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HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel segment on HBO that debuted on March 16th. The segment was on transgender sportswriters, focusing a great deal on Christine Daniels.
One of the transgender sportswriters interviewed for the segment stated that when she heard that Christine had detransitioned to Mike Penner, she feared Christine would experience death by suicide. At the time, so was I; so were many trans activists I know.
Within the program, Gumbel stated that the number of transitioners that experience death by suicide is about one in three. I thought that ratio sounded high, so when I talked to my therapist last Wednesday about that statistic, I told her that. She corrected me, saying the ratio sounded about right to her.
That’s a ratio that’s pretty shocking.
During the past four months, I’ve talked to probably a half-a-dozen mainstream media reporters from a half-a-dozen publications about Christine’s passing. I felt most comfortable talking to the Los Angeles Times’ Christopher Goffard. I knew, from talking to him, his piece would at the very least, be thoughtful and sensitive.
Well, his piece published this weekend. It’s entitled Public Triumph, Private Torment.
Honestly, I can’t review this article dispassionately for accuracy…or, well, by any measure. I feel so much emotion — tied to the series of events outlined in the piece — that I simply cannot look at this article objectively. So, I’m not going to try.
…Under the headline “Old Mike, new Christine,” Penner explained that he would soon assume a female identity and byline, a decision that followed “a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy.”It was “heartache and unbearable discomfort” to remain a man, he explained. Being a woman promised “joy and fulfillment.” The article ended on a hopeful note: “This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”
Gone was quiet, circumspect Mike Penner, replaced by ebullient, outgoing — and instantly famous — Christine Daniels. Celebrity meant a megaphone, and Daniels vowed to use it as an advocate. She told her story at transsexual conferences across the country, becoming a symbol of courage to a transgender community inspired by the most visible coming-out in decades.
A year after the essay, the Daniels byline vanished from the newspaper, and within months Penner was back at work, living as a man and writing under his male name. Once so voluble about the reasons for becoming Christine, Penner was silent about the reasons for abandoning the identity.
This time, there was no essay, no explanation. But friends saw a person in torment. Last November, in the parking garage of the apartment complex where he lived alone, Penner killed himself. He was 52.
From there, Christopher Goffard follows a timeline Christine Daniels’/Mike Penner’s life, from her public coming out to the end of her life by suicide. I’m quoted twice in the piece…I don’t even remember when I gave those particular quotes. However, the quotes are definitely phrased in a way I would have said what was quoted — I’m sure the quotes are accurate.
I learned from the article where Christine’s death occurred. I learned too that her attempt to erase Christine was attempted with the same vigor with which she first erased Mike. I learned much about what I didn’t know about what happened in her life after she stopped talking to many of her trans and non-trans friends from late 2007 to early 2008.
Thinking about trans community in relationship to the article, I note her estrangement from trans community occurred sightly after the Day Of Remembrance in 2007. Something was said at that event to her that resulted in her withdrawal. I know we in trans community have a habit of doing a horrible job of supporting our own. Our propensity to viciously, verbally attack our trans peers at the slightest provocation or disagreement is legendary, and reading the article, one can see this happened to Christine.
In general, I can’t help but wonder if this propensity for community viciousness to one another doesn’t contribute to that one in three statistic HBO put forward to its cable audience.
Somehow, we need to engage community on acting like brothers, sisters, …as siblings.
It’s a melancholy day for me today. Tears seem to be welling randomly as this LA Times article about my friend fill my thoughts. Thoughts too about Angie Zapata, and the trial of her brutal murderer, have filled my mind this past week due to a different narrative about trans existance has been in the news.
I’ll be fine. I’m not suicidal; I’m determined not to be a personification of that tragic one in three statistic for my trans community peers to mull over. I know those feelings of wanting to isolate myself — giving into those feelings of wanting to withdraw into the same kind of shell Christine withdrew into — are feelings I actively counter. I counter these by reaching out to my friends and to mental health professionals when my spirits are down, contraveningly to that desire to isolate myself. I want to live; I have many, many good reasons for living — reasons which include the love of my many friends, my family, my community, and oddly enough, my two pet cats.
I highly recommend reading Christopher Goffard’s piece in the LA Times today. If nothing else, it a humanizing piece on the person who was known both as Christine Daniels and Mike Penner.
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Related:
* The Closet Kills
* MMC L.A. Memorial Service For Christine Daniels
* LA Times’ Penner: “I am a transsexual sportswriter.”
* Thinking About Mike Penner; Thinking Again About Destransition
* About The “Real Life Experience” and Detransitioning
* Memorial service for Mike Penner (f.k.a. Christine Daniels)
* Grief Process Stage 3: Bargaining Regarding Mike Penner’s Completed Suicide
* Mike Penner (f.k.a. Christine Daniels) Dead Of Apparent Suicide
* Christine Daniels Retransitioning Back To Mike Penner
* Check Out LA Times Sportswriter Christine Daniels’ Transition Blog (Autumn note: The blog is gone.)
