In November, transgender Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner was found dead of an apparent suicide. Penner, who wrote for the paper since 1983, made headlines himself in 2007 when he he came out as transgender, began living publicly as a woman, and changed his byline to Christine Daniels. In 2008, Daniels quietly detransitioned back to Mike, leaving mourners with an identity problem: Should they eulogize Mike Penner or Christine Daniels?

After Penner's death, transgender activist Autumn Sandeen spoke to the importance of identifying Penner as Penner. "In my heart, I know her as Christine. In my job as a writer, I have to think of him as Mike,” she said. "I would love to remember him as Christine, but he didn’t give us that opportunity, and I’m going to be sad about that . . . How he identified was important. We can’t just pick and choose how we want to identify someone. I’m militant about that, but I’m frustrated at my own militance."

Recently, Sandeen attended a memorial service for Daniels, where she heard some stories that changed her position on how to publicly refer to the deceased:

[S]ince I'm now going to refer to the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who wrote under the Mike Penner byline as Christine Daniels again, I thought I needed to explain why . . . And, the reason has to do with how Christine identified herself in conversations with her minister, and to one of her very close friends—Susan Horn (who delivered the eulogy to Christine at the memorial service)—after she detransitioned. To the both, she said words to the effect of: "I never stopped being Christine," and . . . "Don't you ever think I'm not Christine."

So now, knowing how she identified, I can—and will—stop calling her by male pronouns, and stop calling her Mike Penner. She detransitioned to Mike not because she wasn't Christine, but for whatever external pressures to which she succumbed because presenting as Christine became too hard to bear.

In death, how do we reconcile a person's public and private lives? After he publicly detransitioned back to Mike, Penner indicated that he still wanted to be identified as Christine to his minister and a very close friend of his. That's private. In his professional life, however, Penner was still writing columns as Mike and presenting outwardly as male. At the memorial service, the Reverend Dr. Neal Thomas made Penner's private identity public by delivering a eulogy remembering Christine Daniels. In death, should we defer to Penner's wishes in life by keeping his private identity private? Or should we pay tribute to the reality of her life by finally publicly eulogizing her as Christine?

On Saturday, Nov. 28, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner was found dead in his Los Angeles home, the victim of an apparent suicide. Penner had been covering the sports beat for the LA Times since 1983. But the writer's public profile skyrocketed in April of 2007, when he came out as transgender, began living publicly as a woman, and changed his byline to Christine Daniels. The world lost Christine Daniels before it lost Penner: In 2008, Daniels quietly detransitioned back to Mike.

Penner's impermanent gender transition left obituary writers with an identity problem. Whose obituary to write: Mike Penner's or Christine Daniels'?

In the 25 years he worked at the LA Times, Penner evolved into a modest public figure in the sports world. But in the eighteen months that Penner lived outwardly as Christine Daniels, Daniels became a celebrity in the LGBT community. Daniels' coming-out column, in which she announced, "I am a transsexual sportswriter. 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," was one of the LA Times' most widely-read stories of 2007. That year, Daniels launched a new blog for the paper, Woman In Progress, which discussed trans issues with transparency and humor. She spoke about her experiences coming out in the workplace at the National Gay and Lesbian Journalist's Association's National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's annual conference. She earned a coveted spot on Out Magazine's annual "Out 100" list. Then, in October of 2008—with none of the fanfare that accompanied Penner's original gender transition—the celebrated sportswriter resumed the public persona of Mike Penner, reclaimed his original byline, and scrubbed the L.A. Times' Web site of all work attributed to Daniels.

The obituaries penned in the days following Penner's death revealed a fault line among his public mourners. Some writers favored Penner's sex assigned at birth—and his final public identity—by employing masculine pronouns in their obituaries. Others favored Daniels' brief public persona as an out trans woman, and referred to the deceased as "she" and "her." Gawker, puzzlingly, chose to straddle the gender divide by reporting the death of Mike Penner but referring to him as "her."

