Mike Penner, a sportswriter for the LA Times, announced in April of 2007 that he was transitioning to Christine Daniels. Over a year later, Christine decided to 'detransition' back to Mike.

The purpose of the one-year Real Life Experience (formerly Test) is, in part, to allow individuals the opportunity to decided if transitioning between genders if truly right for them before proceeding to the more permanent transition step of Gender Reassignment Surgery. Occasionally, a relative few detransition to their original gender. From what I have read, and I do not pretend to be an authority here but my gender therapist agrees, detransitioning is typically even more difficult than the original transition. And those who detransition often find they are not at all happy going back to their birth gender.

A detransition does not necessarily indicate the person is not transgender. Reasons for detransition may include finances, family, religion and a host of other issues.

I read about Christine Daniel's decision to detransition back to Mike Penner when it happened. Apparently, Mike never explained this decision. I noted then that most transgender/transsexual support sites were supportive and I was glad. Both transitioning and detransitioning take a lot of courage. No one should be condemned for deciding to detransition.

With that in mind, and after some hesitation, I decided to post the news of Mike Penner's apparent suicide today. I hesitated because this is not a happy story of a successful transition or even a successful detransition. We will probably never know what torments Mike/Christine/Mike experienced.

I thought it was important, though, that people understand transitioning between genders is not something to be taken lightly. Transitioning does not eliminate all of life's problems. As female-to-male transsexual Tucker Liberman wrote about the transsexual choice: "it's based on conquering the negative feelings without knowing if there's any joy beyond them." (http://www.whosoever.org/v9i1/tucker.shtml) Fortunately, many who transition genders do find joy and I am very thankful I am one of them.

Please forgive my editorializing. This story affected me so deeply I was crying over the news. For a very brief time after I was laid off, I thought I could not continue to exist as Danya and would have to detransition. Fortunately, Jesus (our Jesus ) was available at that difficult time to assure me I would always be Danya. There really is no way I can go back because that other 'male' person was never me.

Mike Penner dies at 52; Los Angeles Times sportswriter (http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-mike- ... 8738.story)

Penner had been a columnist and covered the Olympics, the Angels, World Cup soccer, tennis and sports media for The Times. In 2007, he announced that he was a transsexual.

By Keith Thursby

November 29, 2009

Mike Penner, a longtime Los Angeles Times sportswriter who made headlines in 2007 when he announced that he was transsexual, has died. He was 52.

Penner was pronounced dead Friday evening at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, a Los Angeles County coroner's official said.

The cause of death has not been determined but was believed to be suicide.

"Mike was a first-rate journalist, a valued member of our staff for 25 years, and we will miss him," Times Editor Russ Stanton said. "He respected our readers a great deal, enough to share with them his very personal journey. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family."

A versatile member of The Times' sports staff, Penner covered the Olympics, the Angels, World Cup soccer, tennis, sports media and a variety of other assignments.

He also spent several years writing a sports column for the paper's Orange County Edition. Since 2008, he was the principal writer for the sports section's "Totally Random" feature.

"Mike was one of the most talented writers I've ever worked with, capable of reporting on any number of topics with great wit and style," sports editor Mike James said. "This is a tragic ending and a difficult time for all of us who knew him."

In a 2001 season preview for the then-struggling Dodgers, Penner wrote:

"The sins of the father on one coast have been revisited by the son on the other. Welcome to Flatbush West. Brooklyn had the wrecking ball crashing down on Ebbets Field, Los Angeles had Peter O'Malley selling out to Fox."

And in 1986 when the Angels lost in the playoffs to the Boston Red Sox, he wrote about the team running into "Angel karma. . . . In the end, it was all a big tease, the biggest yet . . . the karma remained untied and unbeaten."

Penner was born Oct. 10, 1957, in Inglewood and graduated from Western High School in Anaheim and Cal State Fullerton. He joined The Times' Orange County Edition in 1983 as a staff writer, covering high school sports.

He had previously worked at the Anaheim Bulletin as a writer and sports editor.

In April 2007, Penner surprised colleagues and readers with an essay in The Times' Sports section announcing that he was "a transsexual sportswriter."

"It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-searching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words," he wrote.

Times Associate Editor Randy Harvey, who was the paper's sports editor at the time, said the essay allowed Penner to explain in his own way a decision that "we realized would be a human-interest story and a news story. We didn't want it to be filtered through someone else's lens."

In the essay, Penner said of his transgender decision:

"I gave it as good a fight as I possibly could. I went more than 40 hard rounds with it. Eventually, though, you realize you are only fighting yourself and your happiness and your mental health -- a no-win situation any way you look at it."

Writing as Christine Daniels, Penner started a column for the paper's website in May 2007 called Day in L.A. and a blog about the transition, then in July began writing for the paper again.

He returned to using the Mike Penner byline in October 2008.

Penner is survived by his brother, John, a copy editor at The Times, and his former wife, Times staff writer Lisa Dillman.

Services are pending.

I, too, was struck by the news of Mike Penner's death, and found out about it a day after you did. I just happened to check the forums today and saw your post. I even referenced it in my blog post yesterday when I mentioned that I was re-transitioning mtf, after a long period of having had detransitioned for some of the usual reasons. I then "categorized myself" as asexual, since I seemed to be in some gender limbo.

Looking back now after some months, that was an assessment that couldn't have been more wrong. I began cutting myself again, after two years of having been free of that.

What I can say is that by having detransitioned for over two years and going through these past few months, it's clearer to me more now than ever before through proof of how I feel that I was meant to transition. And I needed to have taken the past few weeks away from EA to really look deep inside myself to see what felt right.

I'll still be checking on here from time to time, but not on a near-daily basis...at least not for a while, as I get my stuff together. (Was it "The Longest Yard" where the line,"I've got my s*it together, I just can't lift it" came from? I don't remember. Anyway....

Thanks for sharing all your posts, Danya (and Erica Ann, nullochris & company). They've been a light for me in a someimes dark & dreary world. Silence from me just means I'm not blathering away, not that I've gone anywhere.

Hi Houndstooth,

Best of luck as you renew your male-to-female journey.

Hugs,

Danya

Ditto_I wish you all the best.

So sad. May the soul find light if even death it takes to find it.

Mike/Christine seems to me to be one of those rare people who exist outside the majority gender-duality. When society tells us we are either men or women, I cannot image it must be easy for someone who feels like neither, or both, or anything outside of convention, to find their place.

Unfortunately that is but one of the downsides of the medicalisation of transsexualism, it is established on the very limited understanding of gender that we as a race(including the medical community) have. Doctors are scientists afterall, and they will always be in danger of thinking if there are enough "signs" that matches what is said in the textbook, then it must be what the textbook says it is, without consideration of any other possibilities with very similiar characteristics.