Thinking About Mike Penner; Thinking Again About Detransition
by: Autumn Sandeen
Sun Nov 29, 2009 at 18:15:00 PM EST
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/14291/thinking-about-mike-penner-thinking-again-about-detransition (http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/14291/thinking-about-mike-penner-thinking-again-about-detransition)
I met Mike Penner when he was presenting as Christine Daniels at National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association (NLGJA) Convention in 2007. I last spoke to him on the telephone in December of 2007; he detransitioned from Christine to Mike in autumn of 2008.
When thinking about Mike Penner's apparent suicide, I know I think about Mike's passing in terms of gender. I suspect Mike's struggle with gender had a lot to do with his detransition; I suspect Mike's struggle with gender had a lot to do with his suicide.
I was soooo proud of her to transition.. It gave me hope, then suicide,,,,man I wish I could have been there, maybe I could have helped
The issues of Christine's/Mike's suicide as with all suicides quite naturally, affects us all. Somone taking the decision to end their life. We all spend so much effort preserving our lives, yet someone chooses to end theirs.
Nabokov once wrote that the problem with death is you're completely alone. The character to whom he gave that statement was a child, but if I may expand that point, death is personal.
I once read an account of someone who ended their life, by jumping off a bridge. The writer said that this person, after speaking calmly to them, looked both ways for traffic, carefully crossed the road, on the other side, they climbed the barrier and jumped off. That was the last they saw of them.
I found this curious. If that person had already decided to die, why were they concerned with how they crossed the road?
Suicide isn't a point of recklessness. An abandonment of the value of life. It isn't a rejection of others. Suicide is a conclusion, when someone reaches a point in their life where they make a decision.
Many years ago I had a friend who managed to kill himself. He had a lot of problems in his own life, but no more than some others and a lot less than some. He would be the first to say that. He had tried many times to kill himself.
He finally succeeded by strangling himself in a police cell after being arrested while trying to jump off something. The police had attempted to have him referred for medical care but this was refused as he was considered habitual.
His preffered method was to get drunk on cheap wine then swallow a load of over the counter tablets. I must have taken him to the poisons department of the local hospital at least 20 time. At his inquest, it was said that he had been in the poisons department 72 times.
I miss him even today. I know that everyone he knew, even those who didn't like him, he was very abrasive, miss him also. But that was his decision. It wasn't the problems in his life, or any specific problem. It was his personal realisation, that that was his next step.
Like most people, over the years, I've read so many different theories and notions of suicide. Most, generally, skirt around things like, it isn't as hopless as you think, there's no problem worth dying for and so on. In writing, there really isn't much more to add. You're separated by text, what else can you say?
There are, sadly, many who are in a hopeless situation and may view dying as the only option. A good friend, who's life is, quite frankly, is in the pits, tried to kill herself. She changed her mind before she lost consciousness and telephoned for help. I'm pleased to say, that help did arrive and more followed. Gradually, she is crawling out of the pit into which her life decended.
For Charlie, (the guy who succeeded), there was no pit, just a wall. Perhaps not even a wall, perhaps his road had simply run out.
Thinking about Christine/Mike, it's too easy, nay, too simplistic, to assume that her/his unsuccessful transion was the cause or even the lead to suicide. I don't believe that people take the decision to end their own adventure do so because of issues. To do so is shallow. Humans are not that shallow. We think. We are all so very different. And let's face it, the smartest person is you.
I don't believe we should be viewing the ultimate fate of Christine/Mike as a consequence of failed transion any more than it was a consequence of being a journalist. It was Christine's/Mike's decison. The end of an eventful life, which for many of us, would be just another eventful life if it weren't for the failed transision.
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It was his personal realisation, that that was his next step.
I've seen once a film called Le diable probablement. It's about a spoiled young man who comes to the same conclusion. I wonder if one has too much time to think about it all, one will always come to the same realisation. We have to DO things instead of thinking, to make our lives less miserable, like Woody Allen said :)
But this is so sad either way. My father had some tendencies like that, I once overheard him saying to my mother that if it weren't for his kids he'd be no longer around. I cried when I heard that and ever since there are days when I pray he doesn't have those thoughts anymore.
Everyone need a reason to live and yes, sometimes finding those reasons can be hard.
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