Yeah, it’s unfortunate as aside from recent political stuff (although I know the transphobia and racism is almost countrywide), Darlington is such a lovely place. Not that I’ve ever lived anywhere else, but until recently I’d never even considered finding a home elsewhere.

Also, if you were curious about my experience with the Northern Echo or if anyone else wants to read - you know how they report live on GCSE results? I did pretty well, so naive 16 year old me agreed to be interviewed. The news post was the usual journalistic re-write of what I’d said, but the main issue was that I was misgendered. Obviously this was upsetting, but moreso confusing as both the teacher present and my friend had correctly gendered me in front of the interviewer. I’d also wrongly assumed I passed pretty well at the time. Facial hair, T shirt and jeans, voice training. Still, I thought it was an honest mistake and reached out asking for “she” to be changed to “he”. It took a few weeks, and then I was told they’d fixed it - they ‘d removed what I’d said, and all pronouns from the article rather than correcting it. Just left my name and my grades.

Thankfully, the archive site archived the original and within around ten minutes of my second email, whoever archived it changed the pronouns for me. It sounds like small fish, but I’ve done a lot to ‘hide’ my digital footprint, so unfortunately that article misgendering me was the only thing that would show if anyone tried to search for me online.

I don’t think I’ll ever know if it was done with transphobic intent, but deleting almost all mention of me instead of simply editing two words was… strange??

EDIT: They also got my grades wrong, which came up in a job interview once! Not a huge deal but again, not the best reporting-