Right Side News, USA


ENDA Threatens the Practice of Religion and Our Nation's Children

Written by TraditionalValues.org

Sunday, 29 November 2009 14:57


Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) Threatens the Practice of
Religion & Our Nation's Children


The House may be voting on passage of the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as soon as early December before the
Christmas recess.

ENDA is a direct assault on the constitutionally guaranteed free
exercise of religion. This means that you can have a belief in your
heart but not practice it.

It is key legislation favored by the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender) lobby to gain federally-protected minority status for
sexual behaviors that most Americans consider bizarre or abnormal.

ENDA (S. 1584) will force all businesses, schools, and other
enterprises in America with 15 or more employees to submit to the LGBT
political agenda.

ENDA will force businesses, public schools (pre-kindergarten through
12th grade), as well as Christian entities such as religious
broadcasters, Christian bookstores, etc., to accommodate the sexual
practices of cross-dressers, drag queens, transsexuals, and even
she-males (individuals who undergo only a partial sex change
operation). Will private Christian entities such as camps,
pre-schools, grade and high schools, be forced to hire she-males?
Under ENDA it is likely.

Make no mistake about it: ENDA will also directly target public
schools and help fuel the LGBT agenda on campuses. Imagine a school
teacher telling students he's returning the next year as a woman. Will
parents be free to opt their children out of a transsexual's class?
NO. Parents are already prevented from doing so by a similar law in
California. Additionally, a recent Massachusetts court decision jailed
a parent who disagreed with homosexual teaching in his child's
elementary school. Will children who are offended be considered bigots
who need re-education? Probably, yes.

ENDA will federalize the sexual insanity taking place in California
schools - thanks to a LGBT-dominated legislature and compliant
governor. Children in California schools are captive to the LGBT
political agenda. If ENDA passes, transsexuals, drag queens,
cross-dressers and she-males will be federally-protected minority
groups and can freely exploit our nation's public school kids.

ENDA is proposing newly invented rights for individuals who engage in
a variety of bizarre sex acts. ENDA pits constitutional rights of
religious freedom and free speech against individuals who cross-dress
or engage in dangerous sexual activities.

Openly gay Obama appointee John Berry runs Office of Personnel
Management, which is the federal government's personnel agency. He
recently gave a speech at a LGBT conference and said that ENDA is the
most important piece of legislation the LGBT movement can get passed.

Only grassroots action can protect religious liberty.
<http://capwiz.com/traditional/issues/alert/?alertid=14069336&type=CO>

(Forward To A Friend)

ACTION NEEDED IMMEDIATELY

It is vital that you do three things:

    1.
       Contact your U.S. Representative
<http://capwiz.com/traditional/issues/alert/?alertid=14069336&type=CO>
and two U.S. Senators
<http://capwiz.com/traditional/issues/alert/?alertid=14069336&type=CO>
and ask that they OPPOSE any version of ENDA that is considered! Send
an e:mail and/or call, (202) 224-3121.
    2.
       Forward this to all your email lists
<http://www.traditionalvalues.org/tellafriend.php?sid=3797> . Only
grassroots action can protect religious liberty. Your Members of
Congress are busy. If they don't hear from us, they won't think it is
important.
    3.
       And please send a donation to TVC
<http://www.traditionalvalues.org/give-monthly.php> to help with our
many expenses in getting out these emails, researching this
information, and lobbying Members of Congress and their staff.

--------

Additional Resources:
TVCELI Special Report: S. 1584, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
<http://www.traditionalvalues.org/read/3775/tvceli-special-report-s-1584-the-emp\
loyment-nondiscrimination-act-enda>
(The House version of ENDA is essentially the same as the Senate version)
TVCELI Special Report: H.R. 3017, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
<http://www.traditionalvalues.org/read/3761/tvceli-special-report-hr-3017-the-em\
ployment-nondiscrimination-act-enda>
Senate Moves to ENDA Religious Freedom
<http://www.traditionalvalues.org/read/3776/senate-moves-to-enda-religious-freed\
om>


Copyright � 2009 Right Side Publications, LLC

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200911297531/culture-wars/enda-threatens-the-practi\
ce-of-religion-and-our-nations-children.html

New University Online (UC Irvine) - CA,USA


LGBT Rights At UCI

By Kym Thoumaked on Nov. 29, 2009


All eyes are on California�s voters to repeal the marginally passed
Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage.

Grass-roots groups across the state are pushing to have California as
the first state to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage by way of a
voter�s �veto.�

Five states have already legalized gay marriage through legislation
and judiciaries.

While some proponents of the repealing movement suggest waiting until
the elections in November 2012, many feel the need to push it for next
year.  In order for such a push to go through, they need 1 million
votes by April 2010.

Since they have only begun the campaign in fall of 2009, they may need
to push further in order to reach the five-month deadline.

While gay rights activism has made for heated national headlines, here
at UC Irvine, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) students and
organizations are pushing for other rights.

The UCI LGBT hosted TransAction week Nov. 16-20 on ring road; they
promoted transgender awareness and tolerance, illuminating the history
of violence and harassments that were the results of insensitivity and
intolerance.

�TransAction was [held] for the purpose of increasing visibility of
the issues that transgender people face here on campus and around the
world,� LGBT Resource Center Representative, Genice Sarcedo, said.
�Rather than having an event in honor of the victims, we strived to
educate others on the violence and problems that the trans[gender]
students faced.�

According to Sarcedo, UCI�s campus as a whole has been very welcoming
of transgender and gay students.

However, �While there is not a large number of these types of
complaints on our campus, discrimination and harassment of all types
often goes unreported,� Assistant Executive Vice Chancellor of the
Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at UCI, Kirsten Quanbeck,
said.

As intimidating as gender-neutral bathrooms may sound to many UCI
students, it does not suggest a complete reformation of the entire
campus� restrooms.

�All the current bathrooms on campus will remain.  However, we are
looking for potential gender-neutral bathrooms around campus,� Sarcedo
said.

She further explained that if UCI were to go through with the plan,
the bathrooms would be single-stalled, synonymous to that of the
on-campus Starbucks� restrooms, but without gender-specific signs.

The push began this year, as a response to the increasing number of
transgender students and faculty on campus.

LGBT hopes to increase sensitivity to the transgender population on
campus by making sure they share the same everyday rights that the
rest of the campus realizes, such as name change, bathroom use and
mental health and emotional safety.

UCI�s current gender specific bathrooms are a form of gender
discrimination. Transgenders do not fit the dichotomy of either male
or female and are forced to choose.  LGBT hopes to increase
sensitivity by the process of proposing gender-neutral bathrooms
around campus.

While the opposition is mild, there is still an issue of safety.  If a
man is able to enter a restroom with a woman, many worry that this may
increase risks of possible attacks and rape on women.

However, supporters of the restrooms contend that they are, single
stalled so women can lock the door behind them.  Also, lack of signage
will not catalyze the attacker�s plan any more than the
gender-specific signage prevents an attack.

As the LGBT center at UCI continues to push for a more accepting
campus environment, gay-rights activists continue pushing for a repeal
of the California Prop 8. While LGBT boasts bi-partisanship, any of
its students are politically active in hopes of repealing the current
ban on same-sex marriage.


http://www.newuniversity.org/2009/11/news/lgbt-rights-at-uci/

Orange County News, CA, USA


NAVEL GAZING

Remembering Mike Penner/Christine Daniels

By Gustavo Arellano in Sports

Mon., Nov. 30 2009 @ 5:37AM


[Photo: Penner]

​Here's a secret: when nosotros are done smashing skinheads, finishing
off the Catholic Church's pedo-priests and their apologists,
destroying the Mexican-hating synapse in the OC psyche, exposing
Birfers, sending off Carona to jail and basically make Orange County
decent for everyone--when all that is said and done--I'd love nothing
better than to become the Weekly's full-time sports writer. It's the
sports page that was my introduction to journalism as a young wab who
kept stealing Anaheim Bulletins and Orange County Registers until his
immigrant parents bought him a subscription to each. My favorite
writers growing up were longtime Sports Illustrated columnist Rick
Reilly, and basically anyone who wrote for the Los Angeles Times
sports section--oh, Alan Malamud and Jim Murray, how we miss you. And
now Spring Street must add a third person along those two saints: Mike
Penner.

Penner passed away this Thanksgiving weekend
<http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-mike-penner29-2009nov29,0,3898738.story>
of an apparent suicide, and most of the remembrances posted around the
Web mention personal demons he faced. I knew none of them. I knew he
was one of our own--a graduate of Western High School and Cal State
Fullerton, former scribe for the Bulletin before starring in the
Times' Orange County bureau back when it was a bureau--and a wickedly
talented writer. He was a close friend of former Weekling Steve
Lowery, and I'd always get a kick out of Lowery describing what a
great guy Penner was and knowing a writer I admired greatly.

Now, imagine my surprise when Lowery told me one Penner wanted to meet
me--or rather, Christine Daniels.

In April 2007, Penner wrote a column announcing he was a transsexual
who would from then on would be known as Christine Daniels. It was a
moving piece, one that provoked thousands of positive letters. One of
them was mine: I commended her for the beautifully written piece,
Christine's courage, and sent along thoughts and prayers. She sent
back her gratitude and word that she was a fan, which blew me away.
Then Lowery--who, by that time, wasn't with us any longer--called to
say Christine wanted to meet me to ask for advice. The honor!

We met at a restaurant in Old Towne Orange, Christine wearing a modest
dress and a glow of happiness, the type people wear when they have no
worry in the world. She jabbered with the restaurant owner, laughed
authentic laughs, and was just a wonderful person--everything Lowery
said of his friend and more. She wanted advice on how to deal with the
media hordes who wanted a piece of her, media hordes I had previously
navigated before the year before due to my ¡Ask a Mexican! column. We
talked, ate great food, and promised to keep in touch.

We didn't. A year later, Christine switched back to using Mike Penner
as a name. I sent Penner a letter wishing him well around that time
but didn't receive a response. I kept up with his columns, of course,
and they remained as sharp as ever. But I always assumed that Penner
was in a good personal spot, the same spot I saw him as Christine in
Old Town Orange.

Only Penner's closest friends and families know the pains their loved
one faced in life. I'm not part of that circle. But I do feel lucky to
have met Penner/Daniels once, to meet someone I admired greatly, and
to have come out of that meeting knowing I met someone honestly,
truthfully wonderful.


©2009 Village Voice Media All rights reserved.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/sports/remembering-mike-pennerchristi/

Women Born Transsexual, USA


Transphobia: The Hate Anyone can Exercise including Feminists like those on A
Room of Our Own

11/29/2009 � Suzan


Autumn Sandeen pointed out the following on Pam�s House Blend.

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/14246/thanksgiving-week-thankfulness-for-pam

As a left wing anarcha-feminist I tend to not spend much time in cultural
feminist land as I really do not like hanging out where I am considered down by
birth.  Feminism, even Lesbian as in LGBT/T Feminism offers me enough space
where my very humanity is not held up to abuse or the very legitimacy of my
existence questioned.

I have barred certain people of the HBS political identity from posting here as
they are abusive of people with transgenderism.  Racists, homophobes, religious
ideologues and right wingers are not welcome here.  So if you are a follower of
A Room of Our Own and think you will be able to turn this post into a forum for
your bigotry�  Think again..

My take on things may be a bit different than the sisters who run Questioning
Transphobia as our experiences are different and so is our language. But, even
if I put things differently from them or for that matter from Julia Serano, I�m
fairly certain that we are seeing the same bigotry standing in opposition to it.

The piece of verbal diarrhea I am referring to may be found at:

http://aroomofourown.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/no-such-thing-as-a-transsexual/

It is by Margaret Jamison.

I have been out for over 40 years and an activist longer than that.  I have
watched the history of the movements from within those movements. I have seen
their rise and fall, the internal wars that often destroyed them.

The loudest and most vicious forms of anti-transsexual bigotry have often been
reflective of what I see as the worst tendencies within the various movements. 
Julia Serano titled her book �Whipping Girl� and put forth the proposition that
transphobia is misogyny directed towards a convenient scapegoat.

Within the early feminist movement there was another tendency.  Women who worked
the hardest and were among the most dedicated as well as talented were seen as
trying to rise above the other women.  Some of us who were in the
feminist/lesbian movements in those early days did what people with
transsexualism have always done.  We threw ourselves into that movement whole
heartedly, working harder than anyone else.  This was because we were raised
thinking ourselves to be inferior and never good enough therefore we felt we had
to prove our worth by working harder than anyone else.

Over compensation for poor self image.  No matter how it gets directed.  In one
sister it might mean thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery, another
constant schooling and the pursuit of the Ph.D.  Or being the best feminist one
could possibly be.

There was a sister named Beth Elliott, in the Bay Area.  She was a member of
Daughters of Bilitis.  She had the honor of being the first sister I know of who
was publicly trashed first in �It Ain�t Me Babe� and later by Robin Morgan.

I didn�t understand it at first.  But over the years I learned how Cointelpro
worked and sowed seeds of destruction within various progressive groups by
attacking people who were dedicated hard workers.  Take down one and destroy her
or him and you have not only destroyed an individual but any who share a common
trait with the person destroyed.

Turn the attacking and defending of the individual into a factional split and
the organization is destroyed.  It doesn�t matter if the individual was innocent
of every charge, fictitious charges; lies told loudly enough in a practice
called �bad jacketing� can tear an organization, indeed a movement apart.

I can�t say for sure that what happened to Beth was Cointelpro.  It doesn�t
matter because even if it wasn�t, the result was the same.  One more element in
the destruction of the first Lesbian Organization promoting lesbian liberation..

Oddly the charges leveled against Beth and outlined in her book Mirrors:
Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual became the script for every bit of filth that
could be leveled at women of a transsexual history by self proclaimed radical
feminists and lesbian feminists.

A few years later Sandy Stone, recording engineer for Olivia Records, a lesbian
music collective was hit with similar if somewhat different charges setting off
a back and forth war of words within the feminist and lesbian feminist press
regarding the legitimacy of women of a transsexual history.

Then Janice Raymond dropped her bigoted polemic, The Transsexual Empire: The
Making of the She-Male. Previous attacks had often been directed at those
sisters who were closest to the socially acceptable feminine stereotypes or who
were in touch with their sexiness and embraced their sexy female side leaving
those of us who were good feminists in our jeans and movement t-shirts feeling
safe.  Raymond changed all that.

Now those of us who were good feminists, working doing leaflet layout and
production, petition signature collecting and all the grunt work of the feminist
movement were suddenly as bad as our sisters who were enjoying being sex
positive heterosexual women during an era far less uptight than the present.

Things I wish we knew or thought about then that we know now.  Raymond was a
former Catholic nun and her mentor Mary Daly was originally a professor of
theology who became involved in some pretty weird cult like magical thinking
regarding theories of hidden matriarchal cultures.

The reactionary cultural feminism that had first stirred with Jane Alpert�s
�Mother Right� and was embraced by Robin Morgan, who coincidentally led the
lynch mob attack on Beth Elliott.  (Morgan�s side of it can be found in Going
too Far).  Alpert laid out a form of binary gender essentialism that posited the
same sort of black and white binary innateness one found in the traditional
patriarchal bullshit that ordained the role of women as inferior to men.

It was seriously reactionary at a time when so much of feminism was based on the
overlapping abilities and traits of men and women.

Long before GID and the million post-modern word games transsexual and
transgender people play now people with transsexualism and transgenderism used
that overlapping of traits to argue that maleness and femaleness were a
continuum rather than a binary and that we were simply more predominately at the
end not indicated by our at birth sex assignment.

But back to Daly and Raymond.  Their Catholicism is the source of their ideology
not feminism.  I may blend anarchism and Marxist class consciousness with my
feminism but they had to do an even bigger trick, that is to say they had to
build their feminism on a foundation of misogyny.

Raymond�s position reflects that form of Christo-fascism that I first saw at 14
when the priest my mother sent me to for counseling basically told me that I
would have to live my life in total denial of what I was or face an eternity in
hell.  That I couldn�t even think or fantasize about something so intrinsic to
my being that I would discard family and risk a life of social ostracism to be. 
I was born with transsexualism.  That was something I can not change.

Yet both the priests and the Ramondites would have me commit suicide either
physically or by repression by denying me the legitimacy of my being.  This is a
denial of my humanity, a form of abuse so severe as to be unacceptable when
directed at groups based on race or ethnicity or for that matter when directed
at gays or lesbians.

It becomes far more egregious when a lesbian or gay man or for that matter
someone claiming to be feminist starts attacking transsexual or transgender
people.  It is almost as though those doing the attacking are unaware of the
real basis for those attacks and how it can be traced back to a chapter in the
Bible that is filled with widely ignored rules.

I am speaking of Deuteronomy 22: 5 (King James Bible)

�The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man
put on a woman�s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy
God.�

Now most gay and lesbian people as well as most feminists have questioned the
manner in which these ancient books of mythology have been used as tools of
oppression.  One does not have to look very hard to see the Bible as the source
of both homophobia and misogyny.

However, the label of abomination is particularly harsh and is followed if
memory serves me correctly with the part about how our blood should be upon us
suggesting that any manner of violence including murder is justified.

When one listens to the vile and often contradictory slander that is laid upon
transsexual and transgender people by bigots like the woman at AROOO one has to
ask exactly what TS/TG folks are supposed to do?

We are attacked if we manage to get an education and develop a career.  We are
attacked if our educational opportunities in childhood were destroyed and we
only managed to do sex work.

We are attacked for getting breast implants even though they were not developed
specifically for us and the majority of women getting them were assigned female
at birth.  The excuse for not attacking natal females is that they get them due
to having a flawed body image since male dominated media regularly shows ample
breasted women as sexy and glamorous.

Ahh, but that is different. Actually it is not.  TS/TG people are immersed in
the same cultural soup as normborns.

TS/TG people both T to F and T to M can be either straight or gay/lesbian.  Some
are bisexual yet it often seems that the only form of sex that is acceptable to
the bigots is asexuality and even that is probably reason for condemnation. 
Even self pleasuring is suspect in spite of there being feminist run businesses
merchandising sex toys for women including Smitten Kitten and Good Vibrations.

If we get SRS we are mutilated men (or women as the case may be).  If not we are
men in dresses of which there is no T to M equivalent.

One of the nastiest rejoinders is the one that directs us to remain as we were
assigned no matter how miserable we are and to fight sexism and the gender
binary from our originally assigned sex.  Now I opposed the draft back in the
1960s and as an anarcha-feminist I find the very idea that someone else should
be required to fight a war for someone else�s cause questionable at best.

At worst it is like demanding that gay and lesbian people have reparative
therapy and live as straight working to end the tyranny of the patriarchal
oppression of women in marriage by changing it in a way so that gays and
lesbians will no longer have to be gay or lesbian to find relationships where
they are equally respected partners.  Oh and BTW erase homosexuality.

We have progressed far beyond that, besides Audre Lorde gave us the tagline
about how the master�s tools will never dismantle the master�s house.

Anarchists do not demand others sacrifice their lives and pursuit of happiness
to fight ill defined quixotic battles.  Existentially that form of behavior is
ethically questionable.  It is more characteristic of hate groups than
liberation movements.

I saw the purity purges on the left. In the 1970s I actually had someone tell me
that in spite of her misogyny Phyllis Schlafly was her sister because of birth
and in spite of my being a hard working feminist because of my birth I could
never be.  That for the same reasons the homophobic Anita Bryant was her sister
but no matter how hard I worked at The Lesbian Tide, I was not.

It has always escaped me how people who demand autonomy for themselves when it
comes to intimate matters on issues like abortion access and birth control can
not see the contradiction in denying TS/TG folks the same self determination and
autonomy regarding decisions they might make regarding their own bodies.

Perhaps it is time for those resurrecting the anti-transsexual/anti-transgender
rhetoric to engage in what we in Weather called criticism/self-criticism because
their bigoted politics suck and are in contradiction with both feminism and
gay/lesbian liberation.

Perhaps the people exercising this anti-TS/TG bigotry would be happier among the
right wing racist and homophobic hate groups that share the same sorts of
bigoted language that show class hatred towards entire classes of people based
on fictitious stereotype, even when some in that group may actually exhibit that
stereotype.

Smash Transphobia, Smash Bigotry

No gods, No masters


http://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/11/29/transphobia-the-hate-anyone-can-exerc\
ise-including-feminists-like-those-on-a-room-of-our-own-2/

Bilerico, USA


The Cleveland Show goes transphobic: GLAAD goes silent

Filed by: Bil Browning

November 29, 2009 1:00 PM


I realize the Thanksgiving holiday was last week, but surely the folks
at GLAAD didn't take the entire week off work. After all, they had
plenty of time to critique Good Morning America's decision to dump
Adam Lambert
<http://glaadblog.org/2009/11/24/good-morning-america-cancels-adam-lambert-appea\
rance-after-racy-ama-performance/>
after his racy AMA performance.

The week before, the org got into a ridiculous fight with South Park
over an episode that used the word "faggot" repeatedly to show how
hurtful it is. (The org later withdrew its objections and acknowledged
there was nothing anti-gay about the episode
<http://glaadblog.org/2009/11/16/follow-up-to-south-park-call-to-action/>
.)

Auntie-Mama-Cleveland-Show.pngSo why isn't the media watchdog all over
last Sunday's episode of The Cleveland Show? Why scream bloody murder
over a cartoon with a pro-gay message while completely ignoring
another show that is actually demeaning to our community? You know,
the one that has characters vomiting at the thought of having sex with
an "outrageous" deceptive "tranny" - who's really just a deep-voiced
man pretending to be a woman, of course.

Thankfully, some of us were paying attention
<http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2009/11/seth-macfarlane-attacks-transwomen-on.ht\
ml>
, because GLAAD sure as hell wasn't.

Complete episode and some of Renee's commentary after the jump.

     ...Cleveland discovers that Auntie Mama has a penis and
immediately declares her a man. Auntie Mama clearly presents as a
woman and lives her life as such and therefore; declaring her a man is
highly transphobic. Rather than just admitting that trans people make
the decisions that they do because their bodies are not aligned with
their gender, Auntie Mama claims to have made the decision to live as
woman after the death of Donna's mother to give her feminine role
models.

     Cleveland then decides to corner Auntie Momma and demand that she
declare that she is a man. Immediately Auntie Momma's voice deepens
and the rest of the episode is spent making jokes about her gender
presentation. It was written as though she was deceiving those around
her. This meme is particularly dangerous. The deceptive trans woman
construction has lead repeatedly to murder and yet MacFarlane decided
that this was just pure humour.

     Of course, the deceptive trans woman then goes on to seduce a
straight cisgender male. When Auntie Momma is outed by Cleveland, his
father proceeds to vomit copiously and expresses shame for having in
engaged in sex with Auntie Momma. It is absolutely not Cleveland's
place to out someone? In the real world, such an action often ends in
violence. Why is it necessarily shameful that a cisgender man engaged
in sex with a trans woman? The response of Cleveland's father is based
squarely in the trans panic and homophobia. Isn't MacFarlane great;
two marginalizations for the price of one.

     This entire episode was devoted to promoting transphobia and
homophobia. It is particularly galling that this episode was aired
right after the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which commemorates all
those who have died because of trans hate in the previous year.

[VIDEO
<http://www.hulu.com/watch/107060/the-cleveland-show-a-brown-thanksgiving>
]


Filed under: Television & Movies | Transgender & Intersex

Tags: Auntie Mama | Cleveland Show | Family Guy | Madea | Seth
McFarland | transgender stereotypes | transphobia | Tyler Perry


http://www.bilerico.com/2009/11/the_cleveland_show_goes_transphobic_glaad_goes_s\
il.php

Pam's House Blend, USA


Thinking About Mike Penner; Thinking Again About Detransition

by: Autumn Sandeen

Sun Nov 29, 2009 at 18:15:00 PM EST


[Photo: Mike Penner (FKA Christine Daniels), Ina Fried, Autumn
Sandeen, and Diane Barnes at National Lesbian and Gay Journalist
Association convention, 2007]

I met Mike Penner when he was presenting as Christine Daniels at
National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association (NLGJA) Convention in
2007. I last spoke to him on the telephone in December of 2007; he
detransitioned from Christine to Mike in autumn of 2008.

When thinking about Mike Penner's apparent suicide, I know I think
about Mike's passing in terms of gender. I suspect Mike's struggle
with gender had a lot to do with his detransition; I suspect Mike's
struggle with gender had a lot to do with his apparent suicide.  But,
of course, we can't really know that for sure -- we don't even know
yet for sure if this actually was a completed suicide.

As a starting point for discussing detransition and Mike's apparent
suicide, I'm reposting my piece entitled About The "Real Life
Experience" and Detransitioning
<http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7755>  (which I
also reposted here <http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/9651/> ). I
believe we all need to have some reference point for discussing Mike's
apparent suicide, and this piece on detransitioning is the place I
believe we need to start.

I'll likely have something up "soon" on the apparent suicide.

~~Autumn~~

_____


About The "Real Life Experience" and Detransitioning

Some days I hate my job at Pam's House Blend, and this is definitely
one of those days. I really need to explain what the Real Life
Experience [(RLE) -- also referred to as the Real Life Test (RLT)] is
and why some transsexuals detransition...And, this is because the
person I met as Christine Daniels is apparently detransitioning (also
called retransitioning) to Mike Penner.

Basically, I need to separate the personal from the professional when
discussing how detransitioning fits into transsexual experience -- a
sometime component of transitioning sexes -- and yet on the very
personal level I wish it weren't at the impetus of someone I've known
and care deeply about that's leading me to discuss the subject.

But life is what it is.

So, the first thing that needs to be explained is exactly what a real
life experience is, and where detransitioning fits into the real life
experience.

Page 17 of the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care For Gender Identity
Disorders <http://www.wpath.org/Documents2/socv6.pdf> says this about
the RLE (emphasis added):

     The act of fully adopting a new or evolving gender role or gender
presentation in everyday life is known as the real-life experience.
The real-life experience is essential to the transition to the gender
role that is congruent with the patient's gender identity. Since
changing one's gender presentation has immediate profound personal and
social consequences, the decision to do so should be preceded by an
awareness of what the familial, vocational, interpersonal,
educational, economic, and legal consequences are likely to be.
Professionals have a responsibility to discuss these predictable
consequences with their patients. Change of gender role and
presentation can be an important factor in employment discrimination,
divorce, marital problems, and the restriction or loss of visitation
rights with children. These represent external reality issues that
must be confronted for success in the new gender presentation. These
consequences may be quite different from what the patient imagined
prior to undertaking the real-life experiences. However, not all
changes are negative.

     Parameters of the Real-Life Experience. When clinicians assess the
quality of a person's real life experience in the desired gender, the
following abilities are reviewed:

     1. To maintain full or part-time employment;
     2. To function as a student;
     3. To function in community-based volunteer activity;
     4. To undertake some combination of items 1-3;
     5. To acquire a (legal) gender-identity-appropriate first name;
     6. To provide documentation that persons other than the therapist
know that the patient functions in the desired gender role.

     Real-Life Experience versus Real-Life Test. Although professionals
may recommend living in the desired gender, the decision as to when
and how to begin the real-life experience remains the person's
responsibility. Some begin the real-life experience and decide that
this often imagined life direction is not in their best interest.
Professionals sometimes construe the real-life experience as the
real-life test of the ultimate diagnosis. If patients prosper in the
preferred gender, they are confirmed as "transsexual," but if they
decided against continuing, they "must not have been." This reasoning
is a confusion of the forces that enable successful adaptation with
the presence of a gender identity disorder. The real-life experience
tests the person's resolve, the capacity to function in the preferred
gender, and the adequacy of social, economic, and psychological
supports. It assists both the patient and the mental health
professional in their judgments about how to proceed.  Diagnosis,
although always open for reconsideration, precedes a recommendation
for patients to embark on the real-life experience. When the patient
is successful in the real-life experience, both the mental health
professional and the patient gain confidence about undertaking further
steps.

So, what's supposed to happen when a transitioner has a unsuccessful
RLE is that the transitioner detransitions.

I had an appointment with my own therapist, Patricia Wojdowski
<http://www.gendercounseling.com/> , L.C.S.W., on Wednesday. While at
the appointment, I asked her some questions regarding detransitioning,
and asked if I could post her responses at Pam's House Blend
<http://pamshouseblend.com/> .

I actually was kind of surprised at Patricia's answers. Basically, in
her long practice with trans clients (she's been involved with
studying and treating transsexuals and other gender variant people
since the mid-seventies <http://www.jstor.org/pss/3811713> ), the
single commonality for all of her detransitioning clients has been
that external pressures were the impetus. All of her clients who have
detransitioned still considered themselves as having a gender identity
that didn't match their natal sex
<http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/natal+sex> , but
external pressures -- issues such as inability to find employment,
biases and discrimination in the workplace, an inability to find
appropriate housing, conflict with friends and/or family, etc. -- are
why the RLE is evaluated by the client as unsuccessful, and the client
decides to detransition.

I know there are other reasons than the ones my therapist cites.
Sometimes the reason is relating to faith, where one becomes an
"ex-transsexual" or "ex-transgender"
<http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2006/11/who-does-or-cou/> (the trans
equivalents to "ex-gay"). Sometimes it's because the person really
isn't a transsexual, and an unsuccessful RLE catches them before they
experience transsexual regret
<http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html> . Since my
therapist doesn't practice conversion (or reparative) therapy, she
wouldn't see those who are detransitioning for reasons of faith. But,
it is interesting that in all the years of her practice, she's never
seen a transsexual who has detransitioned due to because the
detransitioner has figured out that he or she really wasn't
transsexual -- all of her detransitioners have detransitioned due to
external pressures.

So, back to our impetus -- is Mike Penner detransitioning from
Christine Daniels because he's under external pressures, or is it
because he figured out during his RLE that his gender identity really
wasn't female? Honestly, I have a guess, but I have no real idea.

The bottom line is that when a person begins a transsexual transition
-- especially a very public transition -- one trades one set of
problems related to having a hidden, real or perceived gender identity
that's in conflict with one's natal sex for a completely new and
different set of problems. That new set of problems often include
difficulties related to housing, employment, and public accommodation
--basically just dealing with others' biases and discrimination --
family issues related to one's spouse/ex-spouse and children, as well
as having one's peers, friends and family still seeing you as either
still a member of your natal sex instead of your target sex, or as a
member of some "third gender" rather than as your target sex.

Detransitioning may relieve most of the transitioning stress, but at
least in the case of male-to-female transitioners who detransition,
one can't go fully back to one's previous life. Prior to
transitioning, most are fairly closeted about having cross-gender
identity and expression issues. When detransitioning, one's peers,
friends, and family -- and in Mike's case, the sports community
audience he writes at the Los Angeles Times for -- know there are at a
minimum gender expression issues. In other words, since in broad
society most can't tell the difference between a male-to-female
transsexual, a drag queen, a crossdresser, and an effeminate gay man,
a detransitioner going back to a male expression of public gender is
going to be perceived as if he were gay because of the time spent
living as female; basically the detransitioner won't fully regain his
heterosexual privilege.

