Things are definitely changing for the Los Angeles Times as sportswriter Mike Penner wrote his final words this week and revealed a secret that he has been holding inside for his entire life. He will be taking a few weeks vacation and when he returns to his position, his work will be penned under the name Christine Daniels. Penner is undergoing a sex reassignment operation and plans on returning to the Times as a female sports writer.

"I am a transsexual sportswriter," Penner wrote in his column. "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. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them."

In the column, Penner tells the story of his lifelong year struggle of feeling like a woman trapped in a man’s body and the journey he began this past year to make his outside match his feelings inside. He describes that he suffered from severe writer’s block, and once he made the decision to embrace his feelings, he was much happier and able to work again.

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