Name Change by Bradley Manning

I suppose Bradley Manning's statement this morning was shocking to most people. For me, well, I lived for 15 years in lovely downtown Northampton where we elected an openly lesbian mayor several times and the local public college had a center for transgendered students. Natural reproduction in all species is imperfect. Wrongly assigned gender at birth is more common than you might imagine.

So believe me when I tell you, it's not complicated to deal with Bradley Manning's gender shift to Chelsea Manning. It's just ordinary etiquette. She's declared her choice of gender so from now on simply refer to her as Chelsea Manning and use the customary pronouns you would use for any other woman.