The sports world overwhelmingly chose to remember Mike Penner as male. Penner's editor, Mike James, remembered Penner as "a gentle man, a kind man." SportsBlog Nation writer Jon Boise's obituary referred to Penner with masculine name and pronouns, but took care not to erase Penner's transgender identity in doing so:

Changing one's gender is always met with apprehension in our culture, but within Penner's sports subculture, the process was likely even more difficult. Penner later took back his original name and resumed living life as a man a year later, which led to the unfortunate misconception that his decision was a thoughtless, ill-conceived one. In fact, Penner had taken on months of therapy and self-searching before making his decision. . . . At the very least, I hope that those who do decide to play expert for a day and cast judgment can accept that their judgments are completely irrelevant.

A few obituary writers in the LGBT and feminist communities, however, chose to remember Penner for his year of trans activism—-by running obituaries for Christine Daniels. The Advocate's online obit of Daniels went so far as to edit out the gender signifiers used by Penner's colleagues, in order to re-frame all remembrances of Penner as female:

“[She] was one of the most talented writers I’ve every worked with,” said Times Sports Editor Mike James, adding that Daniels covered numerous beats including the National Football League and sports media during her more than two-decade-long career at the paper.

Bitch Magazine's Anna Clark also chose to present Daniels as a woman, even as she recognized Penner's more recent choice to detransition:

One thing that is troubling–and that perhaps foreshadows today's sad news: last year, Daniels started to use the "Mike Penner" byline again. This is presumably why the coverage of Daniels' death at the Times uses male pronouns to refer to her, and why James describes her as a 'gentle man, a kind man,' and why the "Woman in Progress" blog was removed.

(Clark explains her choice to eulogize Christine here. The Advocate did not return a request for comment. The Advocate's obituary has since been heavily edited without comment; you can read the original obit here).

Daniels, left, at the 2007 NGLJA conference

Interestingly, the decision to remember Penner as female in his obituary lies in direct opposition to a longtime cause of the LGBT movement: Ensuring that the mainstream media accurately represent the gender identity of transgender subjects. According to several professional style guidelines, writers are to use the gender identity, name, and pronouns preferred by the subject. So, if Mike goes publicly as Mike, you call him Mike; if Christine goes publicly as Christine, you call her Christine. The GLAAD Media Reference Guide instructs journalists to "ask transgender people which pronoun they would like you to use," or to "use the pronoun that is consistent with the person's appearance and gender expression." Since 2006, the Associated Press Stylebook has accepted that standard. The book's “sex changes” entry reads:

Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics (by hormone therapy, body modification, or surgery) of the opposite sex and present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.

Given Penner's most recent bylines—and his attempts to erase Daniels from the public record—it's clear that in the last year of his life, Penner wanted to be publicly identified as male. By GLAAD and AP standards, that means that a correct obit should refer to "Mike Penner" and employ male pronouns. Penner was a lifelong journalist, and it's only fitting that his obituary writers follow the standards of the profession.

But the life story of Mike Penner and Christine Daniels hinges on that divide between the public and the private, the professional and the personal. It's technically correct to refer to Penner as "Mike," but that treatment fails to recognize Penner's inner life. By remembering Mike Penner only as "a gentle man, a kind man," the media runs the risk of contributing to the widespread transphobia that likely played a role in Penner's death.

Penner never spoke publicly about his motives for transitioning back to Mike. But when Penner chose to "detransition"—when he stopped identifying outwardly as Christine Daniels—several experts weighed in on the latest development in Penner's public persona. According to psychologists, most transgender people who choose to "detransition" do so as a result of external pressures resulting from their public gender transition, and not because they no longer internally identify as transgender. In his coming-out column, Penner informed the world how difficult it was for him to live outwardly as a male sportswriter for upwards of 40 years. He never publicly aired the fresh set of problems that came with the alternative—life as an openly transgender female sportswriter. Penner, already a public figure, traded four decades of inner turmoil for a deluge of public scrutiny from the sports world, the LGBT community, and snarky gossip blogs. Given what we know about detransitioning, it's understandable why the LGBT community and its allies would be reluctant to embrace Penner's reclamation of his male persona, particularly in light of his apparent suicide.

