At behest of Ana Valens, Kotaku rewrites a 2010 article about a Japanese crossdressing model

Over the weekend while railing on Twitter over the continual existence of personae non gratae, Ana Valens also took the time to prod Jason Schreier over an ancient Kotaku article from 2010 about Japanese crossdressing model Kayo Satou:

AV: I love you guys, Kotaku is great. But this article has been up for ages and it still stings knowing it’s online.

JS: Uch this is the first time I've seen this. Awful. We have a pretty strict "we don't remove articles" policy but I'll bring it up to Stephen on Monday and see what we can do

Stephen Totilo: Thanks for bringing this up. I shot you a DM about it. This isn't close to how anyone at Kotaku would write about her in 2019 and we've updated the post to note that. I'm sorry we didn't do better then.

And sure enough, the article changed drastically on the same day. What was once "Believe It Or Not, You Are Looking At Three Dudes" by Brian Ashcraft is now "Star Cosplayer Comes Out As Transgender During TV Show" with a big Editor’s Note by Stephen Totilo:

Editor’s Note - June 2, 2019: We have updated this article, which misgendered Satoh, as it does not reflect our standards about how to cover transgender people on Kotaku. The article failed to capture the original nuance of what Satoh was saying. Osaka-based Kotaku writer Brian Ashcraft, who wrote this post, notes that “During the roughly six-and-a-half minute segment, the on-screen text read ‘I am a male’ (私は男性です or ‘Watashi wa dansei desu’) when the famed model and Street Fighter player appeared on screen. Another banner read ‘Actually, I am a man’ (実は私は男です or ‘Jitsu wa watashi wa otoko desu’) as Satoh talked on screen. What Satoh had said was ‘Actually, I was born into this world as a boy.’ I personally should have handled this announcement better by not glossing over the nuance in her statement, even if the way the program that originally aired the segment did. For that, I apologize.”

We want all readers to feel welcome at our site, and while we largely focus on the work we do now, we recognize that this older post and other coverage of Satoh simply didn’t meet a standard. I apologize to readers who we let down. - Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief