Elliot Page says gender-neutral acting categories at award shows “seems like a good idea”
Elliot Page joins the chorus of Hollywood voices calling for gendered categories at the Oscars to be abolished
Aux News Gender
The topic of gendered categories at awards shows is becoming more prominent as more gender-nonconforming performers rise to the top of their craft (or feel more comfortable being open with their gender expression). Several awards shows have already done away with gendered categories, though most of the major U.S. film and television award ceremonies still have “Best Actor” and “Best Actress” categories. In a new interview, Elliot Page, one of the most visible trans actors and a previous Academy Award nominee, agrees that it’s probably time to move on from those gendered distinctions.
“Yeah, it seems like a good idea,” Page told Entertainment Weekly when asked about the Oscars potentially abolishing gendered categories. “And, again, this sort of unusual aspect of that being the only category, right, where that sort of happens? So, hopefully, we start moving beyond that degree of binary thinking.”
In recent years, several non-binary actors have spoken out about the issue, including Emma Corrin, Liv Hewson, and Bella Ramsey. While Hewson chose not to submit themselves for Emmy consideration because of the gendered categories, Ramsey chose to compete in the female category, noting that doing so “can open up a conversation about how it feels—as long as I’m aware of the fact that it’s not ideal, but also that finding alternatives is really complex.” However, Ramsey told Vanity Fair, “I just hope there’s more space for nonbinary people to be recognized within [future] categories.”
Non-binary actors are not the only ones who have advocated for the abolishment of gendered categories. “I don’t understand why it’s split into just two genders when we all know it’s a much bigger spectrum. Whatever the mix is, we should maybe just break down any of those categories that end up being divisive and unnecessary,” Hugh Jackman said to the BBC (via Metro), while Michael Imperioli remarked to The New York Times, “Why not? It’s all one big acting soup.”
Why not indeed? There are two main arguments against getting rid of gendered categories. One is that collapsing the categories would lead to fewer awards; Angela Bassett told the NYT she didn’t like the idea because there’s “Not enough opportunity.” One solution for that would be to create new categories, and therefore more opportunities. Those new awards could recognize genre performances (like how the Golden Globes have categories for comedy and drama), or be designated by screen time (a featured actor category in addition to supporting, for example).
More complicated is the argument that collapsing the categories would actually take away opportunities for women and gender-nonconforming performers to be recognized, as when only men were nominated in the Brit Awards’ gender-neutral Best Artist category. In the acting world, awards are usually related to screen time, and men tend to get the most of that. Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn observed to the NYT that until women and nonbinary stars get “as much screen time as the men, it’s not very fair to compare the performances.” The Crown’s Olivia Williams agreed, “Until there’s a 50-50 opportunity, then we still need to have our own categories.” One way or another, there clearly needs to be more change to accomplish parity in Hollywood.
115 Comments
Just because something “may be a good idea” doesn’t mean we should do it right away. I suggest we slow our roll on changing the Academy Awards categories. Too much unnecessary backlash and unintended consequences.
Imagine you asked your boss for a deserved raise. You know you deserve it, your coworkers know you deserve it, your boss knows you deserve, and there is not budgetary reason not to.Would you find it reasonable for someone to come along and say “Whoa, we’ve been making too many changes around here recently, let’s slow our roll, and table this idea until the “right” time”?
Hypotheticals are super fun. I deploy them too sometimes – always a great conversation-stopper. I’ll reiterate my opinion – while it’s interesting in theory, I do not think we should change the Academy Award nomination categories at this time. I think you will find that the majority of actresses will agree. Things may change, but this is an unnecessary battle at the moment and not the hill to die on.
The irony, of calling hypotheticals a conversation stopper and then continuing to reply, is just too much for me
“Actresses” tend to prefer just being called “actors” these days.
“Imagine you asked your boss for a deserved raise.”
Imagine that had ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with this subject.
Making kneejerk changes is always a great idea.
That’s the reasoning they gave to delay giving civil rights to Black people. No thank you. If it’s a good idea and the fair thing to do, right away is the time to do it. Hell, yesterday is the time to do it.
That is such a bad faith response. And a provocative and unnecessary acceleration that is not thoroughly thought out.The Academy Awards nomination categories are not the “civil rights issue of our time” and you shouldn’t really make those inflammatory comparisons.
Okay, so, fun fact, a response is not “bad faith” just because you don’t like it or don’t know what to say to it, just fyi. (It’s especially cute because you accused the other poster of deploying a hypothetical as a “conversation-stopper,” so it’s apparently just an MO of yours to pretend that responses you can’t answer are all bad faith.) The fact remains that in questions of social justice, “okay, but not right now” is often the offered response, and that’s not acceptable to those for whom the system isn’t being fair.I didn’t say that the Academy Awards nomination categories were the civil rights issue of our time, though it is a civil rights issue, make no mistake. Fair is fair whether it’s small or giant, and treatment of LGBTQ+ people in general is absolutely a major civil rights issue of our time, and wrapped up in this whole ball of wax is the Academy’s treatment of women and minorities. It should all be examined and overhauled. “Not right now” is not an acceptable response. I’d love to see you accept “not right now” when it’s your rights being violated.“you shouldn’t really make those inflammatory comparisons.”And you shouldn’t try to tell other people what to do. lol It’s not even inflammatory. No one is “inflamed” here but you. If you don’t have a response, just say you don’t have a response.
Eliminating the categories that recognize the achievements of women seems like a strange way to improve the Academy’s treatment of women.
That’s an entirely fair argument. But in the context of the conversation with the other poster, yours is an argument that it’s not a good idea (which is fine). The other poster was arguing that it’s a good idea that we can’t do now. That’s what I was arguing against.
Okay, so, fun fact, a response is not “bad faith” just because you don’t like it or don’t know what to say to it, just fyi. (It’s especially cute because you accused the other poster of deploying a hypothetical as a “conversation-stopper,” so it’s apparently just an MO of yours to pretend that responses you can’t answer are all bad faith.) Yep. This isn’t some tactical deployment, it’s a fucking conversation on AVC.
So what criteria would need to be met to make it the right time to make these changes? Because further down you accuse someone of stopping the conversation, but that’s exactly what you’re doing by saying “not yet”. Not yet is something you can just keep saying forever, especially if you’re not adding anything else to the discussion.
I totally agree but I’m not looking forward to Republicans losing their shit over this. Like dude we get it Ted Cruz you’re a horrible piece of shit with horrible opinions that no one loves not even your own family.
I actually can’t wait to see their hissy-fit. Maybe it’s because I’m morbidly obsessed with answering the question, “how many more times until their constituents realize what incredible wastes of space these people are?”
No need to throw them an easy win that could swing an important Congressional seat or ten. Republicans pray for distractions like this. It’s an unnecessary battle at this time.
Never underestimate the number of people who hear, understand and love the goblin nonsense that spills from Ted’s jowls.
Sadly, their constituents eat up that culture war bullshit with a spoon. They appeal to their worst instincts, validate people’s shittiness and they we get literally worse people as a result. People that vote.
Dude, Republicans are always losing their shit over something. So we might as well go ahead with this because they’re going to bitch and moan anyway. Hell, right now, at least a dozen conservative sites are penning articles like “Why does Elliot Page hate women?”
“Hell, right now, at least a dozen conservative sites are penning articles like “Why does Elliot Page hate women?””
You think conservative sites are using the name Elliot???
I’m impressed with the assumption that those shitty conservative sites will say “Elliot.” My bet would be that they won’t.
Right they were mad over M&Ms. There’s no making them happy.
Dude, Dems and Republicans are constantly losing their shit and bitching/moaning over things they disagree with.
Tucker Carlson will completely lose his shit.
I think the problem is that it isn’t just Republicans who are wary about stuff like this. The TERF arguments are mostly offensive horseshit, but I don’t think it’s a great idea to push to eliminate a category meant to recognize women’s achievement, for the sake of making an incredibly small portion of the population more comfortable. Stuff like this doesn’t just trouble MAGA dipshits, but people who are potentially able to be convinced that trans and nonbinary rights are worth supporting.
This is a subject that affects maybe 3 people.
Most murder cases only involve one person.
Rich and famous celebrities crying about their narcissistic need to be acknowledged for what makes them rich and famous is not murder.
You sound jealous.
I would argue at least 2, if the death only involves 1 person it’ll be misadventure or suicide.
“Most murder cases only involve one person.”
Every single murder case in the history of the word has involved at least two people, genius.
You can’t murder nothing, and you can’t be murdered by nothing.
That’s called suicide, woketard
Die bitch.
No one cares what you think.
Counterpoint… Do away with awards shows.It will be much easier to get everyone on board with this idea than Page’s. And with a lot less manufactured outrage.
