Just remember you are not alone. To you I give my deepest condolences. It will get better with time. Trust me. If you ever need to talk drop me an email.

Whether she was calling herself Christine or Mike, she was always a much more stylish, witty and thoughtful writer than the other sports-section staffers. It wasn’t so many years ago when many of the Times’ sportswriters could only cobble up humor by making fun of women athletes or by contriving xenophobic jokes about the long last names of African and Eastern European athletes. Mike Penner referenced Hunter S. Thompson and hip bands, and didn’t dumb it down for presumably moronic sports fans. He didn’t just understand rock & roll, it infused his writing, which popped and crackled with real energy and rhythm. Nothing overtly flashy or showy, mind you, but Mike Penner/Christine Daniels was masterful at getting to the heart of the matter and revealing the human comedy behind sports’ often-overheated hype.

I agree with Kevin that it would have been nice to see more of Christine’s music writing, since I was only familiar with her sports reporting. Unlike others posting here, I didn’t know her personally or get to cross paths with her, although I’d intended to track her down and interview her someday, if only to compare notes about how hard it is to be taken seriously as a transgendered writer.

The news of her sudden death hit me really hard. I figured there was still plenty of time to e-mail her and interview her, even as I worried when her byline went from “Christine Daniels” back to “Mike Penner” about a year ago. And every time someone else subbed for one of her columns, I worried, “Did the Times finally get rid of her too?” (Again, I have no personal insight into her actual background at the Times. As an outsider, I was pleasantly surprised that the paper seemed to be supportive of her gender makeover. However, there have been so many layoffs in the industry. Who’s to say they couldn’t just use that as an excuse to get rid of her at some point when no one was looking? So, I worried every week until I saw Penner’s byline again.)

Again, I don’t know the whole story, but I can certainly imagine a lot of it. The subject of Christine’s gender seems overlooked here, as if it were an unmentionable disease, or a pitiful, foolish, avoidable condition like being a drug addict. I suspect that Christine Daniels didn’t have a problem with who she really was, it’s the world around her that had trouble seeing the person who was really inside. I think that Michelle Evans makes some very strong and powerful points.