Autumn Sandeen, a trans activist who knew Penner when he was living as Christine, has struggled to process Penner's death on both a personal and a professional level. On the blog Pam's House Blend, Sandeen eulogized Mike. In private, however, she continues to think of her friend as Christine. "In my heart, I know her as Christine. In my job as a writer, I have to think of him as Mike," she says.

To Sandeen, adhering to media style standards in Penner's case shows a respect for every person's autonomy over his or her own gender identity. But the professional treatment also leaves her frustrated. "I would love to remember him as Christine, but he didn't give us that opportunity, and I'm going to be sad about that," she says. "It seems cruel that we need to stick with the style guides, but we need to stick with the style guides. How he identified was important. We can’t just pick and choose how we want to identify someone. I’m militant about that, but I’m frustrated at my own militance."

In the past two years, Penner lived a very public life. But his gender identity didn't belong to the public, Sandeen says—not to the LGBT community that wanted to claim him as Christine, and not to the sports community that wanted to reclaim him as "any regular heterosexual guy." "In the end, he called himself Mike," says Sandeen. "Who am I to call him Christine?"

MORE: The Case for Eulogizing Christine Daniels

Photos courtesy of Autumn Sandeen.

It's 12:30 p.m. outside of the downtown offices of the former Washington Blade, which served as Washington D.C.'s gay newspaper of record from 1969 until this morning. Just hours ago, the staff of the Blade learned that its parent company, Window Media, had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, that the Blade was closed effective immediately, and that the paper's two dozen employees were all out of work.

Now, two guys in purple shirts are methodically removing stacks of boxes out of the office, located on the fifth floor of the National Press Club building. What's inside? "Just personal belongings," one says, as he heads to the elevator. Everybody has until 3:30 p.m. to clear out.

Reporters have been calling the office all morning in search of a comment, having only heard confirmation of the paper's closure via Tweet. Finally, Editor-In-Chief Kevin Naff comes outside to make a statement. Hold on—he has to pee. When he returns from the bathroom, he addresses reporters in front of the Blade's glass-enclosed offices. Inside, a couple of Window Media staffers can be seen shuffling around a glass conference room, hard at work dismantling the newspaper. One of them wears an eye-patch. "I can't speak on behalf of the company, and I can't speak here," Naff says. So the group heads around the corner, where Naff stands in front of another large window looking in on Window brass. "You can refer to me as the former editor of the Blade," Naff says.

He rolls out the details: Naff heard this morning that the paper was kaput. The staff began forming plans to start a new publication within "about five minutes," Naff says. More information will be announced tomorrow. It won't be called the Blade. "We're going to take a day off to pack, and then dust ourselves off and get back to work," Naff says. The staff's focus is on the future, he says—Naff can't even immediately remember what stories the Blade had in the works for its next issue.

Other former employees are focused on the past two weeks. A woman steps off the elevator, a cell phone clutched to her ear. "And the worst thing is that we were supposed to get paid today," she says, before running into one of her former co-workers and enveloping him in a hug. She doesn't have a public comment. Lou Chibbaro Jr., the Blade's longest-running employee, is there to see what he can salvage from the past thirty years. Chibbaro arrived back at the office with a pack full of folding cardboard boxes in order to cart away some "personal papers and things like that . . . mementos, some award plaques." Chibbaro won't say if he'll be involved in Naff's new paper. "We're interested in keeping the best of what we had going. But I can't comment on what's going on right now," he says.