Page’s argument stands regardless of whether the awards are a public event or not.
So many actresses dream of winning an Academy Award and being acknowledged by their peers. It is their lifelong goal and there is zero reason to do away with this. I’m still pissed about Jessica Chastain’s long-awaited Best Actress Oscar speech being overshadowed by Will Smith’s psychotic outburst. SO many women deserve their moment.
People deserve to be recognized for outstanding work. They can do away with the televised shows, I don’t watch them anyway, but they’d still give out the awards and the problem would remain.
You don’t need a trophy or a nomination to be recognized for outstanding work – especially when performances are based on purely subjective opinion.
They are recognized. With millions of dollars. Showering them with more awards is like dictators giving themselves military pins.
This seems a bit melodramatic. There are awards for excellence in all sorts of industries, and generally the awards are given by others in the industry. I’m not sure why you’re so bothered by awards in this one. But I’m not here to argue you out of it. Be bothered if you like.
Counterpoint… Do away with awards shows. If only…
Why not just create a new non-binary category and be done with it? Keep best actor & actress, add best non-binary actor? I dont want to live in a world where women aren’t recognized and all the awards go to dudes. That is exactly what would happen if those categories were collapsed.
There wouldn’t be enough performances to fill it out in a given year.
You don’t think are were five performances by people who identify as non-binary in any given year?
There are several theater awards that have one annual winner and they still see pretty diverse individuals winning. I don’t know that there is any way to know empirically that all awards would go to men unless it was tried. I do think if we’re collapsing the genders, it would be worth dividing out types of performances – minimally, comedy and drama.
It’s nicer to spread awards love around, though. More people getting recognized is a good thing. I’m for more awards categories, not less, as thorny as the gendered issue obviously is.
I think there are probably more alternatives than *just* dividing by gender. I would prefer more awards than less while also recognizing that it’s hard to know exactly what would happen if the Oscars went gender neutral
For what it’s worth the Tony’s are still gendered and two gender non-conforming performers who use they/their pronouns won in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor category earlier this year. Alex Newell won the latter and has said they don’t agree with eliminating gendered categories and opted for their category because they consider “actor” to be a gender neutral term.
A totally valid point.I was thinking specifically of the Drama League which awards one award each year for performer. They’ve had a relatively even mix, though I do think relative fame helps folks with that one.
There aren’t actually that many nonbinary people in the world (which is why the outrage over their mere existence is so tiresome). If you’re a nonbinary actor in a major film you’d pretty much be guaranteed a nomination even if you suck, which isn’t really fair.
One (potentially problematic) idea can be a minimum threshold requirement, where an NB actor must receive a certain number of votes in order to qualify for a nomination. It may result in a small number of nominees per year, but honestly I don’t mind that. Even if there’s one person in the category, they would still be justified in receiving the honor for turning in an exceptional performance. Again, it’s not perfect, but there will never be a perfect solution to this problem until gender bias ceases to exist, so…
But then if a NB actor doesn’t get enough votes I feel like that’s an optics nightmare. Plus is there such a threshold for cis actors? If not it would seem suspicious to put these hurdles in place for a NB actor to be nominated. I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea, and love that you’re brainstorming ways to make it work, though! Definitely better then “it’ll cause this problem so we better give up and not do it at all.”
One reason for the outrage over their existence is that there are so few of them. Hard for such a small group to mount a defense compared to women, blacks, or Jews and fewer people know a non-binary person, especially if you are over the age of 30. The root of all bigotry is not seeing different people as people and actually encountering lots of different people is the bets way to prevent that.
I’m not sure that’s true, or that it’s that simple. I think the outrage over their existence is more to do with the fact that they challenge our belief of How It’s Supposed to Be. People don’t like that. It can’t be a numbers thing, because as you note there is outrage over the existence of Black people, Jews, women, and all sorts of populations. There are enough Black people to mount a defense but they still hate the fuck out of us. The numbers keep them from literally killing you (somewhat, not entirely), but they don’t keep them from being mad that you’re alive.
Maybe it’s time to admit that “non-binary” is some serious, narcissistic bs?
You sound like a total TERF. What is this category “woman” you speak of? Get with the times. (big ol’ sarcasm)
Because then Ezra Miller wins the Oscar for Best Non-binary Actor for The Flash.A single gender-neutral Best Actor award takes away awards from women and non-binary actors, because the winner would usually be a man.