Transitioning is hard; detransitioning is hard. My warmest thoughts
are with Mike -- I wish him the absolute best.

~~~~~

[Note: LenaD has a related diary entitled The road not taken on the
same subject as this diary, but with a somewhat different take.
~~Autumn~~]

~~~~~
Further reading:
* Transsexual regret <http://www.joanneherman.com/Trans_101_regret.html>
* A Warning For Those Considering MtF SRS
<http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html>
* Can One Be A Transgender Christian?
<http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2007/02/can-one-be-a-transgender-christian/>

~~~~~
Related:
* Mike Penner (f.k.a. Christine Daniels) Dead Of Apparent Suicide
<http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/14286/breaking-mike-penner-aka-christine-da\
niels-dead-of-apparent-suicide>
* Christine Daniels Retransitioning Back To Mike Penner
<http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7701.
* LA Times' Penner: "I am a transsexual sportswriter."
<http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1474>
* Check out LA Times sportwriter Christine Daniels' transition blog
<http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1614> (Autumn
note: The blog is gone.)


http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/14291/thinking-about-mike-penner-thinking-ag\
ain-about-detransition

Outsports, USA


JOCK TALK BLOG

Transsexual sportswriter Mike Penner dies

Nov 28th, 2009 by Jim Buzinski.


[Photo: Christine Daniels in 2007]


Sportswriter Mike Penner of the Los Angeles Times has died at 52. His
body was found at his home and suicide was the suspected cause of
death, the paper reported
<http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-mike-penner29-2009nov29,0,3898738.story>
.

Penner, a very gifted writer, made headlines in 2007 when he announced
he was transsexual and changed his name to Christine Daniels. In 2008,
he transitioned back
<http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2009/02/25/usa-today-explores-penners-transit\
ion-back/>
and became Mike Penner again. I last saw Mike shortly after he had
transitioned back to a male. It was a short and awkward meeting as he
told me he was struggling and didn�t want to talk.

In August 2007, Christine Daniels was honored by the National Gay and
Lesbian Journalists Assn. at its convention in San Diego for telling
her story <http://www.outsports.com/columns/cyd/daniels070426.htm>
publicly.

     �I am a transsexual sports writer,� Penner wrote in his first
column discussing his transition. �It has taken more than 40 years, a
million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me
to work up the courage to type those words.�

He became somewhat of a celebrity in the LGBT community and was sought
after as a speaker. At our last meeting, I sensed he was embarassed
that he created a stir, only to switch back. I never judged Mike and
only wanted him to find a happiness that seemed to elude him. He was a
warm and gentle human being and I am saddened by his death. May he
rest in peace.


� 2009 Outsports

http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2009/11/28/transsexual-sportswriter-mike-penne\
r-dies/

Bilerico, USA


On Transition & Suicide

Filed by: Antonia D'orsay

November 29, 2009 2:30 PM


A recent death and the comments I've read
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/28/mike-penner-dead-la-times_n_372751.htm\
l>
has me in an unusual mood today. And I'm reminded of something that
I've seen, and that many in the LGBT community as a whole have seen.

There was, for a couple of years, a number bandied about of half of
the Transsexuals out there kill themselves. I could go into various
arguments about that number, but the truth isn't really all that much
better, and it's 1 in 3.

Suicide, in and of itself, takes a certain mental state of mind, a
special kind of thought, and it comes at you when you've lost hope,
when despair is what surrounds you, and right now, well, this is the
peak time of the year for it. This is not merely the most wonderful
time of the year, it is also the most horrible time of the year.

This is the dying season.

The black record of the new year's count has already begun after the
Day of Remembrance, where we take a moment to remember those who have
been slain by injustice. This is a somber day for transfolks, and it
affects a wider part of the community than many realize, and every
year I read blog posts by straight cisfolk and all shapes of
transfolks, and I struggle to read a post by LGB cisfolk about their
thoughts on attending the event.

It's a piece of the puzzle I miss.

And perhaps that piece is because people don't realize that while 3 of
us are murdered each week, a third of us take our own lives.

And people don't always realize why.

I get into arguments over this. I get told I make it too scary, make
it too harsh, too terrible, that its not always that bad, and while it
isn't always that bad, a lot of the time, it is.

Take one thing you know you to be true. Now let's say you need to make
it true of you to others. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't
matter how big or little it is. Maybe it's the color of our hair. Or
the car you drive. Or the fact you are gay or bisexual or trans. One
thing. One absolute, inalienable truth, one thing that must be, and
you know it, at the core of your heart.

Now, let everyone and everything in the world around you tell you it
is not true.

Everything.

The words you use and others use around and about you. The clothes you
wear. The teachers at school, the schoolbooks themselves, the great
philosophers and the enigmatic priests. The reflection in the mirror.
Your doctor, your library, your police, your government, your entire
world.

Your spouse, your partner, your best friend, your parents, your dog,
your mailbox, your brothers, your sisters.

Everything. You can't even form a thought in your head to speak it or
write it without having to rely on it because the very language you
use is against you, telling you that this one singular truth you know
absolutely and utterly and irrevocably is not true.

Got that? Everything.

Now, you know that everything about it is that way, and then somehow,
you find out a way to make it happen so that it becomes a truth you
can reveal.

Only in doing so, you have to give up everything you ever loved, ever
valued, ever cherished, ever hoped for, ever dreamed about. Family and
friends is part of it. Everything you ever did in your life - yep,
that. Degrees, history, children, job, future.

That is the price. No chance that it won't happen, no hope for
something better - this isn't coming out - that's something that's
easy compared to this.

Now, with all of that, let's through in the absolute necessity that
this truth must be shared.

Kinda has a sense of religion to it, doesn't it?

Something that one person knows, utterly and absolutely, without proof
from anything around them, a truth that they must make known, make
manifest, make visible and possible and probable.

That entirety of things, boiled down into one moment, one instant -
that is the decision to transition as an adult. It's not much better
as a kid. The decision to do that, with that price staring you in the
face, that high and unimaginable degree of total uncertainty.

It can only be done with an act of faith.

Strength is what carries you through it, but strength gives out.
Courage of the sort that allows blind uninformed leaps into the
unknown when all the world is against you is called foolhardiness.
Which, if you talk to people after witnessing a foolhardy act, is
usually called just plain stupidity.

Obstinance is essential to it, but that's a form of strength in this
measure, in this way, and all it does is carry you through the storm
of actually losing things - hoping that maybe you'll keep this part
and maybe you'll keep that part and hey, you got to have this, how
awesome, so maybe you'll get to keep that only to find moments later
you've lost it too.

None of them let you make that decision.

If you make that decision, you begin suffering. And that suffering is
not merely the wide eyed kind you see in horror movies. It is the epic
suffering that tears your soul out like the loss of a loved one, the
slow and steady decay of things you have worked your whole life to
achieve, something once sweet and joyous now dust and despair.

It is the stuff that takes you to your knees and drives you out of
your mind and makes you question everything.

Much like some mad prophet.

There is great reward on the other side. If you make it. It Is a
journey that no one can give you a compass rose for, merely point the
way they took and hope for the best.

Many people forget these moments, these times, and offer merely
condolences, simple gestures, when they hear of such. How can they
know? How can they know what it feels like to have your own son tell
you "I don't want to" when all that is being asked is just to see you?
How can they know what it is to lose a company and job you've spent 20
hours a day on for 4 years?

How can they know what it is like to realize that your life was a lie
and you helped to make it?

Suicide claims one in three who do know what that is like. And a large
part of the reason is that it is crushingly hard, even when things
seem to be going great, and nothing makes it worse, ever, anytime,
than the holidays, when you sit there and look around you and
everything that they represent to you has been taken from you.

The last time I tried to commit suicide was January 2007. My birthday
was a few days away, I'd just gotten everything in my situation at the
time arranged, was settling in for what I thought was going to be a
long haul, and something happened. What is unimportant, but it was
enough, and sent me into a point of despair that even to this day
colors a part of my heart and leaves it cold and sometimes inert.

And I sat there, my knees buckled, my heart so sore I literally clawed
at my chest to try and relieve the pain I was feeling, and I sobbed as
I'd never sobbed before, and I lost my mind. Into my head came the
strange and bizarre notion that I would get up, put my shoes on,
calmly walk out of the apartment, and wait for a short time beside the
very busy street just a few dozen yards away, and step at the last
minute in front of a semi-trailer.

I could see it in my mind, the whole process. It was easy.

It was the right thing to do. I knew it, it rang in my head for
several minutes, and so I started looking for my shoes.

There wasn't going to be a note. Notes never entered my head, and I'm
not the sort to do that. There was no phone call to make - I as nuts,
anyway, it wasn't going to occur to me even if there was a hotline I
could turn to that would be able to even comprehend what I was going
through (and, as a note, there still isn't a hotline for trans folks).

And so I sobbed and weeped and let out howls until my throat was raw
and I crawled all around the tiny room I had searching for my shoes.

Never popped into my mind to load the shotgun I had in the closet with
the shell I had in my drawer.

And it is not a stretch to sit here and write to you that the reason I
am doing so is that I did not find my shoes until after I had passed
out and awakened in a much more sane frame of reference.

Had I found them, I would have absolutely done it.

One in Three. One third. And there is no rhyme or reason to when - it
could be before they start transition, it could be during it, it could
be ten years after. The reasons, the triggers, the causes are all
different, and often it isn't just trans stuff that does it.

Its that whole world against you that does it, and that one little
straw that breaks the camel's back - the last thin little wafer before
the explosion.

We'll likely never know why the death that reminded me of this
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/28/mike-penner-dead-la-times_n_372751.htm\
l>
happened.

But maybe some of ya'll now have an idea of why it happens so often.

And why once so many of do, we have a somewhat fanatical way about us...


Filed under: Personal & Family | Transgender & Intersex

Tags: bisexual | courage | Day Of Remembrance | death | despair | gay
| hope | lesbian | LGBT | obstinance | suicide | transgender |
transition | understanding


http://www.bilerico.com/2009/11/on_transition_suicide.php

LA Observed, CA, USA


Mike Penner's musical side

Kevin Roderick � November 29 2009 9:20 PM


Kevin Bronson, the music writer formerly
<http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/07/more_times_departures.php>
with the L.A. Times, remembers Mike Penner for more than his sports
writing or his sexuality. They bonded over rock and roll. Penner was
known for the annual mixtapes "he named for his own mythological radio
station, KPEN, and gave out as holiday cards," Bronson posted today at
his blog, Buzzbands.LA
<http://buzzbands.la/2009/11/29/mike-penner-1957-2009-a-friend-in-deed/>
:

     I spent Saturday revisiting the Mixtape That Changed My Life,
teetering between tears and the urge to fly into a stereo-smashing
rage. The 110-minute cassette is titled �KPEN 1992,� and it was a gift
from my friend and former colleague Mike Penner.

     Penner, the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who made headlines in
2007 when he declared himself transsexual, was found dead on Friday.
Suicide is believed to be the cause. I do not know, nor can I pretend
to comprehend, what demons laid siege to him at the end, but like
anyone who knew Penner for his crisp intellect, big heart and
cross-cultural passions, I wish there could have been some sort of
intervention. In our case, I wish we could have exchanged one more
mixtape.

     When I met him in the early 1990s, Penner was a rising star in the
Times� Orange County Edition. He could turn phrases more adroitly than
the Angels turned double plays; his lyrical wit was equally capable of
calling out underachievers and illuminating on-field heroics. Outside
the pressbox, he was an an astute purveyor of all things cultural,
especially rock �n� roll, having been reared in southern California
with his ears and mind wide open.

It's a lovely tribute. Penner's death was reported yesterday
<http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/11/mike_penner_52_believed_t.php>
. Here's Ross Newhan
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/sports_blog/2009/11/ross-newhan-remembers-mike-\
penner.html>
, the retired Times' baseball writer at The Fabulous Forum blog:

     A few weeks after losing my friend, my family's friend and my
former sports-writing colleague Earl Gustkey, I am trying to cope this
morning with the loss of my friend, my family's friend and my former
baseball-writing colleague and traveling companion Mike Penner.

     I am not smart enough, and I don't have the insight, to understand
the torment that drove him to an apparent suicide. Instead, I will
remember the fun we had on the Angels beat in the '80s, and I will
remember the talent that flowered on every assignment he was given.

Plus: Gustavo Arellano's meeting
<http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/sports/remembering-mike-pennerchristi/>
with Christine Daniels.


� 2003-2009

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/11/mike_penners_musical_side.php

NPR, USA


Transsexual 'L.A. Times' Sportswriter Dead

November 29, 2009


[Listen to the Story: All Things Considered (02:45) ]


Los Angeles Times reporter Mike Penner, who publicly chronicled his
gender transition and returned to the paper under the name Christine
Daniels, died Friday evening at age 52.

The cause of death has not been determined, but the newspaper reported
that it was believed to be suicide.

Penner made a name for himself in Los Angeles as a sportswriter. He
covered the Olympics, World Cup soccer and Major League Baseball.
Then, 2 1/2 years ago, he showed up at work � and in print � as
Christine Daniels, writing the line, "I am a transsexual
sportswriter."

--
Penner's Interview On NPR's 'Day To Day'

Sportswriter Embarks On New Life As A Woman Aug. 15, 2007
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12783193&ps=rs>
--

A few months later, Daniels talked to NPR's Madeleine Brand about
growing up as a boy. "From the age of 4 or 5, I expressed to cousins
that I would like to be a girl," Daniels said. "And they said, 'Well,
what would you do?' They were more curious about this than � they
weren't demeaning at all, they were just curious.

"I said, 'I'd wear a dress and wear ribbons in my hair and walk like
this,' and they were just, 'OK, cool.' As I grew older, I found that
wasn't the social norm.

"I just felt that I kind of got a raw deal on this thing, Daniels
said. "And yeah, I wish I could be a girl. I really envy girls. But I
didn't think there was anything I could do about it. And so I just
tried to make the best of � the best of being Mike. For a lot of
years."

Daniels talked about a friend who was in a similar stage of
transition. "She just said, 'Christine, we're born with this. We fight
it as long as we can, and it always wins.' And I said, 'I just have to
find out about this. I don't want to die without knowing � without
knowing if this is really me.' "

Mike Penner lived and wrote as Christine Daniels for more than a year,
returning to the press box but also blogging about the transition.
Daniels' writing became a source of hope for people across the country
with gender-identity issues.

Last October, the byline "Mike Penner" returned to the newspaper �
without an explanation. Then Friday night, Penner died.


Copyright 2009 NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120930504

RealClearSports, USA


November 30, 2009

Mike Penner: Great Writer, Soccer Fanatic, Gentle Soul

By Scott French


I met Mike Penner on the field at the Rose Bowl shortly before the
1994 World Cup kicked off. He was a neophyte when it came to soccer:
knew very little, cared even less. I knew the sort, and we veterans on
the soccer beat - we who loved the game and hated how the mainstream
U.S. media treated it - had little time for these "ugly" Americans.

But there was something very different about Mike. You immediately
liked him - you couldn't help it. So many of the qualities that I
would come to love about the man were right there, right at the start.
He was gentle, he was generous, he was kind, and he was so humble for
one who possessed such talent.

As the tournament played out, I ran into Mike again and again, at the
Rose Bowl, in Dallas, at Stanford. When I think back to that World
Cup, so many great memories, I think my friendship with Mike is what I
most cherish.

News arrived Saturday that Mike had died, apparently by his own hand,
and I sat here at my computer and bawled. He'll be remembered by those
