An everyday story of freedom of speech in the UK

Some people just won't learn to shut up, which is a good thing for the rest of us. Stacey Guthrie with a tale of two cancellations

“My first cancellation happened around three years ago when I pointed out to an extremely high-profile casting director that a video he shared on Twitter had been heavily edited, making it look like a trans-identified male was being attacked by security. In fact, the unedited video showed that the male had initiated the aggression and was being physically removed from the venue to protect the women attending the event.

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but, being neurodivergent and very attached to the truth, it felt important to inform the casting director that he’d been duped. I imagined he’d look at the unedited video, realise his mistake, we’d laugh, he’d delete it and we’d all move on, grateful that we hadn’t spread misinformation and fanned the flames of an already volatile situation.

What in fact followed was like that scene in a zombie movie, where the protagonist knocks something over and the dead-eyed horde suddenly turns as one, sensing fresh meat. The unbridled glee with which the casting director’s acolytes immediately started tearing me apart was horrifying. I was called transphobic, bigoted, hate-filled. I was told my hatred of this most vulnerable section of society whose very existence was being erased by hags like me was “sickening”.

At that point, I decided to unpack my mini-shovel and dig myself a even deeper hole by trying to explain that I didn’t hate trans people at all, I just didn’t believe humans can change sex. And with that, the final nail in the coffin of my blossoming comedy acting career was hammered resolutely in. I was openly told I was finished, that I’d got on the wrong side of one of the most influential casting directors in the country and ‘good luck having a career after that’. I was privately sent rape threats and threats of other, really quite creative, acts of violence.

Then my agent was contacted by multiple people and told that if she didn’t drop me her career would also be over. As a small, reasonably new agent I suppose she didn’t really have much choice, and our contract was ended. I was essentially blacklisted. One of the most disturbing parts of it was how my fellow actors responded. People, who only hours before, had been happily gushing at me like a broken platitude hydrant were now energetically distancing themselves from me. One accused me of “shitting on the soul of her trans child” another suggested that recently surviving sepsis had sent me mad, yet another came out with some kind of surreal thought macrame to suggest I was racist: each one side-eying the casting director to check if their feverish allegiance was being seen, like a Maoist Struggle Session in dance tights.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. Working life was looking good, I had a new agent, a good one who represents some of the better comedy acts in the country. I was an accepted part of an 800-strong WhatsApp group set up by a comedy producer for females in comedy. Everything was peachy. Then, after the Supreme Court clarification that, for the purpose of equality law, woman means biological woman, the owner of the group did something that made my mini-shovel start calling to me.

She posted a meme that said “Trans Women are Women” with the suggestion that the whole group agreed. I tried so hard to let it go but it was that T-word again - the truth. She was well within her rights to believe that simply by putting on a dress a man can magically transform into a woman but suggesting we all agreed with her? Not okay. I tried to show her respect by messaging her privately to make her aware that not everyone in the group shared her belief. It didn’t go well. Aware that my beliefs were protected by law, this one was clever enough not to say anything ‘out loud’ but within a couple of days I received an email informing me that I was no longer part of the group; that by messaging her privately my ‘behaviour’ was a danger to her mental health and that of the other members.

Next day, I got a phone call from my agent, the producer had contacted her. A couple of days after that my agent told me that ‘lots of actors’ had contacted her to say I’d been aggressive on social media and had been openly criticising her. I hadn’t. A few days later, on my 60th birthday, I was packing our van for a trip away and received an extremely surreal call from my agent which felt like we were both having entirely separate conversations. I had done everything she’d asked me to do; deleted my social media accounts, apologised and promised I wouldn’t behave ‘unprofessionally’ again but she was getting more and more upset and then said I was being aggressive.

I asked my husband, who was packing the van with me, for his opinion. I’ve known him forty years and he knows that my autistic style of communication can come across as ‘blunt’ but he was as confused as I was. Neither of us could make sense of the accusation. When she realised I had a witness, she completely lost it and ended the call. An hour or so later I received an email terminating our contract due to me ‘bullying her' and other bizarre assertions. It was destabilising. The whole thing had felt scripted, like my agent was being steered by someone else, trying to corral me into saying or doing something that could give her a lawful reason to dump me. I now realise it was classic gaslighting. Just another witch hunt, all the more painful for being performed by women.

It’s a huge relief to no longer have to tiptoe around an industry that doesn’t know it’s arse from its lady-dick; one that’s populated by desperate, weak people, willing to ruin another woman just for a pat on the head from someone who won’t remember their name in a week’s time. I can now work on my own terms, authentically and truthfully. What does sting though, is that every time I stick my head above the parapet and get a poisoned arrow in the eye, I get so many private messages from women who say they agree with me but don’t want to say it openly. I couldn’t live with that level of cognitive dissonance myself, but I kind of understand. Kind of. Just don’t come running to me when the flying monkeys are rinsing out their dance tights and looking at you.”

Stacey Guthrie