Christine Daniels, LA Times Sports Writer Suicide: Follow Up Story

The good folks at TG Life, pointed out to our caffeine jolted staff here at Beck’s Cafe that an excellent follow up article had been written on Mike Penner/Christine Daniels suicide.   It’s a very good article and some of the comments are helpful as well.   The story does a very good job of outlining the pressure Christine was under, how, perhaps, the Times didn’t think through how to best work with her, and some of the elation and then isolation she felt prior to her sad death.

There are some lessons I think.  Wendy, one of our readers, noted in a comment she left during our first article on Christine Daniels that:

The pressures from society, our families, the media, etc. can exert such a profound force on a transgendered person. I think if we can provide more friendship and love to others experiencing this major adjustment maybe we could prevent the suicides.

Wendy makes an important point that relationships are important and we couldn’t agree more.  Christine apparently had them but closed herself off to them.  What do we do then?  So many of us feel we can’t intrude in others lives but, maybe, there are red flags that should say, “propriety be damned” and we barge in anyway?

You can read the follow up article at The Daily Beast, “The Sad Struggles of a Transsexual Sportswriter“.