Sports Columnist: 'I
Am a Transsexual'
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web, April 26, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- A veteran
sports writer for the Los Angeles Times said in his column Thursday that he is a
transsexual.
Mike Penner told readers of his struggle to embrace his gender, and said when he
returns from vacation in a few weeks he will be known as Christine Daniels.
He did not say whether he was having surgery or why he's changing his last name.
''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 49-year-old Penner said his brain has been ''wired female'' and he's tried
to fight off the urge to change sexes. He called writing a story about his
sexuality 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 facade?'' Penner asked.
Penner, who is married to another Los Angeles Times writer, said he started
coming out about two months ago by telling his boss, his barber and a soccer
teammate, and that he now feels happier and healthier.
''Mike Penner has been an exemplary contributor to the Los Angeles Times sports
pages for over two decades and today's column is no exception,'' Randy Harvey,
the newspaper's sports editor, said in a statement. ''The decision to go
public cannot have been an easy one and, while we do not make a habit of
commenting on the personal and private lives of our journalists, we do look
forward to continuing our relationship into the future.''
John Amaechi, the first NBA player to publicly come out of the closet as being
gay, said he read Penner's column Thursday after returning from a speaking
engagement in Berkeley at the University of California.
''It's incredibly bold and far more courageous than anything I could have
done,'' said Amaechi, who spent five seasons in the NBA. ''I commend
him.''
Penner has spent more than 20 years at the Los Angeles Times and has covered the
Olympics, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and has served as the Times' sports
media critic.
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