Whatever else you think about Bradley Manning's declaration that he is now assuming a transgender identity as "Chelsea Manning," you have to admit it is a shrewd move. It likely will delay or even spare him the ordeal of joining the male prison population, and will keep his name in the headlines.

Manning strikes me as a troubled man, but he has also become a political cause to the political and gender leftists, and every political cause loves attention.

He wrote:

"As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me," Manning said in the statement. "I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition."

The gender left wants sexual practice completely divorced from biology and taboo. The more that the general public is bombarded with the notion that it is perfectly normal for people to deny their chromosome-level nature, the closer they are to acceptance, even if the initial attention is mostly unfavorable.

The political left wants a martyr to the cause of the United States having no secrets (unlike, say, Russian and China). For them, if a legal circus should break out, with the Army sued to take steps it doesn't want in order to empower Manning's new aspect as a woman, so much the better. People will be reminded that he is a victim, a veritable political prisoner.

Manning is free to call himself a woman as far as I am concerned. He looks better as a woman, for one thing, and he may be at the edge of the bell curve distribution of male traits among those with an X and a Y chromosome. If he wants to pretend to be a woman, okay, if that makes him happy, fine. But don't force the law and society to go along as a matter of right. The scientific definition of the sex of a member of the species is chromosomal. If an adolescent boy is pretending to be a girl, he shoudn't go into the girls' locker room.

Besides, as Lucianne Goldberg tweets:

Wait 'til Chelsea Manning experiences the pain of the push-up bra and control top prison pants. She'll change her mind.

-- Lucianne Goldberg (@LucianneLinks) August 22, 2013