who didn't know him, or those who didn't know him well, as that
sportswriter who became a woman, changing his byline to Christine
Daniels, and then went back to being Mike Penner. To all of us who
knew him, who loved him, he was so, so, so much more.

None of us will ever know the turmoil he endured the past few years
dealing with gender-identity issues. When he announced, in a
beautifully written column in the Los Angeles Times, that he was
transgender and would be living as a woman, there was an outpouring of
support, especially from his friends. But there also were nasty
comments, despicable letters, a few horrible blogs and God knows what
else.

I met Christine at a party in Torrance, then saw her a few times at
Home Depot Center, for the David Beckham introduction and at a couple
of soccer games. She seemed happy and secure, and her writing was, as
always, so note-perfect. When she quietly reverted back to Mike last
year, I sent an email. I never received a reply, and my friend request
on Facebook a month or so ago went unanswered. I figured Mike would be
in touch when he was ready, and I let it go. Now I'm kicking myself,
as are so many among his friends, that I wasn't more forceful, that I
didn't reach out as I should have to let him know that he was loved,
that I had his back no matter what he was going through, no matter
where it all took him.

Mike had so many friends, so many admirers. Anyone who has read the
Los Angeles Times sports section over the past 25 years has to be a
fan. Mike always wrote with great wit and insight. His touch was so
perfect. He was the best writer I knew, and how I wish I could write
like he did.

Mike had the most deft touch imaginable. He could be writing about
anything - he could be writing about something you hate - and he'd
enrapture you. He could get to the heart of something, with this
sweetly subversive humor, like nobody else.

I was a fan of Mike's well before he was my friend. He was sports
editor of the Anaheim Bulletin not long after getting his degree from
Cal State Fullerton, my alma mater, and quickly was a rising star in
the Times' Orange County bureau. With good cause: What I love most in
newspapers in great writing. Mike was the finest writer the Times
employed from the moment they added him to their staff.

I was among many friends who knew Mike primarily through soccer. I
watched in 1994 as he caught the bug, and before Brazil and Italy were
battling scoreless through 120 minutes, and on to penalty kicks, in a
final played in strength-sapping heat, he was on board. He wrote about
it in a 1998 column for the Times:

In the months leading up to the World Cup, I had written derisively
about the 1993 APSL final between the Los Angeles Salsa and the
Colorado Foxes-drawing the ire of letter-writing soccer fans across
Orange County-and poked fun at the "so-called American soccer
underground-you know, the unshaven, vertical-stripe-shirted loners you
spot from time to time in the corner of an international bookstore,
breathing heavily over the latest copy of World Soccer."

Today, I am one of them.

My boss calls it "a disease." Concerned friends have suspected a
midlife crisis. Others have brought up religion and that episode about
St. Paul seeing the flash of light and falling off his horse-falling
off his horse, especially.

No, there was no crackle of lightning, no rending of the heavens that
I can remember.

Only a 35-yard free kick into the far upper corner of the net by Gheorghe Hagi.

That swerving, bending, incredible and illogical ball, struck during
the first World Cup game I covered, Romania versus Colombia at the
Rose Bowl, seemed to trigger some disabling chemical reaction in my
jaded and crusted sportswriter's brain. I just sat there, staring at
the replay on the press row television monitor, marveling at Hagi's
imperious coolness as he approached the ball, his nonchalant
follow-through, the wild trajectory of his physics-defying shot and
the full-on Romanian festival suddenly raging in the south corner of
the stadium.

I'd never seen anything like it, but I wanted to see more.

I covered 11 games during the 1994 World Cup, watching Colombia's
Andres Escobar net his catastrophic own goal against the United
States; checking out Bebeto and Romario "rocking the baby" after a
vital goal in Brazil's quarterfinal victory over Holland; taking in
the back-and-forth fastbreak action between Argentina and Romania and
listening to Al Mistri, the Cal State Fullerton soccer coach seated
behind me, roar with delight, "And they say this sport doesn't have
enough offense!"

Everything about the event pulled me in-the drama of the matches, the
virtuosity of the players, the unpredictable spontaneity of the play,
the passion of the fans.

When the World Cup was over, he bought a soccer ball ("the ugliest,
most ridiculous-looking ball I could find - a rock-hard Jorge Campos
model, with panels tinted florescent purple, lime and orange, much the
same color scheme as Campos' outlandish goalkeeping outfits," he
wrote), and started going out to the park with his wife, Times
sportswriter Lisa Dillman, to kick it around.

All nice and good, but what happened next says so much about Mike. He
invited some of his friends, Times colleagues and a few of us he met
while covering the Cup, to come out and kick the ball around with
them. Who could possibly say no? There were just a handful at first,
then a few more, then enough for a really good 7-on-7 game, usually
followed by a Chicago-style hot dog feast at Mustard's in Los
Alamitos, a half-mile or so from the park.

From that, a thought. What if we put together a real team and played
other teams? As Mike noted after our first informal game against
outside competition, a 7-6 victory: "What have we gotten ourselves
into?"

So began Scribes FC, the best soccer club in Southern California
consisting primarily of sportswriters, to be sure. It lasted 10 years,
won plenty of trophies - capturing titles in adult-recreation leagues
in Monterey Park, Long Beach and Placentia - and spawned a coed team,
a 7-a-side team, even a second team that battled the first team in the
championship game one year in Placentia.

What held it all together, of course, was Mike. He was the pied piper
for Scribes, a solid central defender (patterning his play after his
hero, English backliner Tony Adams) and master motivator. And to all
of us, "The Gaffer." Scribes was a huge part of his life, and - in
part so we could be with Mike, hang out with him, bask in his glow -
it became a huge part of ours.

We had a Who's Who of L.A.-area sportswriting talent, with journalists
from the Times, Orange County Register, Long Beach Press-Telegram,
Pasadena Star-News. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, a Times editor who now is the
Washington Post's sports editor, teamed with Mike in central defense,
and he brought his Spanish-born cousin, Sergio Verdu, a creative
midfielder and Scribes FC's first superstar.

Marc Stein, ESPN's Manchester City-loving NBA writer, was up front,
known more for shanking golden opportunities than finishing them. Kent
Coloma, who worked in the Times' library, provided midfield
leadership. Billy Witz, from the Press-Telegram and later the L.A.
Daily News, was valuable anywhere he played. There were so many more:
Bill Shaikin, the Times' baseball writer, and the Register's Bill
Rams, Times vet Elliott Teaford, librarian Paul Singleton and photog
Kevin Casey. Samuel Chi, editor of this fine publication. So many
more.

Fred Robledo, a prep guru and soccer writer for the Star-News (and now
the San Gabriel Valley Tribune), was as valuable off the field as on.
He brought in his brother, Steve, a fine forward, and his cousin
Shelby Greep, who had played at Cal Poly Pomona and coached Arcadia
High School's powerhouse girls soccer team. Shelby's husband, Mike,
was phenomenal. Freddie even brought out his dad on occasion.

We debuted, in earnest, in a 7-on-7 tournament at Cal State Dominguez
Hills, playing against college kids, mostly. College kids who played
for their schools' soccer teams, mostly. It was eye-opening, but we
managed a tie in one game, and celebrated with pizza.

Next thing, we were in the Monterey Park league, where we developed a
bitter rivalry with Chinese United and a friendly rivalry with Fuller
Seminary. One of our referees was Fabio Tovar, now a veteran linesman
in Major League Soccer.

The roster was supplemented by ringers, most of them friends of
friends, every so often some opponent who saw how much fun we were
having, win or lose. (And we won a lot more than we lost.)

Cypress College's women's coach, Tino Younger, joined us for awhile in
the Long Beach league - he once missed a cross because he was standing
next to the midfield flag drinking coffee, and he nearly started a
riot against the Islanders, a team of primarily Jamaicans, when he
beat the goalkeeper, dribbled to the goal line, then stopped and
turned around, baiting our foe. One of the Islanders picked up a
corner flag and used it as a spear, chasing Tino around the field.

Two Ghanaians who were working, if I remember correctly, as
parking-lot attendants at the Times' downtown office, joined us one
Sunday in Placentia. They were really, really good. And they figured
that playing for the "company" team meant they'd be seen by scouts,
who might offer professional contracts. Like in Ghana. Mike didn't
have the heart to tell them the truth, but they quickly figured it
out, and we never saw them again.

Jason Bunch and Stuart Cooley were wonderful additions, and so was
Julian Neely, and so was Eric Spotts, a high school soccer coach in
Torrance who became, like Billy Witz, one of Mike's closest friends.
It was at Eric's house that I first saw Christine.

Mike called us "lads," like the Brits do, and he published a
hysterical weekly newsletter about the club, written as always with
love and great wit. He waxed about the victories, the defeats, the
goals and should've-been goals, the red cards and all the silliness.
My favorite: At one game a light went off in Julian Neely's head. "So,
you're all writers?" he asked Mike. Yep. "Man, writing's hard." I can
still hear Mike's deep, genuine laugh.

He gave us all nicknames. Emilio was "Generalissimo," in honor of his
Spanish ancestry and leadership on the backline. Marc Stein was
"Steeno," which is surely what he would have been called at Man City.
I was "El Bleeping Loco" because I couldn't abide by poor officiating,
too often letting my emotions get the best of me. I picked up my share
of red cards.

And Mike, as always, was "The Gaffer." He was the fulcrum of that
team. He was the one we all looked up to, whom we wanted to please,
whom we didn't want to disappoint. You might say he held court at our
postgame Shakey's Pizza gatherings, except that Mike never wanted a
spotlight. He was just part of the gang, but always the best among
equals, so to speak.

His and Lisa's love of soccer was fed with trips to Europe, to see
games in Spain and France and England. Mike loved London powerhouse
Arsenal FC - Tony Adams' club - and he acquired lots of Gunners
memorabilia. He wrote in the Times:

There are times when I open the trunk of my car and spot the four
soccer balls, the two soccer nets, the soccer coach's diagram board,
the mini pop-up soccer goals, the plastic soccer practice cones, the
empty water bottles and the stray jar of Mineral Ice and I flash to
that old Talking Heads lyric:

And you may ask yourself

Well, how did I get here?

Hanging in the bedroom closet are more than a dozen replica soccer
jerseys-Brazil, Scotland, Chile, Cameroon, England (1966 red edition,
1990 white and 1996 gray), Colombia, Arsenal (home red, away blue,
long sleeved 1970s vintage edition), Sheffield Wednesday, Athletic
Bilbao.

In the living room video cabinet are stacks of tapes bearing such
titles as "Defending to Win," "Dribbling and Feinting," "502 Great
Goals," "England's Tribute to Gary Lineker," "Goals Galore," "F.A. Cup
Final, 1923-1978" and "Great Soccer Highlights: The Sixties."

Two shelves in the home library are crammed with the likes of "The Art
of Soccer," "Soccer Skills and Tactics," The Yearbook of European
Football," "Cantona," "Hand of God: The Life of Diego Maradona" and
"The Complete Record of the North American Soccer League."

Next to the stereo system, sharing CD shelf space with the Smashing
Pumpkins, Husker Du and the Clash are "The Best Footie Anthems in The
World," "The Beautiful Game," "Good Old Arsenal" and Alexi Lalas'
debut with the Gypsies.

I'm going to miss talking soccer with Mike. I'm going to miss watching
soccer with Mike. And I'm definitely going to miss playing soccer with
Mike.

I retired in 1998, after a broken leg in Monterey Park forced me onto
crutches at the World Cup in France, which I covered for the L.A.
Newspaper Group. Mike brought me to my mother's house, where I would
recuperate. My mom spent five minutes, maybe less, with Mike. She
loved him.

Mike also went to France, for the Times, and some of my favorite
memories with him are from that month. The free all-you-can-eat sushi
at 2002 co-host Japan's media to-do. Mike laughing as my steak tartare
arrived at a very nice establishment and I realized it was raw meat.
His recommendations of fine French cuisine that I struggled to find
edible.

Anda wonderful end-of-the-tournament dinner at a tiny restaurant on
Ile de St. Louis with Mike, Lisa, Sam Chi and Times soccer guru
Grahame Jones. Great food, great wine, and most of all great company.

Mike was forced into retirement when he had to undergo heart surgery,
which kept him out of Germany's press tribunes at the 2006 World Cup.
He was certainly missed.

Not long after, he announced, in a column headlined "Old Mike, New
Christine," that he would be Mike Penner no more:

During my 23 years with The Times' sports department, I have held a
wide variety of roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat reporter.
Olympics writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL columnist. Recent
keeper of the Morning Briefing flame.

Today I leave for a few weeks' vacation, and when I return, I will
come back in yet another incarnation.

As Christine.

I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a
million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me
to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and
colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.

That's OK. I understand that I am not the only one in transition as I
move from Mike to Christine. Everyone who knows me and my work will be
transitioning as well. That will take time. And that's all right. To
borrow a piece of well-worn sports parlance, we will take it one day
at a time.

Christine seemed happier than I'd ever seen Mike, and Mike always
seemed happy, I thought. Maybe he was just happy to be with friends.
Things seemed to be going well, and then, not quite a year and a half
later, Mike was back. One of my life's regrets will be that I never
saw him again.

I've got to tell you about Mike and music. I loved nothing more than
to discuss - and so often argue - music with Mike. We were both
amateur critics (and both of us - Mike especially - could have been
pros, believe me) who grew up with classic rock and came of age with
punk. We shared a love of many bands, none more so than the Clash and
Joy Division. He might have liked British alternative more so than I
did, and I clearly was more of a Led Zeppelin fan than he, but we
could go on for hours about this band and that song, argue over
whether "Rudie Can't Fail" or "Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)" was the
greatest song the Clash recorded, share our mutual love of melodic
noise.

I'd like to think I turned Mike onto a band here and there, but
probably not. He was on top of things. He knew Husker Du and Sonic
Youth and the Minutemen, and he loved Joy Division, perhaps the most
majestic and tragic band to emerge from the second wave of U.K. punks.

I'm listening to Joy Division now. Ian Curtis, the band's singer and
songwriter, was a tortured soul, and that plays out across the
entirety of their catalogue. He was, for Mike and me, a musical hero,
just like John Lennon and Joe Strummer.

Ian Curtis hanged himself on the eve of the band's first American
tour, just before its masterpiece album was released. I shudder to
think Mike might have been listening to "Closer" in his final days,
his final hours.

Mike introduced me to so many bands through his annual "KPEN"
compilation cassettes and CDs, which Christine turned into "KGAL." I
might be clueless about one of my favorite bands, Austin's ... And You
Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, were it not for Mike.

His "KPEN '90s" CD is a perfect summation of the decade's music, both
obvious (Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Radiohead's "Creep")
and cultish (My Bloody Valentine, Catherine Wheel, Sugar and Inspiral
Carpets). He gave us tastes of the Strokes, White Stripes and Yeah
Yeah Yeahs before they went big. Or big-ish.

And each cassette or CD featured his take on every song, perfect
synopsis that would put Robert Christgau to shame. Of ... And You Will
Know Us By The Trail of Dead's "It Was There That I Saw You," he noted
"the band's entire name is a full paragraphs when translated into
Portuguese." Of At The Drive-in's ArcArsenal, he was gloriously
succinct:

Relax, all. Contrary to first appearances, this is NOT a soccer song.
But, you know, any song with Arsenal in its title and filled with
roaring punk guitars and raging on-the-brink-of-implosion vocals is,
well, as you know, right up KPEN's alley.

In 2002, he included "The 2002 FJSA World Cup Official Anthem":

I'll leave you with a World Cup story. (You were dying to hear one,
right?) During my travels across Japan this summer, as I tried to burn
off the deadline adrenaline in a box-sized businessman's hotel room
(imagine a bed and shower in your walk-in closet, only smaller), I'd
faithfully crack open a refreshing bottle of the tragically addictive
Royal Milk Tea (thank God they sell this stuff at Marukai; I
immediately bought a year's membership upon my stateside return) and
would wind down watching World Cup game replays and then, after that,
after the final whistle had sounded, this bizarre channel that
featured nothing but an endless loop of still photographs of World Cup
soccer stadiums - here's the pitch in Yokohama, and now the locker
room, and the concession stand - rolled out over and over while the
haunting World Cup anthem played in the background. (Oddly soothing in
its own way, listening to this over and over while watching the
endless parade of soccer stadiums. The Japanese are very proud of
their soccer stadiums.) I guess you kind of had to be there. And