Robbie Barnett, one of the guys in the purple shirts, is back from unloading another dolly full of Blade leftovers. Barnett worked as the Blade's distribution coordinator until this morning, when he walked into the office in the middle of the closure announcement. Barnett says the news came directly from COO Steve Myers and CFO Mike Kitchens. Myers is the one in the eye-patch, Barnett says: "I think he might be ill or something." Myers and Kitchens did most of the talking, Barnett says. "None of us really said anything." The atmosphere, he says, was just "grim."

Barnett says that he has not been asked to finish up his distribution duties by removing Blade newspaper boxes from the streets. For now, Barnett is just helping to unload the paper from the National Press Club, box by box. Steve Cheverton, a close friend of the paper, is also on hand. When Cheverton heard of the paper's closing, he showed up with his Ford F-350 to help employees with the liquidation. "I know a lot of the employees, and I've supported them throughout, in all the gay pride marches and stuff like that," Cheverton says. "I just think it's really without integrity the way they did this . . . The least we can do is help these people take their stuff home."

Photos of former Blade employees by Darrow Montgomery

So imagine my surprise when I click over to the CockBib online store, only to find the Web site abandoned! What the fuck happened to the CockBibs?!

I have an e-mail out to CockBib guy to see whether the CockBib is dead for good, or whether some Christmas miracle will bring our favorite novelty penis accessory back just in time for the holidays. In the meantime, you can pay your respects by joining the CockBib Facebook group. And while we're waiting for the inevitable CockBib resurrection, let's share the best CockBibs of Christmas past. CockBibs may be dead, but making fun of CockBibs lasts forever. So without further ado:

"Who Am I Kidding: You're Hired," perfect for your office Secret Santa pool:

North Pole Ahead: Actually more Christmas-themed than it is cock-themed, in my opinion!

Heads, You Suck It, Tails, You Fuck It: There's nothing like a good old fashioned game night to bring couples closer over the holiday season.

The Happy Birthday! CockBib. For Jesus.

Observe:

Pictured: Not Megan Fox's boobs

Pictured: Not Megan Fox's thigh

Pictured: Not Megan Fox's ass

Pictured: Not Lindsay Lohan's nipple

Pictured: Not Lindsay Lohan's side-boob

Pictured: Not an interactive slideshow comparing Megan Fox's side-boob to Lindsay Lohan's nipples

In fact, the closest we come to lady-flesh on HuffPo today is this:

Pictured: Just a bare upper back.

Oh, when will the world stop mourning!

Michael Jackson's death at 50 from cardiac arrest has inspired the entire world to revisit the King of Pop's body of work. And though I'm a huge MJ fan, I'd be remiss in my role as Pop Culture Fun Killer if I didn't point out some defining characteristics of Jackson's music videos: rapey, stalkey, and victim-blamey.

Off-screen, Jackson's sex life was notoriously tortured—rumors in the press pegged Jackson alternately as a lifelong virgin, a pedophile, and a freak. In his music videos, we saw Jackson play with sexual violence and physical domination in order to portray the image of complete sexual control.

Michael Jackson Date Rape Anthem: "The Way You Make Me Feel"

Relevant Lyrics:

The way you make me feel
You really turn me on
You knock me off of my feet
My lonely days are gone

Why It's So Rapey: Here, Michael Jackson presents an interesting contribution to the Date Rape Canon—one that defies lyrical explanation. The words to "The Way You Make Me Feel" only convey that the object of Jackson's affection "really turns [him] on." The song's undertones of sexual violence all come courtesy Jackson's notoriously specific body language. The music video makes clear the way the woman makes Jackson feel—like stalking, verbally harassing, and physically intimidating her into loving him.

