The trans inquisition: Rosie Kay has been forced out of her own dance company for questioning gender-identity dogma.

Kay is an experienced and accomplished dance professional. She graduated from the London Contemporary Dance School in 1998, founded the Rosie Kay Dance Company in Birmingham in 2004, and her productions have been acclaimed for their creativity and their sensitive treatment of topics such as sexual violence, conspiracy theories and military intervention.

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Things took a turn for the worse at the dinner party, when Kay announced that her next ballet would be based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, which is about an aristocrat who changes biological sex and lives for hundreds of years. This soon prompted a discussion on the difference between sex and gender, at which point Kay challenged some of those there to define non-binary, and defended the existence of women-only spaces. Several male dancers reportedly started shouting at her and accusing her of being a bigot and a transphobe.

After the party, four of the young dancers complained to Kay’s board of trustees. Orlando was cancelled, without notice. Kay was forced to apologise and was told she must undergo ‘gender training’. An external HR consultant was also commissioned by the board to investigate Kay.

In her apology, Kay wrote: ‘I am devastated by how the night went and how much it has affected you. It was never my intention to upset you, but I see now that I did so profoundly. I am truly sorry for this.’ But this was insufficiently contrite for the complainants. One said Kay had apologised without ‘true ownership of the fact she made transphobic comments’.

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So far, Kay has apologised, she has been ostracised by her own dance company, and she has now been effectively forced to resign.

Once again: Never apologize. Deal from a position of strength or lose every time.