How’s that working out for Best Director?
don’t forget literally every non-performance category
Excuse me, all we ever do for these things is forget every non-performance category.
Considering there have been two female best director winners in 80+ years?
Not great.
I mean you could argue there really should not be Gender based acting categories…acting is acting. This is not sports where there are physiological differences that preclude fair competition for most sports.
John Holmes would disagree
I agree w/ Page and others in the non-binary camp in principle but… in practice actresses quoted later in the article (Seehorn and Williams) seem to be more realistic about how this will play out.
gimme a Best Cameo category; the cameos these days are so artless and the truly powerful walk-ones deserve some credit.
“the cameos these days are so artless”
The comments around here are so pointless.
More complicated is the argument that collapsing the categories would
actually take away opportunities for women and gender-nonconforming
performers to be recognized
Someone that actually engaged in critical thinking would arrive at this being the obvious outcome fairly quickly.
I still want to see stunt people recognized. Interestingly, del Toro used a woman stuntperson in Hellboy II to represent a male character, as he notes in the film’s Commentary.
In general, adding stunt people seems like a no-brainer. You’d be nominating more blockbuster movies (something the Academy has been trying to do, in far less defensible ways, for years) and rewarding people who truly deserve recognition.I think in practice you’d have to nominate stunt crews, not individual stuntpeople. By design, the work of individual stunt people is difficult to discern in the movie — you’re supposed to be thinking the people jumping out of the car is Robert Downey Jr. or whoever.
Well, this topic well certainly inspire discussion. Unfortunately, The Root has shut down commenting for the moment, so expect the grey trolls that spew racism and sexist garbage there to make their way here to this story in order to entertain themselves.
If the Root is shut down that will greatly reduce homophobia and transphobia since blacks hate LGBT. The Root wont even censor the F word
Die bitch
Would combining the awards lead to them just being dominated by men? The Grammy Awards don’t seem to have gender based awards and the story after usually seems to be how Beyonce or Adele or Lady Gaga or Billie Eillish or Sam Smith cleaning up and winning a bunch of awards.
TIL that music and movies are the same thing.
Movies are not music.
One of the main tenets of pro-queer ideology is that gender is different from sex.Those categories are just sex, not gender. It’s already taken care of.
An idea that would fail the first time a woman doesn’t get the nod for successive years; the outrage would demand a restoration of split awards. Or some stupid compromise of men and women winning alternating years. This doesn’t feel like a thing people want, and only invites eye rolling and rightwingers carping about Hollywood’s liberal bubble once again.
This will never happen, because in an age where theatrical interest is getting smaller and smaller, lessening the amount of awards a film can potentially win is the last thing studios want. They’re never going to condense two gendered awards into a single award.I could see a new category being added, but only if it could prove a positive for studios and their marketing teams.
it’s a nice idea in *theory* but if best director is already always a sausage fest then what leads people to believe the acting categories won’t also turn into that as well
A solution in search of a problem.
Simple and obvious solution.Non binary performers are eligible for both awards.
Simple and obvious rebuttal: everyone would declare themselves as “non-binary.”
Yes. It’s glaringly obvious.
I was resistant to this idea at first because…well because I have no really good reason. But it does make sense. Other non-Hollywood professions don’t tend to hand out awards based on gender.However, it does make sense to expect that mostly men will be nominated, in that case. Just like how in non-Hollywood professions men get the bulk of the recognition. But that’s not a reason not to do it. Just something else to work on.
The simple and obvious fact of the matter is that male actors don’t compete with female actors for female roles, and female actors don’t compete with male actors for male roles. (Well, they might compete for “Unnamed Nurse” or “Judge Smith,” but those roles don’t lead to awards nominations.) Ergo, different categories for male and female actors make fundamental sense in a way just about no other awards do, apart from sports.
Everyone deserves to go by the pronouns and gender identity of their choice, but that doesn’t entitle them to demand that the rest of society act as though the vast majority of humans don’t identify as one of two genders. Nor does the existence of non-binary people, and their fundamental right to respect and dignity, make any and every societal/cultural distinction between men and women inherently illegitimate.
Are male/female acting awards somewhat unfair to non-binary performers? Yes. But the alternative of simply flattening everything would be more unfair to far more people. This is one real-world case where there simply isn’t a perfect solution that’s equally fair to everyone.
Eh. Separate categories for gender sounds really fucking antiquated and foolish. Be weird if literary or music prizes did that.
Perhaps the real foolishness is to not realize that anyone can write a book, but very few/zero male actors could have played, say, Erin Brokovich, and very few women actors could have played, say, Johnny Cash.
This is a great point.
Separate “male vocalist” and “female vocalist” categories wouldn’t seem unexpected at all to me. “Male songwriter” and “female songwriter” would.
Eh, if you go down that road you’d wind up with a million categories. Not every actor is right for every part for any number of reasons related to their identity. An 80 year old won’t go up for the same part as an 18 year old either. Should we have age categories?
I don’t know if we *should* have age-specific categories, but I don’t think it’d be an injustice or irrational if we did. Age and gender are both very real distinctions, and they do limit casting, so it’s really just a question of how many awards an organization wants to give.
Maybe this could be something helped via the strike negotiations? Because the skepticism is completely valid: is acting treated with enough equity to celebrate achievements with fair neutrality? Female actors still have a different shelf life, weight, and career trajectory to male actors, which is worse when you factor in race/ethnicity, gender expression, and ableism. Then there’s differences in professional support based on who you are, when you start, and who you know. As is trans/non binary actors are still fighting for a small niche that still sort of seems slanted to ability to ‘pass’/conform/aesthetically exist. Then there are the writers rooms that still have voice problems when writing outside gender/race/sex.
It’s a great idea until people inevitably start analyzing which sex has won more of the “genderless” awards.
As much as I love the sentiment, my acting teacher said it best “if the Oscar’s only had a gender neutral acting category women wouldn’t win, we aren’t there yet as a society.” Honestly how on earth would that go down the first year? Do they give it to a man? (Outrage) do they give it to a woman? (Woke police). Leave it how it is.
My wife and I have talked about how we want a category for “Biggest Swing”. Basically, which actor gave it their all (for better or for worse) but took a big risk and just went all in. Basically the Nicolas Cage award.
I’m not comfortable with the idea that Joaquin Phoenix could have won two Academy Awards for Joker.
Love transphobes impotently raging every time he’s in the news.
I wish there was a way to insure men, women, and non-binary actors received equal scrutiny from the judges, but until that’s the case it doesn’t seem like there’s a truly fair option. They could create a non-binary category, but the same actors would be nominated every year just to fill the ballot. Some awards outside the scope of entertainment have actually had to create gendered categories just to keep bias from handing all the awards to men, or to encourage women to compete in male dominated venues. It’s sad that the Oscars segregate its contestants into gendered buckets considering how irrelevant gender is to an actor’s potential. Gendered awards seem as absurd as the notion of having awards based on race or ethnicity. It plays a part in the identity of the roles they play, but there’s no inherent difference in the capability of any actor. Hell, defining that is the whole point of the awards, so segregating the awards into gendered categories even implies that women can’t compete with men.
The best actor in a male-presenting role and the best actor in a female-presenting role and the best non-binary actor in a non-binary-presenting role?That way all three winners could be non-binary actors.
So how would this work in practice?Here’s the all the nominees from this year’s Oscars:Lead
Brendan Fraser, Austin Butler Colin Farrell, Paul Mescal, Bill Nighy, Michelle Yeoh, Cate Blanchett, Ana De Armas, Andrea Riseborough, Michelle Williams
Supporting
Ke Huy Quan, Brendan Gleeson, Brian Tyree Judd Hirsch, Barry Keoghan, Jaime Lee Curtis, Angela Bassett, Hong Chau, Kerry Condon, Stephanie Hsu
So do you just have two categories: Best lead actor, best supporting actor?Do you pick the top two or top four?
Top 2 or top 4 would work. Best Actors. Would work just fine in advertising.
So, since we’re not considering gender, the same way we don’t for say, Best Editor, theoretically you could nominate four people who identify as male or four people who identify as female or four people who identify as something else and everyone would be happy?
Doesnt make any sense. Why didnt Page identify as someone with talent?
Die bitch
Yes. Lets start a new yearly debate on the breakdown of nominations by gender and how many times one wins the award vs the other. How about just end the whole fucking ruse saying one actor or performance is better than everybody else’s during a given year. At the very least, just return the awards to in-industry accolades and stop making them some masturbatory extravaganza exhibited to the masses.
I would vote for this but America loves cults and clans and teams.
One problem I see with this is if a male wins over a beloved cis female performance, the award will be “controversial.”