Mephisto
27th April 2007, 06:19 AM
I don't much pay attention to organized sports, but I do understand the attraction as well as the sometimes "macho" image perpetrated by atheletes and sports fans. A noted sports columnist for the L.A. Times has recently announced being a transsexual and I'm wondering if this will be a career-defeating confession on his part.
The city manager of Largo, Florida (Steve Stanton) recently announced that he'd be undergoing a gender-reassignment operation and was fired from his job of 14 years for various expedient reasons among them, "he could no longer be trusted."
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070324/NEWS/703240408/1134
Will this be the same case in sportswriter, Mike Penner? Will sport enthusiasts "lose their trust" in a sportswriter that has changed his gender?
Sports writer says he is transsexual
Posted: Thursday April 26, 2007 5:22PM; Updated: Thursday April 26, 2007 5:22PM
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 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."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/more/04/26/sportswriter.ap/index.html?cnn=yes
Perhaps it will be different in Penner's situation as he's not often physically in the public light, however, like Stanton he is still the same person and I feel that his announcement will undoubtedly affect his career.
The city manager of Largo, Florida (Steve Stanton) recently announced that he'd be undergoing a gender-reassignment operation and was fired from his job of 14 years for various expedient reasons among them, "he could no longer be trusted."
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070324/NEWS/703240408/1134
Will this be the same case in sportswriter, Mike Penner? Will sport enthusiasts "lose their trust" in a sportswriter that has changed his gender?
Sports writer says he is transsexual
Posted: Thursday April 26, 2007 5:22PM; Updated: Thursday April 26, 2007 5:22PM
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 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."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/more/04/26/sportswriter.ap/index.html?cnn=yes
Perhaps it will be different in Penner's situation as he's not often physically in the public light, however, like Stanton he is still the same person and I feel that his announcement will undoubtedly affect his career.