Meanwhile, Jackson's female victim repeatedly fails to verbally dissuade Jackson from terrorizing her. The woman in the video, who attempts to evade Jackson's advances through the darkened night streets, remains silent throughout. The disconnect between Jackson's physical and verbal messages, and the woman's inability to articulate opposition, mirror the unspoken nature of much sexual violence, which often goes unidentified and unreported. But it's not the only MJ jam to play on the stalking theme:

Michael Jackson Date Rape Anthem: "Billie Jean"

Relevant Lyrics:

For forty days and for forty nights
The law was on her side
But who can stand when she's in demand
Her schemes and plans
'Cause we danced on the floor in the round
So take my strong advice, just remember to always think twice

Why It's So Rapey: In the "Billie Jean" video, a rogue Michael Jackson sneaks into a woman's bed at night as he's chased by a band of police. The woman, obscured beneath the covers, shows no sign of being awake, or in fact registering Jackson's presence at all! The sheets nevertheless erupt into a metaphorical flash of light, signifying doin' it. Then, Jackson vanishes into thin air, underlining the song's assertion that Billie Jean is totally lying about all of this. Tragically for MJ, charges of sexual assault weren't relegated to the fictional sphere: Jackson was acquitted of sex abuse allegations in 2005.

Michael Jackson Date Rape Anthem: "Thriller"

Relevant Lyrics:

They're out to get you, there's demons closing in on every side
They will possess you unless you change that number on your dial
Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together, yeah
All through the night I'll save you from the terror on the screen
I'll make you see

That this is thriller, thriller night
'Cause I can thrill you more than any ghost would ever dare try
Thriller, thriller night
So let me hold you tight and share a
Killer, diller, chiller, thriller here tonight

Why It's So Rapey: In "Thriller," a young man attempts to scare his date by taunting herwith horror film phantoms—and insisting that she needs to come home with him to avoid them.

There's a domestic violence lesson to be learned here: The guy who insists that you need his protection in return for sexual favors (implied) is actually much more dangerous than any of the shit he's claiming to protect you from. (" I can thrill you more than any ghost would ever dare try.") In the case of "Thriller," the bogeyman keeping the girl close to Jackson takes the form of ghouls, blood-seeking creatures, and "the thing with forty eyes." In real life, the phantom dangers abusive men use to make women stay include "never being able to find a guy like me again," "being unhappy forever," and/or "doing it for the kids."

Farrah Fawcett, sex symbol, has died at the age of 62. This photo reveals the private moment of one young fan unrolling her iconic poster for the first time. The snapshot captures what Fawcett represented to many men and women—an image of beauty to be admired, replicated, bought, sold, manipulated, imitated, discarded, stuck on bedroom walls, stared down, and remembered. It's an image that has endured through Fawcett's extended battle with cancer, and that will remain in our consciousness for a long time to come.

Photo by Shaggy Duck, Creative Commons Attribution License

Bea Arthur, television feminist icon, died on Saturday at the age of 86. When Bruce Weber's New York Times obit was emailed to subscribers, the headline read, "Bea Arthur, TV Battle-Ax, Dies at 86."

Someone at the NYT must have thought better of sending Arthur off with a "cautionary/derogatory label for a formidable & forbidding woman." Now, the obit's title reads "Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86."

I'm glad Bea is still intimidating them all, even in her death.

The death of the word "feminist" was broadcast on the evening news. In September 2008, at the height of the presidential campaign, Katie Couric boarded John McCain's airplane, took a seat with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and lobbed the first in a series of softballs: Did Palin consider herself a feminist? Palin's response:

I do. A feminist who believes in equal rights, and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed, and to try to do it all, anyway. And I'm very, very thankful that I've been brought up in a family where gender hasn't been an issue. You know, I've been expected to do everything growing up that the boys were doing. We were out chopping wood and we were out hunting and fishing and filling our freezer with good wild Alaskan game to feed our family.

"Feminist" isn't the only English-language word that suffered from Palin's candidacy, of course (see "maverick," "terrorist"). But while other terms employed by the Alaska governor withered from twisted meanings, "feminist" experienced a more symbolic death. Palin killed "feminist" not by altering the meaning of the word—its meaning has never remained consistent in a century of use—but by eliminating its taboo.

