Chelsea Manning: prison will not be kind to the WikiLeaks informer There was a fair bit of comment that this was a fairly light sentence, given the extent of Manning's treachery. But after her announcement on her gender, the chances are it will feel onerous indeed. One who has some inkling of what she'll be going through is Paris Lees. She too, traumatised by her own gender identity, committed a crime and was jailed for it. In prison, she grew her hair long and shaved her legs. Tortured by not being able to live as a woman, she crushed up the chalk from her weekly art classes, and, alone in her cell at night, used to smear it on her face to make her cheeks pink and lips red. Paris Lees Yes, prison's unlikely to be kind to Chelsea Manning. She wants to begin hormone therapy while serving out her sentence. But Fort Leavenworth doesn't provide that to inmates. It's hard to see why not. Imagine being forced to grow up as a man, knowing all the while you're a woman. Imagine being so desperate to deny your true gender that you "man up" by joining the army. And without in any way condoning what she did, and how she betrayed her own country, the experience of other trans people suggests that on top of the punishment handed down by the courts, she can expect more than her fair share of physical and sexual assault. Leading members of the trans community say she was penalised by the judicial system too. They say her lawyers advised her not to come out before sentencing for fear it would count against her. Lees told me: "Trans people have known Chelsea Manning is one of us since she first opened up about her gender on private forums, years ago. There was always the suspicion, though, that rumours about her being trans was just propaganda distributed by her enemies to undermine her. Now we learn that she is in fact transgender. Clearly she, and her legal team, believed this information would harm her in court. Why is being transgender something to be ashamed about? It makes me think that while I'd be the first to suggest that women aren't treated entirely equally in today's society, we get a far better deal than trans people. Manning should have been confident of a fair trial - whether as Chelsea or Bradley. But I can't be confident that would have been the case. I need only think of my own ignorance of the prejudice and abuse the trans community experiences on a daily basis. I met Lees as part of a trans "interaction" organised by the charity All About Trans. The idea was to challenge media misconceptions by inviting people working in TV and newspapers to events attended by trans people of all ages. It proved insightful, not least because I realised how little I knew about the trans community. It seems I'm not alone. Despite Manning's crystal clear statement that henceforth she should be described as a woman, the US TV anchors struggled to get the right pronouns during interviews on the subject during the last 24 hours. Far worse, when teacher Lucy Meadows killed herself, the coroner laid into the press for carrying out "a character assassination, having sought to ridicule and humiliate [her] and bring into question her right to pursue her career as a teacher." Perhaps Chelsea Manning's announcement is an opportunity for us all to reflect how little we understand the fear and torment she and others face every day of their lives.