I've been moving all week and missed the Chelsea Manning wars here.

[WilliamPitt]

Thank God.

Because I'm one of the people who might have been labeled a bigot in the heat of the moment.

Not because I am, but because I am crashingly ignorant when it comes to transgender issues, as I have come to find out as this story has unfolded. Just the other day on my Facebook wall, I posited the question - very politely - as to why the military or the government should be "forced" (in Manning's lawyer's words) to pay for her sexual reassignment. "They are supposed to keep him alive and healthy," I said, "but not happy. Wouldn't this process be aimed at making him happy?" - and, yes, I said "him" in the post.

The very first reply I got explained what "body dysmorphia" is, why it is an actual, legitimate medical condition, and why it falls within the yardsticks of the kind of medical matters that keep a prisoner alive and healthy, and not just happy. It made perfect sense, I got it, and came away knowing some things I didn't know before...but then, right on the heels of that exchange, came a barrage of anger and accusations that I am "trans bigoted," etc., basically because I didn't have the answers to these questions in my hip pocket.

It seems I had the DU Manning Experience in a microcosm on Facebook.

In catching up with the doings around here, I've seen some legitimately disgusting and hateful comments. Manning's announcement has exposed a number of deep-seated and repulsive biases within this community, and that fact is not to be denied.

But there are also a lot of people who don't know, who are not versed in the politics and the proprieties of transgender issues, and I've seen a number of instances where they blunder into a thread with that ignorance as the hood ornament. I would have been one of them had my computer not been in a box.

We mean well, and I, for one, have been deeply edified and educated by the conversation on this matter here.

My point: before you take someone's head off at the eyebrows, make sure you're dealing with an actual bigot, and not just someone who is treading new and unfamiliar ground.

#LateToTheParty