different definitions of trans, and misuse of pronouns and names (Barker-Plummer 2013; Capuzza 2015Capuzza , 2016Gupta 2018;Hackl, Becker, and Todd 2016), therein undermining the expressed identity as an alias or an act, rather than a legitimate gender identity (Willox 2003). Often, research has found that news media focus on sexual organs, as well as binary expressions of masculinity and femininity in terms of defining trans people (Baptista and Himmel 2016;MacKenzie and Marcel 2009;Sloop 2000;Squires and Brouwer 2002).…”

Dinner and a Conversation: Transgender Integration at West Point and Beyond

“…Caitlyn Jenner and Chelsea Manning brought transgender matters to the forefront of American national discourse in unprecedented ways [1,2]. With the repeal of the U.S. military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy on 20 September 2011, gay, lesbian, and bisexually oriented military service members could for the first time serve openly without fear of formal institutional sanctions, specifically military separation.…”