The Royal Academy of Arts had just publicly announced that they would no longer stock my merchandise in their shop, after a bunch of incensed embroiderers took it upon themselves to rally the virtual masses against me. Eight emails from “the public” were apparently enough to spook one of the UK’s major art institutions into submission and, without further ado, drop me like a hot potato — via Instagram, no less.

I have heard it said many times that cancel culture does not exist. My story would almost appear to support that idea: here I am, a year on, still making a living and sharing my views. For the last few months, I have been working on a huge embroidery piece; in a twist of fate that I would never have foreseen a year ago, it is about to be revealed in the Summer Exhibition at, of all places, the Royal Academy.

And it certainly seems, from what I’ve observed since last year, that cancel culture is in retreat. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real — or that we should ignore what it has done.

Let’s consider what, exactly, I was being “held accountable” for. Why did I manage to accumulate, over the period of two years, a small but very vocal “anti-fan club”? What caused me to leave the small hair salon inside Soho Theatre’s dressing room that I ran for nearly nine years until late 2019, to subsidise my art career? What inspired the witch-hunting mob that subsequently sabotaged any of my art-related collaborations and relationships with stockists, including a regular gig selling embroidered patches at Liberty’s London?

All this was in response to an essay I wrote to express my steadily increasing concerns about gender identity ideology and its impact on women’s rights and boundaries, as well as children’s safety. When it comes to understanding basic biology, I, like most people, stick to good old science: there are two sexes, male and female. Intersex conditions are very rare and, contrary to the new ideological belief, do not a third sex make. Gender identity as an innate condition — “gendered souls” — is not something I believe in. After all, what is “gender”, if not a word describing sexist stereotypes?

I have compassion for those who are severely uneasy about their bodies and the stereotypes associated with them, but I do not accept the idea that “woman” or “female” is a feeling — an identity that one can opt into. Nevertheless, though my detractors would have you believe otherwise, I don’t hate those who disagree with me. That should go without saying. But sadly, in the age of cancel culture, it has to be spelled out.

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Few noticed when I left my hair salon. Nobody came to my defence in a national newspaper when Liberty’s quietly dropped me. Back then, mine was a typical cancellation: hard to pin down, an accrual of several incidents that could be passed off as minor misfortunes, only half in public.

So, in some ways, I was lucky that the RA jumped on the bandwagon. That story was noisy, got a lot of attention, and inspired resistance. Dragged into the spotlight, the “activists” who’d been making my life harder for two years exposed themselves as the nasty bullies I’d always known them to be. The general public saw it happen, and rushed to my support. Ultimately, the chief of the RA apologised to me, and my merchandise was reinstated in their shop. It remains to be seen how long it will stay there.

The whole saga, while enormously stressful and upsetting at the time, was serendipitous in many ways: it actually hugely increased my art sales and commissions.

Still, my story could easily have ended badly. I know many whose have — those who have had their careers destroyed and their lives made hell, because they don’t believe a man becomes a woman if he says he’s a woman. The artist Nina Edge, for example, has been hounded and vilified online for her pro-woman stance by the people behind “The White Pube” and “Terfs out of Art”. She had opportunities stripped away from her and her name smeared. Then there’s Claudia Clare, a ceramicist who has recently been cancelled by Ceramic Arts London and banned by the Craft Potters association. Dance choreographer extraordinaire Rosie Kay, meanwhile, had to leave the company she built from scratch, due to ridiculous accusations of transphobia and the resulting hostility her employees directed towards her. I could go on. There are many more artists, writers and creatives who have had their lives turned upside down: some have reached out and connected with me, to escape the isolation such incidents can trigger.

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Silence is deadly. Stonewall — a government-funded, formerly brilliant LGB charity that has made the “T” its new raison d’être — has been instrumental in quenching attempts to discuss gender ideology. Their “Diversity Champions” schemes are embedded in many companies and institutions uber-eager to appear on “the right side of history”. “No Debate” was the rebuttal to the ever-growing mountain of questioning voices, many of which echoed my own concerns regarding a proposed “Self-ID” law that would affect women and girls in sports, prisons, changing rooms and more. 

Since the attempt to cancel me, that mountain of resistance has reached critical mass. More and more people have been willing to express criticism of this noisy ideology. There have been an increasing number of lawsuits against it. Allison Bailey is currently suing Stonewall. James Esses, a trainee therapist who launched a public petition trying to safeguard counselling for vulnerable children with gender dysphoria, is suing the university that expelled him via email for doing so. Gillian Philip, an author whose contract was terminated by HarperCollins, is bringing an Employment Tribunal claim against her former publishers, arguing that she should not have been discriminated against for holding and expressing gender-critical views.

All this has led to the “Self-ID” law being scrapped and “gender-critical” views (or rather, an understanding of science and biology) being protected in law. Meanwhile, many employers have actually left the Stonewall “Diversity Champions” scheme, after recognising that it creates a hostile work environment for people, like me, who are not taken with gender ideology. Among them are Channel 4, Ofsted, the Cabinet Office, and the UK’s equality watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). 

Common sense is, slowly, returning to public discourse.

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It is essential for the people in charge to step up when gender ideology activists go too far. My own story illustrates that fact. When all hell broke loose last year, the Royal Academician David Mach reached out to convey his dismay at what had been done to me. After all, art requires freedom, and I had been cancelled for doing what all artists do: express our thoughts through our work. That should have bothered many more creatives, yet he was an isolated voice at the time.

A few months later, he contacted me again. Each Royal Academician involved with the Summer Exhibition can issue a few invitations to the annual Summer Show to artists they would like to participate. These artists do not have to go through the usual application process. David invited me. I know this wasn’t an easy stand for him to take; I am very grateful that he took it. And I accepted, of course.

Rest assured, this won’t go down well with the guild of envious embroiderers, much less all those who would like me to never say a word again, have any commercial success, or be given a platform as an artist. I am braced for them to screech: “How can you support this witch, especially during Pride month!?” They are screaming into a void. I’m not afraid of the lies, the smears, the intimidation. Truth has a habit of revealing itself in the end.

Concerned and influential voices within the arts are starting to come together, to protect one of our cornerstones: freedom of expression. JK Rowling and Graham Linehan bravely led the charge against this growing authoritarian movement, enduring considerable harassment. Finally, it seems, more and more people are willing to stick their head above the parapet. Comedians Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais and Bill Maher have publicly “come out” for common sense, taking on the zealots this movement has produced. The rather erratic protests they triggered helped highlight the absurdity of a movement that purports to have inclusivity and diversity at its heart, while trying to eradicate any dissenting voices that don’t toe the party line.

It’s a hopeful sign of the times that Netflix recently came forward to say it will not censor or reject people or shows on the grounds that they may make some people feel uncomfortable. A statement read: “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.” Cultural institutions, take note!

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Despite all the effort made by self-proclaimed “trans rights activists”, people in positions of power are finally realising that the movement’s temper tantrums have held far too many companies and institutions hostage for far too long. Have the adults finally come back into the room? Have years and years of grassroots feminist activism — by organisations such as Woman’s Place UK, Fair Play For Women and Sex Matters — finally shaken people awake, before we sleepwalk into disaster?

It’s easy to be discouraged sometimes. Particularly during the corporate festival that Pride Month has become: a month in which many companies, and even the police, rush blindly to pledge their allegiance to the ever-expanding LGBT+++ movement. (Mattel, for example, has a new “Trans Barbie”: same old sexist stereotypes but with a twist!) “Diversity and Inclusion” has become big business these days.

Meanwhile, many LGB people feel thoroughly disheartened — excluded from a movement that is supposed to champion them. What started as a protest for people’s right to be free to love who they love without stigma and discrimination has become a hostile environment. This is particularly true for those lesbians who point out that they experience same-sex attraction (not same-gender) — and that excluding males, however they identify, is not transphobic, but the very grounds on which their sexuality is based. 

This too shall pass. In the year since I was cancelled, the tide has turned. Common sense will prevail and when it does, we will perhaps have learned a thing or two about genuine tolerance, compassion, diversity and inclusion.

In the meantime, you can see my work at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It is entitled: “Nevertheless She Persisted.”

It was a wave that meant that when I was publicly “cancelled” by the Royal Academy of Arts this summer, I was swiftly “un-cancelled” in a spectacular fashion. More importantly, it was a wave that finally smothered Stonewall’s ‘No Debate’ strategy — and dragged a conversation they had tried to avoid for so long kicking and screaming into the public sphere.

Things started to fall into place when, within a few weeks, Maya Forstater won her court case, protecting gender critical belief in law, my own story hit the headlines, and the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published a damning essay, It Is Obscene, revealing the horrendous treatment she had been subjected to after saying that transwomen are transwomen and not women.

Of course, it was a moment that had been brewing for a long time. Many feminists had been warning about the concerning impact of gender identity ideology for years, sounding the alarm and being vilified, ridiculed and ostracised in response. No doubt, the inimitable JK Rowling’s decision to make her views on the subject known last year helped pave the way for an increasing number of women to stand up and speak out; finally, everything is out in the open.

