This week, veteran sports writer Christine Daniels was found dead in her home at age 52, presumably due to suicide. The LA Times icon, long known as Mike Penner, made headlines in 2007 when she came out as a transgender woman. Shortly after the sad news of her death, I wrote a piece for Bitch Magazine about it--including Daniels' legacy and the really impressive way that her paper supported during the transition. I also made note that last year, Daniels' byline reverted back to Mike Penner.
Now, Amanda Hess over at the Washington City Paper penned a fascinating column that looks at how different writers approached their eulogies of Daniels/Penner--some gendering her as female, others as male. Traditional AP style indicates that journalists should refer to people by whatever gender they prefer, and/or present as publicly; a guideline that's way too frequently ignored. But even with that in mind, in this case, the preferred gender of Daniels/Penner remains unclear--and Hess' overview details the different interests that seem to fold into how her legacy is written. I was rather unusual in referring to Daniels as female in my eulogy, which Hess notes in her original article. In a follow-up piece ("The Case for Eulogizing Christine Daniels"), she was kind enough to give me an opportunity to explain why that choice makes sense to me.
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