really, I wish you'd been. Six months later, these 4� minutes are the
best I can do.

A year later, he offered a most poignant take on Clash frontman Joe
Strummer's death, along with a copy of "Silver and Gold" by Strummer's
band, the Mescaleros:

When you log as many earth years as KPEN has, you find yourself
running decidedly low on real-life heroes. Strummer was one of them,
one of the last, and his passing on Dec. 23, 2002, felt like a death
in the family. It's interesting, if not heartbreaking, to see Joe
earning the kind of accolades in death he should have experienced
during his 50 years - the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame, the Bruce
Springsteen/Elvis Costello/Dave Grohl/Little Steven tribute at the
Grammys, the recent Mojo magazine poll which listed the Clash as the
third-greatest rock act of all time - behind Elvis Presley and Bob
Dylan, just ahead of the Beatles (me, I'd have moved Elvis out of
there). Then came "Streetcore," the album Joe was recording with the
Mescaleros when he died. "Silver and Gold" is the last track on
"Streetcore." I've heard it more than a double times, and it puts a
lump in my throat every time. Joe, this one's for you.

As I reread this, I think much the same could be said about Mike. He
was one of our best sportswriters - hell, he was one of our best
writers, period - and if not enough readers understood this, well,
someone dropped the ball. I have a feeling Mike will get all the
accolades he deserved while he was alive. I'd love for someone to take
his columns over the past 25 years, choose a couple hundred of the
best - and weeding them down to just a couple hundred will be a
mammoth task - and publish them in book form. When they go on sale,
I'll be first in line.

I loved Mike Penner. I always will. He was a wonderful person. The
sweetest, gentlest, most generous human being you could ever hope to
meet. Ask anyone who knew him, anyone who called him friend, and
they'll tell you the same thing. I'm richer having known him, and this
world's a lesser place without him.


Scott French, who covered the 1994 and 1998 World Cups for the Long
Beach Press-Telegram, is managing editor of The Soccer Magazine and a
contributing editor to the Madera (Calif.) Tribune.


� RealClearSports 2009

http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/11/30/mike_penner_great_writer_socc\
er_fanatic_gentle_soul_96555.html

The Independent, UK


Transsexual who went back to being a man is found dead

By Stephen Foley in New York

Monday, 30 November 2009


When Mike Penner, a 25-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times, typed
the words "I am a transsexual sportswriter", it became the most
celebrated coming-out of the internet era.

Returning to work as Christine Daniels and challenging macho sports
stars and fellow journalists to recognise her new identity, she became
an instant heroine to the transgender community and received an
overwhelmingly positive response from an avalanche of readers around
the world.

Away from the flush of early headlines, however, Ms Daniels' long
struggle with gender identity continued to be a personal torture.
Two-and-a-half years on, after he quietly returned to work as a man,
his LA Times colleagues are mourning his death at the age of 52 from
what appears to be suicide.

"Mike was a first-rate journalist, a valued member of our staff for 25
years and we will miss him,'' the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton,
said. "He respected our readers a great deal: enough to share with
them his very personal journey.''

Ms Daniels' April 2007 article began: "I am a transsexual
sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and
hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the
courage to type those words."

Despite the ebullience of the coming-out, Ms Daniels wore the
resulting celebrity with some reluctance. She spoke only sporadically
on gender dysphoria and batted away questions about family, except to
say that she was going through an "extremely painful" divorce.

Christine Daniels told National Public Radio in 2007 that the desire
to become a woman "bubbled up" three years previously. "I have a
friend who said, 'We fight it as long as we can and it always wins.'
And I said, 'I just have to find out. I don't want to die without
knowing if this is really me.'" She said she was undergoing female
hormone treatments but declined to say whether she planned to undergo
a sex-change operation.

In the end, the writer resumed work as a man last autumn, after a
leave of absence, writing about moments in sporting history. The
byline Christine Daniel had been erased. A blog, Woman in Transition,
which detailed life after coming out as a transsexual, was taken down
from the LA Times website.

The LA coroner's office said Mr Penner was pronounced dead on Friday,
but gave no further details.


�independent.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/transsexual-who-went-back-to-be\
ing-a-man-is-found-dead-1831111.html

On Top Magazine, USA


Transsexual Sportswriter Mike Penner Dead At 52

By On Top Magazine Staff

Published: November 29, 2009


[Photo: Christine Daniels in 2007]


Transsexual journalist Mike Penner is dead at the age of 52, the Los
Angeles Times reported.

Officials believe Penner took his own life. He was pronounced dead
Friday evening at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City.

Penner, who spent 25 years reporting on sports at the Los Angeles
Times, created a stir in 2007 when he announced he would transition to
Christine Daniels. A year later, however, he returned to using the
Mike Penner byline.

�Mike was a first-rate journalist, a valued member of our staff for 25
years, and we will miss him,� Russ Stanton, the paper's editor 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.�

Penner announced he was a transsexual sportswriter in an April 2007
essay published by the Times.

�I am a transsexual sports writer,� he wrote. �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.�

Writing about his journey thrust Penner into the national spotlight,
and made him an LGBT celebrity.

�At our last meeting, I sensed he was embarrassed that he created a
stir, only to switch back,� said Jim Buzinski in an entry at the gay
sports blog Outsports
<http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2009/11/28/transsexual-sportswriter-mike-penn\
er-dies/>
. �I never judged Mike and only wanted him to find a happiness that
seemed to elude him. He was a warm and gentle human being and I am
saddened by his death. May he rest in peace.�


�2006-2009 On Top Media

http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=4927&MediaType=1&Category=26

Pink News, UK


US trans sportswriter found dead

By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk � November 30, 2009 - 10:24


[Photo: Mike Penner worked for the Los Angeles Times for 25 years]


A sports journalist who worked on the Los Angeles Times has been found
dead in an apparent suicide.

Mike Penner, 52, who worked for the newspaper for 25 years, had
struggled with his sexual identity.

In April 2007, he announced in a column that he would be beginning
hormone treatment and returning to work under the name of Christine
Daniels.

At the time, he wrote: "I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken
more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of
soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those
words."

Under the female name, the reporter began chronicling the change from
male to female in a blog titled Woman in Progress.

However, Penner quietly returned to his male name in October 2008
after a leave of absence.

The Los Angeles coroner's office said Penner was found dead on Friday
but did not give any further details.

Los Angeles Times sports editor Mike James described Penner's death as
"a tragedy".

James said: "He was one of the most talented writers I've ever worked
with. He was a gentle man, a kind man."


http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/11/30/us-trans-sportswriter-found-dead/

Irish Examiner, Ireland


Law recognising transsexuals to go before D�il

By Mary Regan, Political Reporter

Monday, November 30, 2009


CONTROVERSIAL laws allowing transsexuals to be recognised in their
acquired gender are likely to go before the D�il next year following
demands from the Green Party.

Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin said work will get
under way "immediately" to see how legal recognition for people who
change their sex can be incorporated into law. This is likely to
require new legislation.

Between 80 and 100 people are currently accessing hormone therapy
after undergoing sex changes. However, the number of people who define
themselves in a gender category different to that on their birth
certificate could be much higher, according to Cat McIlroy of TENI,
the Transgender Equality Network Ireland.

"There are under 100 people accessing hormones in the Loughlinstown
clinic, but many more people identify as cross-dressers or
transvestites and their family or work experiences can dictate if they
go further. We believe there are potentially hundreds of people who
could benefit from new laws in the area."

The difference between psychological gender identity and medical
gender identity was one of the areas of disagreement between Fianna
F�il and the Green Party in talks on the revised Programme for
Government.

At the request of the junior partner, the renewed government agreement
says: "We will introduce legal recognition of the acquired gender of
transsexuals."

Green TD Ciar�n Cuffe said his party argued that "a person should be
legally recognised with the gender they wish to be recognised with."
However, Fianna F�il were concerned that people would seek to change
their gender for reasons other than psychological or medical, such as
welfare or other entitlements.

In a written response to a D�il question, Ms Hanafin said: "I will be
moving to progress this matter in the immediate future."

She said: "The means by which legal recognition will be effected may
include legislation and, in any event, will require careful
consideration and consultation."

The state has dropped an appeal of a High Court decision that it is in
breach of the European Convention on Human Rights in not having a
process and a register legally to recognise the acquired gender of
transsexual persons. Ireland is one of two European countries that
refuses to allow people to change their gender on their birth
certificate.

Ms McIlroy said she hopes the Government can see this as a human
rights issue: "Having your identity validated and respected by the
Government and the rest of your peers is important for everyone," she
said. "Trans people can have their passport amended or have their name
change, but not their birth certificate and that is crucial to the
identity of many people.

"It needs to be shown in regard to marriage, meaning many trans people
cannot legally marry their partner. It�s also important if you are
arrested for a crime in relation to how you are charged and where you
are detained. There is anecdotal evidence of trans women being
incarcerated in male facilities."


� Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/law-recognising-transsexuals-to-go-before-d\
ail-106732.html

Gair Rhydd (Cardiff University), UK


[11/30/2009]

Issue 911

Gender-neutral toilets proposed for Union

by Gareth Ludkin


A motion brought to Student Council last week proposed that the
Students� Union introduce gender-neutral toilet facilities in the
Union building.

The motion, which was put forward by LGBT officer Rachelle Simmons,
was discussed by Student Council before it was decided that a survey
should be carried out to assess the need for transgender toilets.

Rachelle Simmons was happy with the progress made with the motion she
put forward. She said: �I�m really pleased that so many students voted
in favour of such a progressive motion. I know that many people,
including transgendered students, but also others outside the gender
binary will appreciate this development.

�I�m sure that other students, when the toilets appear, will use the
toilets as they always have. I�m enthusiastic about doing the survey.
I want to get the biggest number of students, trans and not, to
complete it.�

Manchester University introduced gender-neutral toilets in 2008,
renaming the �gents� toilets to simply say �toilets with urinals�.

If a change were to occur at Cardiff�s Students� union, it would occur
in a similar way to Manchester. There wouldn�t be a need for brand new
toilet facilities. Instead, a simple change in sign names would be
used.

The results of the survey will be brought to the first student council
after Christmas where the decision over the motion will be made.


� gair rhydd 2009 - all rights reserved

http://www.gairrhydd.com/news/911/gender-neutral-toilets-proposed-for-union

Toronto Sun, Canada


Where 'nobody hears you'

'Haunting' tales of how human trafficking changes lives

By TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA

Last Updated: 30th November 2009, 2:38am


In a recent series, the Sun found that Ontario is failing to address
the needs of human-trafficking victims, many of whom are exploited
through the sex trade. During a conference hosted by Light Patrol at
the Yonge Street Mission on Friday, 130 people gathered to discuss the
issues. Here are some of their stories.

---

Some 20 years ago in Toronto, Tim Huff started a drop-in centre.

One Friday night, there were two siblings, five and seven years old,
asking the older kids for cigarettes. If they collected enough, they'd
get to smoke some and their mother -- an infamous street worker known
to service men for food -- would smoke some, Huff was told.

Several years later, Huff saw those kids again. They weren't kids
anymore. And they were working right alongside their mother.

"You can have them in three-ways, you can have them two at a time, you
can have them however you want," Huff says. "That's haunting to me."

He knows he's preaching to the converted: A room of ex-sex workers,
anti-prostitution advocates and religious outreach workers. And so he
wonders aloud, how can this room of "social justice junkies" make a
soccer mom or hockey dad take part in Toronto's fight against sexual
exploitation?

"We have so few answers when it comes down to it, but, man, we want to
get it right," Huff says.

AMY

Growing up, Amy was known as "the preacher's kid."

One night, someone slipped something into Amy's drink. Amy was
gang-raped. About a month later, Amy learned she was pregnant. Amy got
an abortion.

The life of the preacher's kid was changed.

About two years ago, Amy met a man who forced her to quit her nanny
job and work as a prostitute. For about a year, she lived in a hotel.

During one job, one client turned into four and Amy was stripped down,
tied to a bed and gang-raped again, this time for four hours.

"I think the worst part of it is when you scream and nobody hears
you," the 34-year-old says. "I deal with a lot of guilt, I deal with
depression and I do have some self-abusive tendencies."

To a room of mostly Christians, this preacher's kid adds: "I often
find myself very angry with God and wondering where he was when I was
raped."

PATRICK

Patrick turned his first trick at age 11 in a hotel room in downtown
Toronto. He had been sexually abused at home.

As a teen, on the advice of his transsexual roommate, Patrick tried
working in drag. He was offered three times as much money as any girl
he'd ever known, so Patrick stuck with it.

The shelf life of a male prostitute is very short -- five years at
best, Patrick says. He turned his last trick when he was 24.

Society sees female prostitution, the 46-year-old man says. "But there
are many, many boys and many, many men out there who are victims."

Twenty-two years out, he carries his scars on his sleeve.

"As much good as I do, there are numbers of times when I will see
myself still as a commodity. When people are nice to me, is it because
they really like me or because they want something from me?"

KAYLA

Kayla remembers living with her aunties. They weren't really her
aunties, but she called them that so it didn't seem strange to
outsiders that she lived with women who worked with mom on the high
track, "where the upper-class girls work."

The 18-year-old remembers mom's "boyfriend" (pimp) who made mom work
everyday and who got mom pregnant with Kayla's little sister.

Mom was an alcoholic, a drug addict and a prostitute for 21 years.

By six, Kayla had taken on the mother role. She went to 21 different schools.

In mom's escort agency, there was a back room with a futon, small TV
and VHS player where the kids watched Beetlejuice and waited until she
was done working.

One night, when Kayla was about 10, mom was raped, strangled and left
to die -- but she survived.

Kayla was 12 when she was molested. She was 13 when mom -- in another
attack -- was raped, sodomized, beaten, burned and choked. Kayla found
the police photos.

Kayla became suicidal. She cut off all her hair. At 16, she met a man
with whom she would have a son. He beat her. She took a stand.

Now Kayla and her son live in affordable housing. She's going to
school. She wants to be a social worker.

BRIDGET PERRIER

Perrier's son never had a proper bedtime and, young as he was, he knew why.

"Where do you get money from?" Tanner would ask her. "The bad men,"
she would say.

Perrier got out of jail three days before five-year-old Tanner died of
a terminal disease. His wish was that she not go back to work, and she
didn't. She had been turning tricks for 10 years, since she was 13.

"I made a decision, that was it. I was going to tell my story and I
was going to change the way people view women like me," the
33-year-old Ojibwa woman says.

In her previous life, Perrier was sexually exploited by a group-home
worker and a lawyer. She sold "survival sex." She watched friends die;
she watched friends vanish. She wanted to stop earlier, she says, but
there were no supports in place for her to do so.

Now she's raising 16-year-old Angel Wolfe, daughter of another couple,
as her own.

"When people see these missing, murdered women, they say, 'Oh, that
was low track, bottom-of-the-barrel women,' " Perrier says. "They were
moms; they were sisters; they were aunties; they were wives. They were
someone's daughter and we need to remember that."

JOHN FENN

When Fenn bought sex -- first monthly, then weekly -- he didn't just
pay with cash. It cost him his 25-year marriage and the love of his
two children.

Now, he teaches other johns about the realities of the sex trade as
the director of Toronto's John School, where men who buy sex go for
redemption.

Fenn has seen johns from all cultures, all religions, all walks of