Update: Below the fold, a “pray the
Ya know, my heart bleeds for Mike, for his anguish, for his torment, for his feelings of having no hope, etc.. But not for the obvious reason. For Mike was never Christine–he was always Mike. Had he simply prayed to God for understanding, love, guidance, etc., he’d have all the hope in the world to continue living. I know this sounds easily done, but it isn’t. But, it is 100% that it’ll work–every single time. I fault to a point the do-gooders in society that seek a way out that is never that. For their ways are never The Way. I don’t want to sound harsh but I’m less concerned with feelings (or, “style”) at present and more concerned with one’s soul (“substance”). Try what you will in life … but if you don’t have a deep and abiding relationship with Christ, you can never be considered a success in this life — no matter what others say. Do you disagree with me? Consider the life of one tortured soul name Mike who tried to become Christine — something he never was. May Mike rest in peace. Let us all learn from Mike’s example of how not to live life.
Reminds me that before I transitioned, I tried to pray away the trans, and actually went to some reparative therapy.
As someone who is an ex-ex-transgender woman, I can say with some authority that praying the trans away and reparative therapy work as well on trans people as praying the gay away and reparative therapy work for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. And, the negative impacts of the ex-gay mill are just as harmful to trans people as these are for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
And probably more importantly, what an unkind thing for the commenter to say on the passing of a human being.
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8 Comments
My thoughtsThanks for posting this, Autumn. As I said on my Facebook page, There but for the grace of God go I.
Somehow 1 in 3 doesn’t seem so high anymore…
thank you AutumnI had a lot of thoughts after reading this, and maybe the one I came away with was just how important it is to be kind to one another as often as possible. It’s something I try to do every day, just be nice instead of being mean.
I wish that the propensity of some trans folks to be cruel or judgmental to others in the trans community didn’t exist, but of course it does. It’s a shame. We need one another so badly.
Re: the comment below the fold.
Would that we could ‘pray away’ the intrusive xtians. How rude they are. Why must they inject their crap into every tragedy?
Very very sad story.
BecauseBecause, Snooky… they’re required by their masters to speak their twisted and perverted version of the truth, else their masters in the pulpit will say the magic woids and they won’t go to heaven…
We are traumatisedWe lash out when we are triggered.
We lash out at things that remind us of the transphobia we have internalised.
We scapegoat other SS&GD people to feel better about ourselves and blame them for the misstreatment we get from our family friends and society. Perpetuating in society over others some of the harms done to us.
We take out or anger on each other rather than on those genuinly responsible for hurting us.
We shout down people who are hurting too for saying hurtful things even when they are struggling with their own internalised transphobia.
We attack those similar to ourselves but different calling them fake or wanabees and invalidate other peoples identities.
We block and ban the vulnerable and needy to look better or to avoid uncomfortable questions or shake the structure of justifications we have used to exclude ourselves from out own prejudices.
We blame each other for acting out and flying off the handle and yet also do the same to others and get further furious when our grievences and feellings aren’t acknowledged.
We are traumatised. Showing all the hallmarks of the coping mechanisms that help us survive in the short term but are hindrences in the long term.
We are a people that needs healling. Needs to forgive ourselves and one another. Needs to face what in our pain and fear we do to ourselves and each other.
And like other traumatised people we need to hold the causes of our harm accountable and stop being a part of it ourselves and compassionatly help others out of the same trap.
There is no evidence for the existence of gods,and religion poisons everything it touches.
No gods to worship, no demons to fear, just the big, bright, beautiful (and dangerous) universe around us.
The tendency to withdrawIt’s interesting that you bring that up, Autumn. I thought it was a personality trait, something I picked up from my parents, something that I learned a long time ago from being told “keep it to yourself.”
Only in the past few months as I’ve struggled against my own suicidality have I realized how destructive that tendency to withdraw can really be. More worrying, I guess, with that one-in-three statistic, is the knowledge that withdrawing in adversity is maybe a more common trait for trans people than we really knew.
That it wouldn’t be beneficial isn’t surprising, but it also never felt like a symptom of growing up trans. It’s horrifying to consider that so many of us have become so used to hiding who we really are that withdrawing from our friends would be so automatic for us.
I liked the piece very much too, AutumnIt wasn’t in the least sensational. It made a real effort to understand what happened from all the available information. Ultimately we’ll never know. But it was heartening to see the respect Penner was afforded from peers when the transitioning announcement was first made. Christine wasn’t treated like a freak but an individual worthy of respect. Alas it didn’t work out.