NPR.org
Day to Day, August 15, 2007 ? Three months ago, Mike Penner was a longtime sports columnist for The Los Angeles Times. Then he wrote a dramatic goodbye column and disappeared for several weeks.
“I am a transsexual sportswriter,” 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. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.”
Now Penner is back on the beat, as a she. With a new name and a new gender, Christine Daniels now covers sports and her own gender transition for The Los Angeles Times Web site. She tells Madeleine Brand about the experience, personally and professionally, of her new identity.