life: Truck drivers, doctors -- no, doctors don't buy prostitutes, he
jokes sarcastically.

He's heard of what they've lost, the times they vowed never do it
again and the times that they did do it again.

"I'm responsible today; I'm responsible for me; I'm responsible for
what I do," he says.


TAMARA.CHERRY@...


Copyright � 2009 Toronto Sun All Rights Reserved

http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2009/11/30/11975521-sun.html

Oneindia, India


[11/30/2009]

Are Indian Hijras Becoming Dangerous?

Courtesy: Meera Paros


Stop your vehicle at major traffic signals in any of the Indian
metropolitan cities-Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore- and you will soon hear
loud claps. Yes, they are there to demand money. Just try to ignore
them as any other street beggars. You can hear the words that you have
never heard or imagined and witness some unpleasant scenes too.

Hijras (eunuchs) in India are asserting their rights in contrast to
the early years. Though it is agreeable from the humanitarian point of
view, there are arising some serious concerns behind it. They are
getting violent at times and causing traumas to other citizens.

There was an instance at the Bangalore Majestic bus stand. An MBA
student was on his way back to his home at Mysore with heavy
backpacks. In an accident he touched a hijra who was standing next to
him. Very soon he was surrounded by a group of bullying Hijras who had
extracted a reasonable amount from him.

Another family in Mumbai had to go through a mental turmoil after the
birth of a son born on the fifteenth year of their marriage. The
Hijras threatened to literally take away the baby, if the family
doesn�t pay the money as demanded by them. It seems the money is meant
to celebrate the birth of their son.

At Delhi, a group of youngsters found out that all that the Hijras
have to do to make money is to clap nicely. They liked the idea and
wore a sari, kajol, lipstick and make up to clap near the signals. As
they deserve, the Hijra gang very soon beat them up.

I don�t deny the fact that Hijras too have the rights as any other
Indian citizen. However as they start to become dangerous their
situation will be at a risk than on the expanding stage. Indian
Government should consider this as a serious issue than putting it
behind the stacks to explode.


�Copyright Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

http://living.oneindia.in/expressions/personal-expressions/2009/india-hijra-eunu\
chs-301109.html

FOX 9 News, MN, USA


Woman's Long Lost Dad Is a Woman

Updated: Sunday, 29 Nov 2009, 2:23 PM CST
Published : Sunday, 29 Nov 2009, 2:23 PM CST

By MIKE BRODY


(MYFOX NATIONAL) - A British woman who tracked down her long lost
father that she had never met was in for quite a shock when they
finally met -- he was now a she.

Emily Wallis, 22, managed to find Clive Harrison several years after
her mother told her the man who had raised her was not her real
�father, according to the Mirror
<http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/11/29/woman-finds-long-lost-dad-b\
ut-now-he-s-a-laydee-115875-21858147/>
.

Her mother described Wallis' biological father as an "Italian
Stallion." She said he was a tattooed boxer who had moved to
�Australia before she could tell him that she was pregnant.

But when Wallis finally met Harrison he was in the process of
transforming himself into a woman and called himself Chloe.

"Chloe was squeezed into a silver dress and wearing make-up and a wig.
I had no idea what to do so I said, 'You look better than me � and I
really like your shoes.'"

Wallis said she had hoped her mother and real father might get back
together, but all that changed after she met Chloe. But Wallis wasn't
angry, she was happy to finally know her real father.

"We hugged for ages and couldn't stop crying. Then I noticed we had
the same chin. Chloe kept saying she was sorry," Wallis said. "He
looked glamorous and I was surprised by how feminine he was in a wig
and silver dress."

Wallis added that she was proud of Chloe and will be at her hospital
bedside when she has the full sex change operation.

In August, British boxer Rob Newbiggin said he "lost every friend he
had" after revealing he was planning on undergoing a sex change
<http://boxing.fanhouse.com/2009/08/03/boxer-rob-newbiggin-lost-every-friend-aft\
er-revealing-sex-chan/>
.


(c) 2009 Fox Television Stations, Inc., and its related entities. All
rights reserved.

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/offbeat/dpgo-Womans-Long-Lost-Dad-Is-a-W\
oman-mb-200911291259526238897

Guardian, UK


Uganda considers death sentence for gay sex in bill before parliament

� Minimum penalty is life in jail, under anti-homosexuality bill
� US evangelists are main activists behind measure

Xan Rice in Kampala

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 November 2009 20.28 GMT


As a gay Ugandan, Frank Mugisha has endured insults from strangers,
hate messages on his phone, police harassment and being outed in a
tabloid as one of the country's "top homos". That may soon seem like
the good old days.

Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of
having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before
Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial
offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the
"victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.

Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to
police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail � a scenario
that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt.Ugandans
breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.

"The bill is haunting us," said Mugisha, 25, chairman of Sexual
Minorities Uganda <http://www.sexualminoritiesuganda.org/> , a
coalition of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex
groups that will all be banned under the law. "If this passes we will
have to leave the country."

Human rights groups within and outside Uganda have condemned the
proposed legislation, which is designed to strengthen colonial-era
laws that already criminalise gay sex. The issue threatened to
overshadow the Commonwealth heads of government meeting that ended in
Trinidad and Tobagotoday, with the UK and Canada both expressing
strong concerns. Ahead of the meeting Stephen Lewis, a former UN envoy
on Aids in Africa, said the law "makes a mockery of Commonwealth
principles" and has "a taste of fascism" about it.

But within Uganda deeply-rooted homophobia, aided by a US-linked
evangelical campaign alleging that gay men are trying to "recruit"
schoolchildren, and that homosexuality is a habit that can be "cured",
has ensured widespread public support for the bill.

President Yoweri Museveni appeared to add his backing earlier this
month, warning youths in Kampala that he had heard that "European
homosexuals are recruiting in Africa", and saying gay relationships
were against God's will.

"We used to say Mr and Mrs, but now it is Mr and Mr. What is that
now?" he said. In a interview with the Guardian, James Nsaba Buturo,
the minister of state for ethics and integrity, said the government
was determined to pass the legislation, ideally before the end of
2009, even if meant withdrawing from international treaties and
conventions such as the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights,
and foregoing donor funding.

"We are talking about anal sex. Not even animals do that," Butoro
said, adding that he was personally caring for six "former
homosexuals" who had been traumatised by the experience. "We believe
there are limits to human rights."

Homosexuality has always been a taboo subject in Uganda, and is
considered by many to be an affront both to local culture and
religion, which plays a strong role in family life. This negative
stigma and the real threat of job loss means that no public
personality has ever "come out".

Even local HIV campaigns � which have been heavily influenced by the
evangelical church with a bias towards abstinence over condom use �
have deliberately avoided targeting gay men for both prevention and
access to treatment.

"This means many gay men here think Aids is a non-issue, which is so
dangerous," said Mugisha, who together with a few colleagues, has
risked arrest by agitating in recent years for a change in the HIV
policy.

At the same time, some influential religious leaders have warned about
the dangers of accepting liberal western attitudes towards
homosexuality.

Both opponents and supporters agree that the impetus for the bill came
in March during a seminar in Kampala to "expose the truth behind
homosexuality and the homosexual agenda".

The main speakers were three US evangelists: Scott Lively, Don
Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge. Lively is a noted anti-gay activist
and president of Defend the Family International, a conservative
Christian association, while Schmierer is an author who works with
"homosexual recovery groups". Brundidge is a "sexual reorientation
coach" at the International Healing Foundation.

The seminar was organised by Stephen Langa, a Ugandan electrician
turned pastor who runs the Family Life Network in Kampala and has been
spreading the message that gays are targeting schoolchildren for
"conversion". "They give money to children to recruit schoolmates �
once you have two children, the whole school is gone," he said in an
interview. Asked if there had been any court case to prove this was
happening, he replied: "No, that's why this law is needed."

After the conference Langa arranged for a petition signed by thousands
of concerned parents to be delivered to parliament in April. Within a
few months the bill had been drawn up.

Christopher Senyonjo, a retired Anglican bishop, said the bill would
push Uganda towards being a police state. "This law is being
influenced by some evangelicals abroad," he said. "There's a lack of
understanding about homosexuality � it's not recruitment, it's
orientation."

But among religious leaders of all faiths his is a rare voice. Langa,
the pastor, said the only thing lacking in the legislation was a
clause for "rehabilitation" of homosexuals, whom he "loves" and wants
to help. Gay rights had the potential to destroy civilisation, as the
west could soon find out, he said.

"As one parent told me: 'We would rather live in grass huts with our
morality than in skyscrapers among homosexuals'."


� Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/uganda-death-sentence-gay-sex

Bilerico, USA


Book Review: Transmigration

Filed by: Dr. Jillian T. Weiss

November 28, 2009 12:00 PM


Poet Joy Ladin's
<http://sheepmeadowpress.com/pages/author%20pages/ladin.html> new
collection, Transmigration
<http://www.amazon.com/Transmigration-Joy-Ladin/dp/1931357692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8\
&s=books&qid=1259330542&sr=1-1>
, will soon be out from Sheep Meadow Press.

This is from her poem Secrets:

     You discover them every day,

     Leaning toward you, trying not to laugh. As guilty
     Of the truth you never told
     As of the truth you share, your face

     Is huge with secrets
     You pretend to avoid
     ...
     You think you are passing

     As a normal person,
     Being silly, talking on the phone, giving
     The gift of pain
     ...
     Your friends see you
     As completely lost, a menorah of need and love

(Click here for more
<http://www.fringemagazine.org/lit/longer-poetry/secrets/> .)
"Transmigration" is a word that suggests transmigration of souls
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmigration_of_the_soul> , and this
poetry reveals the pain of the soul going through it. We all have
experienced change that hurts, and have sometimes lived to see the
humor it in. That's why this volume spoke to me so deeply.

It helps that Joy Ladin is a transgender woman who understands change
at the molecular level. She's also got more poetry awards and
publications than I can comfortably list here. She'll be reading her
poetry next week at the new NYC gallery 25CPW <http://www.25cpw.org/>
. More exquisiteness after the jump.

Every adolescent poet writes of pain, but its complexities are not
easily expressed. "Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy
to those who feel," said Horace Walpole, and truer words were never
spoken. But rarely do we get a glimpse of both at the same time like
this.

     Somewhere between male and female

     The soul gets lost
     Where are you calls the mother of the soul
     But the soul never had a mother

     Get back here this instant the father demands
     But somewhere between male and female
     The soul failed to be fathered

All this talk of souls and pain can benumb one's sense of empathy.
Tragedy is so wearing, it even wears itself out. For those of us who
have considered suicide, I think this expresses the feeling in
retrospect spot on:

     The Soul is a Threat to Herself and Others

     The soul has decided it would best
     For all concerned

     If she didn't exist.
     This is harder than it seems.

     Bullets mean nothing to the soul.
     She has no veins to open.

And yet, this is not merely gallows humor. The humor is not jokey or
ham-fisted. It's the best kind of humor -- unintended and yet sweet,
as in revealing a tender side that makes one want to draw your two
year old near and laugh through the tears at the distress.

     Adolescent

     You lie awake rubbing against the future
     The pain is mutual
     The future doesn't love you either

It's not always humorous. Sometimes it opens a hole in your chest, but
in a way that you makes you feel your own humanity.

     When you leave your children

     To become yourself,

     Your self leaves

     To become your child. Calls to ask

     When you'll come home.

     Sobs when you answer.

     Your self will never understand

     The emptiness

     You couldn't bear

This is the uber-key lime pie of poetry, made with real key limes and
found in a little bakery in Key West, not that synthetic stuff you
find in Costco. The reading will be held on Tuesday, December 8 at 7
pm. I can't wait.

[Image
<http://www.bilerico.com/2009/11/Joy%20Ladin%20poetry%20reading%20poster.jpg.
]


Filed under: Books & Authors | Transgender & Intersex

Tags: Joy Ladin | New York | poet | poetry | Sheep Meadow Press |
Transmigration | Yeshiva University


http://www.bilerico.com/2009/11/book_review_transmigration.php

Los Angeles Times, CA, USA


Mike Penner dies at 52; Los Angeles Times sportswriter

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


[Photo]


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
<http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oldmike26apr26%2C0%2C2709943.story>
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
<http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-daniels27-2007apr27%2C0%2C6684546.story>
, 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.


keith.thursby@...


Copyright � 2009, The Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-mike-penner29-2009nov29,0,3898738.story

The Los Angeles Independent, CA, USA


Mike Penner, transsexual L.A. Times sportswriter, dies at 52

By WIRE SERVICES

Story Published: Nov 28, 2009 at 5:54 PM PST
Story Updated: Nov 28, 2009 at 9:08 PM PST


[Photo: Christine Daniels]


Longtime Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner, who drew
international attention when he announced he was transsexual, has
died, the paper announced Saturday.

The 52-year-old Penner was pronounced dead Friday night at Brotman
Medical Center in Culver City, a Los Angeles County Department of
Coroner's official told The Times in a story reported on its Web site.

The cause of death has not been determined, but suicide is suspected,
The Times reported.

In a 2007 first-person story headlined, "Old Mike, New Christine,''
Penner wrote, "I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than
40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching
therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words. I realize
many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.

"That's OK. I understand that I am not the only one in transition as I
move from Mike to Christine. Everyone who knows me and my work will be
transitioning as well. That will take time. And that's all right. To
borrow a piece of well-worn sports parlance, we will take it one day
at a time.''

Penner continued to write the "Totally Random'' column for The Times
sports section under the new byline Christine Daniels and a blog,
"Woman in Progress,'' for the paper's Web site about his transition
from a man to a woman.

Daniel was his middle name at birth.

Reaction was generally positive, with The Times reporting that she had
received 538 e-mails by the end of the day the story was published.
Only two were negative.

"Writing that piece, which I didn't initially want to write, ended up
becoming one of the best things I have ever done," Daniels told Times
media columnist James Rainey. "And a day I dreaded all my life has
ended up being one of the best days I've ever had."

A transsexual, unlike a transvestite, undergoes medical procedures to
change from one sex to the other, but in October 2008, he returned to
writing under his birth name.

Penner was born Oct. 10, 1957, in Inglewood and graduated from Western
High School in Anaheim and Cal State Fullerton. He began his career
with the Anaheim Bulletin, where he was a sports reporter and sports
editor.  He joined The Times' Orange County Edition in 1983 as a staff
writer, covering high school sports.

Penner had covered the California Angels, tennis, the Olympics and
soccer for The Times and been a columnist for its Orange County
edition.

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

The paper's sports editor, Mike James, called Penner "one of the most
talented writers I've ever worked with, capable of reporting on any
number of topics with great wit and style.

"He was a very gentle man who will be greatly missed,'' James said.
"This is a tragic ending and a difficult time for all of us who knew
him.''

Penner was especially fond of soccer, both as a spectator and
participant. He organized a team mainly of sports reporters and
editors, Scribes FC, which won championships in Monterey Park, Long
Beach and Placentia, according to Scott French, a teammate and former
sports reporter for the Press- Telegram.

Penner played central defender, wearing the No. 6 because it was worn
by his favorite player from his favorite team, Tony Adams, a central
defender for England's Arsenal FC.

"Mike was the heart of that team,'' French said.

Penner was also a fan of punk and post-punk music and the English
post- punk band Joy Division, French said.

Penner is survived by his brother, John, a copy editor at The Times,
and his former wife, Lisa Dillman, a Los Angeles Times sports
reporter, according to The Times.

Funeral arrangements are pending.


Copyright � 2009 The Los Angles Independent. All rights reserved.

http://www.laindependent.com/news/77897457.html

The Associated Press, USA


[11/29/2009]

LA Times sports writer Mike Penner dead at 52

By JOHN ROGERS (AP)


LOS ANGELES � Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner, who
announced two years ago he was a transsexual and was changing his name
to Christine Daniels, has died at age 52, the newspaper reported
Saturday.

Penner was pronounced dead Friday at a hospital, said Los Angeles
County coroner's Lt. Brian Elias. He said coroner's officials hadn't
yet performed an autopsy or issued an official cause of death.

The Times said in a story Saturday Penner was believed to have
committed suicide. Penner had returned to using the name Mike Penner
last year and was a Times columnist at the time of his death.

In 25 years with the newspaper, Penner covered Major League Baseball,
the National Football League, the Olympics, World Cup soccer, tennis
and other sports. A fluid writer with a sharp wit, he worked at
various times as a reporter, columnist and the newspaper's Los Angeles
Angels beat writer.

"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.
He was a very gentle man who will be greatly missed. This is a tragic
ending and a difficult time for all of us who knew him," said Times
Sports Editor Mike James.

Times Editor Russ Stanton said Penner "respected our readers a great
deal, enough to share with them his very personal journey."

Penner revealed that journey on April 26, 2007, when he wrote a story
for the Times headlined "Old Mike, New Christine," in which he
revealed he was taking a few weeks vacation and when he returned to
his job as a sports writer it would be as a woman named Christine
Daniels.

"I am a transsexual sports writer," Penner wrote. "It has taken more
than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching
therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words."

The announcement sent shock waves through the sports world, but
Penner's bosses were supportive.

As Penner himself noted, when he revealed his plans to Times Associate
Editor Randy Harvey, who was then the newspaper's sports editor,
Harvey "leaned back in his chair, looked through his office window to
scan the newsroom and mused, 'Well, no one can ever say we don't have
diversity on this staff.'"

After his vacation, Penner did indeed return as Christine Daniels, not
only continuing to report on sports for the Times but also authoring a
blog called "Woman in Transition," detailing his experiences.

Making public the transition, he once said, was the hardest thing he
had ever done.

"How do you go about sharing your most important truth, one you spent
a lifetime trying to keep deeply buried, to a world that has grown
familiar and comfortable with your facade?" he asked.

At the time of his announcement he was married, and he declined to
discuss his family situation. He said he was undergoing female hormone
treatments but declined to say whether he planned to undergo a
sex-change operation.

However, he eventually dropped the "Woman in Transition" blog and
returned to writing under the name Mike Penner.

At the time of his death he was writing a column for the Times called
Totally Random that focused on offbeat, lighthearted and historic
moments in sports. His last one appeared in the paper on Nov. 15.

Penner is survived by his brother, John, a copy editor for the Times.
Funeral plans were pending.

Copyright � 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


�2009 Google

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBnQ9zzsYd5gHySa7ILztNQClvFAD9\
C911HG0

AFP, France


[11/29/2009]

Journalist who made headlines with gender struggle dies

(AFP)


LOS ANGELES � Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner, who
attracted international attention in 2007 when he announced he was a
transsexual, has died at the age of 52, the newspaper reported on its
website Saturday.

Brian Elias of the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Penner was
pronounced dead Friday at a hospital. He said coroner's officials had
not yet performed an autopsy or issued an official cause of death,
although the Times reported that the death was believed to be suicide.

Penner drew both support and criticism when he announced in the
newspaper in 2007 that he had long struggled with his gender identity
and had decided to live as a woman.

He began working under the byline Christine Daniels and blogged about
his experience.

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

Eventually, however, Penner returned to his Mike Penner byline. He
stayed with the Times, writing a column called "Totally Random".

"He was one of the most talented writers I've ever worked with," said
Times Sports Editor Mike James. "He was a gentle man, a kind man. It's
just a tragedy."

Copyright � 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.


�2009 Google

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5godZWeApIXxXoASfTaC0VpP5jmoA

LGBT POV, USA


BREAKING: LA Times sports columnist Mike Penner/Christine Daniels found dead

Karen Ocamb

2009-11-28


The Los Angeles Times just reported
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/veteran-times-sportswriter-mike-p\
enner-dead.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lanow\
blog+%28L.A.+Now%29&utm_content=Twitter>
  that veteran sportswriter Mike Penner  - who announced in 2007  that
he was transsexual and publicly transitioned into Christine Daniels –
only to return to The Times in 2008 as Mike Penner – was found dead in
his home today. Suicide is suspected.

Here’s The Times report:

     Mike Penner, the veteran Los Angeles Times sportswriter who made
international headlines in 2007 when he announced
<http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oldmike26apr26,0,2709943.story>
he was transsexual and began working under the byline “Christine
Daniels,” has died.

     Colleagues said today that Penner was found dead at his Los
Angeles home and that suicide was the suspected cause of death. He was
52.

     “He was one of the most talented writers I’ve ever worked with,”
said Times Sports Editor Mike James, adding that Penner covered
numerous beats including the National Football League and sports media
during his more than two-decade-long career at the paper.

     “He was a gentle man, a kind man,” James said. “It’s just a
tragedy.”

     Penner garnered much support and some criticism when he announced
he was a “transsexual sportswriter.”

     “During my 23 years with The Times’ sports department, I have held
a wide variety of roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat
reporter. Olympics writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL
columnist. Recent keeper of the Morning Briefing flame. Today I leave
for a few weeks’ vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet
another incarnation. As Christine,” he wrote. “I am a transsexual
sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and
hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the
courage to type those words. I realize many readers and colleagues and
friends will be shocked to read them.”

Penner ended up blogging about
his transition and later wrote a Times sports blog.

     In 2008, he began using the “Mike Penner” byline again.

     The Times will have a full obituary soon.

Here is that original column on April 26, 2007
<http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oldmike26apr26,0,2709943.story>
announcing Mike’s transition to Christine:

     FIRST PERSON

     Old Mike, new Christine

     By Mike Penner

     Times Staff Writer

     April 26, 2007

     During my 23 years with The Times’ sports department, I have held
a wide variety of roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat
reporter. Olympics writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL
columnist. Recent keeper of the Morning Briefing flame.

     Today I leave for a few weeks’ vacation, and when I return, I will
come back in yet another incarnation.

     As Christine.

     I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years,
a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me
to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and
colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.

     That’s OK. I understand that I am not the only one in transition
as I move from Mike to Christine.

     Everyone who knows me and my work will be transitioning as well.
That will take time. And that’s all right. To borrow a piece of
well-worn sports parlance, we will take it one day at a time.

     Transsexualism is a complicated and widely misunderstood medical
condition. It is a natural occurrence — unusual, no question, but
natural.

     Recent studies have shown that such physiological factors as
genetics and hormonal fluctuations during pregnancy can significantly
affect how our brains are “wired” at birth.

     As extensive therapy and testing have confirmed, my brain was wired female.

     A transgender friend provided the best and simplest explanation I
have heard: We are born with this, we fight it as long as we can, and
in the end it wins.

     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.

     When you reach the point when one gender causes heartache and
unbearable discomfort, and the other brings more joy and fulfillment
than you ever imagined possible, it shouldn’t take two tons of bricks
to fall in order to know what to do.

It didn’t with me.

     With me, all it took was 1.99 tons.

For more years than I care to
count, I was scared to death over the prospect of writing a story such
as this one. It was the most frightening of all the towering mountains
of fear I somehow had to confront and struggle to scale.

     How do you go about sharing your most important truth, one you
spent a lifetime trying to keep deeply buried, to a world that has
grown familiar and comfortable with your façade?

     To a world whose knowledge of transsexuals usually begins and ends
with Jerry Springer’s exploitation circus?

     Painfully and reluctantly, I began the coming-out process a few
months ago. To my everlasting amazement, friends and colleagues almost
universally have been supportive and encouraging, often breaking the
tension with good-natured doses of humor.

     When I told my boss Randy Harvey, he leaned back in his chair,
looked through his office window to scan the newsroom and mused,
“Well, no one can ever say we don’t have diversity on this staff.

     “

When I told Robert, the soccer-loving lad from Wales who cuts
my hair, why I wanted to start growing my hair out, he had to take a
seat, blink hard a few times and ask, “Does this mean you don’t like
football anymore, Mike?”

     No, I had to assure him, I still love soccer. I will continue to
watch it. I hope to continue to coach it.

     My days of playing in men’s over-30 rec leagues, however, could be
numbered.

     When I told Eric, who has played sweeper behind my plodding
stopper for more than a decade, he brightly suggested, “Well, you’re
still good for co-ed!”

     I broke the news to Tim by beginning, “Are you familiar with the
movie ‘Transamerica’?” Tim nodded.

     “Well, welcome to my life,” I said.

     Tim seemed more perplexed than most as I nervously launched into my story.

     Finally, he had to explain, “I thought you said ‘Trainspotting.’ I
thought you were going to tell me you’re a heroin addict.”

People
have asked if transitioning will affect my writing. And if so, how?

     All I can say at this point is that I am now happier, more focused
and more energized when I sit behind a keyboard. The wicked writer’s
block that used to reach up and torture me at some of the worst
possible times imaginable has disappeared.

     My therapist says this is what happens when a transsexual finally
“integrates” and the ever-present white noise in the background
dissipates.

     That should come as good news to my editors: far fewer blown deadlines.

     So now we all will take a short break between bylines. “Mike
Penner” is out, “Christine Daniels” soon will be taking its place.
From here, it feels like a big improvement. I hope with time you will
agree.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Here’s my interview with Christine for IN Los Angeles
<http://www.frontierspublishing.com/IN_archive/1007/special_reports/sprt2.html>
magazine:

     Mike Penner loved uniforms. Always did. As a 10-year-old boy who
loved to draw, he was enthralled by the colors of big league football
jerseys—the red Kansas City Chiefs, the Oakland Raiders with their
“very manly” steely colors of black and silver, the San Diego Chargers
powder blue. He wanted to see more so he started watching football on
television, and then started writing about what he saw.

     His therapist joked that those colorful uniforms are what made him
one of the most well-respected sports writers at the Los Angeles Times
for the past 23 years.

     On April 26, Penner came out as Christine Daniels. “During my 23
years with the Times’ sports department, I have held a wide variety of
roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat reporter. Olympics
writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL columnist. Recent keeper of
the Morning Briefing flame,” wrote Penner. “Today I leave for a few
weeks’ vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another
incarnation—as Christine.

     “I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years,
a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me
to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and
colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them. That’s OK. I
understand that I am not the only one in transition as I move from
Mike to Christine.”

     To help her family, friends and fans better understand her
transition, Daniels is blogging about it on the L.A. Times blog site,
latimesblogs.latimes.com/womaninprogress.

     “It feels like a rebirth,” Daniels told IN Los Angeles during a
May 7 interview infused with giddy liberation. “Everybody has been so
nice,” including the Times, which has handled her coming out “better
than sainthood.”

     Daniels has not been alone in the process. For the past year she
has attended the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles in West
Hollywood under the pastoral care of Rev. Neil Thomas and his
spiritual team who, Daniels said, “have been instrumental” in her
transition. “In the first place, they have never seen me as Mike. They
just accepted me as another woman” and have been “so excited and
supportive about my coming out.”

     Three days after her public coming out, Rev. Randall Besta
preached about the apostle Simon raising Tabitha from the dead. For
Daniels and the other MCC parishioners, the sermon was more than a
profound metaphor about spiritual and emotional numbness.

     “As an example of someone coming back from spiritual death and the
impact we, as a Christian community, can have, I highlighted Christine
Daniels,” Besta told IN. “The love God has for Christine was evident
through every person who was there on her journey, especially those in
the church who made it clear there is not death inside her, just life
that was screaming to come out.”

     Daniels cried and the congregation applauded. At the end of the
service, Thomas invited the transgender members to come forward for a
group prayer.

     “We all had streaky faces,” Daniels said. “I was balling like a
baby.”

     Daniels, a Libra, was born in Inglewood in 1957.

     Asked when she first knew she was born in the “wrong” body,
Daniels said, “I don’t know if it was that clear cut. When I was about
4 or 5, I can remember wishing to be a girl.” She told her boy cousins
who “were not demeaning or derisive at all. They were just curious.”
She demonstrated how she would wear a dress, put ribbons in her hair
and walk. “I wished the rest of my socialization had been like that.
We had a great time.” She also had a “sissy” friend who was invited
over to play with GI Joes and, instead, the two played with Barbie
Dolls.

     Daniels always felt uncomfortable, out of place, excruciatingly
shy. She did the typical “guy things” like build models. But she was
also very creative and wanted to be a cartoonist like Peanuts creator,
Charles Shultz.

     “I remember drawing a lot of pictures of women and girls that I
wanted to look like—Ann Margret was a big one,” Daniels said. She also
drew science fiction comic strips starring herself and a friend as
secret agents who took a potion and changed into women to work
undercover. After they solved the crime, her friend changed back, but
Daniels didn’t—and “lived happily ever after.”

     When she was 12, her father moved the family to Anaheim where she
was inculcated with a strict Catholic upbringing. Living with a “huge
secret” was not easy.

     “I needed to fit in,” Daniels said. “It didn’t come easily for me.
It was a learned behavior. I remember in third or fourth grade walking
down the hall and turning my books the way I felt comfortable with
them—carrying them against my chest.”

     The boys laughed and pointed because Daniels was carrying her
books “like a girl.”

     “That was a big seminal moment for me,” Daniels said. She started
studying male and female behavioral differences, and “I got an
exaggerated sense of the differences. I think all transsexuals do that
in order to fit in … I just created this little vault, and that’s
where I buried everything—the manners, the gestures, the desires,
dreams, hopes, fears. And it’s just buried away because you never want
anyone to find that out about you, because you don’t think you’ll be
able to function if people know the real you. The fallout would be too
great.”

     That was then; this is now. “When I dress as Christine, I have a
million options. I love that,” she said. No more drab. Now there’s
lots of color.

     No more divided soul. “When I can present as Christine and I have
people call me ‘ma’am’ and see me as a woman—it’s very important for
us to be seen and treated as women —I feel whole.”

     And finally free.


http://www.lgbtpov.com/2009/11/breaking-la-times-sports-columnist-mike-pennerchr\
istine-daniels-found-dead/

Joe. My. God., USA


In 2007 Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner announced
<http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oldmike26apr26,0,2709943.story>
in his column that after a vacation, he would be returning to work as
Christine Daniels, a transition that was met with surprising support
from the sports world and Penner's colleagues. But in a decision
commonly called "transgender regret," Penner revealed