Whatever "feminist" meant, it was a strong, scary term, one often prefaced with "man-hating" and followed by "bitch" and/or "Nazi." Its power as insult was matched only by its usefulness as a community-shaping litmus test. If you would self-identify as a feminist, with all its negative connotations, you proved your commitment to the women's movement; if not, you were part of the problem. In some respects, feminism was justified by its vile reputation: If the very name of the movement scared people, it meant that it was still relevant.

"Feminist" was not always the dirtiest term. Self-proclaimed "feminist" author Amy Richards writes that "women's liberationist was actually the preferred term" in the 1960s and '70s. Then, it "started to get a bad name, so it was abandoned for feminism. Now, that has a bad name."

Palin's nonthreatening version of feminism, gender-neutral aerial wolf-hunting aside, is in many ways a product of the feminist's reviled reputation. Take a close look at how Palin phrases her feminist self-identity. She calls herself a "feminist who believes in equal rights." That's spin most feminists are accustomed to unloading on when they're branded "Feminazis" or "man-hating lesbians." "Feminism is just about equal rights with men," they reply. "This is a mainstream position that any reasonable person would support."

In truth, feminists don't want "feminist" to be accepted as a mainstream position supported by any reasonable person—and they certainly don't want it to be accepted by a rogue conservative who does not support abortion rights or contraceptive access for rape victims. Feminists were misguided when they criticized Palin for professing to align with a movement she so clearly did not support. They should have been shaking their heads that the word "feminist" had become so safe that even a Republican vice presidential candidate is comfortable invoking it in a televised interview. The term "feminist" has resisted a lasting definition in order to maintain its radical attitude. That way, when feminist agenda items are accomplished—voting rights, contraception access, pay equity—they can be deposited into the mainstream as feminists move on to newer, more controversial issues. The threatening connotation of "feminist" works to keep the movement relevant and box out the traditionalists.

Now, Palin has made it acceptable for anyone who's simply dipped into the movement's archives to identify as "feminist." Thanks to her, "feminist" may now refer to those who believe the women's movement has already accomplished its goals—or worse, that feminism was stronger in the distant past. Even as Palin's presence has faded from the national scene—and with it, her gosh-darn brand of feminism—a deeper threat to "feminist" remains.

When Michelle Obama refused in 2007 to identify as a "feminist" in an interview with the Washington Post, the dirty-word status was alive and well. "You know, I'm not that into labels," Obama said. "So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it.…I wouldn't identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn't identify as a liberal or a progressive."

But later in the campaign that would kill "feminist," her husband privately self-identified as feminist to Ms. publisher Eleanor Smeal. This month, Smeal had Obama's feminism illustrated on the cover of her magazine; in a bodice-ripping superhero shot, Obama pulls away his button-down to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, this is what a feminist looks like. The cover set off a firestorm of debate among self-identified feminists—does Obama have true feminist credentials, or doesn't he? Whatever: Once the most popular guy in the world identifies with your movement, you are swimming in the mainstream. Sarah Palin, at least, was scary.

Now, instead of a conservative feminist vice president, we have a moderate liberal feminist president. Could this perhaps be worse—not for feminism, of course, but for "feminist"? It's no longer a bad word, and that's a bad thing for feminism.

Photo by buddhakiwi

* Revealed! How Moe Tkacik avoided becoming a cat lady early in life—you can too! [via Slate's XX Factor].

* Regrettable! Tiger Beatdown laments that the loss of Sparks' caffeine, gain of doctors "conscience".

* Rectal! Shakesville presents the perfect stocking stuffer for the Catalan at heart: the Obama Caganer!

* Rick Warren! Wants wives to submit to their husbands, Feministe remembers. But shrewd Barack Obama must cross party lines to pacify America's misogynist, gay-hating "other half" for when he needs to later court their support for women's issues GLBT rights bailouts.

* R.I.P.! Today, we salute the fallen: Deep Throat; brave, suicidal waterslide shark.

Photo by trialsanderrors

Pin-up queen Bettie Page died of pneumonia yesterday in Los Angeles. She was 85 years old.