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Transsexual sportswriter tells his readers

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by divadarya, Apr 10, 2008.

  1. divadarya

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    This is great post by a sportswriter who came out Trans at the L.A. Times about a year ago. This letter really moved me and in fact, gave me some courage. I put in bold some of the things that she says that are truths to me
    xo Darya
    _________________________________________
    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.
     
    #1 divadarya, Apr 10, 2008
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2008
  2. beckyg

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    Good for Christine! I think its great that many parents are recognizing gender dysphoria in early childhood and getting their children help in transitioning BEFORE they have to go through decades of turmoil and grief.
     
  3. Jim1454

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    Wow. What a brave soul! You have to give this person credit for doing this in such a public way, having such an extensive following. Very cool, and very inspiring.
     
  4. Orion

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    Wow. Simply wow. I assure you because of you, and of course Christine, I completely understand Transsexuals. I honestly say it was a mystery to me, specially since in Argentina transsexuals and transgenders are covered in a veil of prejudice, often linked with sexual labor, etc.

    She has an amazing will and so do you! Thanks for being here!
     
  5. justcallmejoey

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    I totally agree with everything she says. It absolutely sucks trying to come out to people as a transsexual. I haven't told anyone other that my girlfriend and my mom. My mom is convinced I am just a very butch lesbian. My girlfriend agrees with me and is willing to stick through everything with me. (Damn I love her!) It is very hard to get people to understand transsexualism. My friends joke around about how I need a sex change but don't totally understand what it means. I have tried to explain it but haven't succeded at all in that adventure.
     
  6. Jeimuzu

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    I've got a few TF friends, both F->M. Got another friend, who oddly enough isn't TF, but says she wishes she had a penis for practical reasons. Anyways...

    T and J are both totally normal people. They suit being guys, y'know? I can't imagine J as anything else. T, I can, because I met him when we were both about thirteen. He was the first person I came out to, in fact.

    He was always confused as to whether he was a lesbian, bisexual, all of that. He went through loads of bad stuff, because he just couldn't cope with himself. He's finally working towards his goal, and finally seems to have settled. He's found a guy (pansexual, so no worries there :grin: ) and they're great for each other, it seems.

    J, on the other hand, I knew originally as a gay man. He just wouldn't suit being a woman. He isn't a woman at all. He manages to be a gay man who likes poetry and ballroom dancing, totally un-macho things... and yet, he's just entirely male, regardless of anything else. When he told me he was born female, I just thought... despite everything that's un-macho about him, he's not female at all. I never even suspected, even though I already had T who I knew was going through the TG issues.

    Thing is, you don't need to understand transsexualism to see the effect it has on people; to see how clearly they were born the wrong gender. Those two are clearly in better positions, more comfortable, and settled with who they are, now they've switched. Before, certainly T was having a lot of trouble coming to terms with things. I know some of the issues T was going through, and my biggest regret there is that I wasn't there for him while he was going through some of the worst of it.
     
  7. CerahWright

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    i find it admirable of Christine to write that- its so public! but i think its good.