Yet this debate is far from won. Activists often still succeed in framing it as a “trans rights issue”, rather than something that actually concerns women. Looking at the vast political capture, it’s sometimes easy to lose hope. We see the Mayor of London tweet ideological dogma such as: “Trans women are women, trans men are men, and all gender identities are valid.” We see the leader of the Labour Party say: “it’s not right to say that only women have a cervix, it shouldn’t be said”. We see MPs such as David Lammy, who has made clear that he doesn’t even know what a cervix is, state unchallenged that there are “dinosaurs hoarding rights in the Labour Party”, referring to brave women like Rosie Duffield who keep pushing back against this ideological land grab.

To be fair, that last point resulted in a new trend for wearing dino costumes at most feminist gatherings and protests, so I suppose a thank you is in order, Mr Lammy.

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Yet even his buffoonery shouldn’t be laughed off — if only because it distracts from the more insidious repercussions of the transgender debate. In many institutions and companies, “preferred pronouns” are now being implemented from the top down under the guise of “diversity and inclusion”. Anybody who dares to question this may find themselves quickly under investigation for alleged “transphobia” or called a bigot and cowed into silence.

Let’s make no mistake: “preferred pronouns” aren’t, as some would have you believe, just a courtesy. They are a form of compelled speech; they ask people to no longer trust their eyes, but instead do as they are told or be ostracised. I have previously written about the parallels between the current climate and the East German Stasi under which my whole family used to live. And it is becoming clearer by the day that those comparisons were not an exaggeration.

Just look at the state of academia, where professors who dare to acknowledge the biological reality of the sexes are being de-platformed and hounded, regardless of the toll the often-aggressive behaviour has on their well-being. The use of smear campaigns and intimidating “protests”, with individuals donning balaclavas and waving smoke flares, seems to have washed over from the US and are now commonplace whenever a “heretic” has been identified and needs “dealing with”. Just ask Professors Joe Phoenix and Kathleen Stock.

That this ideology has also crept deep into the Arts, once the most tolerant of disciplines, was clearly highlighted by my attempted cancellation. It was by no means the first time an artist has been attacked and ostracised publicly for her alleged thought crimes, but it was certainly a turning point due to the involvement of the Royal Academy. The public apology and reinstatement of my work in their shop thrust into the spotlight something that has been happening quietly but constantly for quite some years now.

Petty groups like ‘Terf’s out of Art’ and ‘The White Pube’ have long bullied artists, most of whom are women, into silence. Their success is proved by the fact that many of these cases don’t make the headlines, even though they still cost these women dearly, in some cases their entire career. Meanwhile, for those who are yet to be publicly called out, there’s another chilling effect: don’t expect to be invited to give talks at universities or to create public artworks with Arts Council funding. If you’re deemed ‘unacceptable’, you’re on your own.

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These silent cancellations are just as vicious as those fought out in public; perhaps even more so, because they leave their victims utterly defenceless. Being de-platformed for your views is something one can challenge. Being quietly excluded from any kind of platform and conversation altogether leaves you with nothing.

When I wrote on these pages in August about the deafening silence within the arts establishment following the attempt to cancel me, I did so with a sense of despair. It seemed to me that the blue-haired activists had won; that ‘diversity and inclusion’ now only matters as long as you repeat the mantras and toe the party line.

Things still look bleak. But after everything that has happened this year, a sense of optimism has started to creep in. That isn’t merely because the alternative is a dystopian hellscape of authoritarianism that history has seen many times before. It’s because the truth has a habit of prevailing.

What’s striking this year is the growing number of women and men who have started to say: Enough. One court case verdict follows another, holding the line against a vicious new orthodoxy that seeks to burn witches while screaming “JUST BE KIND”.

The Forstater ruling has cemented the protection of “gender critical belief” in law. The charity LGB Alliance has now firmly established itself as a much-needed alternative to Stonewall. Grassroots organisations such as FiLiA, FairPlayForWomen and Women’s Place UK provide support and resources to a vast and growing number of gender-critical women who have found their voice. And for everybody who dares speak out regardless of the consequences, there are many more waiting in the folds, preparing for their moment to be brave.

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Fortunately, in my own case sanity prevailed and, like a monsoon rain, the stains my detractors tried to smear me with have washed right off, leaving me free to continue to create work without censorship, encouraged by a rapidly growing number of patrons and supporters. And I am not alone: despite great efforts to the contrary, heretical artists are finding new ways to exhibit work and bypass gatekeepers.

That is the lesson of the past year. Finally, the tide is turning. We have not been silenced; let alone defeated. So to those art students with a firm grasp on reality who may feel a bit hopeless: don’t be afraid. Come on in, the water’s fine.

Art, he warned, is in its final throes, largely thanks to its obsession with cliches. He went on to describe a group of children who were asked what they thought artists did. One child responded: “They notice things.”

Much has changed in the art world, as well as the world at large, since those lectures were recorded. Perry’s crossdressing is no longer seen as unusual. It would not raise a single eyebrow amidst all the gender identities, “preferred pronouns” and codes of conduct that have rapidly taken hold of Britain’s institutions.

