Letters to the Editor: More Disrespect for Chelsea

  Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to continued misgendering of Chelsea Manning.

I was pleased to note that you decided, in today's edition of the paper, to print a letter, similar to the one I myself sent in yesterday, condemning your own editorial choices with regards to reporting on Chelsea Manning's decision to live as a woman. I was significantly less pleased to see this letter printed across from an article that consistently referred to Pvt. Manning as 'He' and 'Bradley'. Clearly, myself and other correspondents have bought this matter to your attention, and you have acknowledged your faults, yet you continue to do nothing to correct them. Let me offer a possible course of action. Presumably your writers, editors, layout staff and so on use computer text editors to produce your paper? As any of the 16 year old children who attained a passing grade in GCSE IT last week might be able to tell you, the normal shortcut for 'find and replace' is ctrl+h in Windows or Linux and cmd+f in Mac OS.  Changing 'He' for 'She', 'His' for 'Her', 'Bradley' for 'Chelsea' etc. would take you less than a minute and cost nothing, whilst putting your paper on an ethical level above the one it currently occupies, next to such august publications as The Sun and the Daily Express.

Letters to the Editor: Respect for Chelsea

 Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to an article misgendering Chelsea Manning.

I was disappointed, though, I must confess, not particularly surprised to read the i's take on Chelsea Manning's recent public declaration of her decision to live as a woman. This is not something that comes as a surprise to anyone following the case, particularly what has been reported outside the mainstream media. What is disappointing is your paper's decision to disrespect the wishes of Pvt. Manning by referring to her as 'He' and using the name 'Bradley'. Pvt. Manning is a young person who has been treated extremely harshly by her own government for doing something many people consider heroic, and has taken a courageous decision in coming out as transgendered. The least the i, an ostensibly liberal newspaper, could do is respect her wishes and refer to her by her preferred name and pronoun.