Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, that’s now become a major holiday season shopping day, has a different meaning for me. That’s because on Black Friday in 2009 Christine Daniels, fka Mike Penner, died by suicide. I wasn’t her closest friend by far, but her death still impacts me greatly to this day.
For those who don’t know or recall her story, Christine Daniels was a Los Angeles Times sportswriter. For most of her career her byline was Mike Penner, but in 2007 she publicly transitioned to Christine Daniels. A year-and-a-half after transitioning to Christine, she retransitioned back to Mike Penner.
Before I go on, let me quote from the GLAAD Media Reference Guide which states the following: “If it is not possible to ask a transgender person which pronoun he or she prefers, use the pronoun that is consistent with the person’s appearance and gender expression.”
However, the reason I refer to her as Christine and not as Mike and refer to her with female pronouns is that when I went to her memorial service, her minister, and one of her best friends repeated what Christine told them after she retransitioned.
She told both of them words to the effect of “I never stopped being Christine” and “Don’t you ever think I’m not Christine.”
She retransitioned back to Mike not because she wasn’t Christine, but for whatever external pressures to which she succumbed because presenting as Christine became too much of a burden to bare.
I met Christine at the 2007 National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association’s convention in San Diego. She, and the other three of us trans people who attended the convention hung out together; we had a marvelous time.
I know a couple of the reasons she retransitioned. One is because she called me up in December 2008 to tell me how badly she was treated by some of our trans community peers.
Her transition had started out as a publicly easy one with a smooth transition at work, and in her Los Angeles Times blog she often wrote about the designer clothing she wore.
Some trans people who had rougher transitions derided her for “not paying her due” and some trans people vocalized how unhappy they were that she wasn’t the “serious” trans activist they wanted her, as a public figure, to be.
When I last talked to her, in 2008, she told me that at a recent public speaking event that someone came up and angrily told her that her transition wasn’t representative of most trans women’s transitions and that she was a horrible activist.
Other pressures of her transition included the failure of her marriage. In the Los Angeles Times retrospective of her life, reporter Christopher Goffard wrote, “Daniels told Amy LaCoe, her transsexual friend, that she had ruined her marriage and made a mess of her life.”
LaCoe insisted that Daniels stay with her for a couple months. “She stared at my bedroom ceiling for a long time,” LaCoe said. “She had stopped caring about herself.”
Her wife was also a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, and as Christine was experiencing joy at the beginning of her transition, others in her workplace saw the pain her wife was feeling related to Christine’s transition.
And like me, Christine was bipolar. I know that when bipolar people become depressed, we have a tendency to hunker down and cut off inputs that cause us stress. Christine cut off most of her friends, especially her transgender and transsexual friends.
As I think about Christine this holiday season, I’m reminded how much that all of us must take care of ourselves. And, when we’re in pain, we need to reach out to others even when we don’t feel a desire to reach out; even when we don’t feel like anyone cares.
Rest in peace, Christine Daniels. You’re still loved and remembered by your friends.
Isn’t it time to let this person rest in peace and to stop trying to self-aggrandize because you met someone a few times?
Personally, I have to wonder if a lot of this person’s problems did not stem from the pressure put on them to be a “role model.” Being forced into a high profile transition would be torture for someone who really is transsexual. They would simply want to transition and move on with their life as a woman, not as a very public “transgender person,” knowing that a significant number of people, perhaps even a majority, would therefore never see them as “simply a woman.”
A lot of us literally start our lives over to a large degree to avoid having to reveal things that might lead to our history being revealed. That would be hard for someone who was a well-known sports writer, who intended to stay in their current position. Perhaps a move to another city, with arrangements being made to start a new career with no links to the past, would have made a big difference?
Spot On.