Guided by Stonewall and its Diversity Champion Scheme, companies and Government departments now require its employees to comply with new and increasingly wide-ranging speech rules. That Stonewall deliberately misrepresents the existing equality law does not matter. These employers are desperate to appear inclusive and diverse — whatever the cost.

I noticed things.

Just over a month ago, thanks to a blog post I had written in 2019, I was publicly “cancelled” and then swiftly “un-cancelled” by the Royal Academy of Arts in London in a spectacular fashion. I had criticised and questioned the dangers of gender identity ideology, its effect on women’s rights, single sex spaces and services, as well as its corrosive impact on language itself. Something was shifting in our society; even the act of noticing, discussing or creating work about gender had started to feel uncomfortable, creating tangible repercussions for those who did.

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As a self-taught “outsider artist”, I have never aspired to be a member of the cultural establishment. That is partly because my chosen artform of embroidery had long been relegated to its little “women’s craft corner” and not taken seriously as fine art, and partly because I had not taken the traditional route into my art career. I came into it sideways via a 22-year-long hairdressing career, making it vastly more difficult to be taken seriously as an artist.

So perhaps I should have had no expectations towards the art establishment during the RA episode. And yet I found it remarkable that my peers remained silent. Artists, after all, require freedom of thought and expression to be able to create something that is vital, engaging and sometimes challenging to the viewer. So why would they choose to absent themselves from a discussion about those values?

With very few exceptions, the entirety of the UK arts scene stayed well clear of the spectacle. Rachel Ara, a fellow “cancelled” artist, withdrew her submission from the Summer Exhibition in solidarity with me, and one Royal Academician reached out in support. One.

Was everyone else too scared to speak out? Certainly Grayson Perry kept quiet — as he has done throughout a number of debates over transgenderism and censorship in recent years.

Is “being a cliché” no longer a problem? Is “sucking up to an academic elite” now more important than “noticing things” and conveying them through our work? Perhaps loss of courage is the trade-off one makes for a successful career within the arts establishment. I wouldn’t know, but I noticed things.

Having grown up in East Berlin — a breeding ground for its own type of severe authoritarianism — I am increasingly aware of the parallels between today and the censorious regime that shaped most of my grandparents’ lives and my parents’ formative years. There is a creeping anxiety towards expressing any thought that could be perceived as criticism or scepticism towards an orthodox narrative. You can be punished, socially ostracised and fired at a moment’s notice. In effect, nobody is free from the consequences of their speech.

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What, then, is the meaning of free speech and expression?

As a society, we define freedom of speech as a principle that supports an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship or legal sanction. The term freedom of expression is usually used synonymously but, in a legal sense, includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

The recent Forstater Judgment determined that gender critical views (or as I like to call them: “an understanding of the immutability of sex”) are now protected under the law. And the public outcry in response to my mistreatment by the RA gave a good indication that such views are far from unusual or in any way hateful, despite great efforts to portray them as such.

Germany has a troubling legacy in more ways than one. I have often spoken to my octogenarian grandmothers about life under the Nazis, and read an abundance of literature about the period. I personally caught the tail-end of the German Democratic Republic, which saw itself as a “people’s democracy” but was, in fact, a dictatorship.

Many people hailing from such places, who have witnessed the creeping ideological hold of authoritarianism first-hand, have contacted me to share their concerns about the present. Like me, they can see how censorship is starting to seep into every walk of life.

The question now is how to respond. I have often wondered if, had I been alive in 1930s Germany, I would have spoken truth to power. Would I have recognised the moment when the mood started to shift and things started to go awry? Or would I have been like a frog in tepid water that is slowly brought to the boil, not aware of the imminent danger until it’s too late?

It is impossible to say, but we all fancy ourselves the hero of our own story. But surely it says something about our current situation that a vocal but tiny minority of voices, amplified by social media, is able to force a major institution such as the Royal Academy of Art to forget its raison d’etre and publicly disavow an artist for her perceived thought crimes?

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Yes, in my case it backfired. I refused to back down and, with the help of a number of journalists, dragged the incident into the public realm kicking and screaming.

But what about the two previous years, during which I had to leave my job at Soho Theatre after it was threatened for renting out their space to me? What of the work collaborations that were boycotted due to guilt by association, so much so that I stopped them altogether in an attempt to protect my former partners?

That is my story — but I am far from the only artist who has been forced to live it. For every news story in the national press, there are dozens of quiet cancellations and insidious demands for language to be changed.

Artists have long been the canaries in the coal mine, providing advance warning once they detect dangers that others haven’t quite seen yet. That is why they “notice things”. Because when they no longer do, the rest of society suffers.