<http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/02/mike-christine-mike.html>  in
February of this year that he was now once again Mike. Today the LA
Times reports that Penner has committed suicide
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/veteran-times-sportswriter-mike-p\
enner-dead.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lanow\
blog+%28L.A.+Now%29&utm_content=Twitter>
.

     Colleagues said today that Penner was found dead at his Los
Angeles home and that suicide was the suspected cause of death. He was
52. "He was one of the most talented writers I've ever worked with,"
said Times Sports Editor Mike James, adding that Penner covered
numerous beats including the National Football League and sports media
during his more than two-decade-long career at the paper. "He was a
gentle man, a kind man," James said. "It's just a tragedy."

I imagine that the enemies of transgender rights will now attempt to
spin Penner's tragic end into some kind of "proof" that all trans
people are suicidal or mentally ill.

(Via - LGBT POV
<http://www.lgbtpov.com/2009/11/breaking-la-times-sports-columnist-mike-pennerch\
ristine-daniels-found-dead/>
)

Labels: Christine Daniels, journalism, Mike Penner, obituary, sports,
suicide, transgender issues


posted by Joe


http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/11/trans-la-times-sports-columnist-mike.html

The Aurora Sentinel, CO, USA


Film explores death of transgendered Colo. teen

BY JOE HANEL
Durango Herald

Published: Saturday, November 28, 2009 6:42 AM MST


DENVER | Fred Martinez was anything but simple.

He was, at various moments, a boy, a girl, a Navajo, a
Montezuma-Cortez High School student, gay, transgendered, "nadleehi."

In June 2001, in a ravine just south of Cortez, he became a murder victim.

Now, he's the subject of a movie, and, if the filmmakers have their
way, he will become a window onto a view of gender that is at once new
to American society and older than America itself.

"Two Spirits: Sexuality, Gender and the Murder of Fred Martinez"
premiered Nov. 21 at the Starz Film Festival in Denver. Filmmakers
plan to take it to southwest Colorado, and they are in talks with the
Durango Independent Film Festival. They haven't scheduled a showing
yet.

The makers of "Two Spirits" hope the movie will shine the spotlight on
Fred and his identity the way his death never did.

"There really is a redemptive piece of this, which is why we were
interested in making the film," said Lydia Nibley, the director.

Martinez's mother, Pauline Mitchell, is one of the main characters in
the one-hour documentary. She attended the premiere and took the stage
afterward, wearing a rainbow pride flag pin and holding back tears as
the audience of 500 applauded.

Fred showed his differences as a child, Mitchell says in the film. He
wanted her purses. He wore makeup.

As a teenager, Fred resisted categorizing himself, calling himself gay
and transgendered, dressing as both a boy and a girl. He told his
mother he wanted to be both.

She told him there was a word for him in Navajo � "ndleehi." It's the
third of the four Navajo genders, used for a person with a male body
and female character traits.

But Mitchell knew little else about it. Most Navajo lost the concept
of multiple genders, along with large parts of their culture, when
their children were shipped off to government boarding schools
starting in the late 1800s, said Richard LaFortune of Minneapolis, an
organizer of "Two Spirits" gatherings.

LaFortune's mission is to recover that lost history. He helps organize
an annual gathering that coined the English phrase "two spirits" to
convey a concept found in most native languages.

Native people had gay marriage long before European settlement of the
continent, he said. From his point of view, traditional values make
room for a broad range of gender identities.

Not only that, two-spirit people usually were given honored places in
the community, serving as counselors and caretakers of orphans.

"You stand at the crossroads of two points of discrimination. It's a
dangerous place to be. You stand at the crossroads of two genders, and
it can be a gift," LaFortune says in the film.

The film's director hopes the idea won't be raided by the non-Indian community.

"We want to be inspired by this without appropriating it," Nibley
said. "What we need to make sure doesn't happen is a bunch of white
people run around calling themselves two-spirited."

The last time Mitchell saw her son, he was leaving the house to go to
the Ute Mountain Roundup rodeo in Cortez. Five days later,
neighborhood kids found his body while playing outside. He was 16.

Gail Binkly, who at the time was a Cortez Journal editor, appears in
the movie to tell about the crime and the investigation.

Martinez was beaten to death with rocks. At the premiere, sniffles and
sighs were audible during the re-enacted murder scene.

Shaun Murphy of Farmington, N.M., pleaded guilty to second-degree
murder and got a 40-year prison sentence. Now 26, he will be eligible
for parole in October 2019, according to the Colorado Department of
Corrections.

Cathy Renna of New York City enters the film after Fred's murder.
Local activists called her in for her expertise on the aftermath of
hate crimes. Renna still remembers flying into Cortez that summer
afternoon.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'Why do I always have to go to these
beautiful places for such horrible things?'" Renna said.

Two years earlier, Renna was in Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of
Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was tied to a fencepost on the prairie
and beaten to death. His killing made national news and spawned a
famous play, "The Laramie Project."

But Renna had a lot to learn about the Fred Martinez case.

Nearly every one of the 200-plus native languages in North America
have words for more than two genders. Some have as many as nine, said
LaFortune.

Renna was used to the straightforward labels of her community, which
sums up its identity in a neat acronym � GLBT or LGBT, for gay,
lesbian, bisexual, transgendered.

"It brought a level of nuance to the case that I hadn't dealt with
before," Renna said.

Although the murder was covered extensively in the local news media,
national reporters seemed uninterested, Renna said. The Washington
Post did a big piece. There was a story in Teen People, and one in The
Advocate. But even much of the gay media didn't pay attention and
couldn't figure out how to describe Fred.

"It was a tremendous struggle to get both the media and the LGBT
community to pay attention to Fred's murder," Renna said.

The movie crew filmed most of the Cortez scenes in summer 2007. Local
people were supportive, Nibley said, and her film does not pick on
Cortez. Hate crimes happen everywhere, and there's nothing special
about Cortez that allowed it to happen here, Renna said.

"It's not Cortez's fault that Fred was killed," Renna said. "But there
are people in Cortez who were taught to hate, same as in Laramie, same
as in New York City, same as Puerto Rico, as we found out this week."

A gay Puerto Rican teenager, Jorge Steven Lopez, was found decapitated
on Nov. 13.

But nationally, and in Cortez, things are changing, Nibley said. The
school where Fred once was punished for wearing girls' shoes now has a
gender-neutral dress code. The police force is trained in gender
issues, she said.

Nibley, Renna and LaFortune took part in a panel discussion after the
Denver premiere.

LaFortune said the film of Fred's story shows the resiliency of both
native and two-spirit cultures.

"The words and values you see shining through the life of Fred
Martinez and his family is something that could not be extinguished by
the last remaining superpower in human history," LaFortune said. "It
speaks not only to the rightness of it, but to the truth of its
rightness."


Copyright � 2009 Aurora Sentinel. All rights reserved.

http://www.aurorasentinel.com/articles/2009/11/28/news/state_and_region/doc4b112\
68583244999794934.txt

Salt Lake Tribune, UT, USA


Transgender officer living his dream -- as a cop and a man

Bountiful police � 'We're glad he works here,' says chief.

By Rosemary Winters
The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated:11/28/2009 07:18:19 PM MST


[Photos]


As a child, Kerry Bell dreamed of growing up to become a policeman --
both a police officer and a man.

Becoming a cop was relatively simple -- Bell joined the Bountiful
Police Department 14 years ago. Becoming a man took more time.

Born female, Bell came out as transgender about a year and a half ago
and started a transition to a new life as a man. He always had felt
male, but did not think switching genders was a viable option until he
saw transgender people gaining wider acceptance, along with advances
in medical technology.

Surprisingly, the 42-year-old -- working in what many perceive as a
super-macho culture -- says he did not fret about telling the police
chief or his co-workers to start referring to him as "he," not "she."

"I wasn't worried about coming out at work," says Bell, who has had
hormone treatments and surgeries. "I've worked for Bountiful for 14
years. I know everybody I work with."

Although some employees have trouble remembering to use masculine
pronouns, Bountiful Police Chief Tom Ross says, "everyone's done a
great job of accepting Kerry and staying focused on why we're here in
the first place."

Bell, a corporal and SWAT member, is a "well-rounded police officer,"
Ross adds. "We're glad that he works here."

Some things about Bell's transition were easy. He did not have to wear
different clothes to work. Uniforms, he jokes, are exactly that
--uniform. His first and last name also stayed the same, although he
dropped a middle name, Ann, and changed the gender marker on his
driver license.

His "only anxiety," he says, was telling his parents, who divorced
when Bell was 2 years old. But his mother, his father and their
spouses were supportive.

"You have to accept your children for who they are," says his dad,
Terry Bell, who lives in Rockville near Zion National Park. "It's a
little difficult for me, after 40 years, to think of my daughter as a
son. That's hard. [But] it hasn't changed a thing about how I feel
about him as a person."

Now, Kerry Bell works to increase understanding between his two
worlds: law enforcement and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) community.

The relationship between the two communities has had ups and downs. A
police raid on a New York gay bar erupted into the 1969 Stonewall
riots, launching the modern gay-rights movement.

Far less hostility exists today -- homosexuality has been
decriminalized -- but many LGBT people remain wary of contacting the
cops, Bell says. Some worry about whether they will be treated with
respect. Others, who are in the closet, fear being outed.

Bell belongs to the LGBT Public Safety Committee, an informal group
with police representatives from Weber County to West Valley City that
has been working for nine years to bridge the gap.

The committee members help gay and transgender people understand
police procedures. They coach police on how to respond to cases of
same-sex domestic violence and gay cruising in parks. In fact, they
helped launch a successful Salt Lake City program that steers those
caught having sex in public places toward counseling, not jail. If the
violators do not repeat the offense for a year -- the vast majority
don't -- the charges are dropped.

That many LGBT officers now serve openly at several Utah
law-enforcement agencies speaks volumes to how far society has
progressed, says Salt Lake City Capt. Kyle Jones, a founding member of
the committee.

"Twenty years ago, they wouldn't have been [welcome]," says Jones, who
was inspired to get involved with the LGBT community after his son
came out as gay. "The current crop of officers, by and large, don't
give it a second thought."

Jones, along with other committee members, recruits potential new
officers at the annual Utah Pride Festival for the Salt Lake City
Police Department.

"Our department has tried for years to recruit from the populations
that we represent," Jones says. "Anywhere from 8 to 12 percent of
[Salt Lake City] is thought to be LGBT so we should have 8 to 12
percent of our cops who are LGBT."

Bell hopes being out can help "demystify" what it means to be transgender.

As a Davis County kid, Bell says he always felt like a boy. It was
something he didn't know how to express to his family. At age 6, he
gathered up all his dolls and gave them to a neighbor. He hated going
to church on Sunday because it meant he had to wear a dress.

"I thought God had just put me in the wrong body, and one day I'd wake
up and I'd be the way I was supposed to be," says Bell, a Salt Lake
City resident. "Of course, you reach an age where you realize that's
not going to happen."

At 16, Bell told his parents he was attracted to women after they
asked if he was gay. As a lesbian, Bell found a home in the LGBT
community. He also learned more about people who are transgender. He
looked into surgery at age 18 but decided the techniques were too
"barbaric."

More than 20 years later, he decided he was ready for the change.

"I'm a generally optimistic and happy person," he says. But "I've
probably felt better in the last year and a half than I have at any
point in my life."

His other joyful moments are similar to those for most police
officers: helping someone in need, maybe even hearing a "thank you."


rwinters@...


--
Transgender terms

Gender identity � One's internal, personal sense of being a man or a
woman or in between. It is different from sexual orientation, which
pertains to whether a person is attracted to men, women or both sexes.

Transgender � An umbrella term for people whose gender identity or
expression differs from their birth sex. The term may include people
who identify as transsexual or gender queer or who cross-dress.

Transsexual � A person whose gender identity is other than his or her
biological sex. Transsexuals may alter their bodies through hormones
or sex reassignment surgery to align their anatomy with their
self-perception.

Cross-dressing � To occasionally wear clothes traditionally associated
with people of the other sex. Cross-dressers usually are comfortable
with their birth sex and do not wish to change it. "Cross-dresser"
should not be used to describe someone who has transitioned to live
full time as the other sex or who intends to do so in the future.

Gender queer � A person who rejects the traditional two-gender system.
It is an evolving concept, but generally refers to those who do not
consider themselves solely masculine or feminine.

Transition � A complex, long-term process of altering one's birth sex.
It can include coming out, changing one's name and sex on legal
documents, hormone therapy and, possibly, surgical alteration of the
chest and/or genitals. Not all transgender individuals wish to
transition to the other sex.

Source: The Utah Pride Center and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
--


--
Kerry Bell

Age � 42.

Career � Police officer for Bountiful for 14 years.

Education � Graduated from Clearfield High and the Utah Law
Enforcement Academy at Weber State University.

Hometown � Bell grew up in West Point but now lives in Salt Lake City.
--


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More on the Web

For more information about Utah's LGBT Public Safety Committee, go to
http://tinyurl.com/ylrcg3c
--


http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_13886492

Santa Fe New Mexican, NM, USA


Transsexual faces charges of police impersonation

Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican

Posted: Tuesday, November 24, 2009


An Eldorado transsexual has been charged with impersonating a police
officer by stopping a car on Interstate 25, police say.

Randey Michelle "Mikeh" Gordon, 60, is a former male high-school art
teacher in Westchester County, N.Y., who caused a stir in 2000 when
she took the school year off with pay to have a sex-change operation.

Her story has been featured by the New York Daily News, Fox News and
conservative Christian publications.

Gordon did not return a message to her phone in Eldorado on Tuesday.

According to the state police, a Santa Fe County grand jury last week
returned an indictment against Gordon for impersonating a police
officer, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless driving.

State police spokesman Lt. Eric Garcia said Gordon was not arrested
because the District Attorney's Office wanted to present the charges
to a grand jury first. Garcia said he expects a jury trial soon will
be scheduled in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court for Gordon.

Last summer, Garcia said, police heard that a "person in women's
clothes who was very obviously a male" was parking a police-like
vehicle along I-25, pointing a radar gun at cars and sometimes yelling
at the drivers with a bullhorn.

On Aug. 13, Gordon pulled over Ralph Lew-Lee of Eldorado, whom Gordon
claimed to have clocked at 105 mph, Garcia said. He said Gordon was
driving a black Nissan Titan with a police decal, flashing blue
emergency lights and other police equipment.

Garcia said Lew-Lee initially thought Gordon was a tribal police
officer, so when he pulled over on Old Pecos Trail after taking that
exit, he asked Gordon for identification and Gordon refused. Garcia
said Gordon was not wearing a police officer's uniform, but was in
civilian women's clothing and was armed with a Glock pistol which
Gordon "grabbed" when Lew-Lee got out of his car.

A state police officer later arrived and spoke to both Lew-Lee and
Gordon. Garcia said Gordon told the officer that she � "the suspect
likes to be called she" � had been a police officer in White Plains,
N.Y., for 18 years. However, a check with that department determined
Gordon had been a volunteer in the police auxiliary there from 1979 to
1986, Garcia said.

"The reason we are taking such a serious look at this case is that we
can't have a bunch of people out there doing their own thing," Garcia
said. "If they want to become police officers, that's why we have
academies, that's why we have programs in place for mounted patrolmen
and auxiliary officers. If that's what they want to do, they can. ...
But, please, allow the commissioned officers and deputies to do what
they've got to do and try not to intervene."


Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@....


�2009, The Santa Fe New Mexican and MediaSpan

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Story/Transsexual-faces-charges-of-police-imper\
sonation



[Thanks to PK for passing along this article.]