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Five years ago, “Billions” actor Asia Kate Dillon wrote an impassioned letter in Variety, calling for the SAG-AFTRA committee to eliminate gendered acting categories after being asked to take part in their motion picture nominating category.
As a non-binary actor, Dillon had previously felt alienated by the Emmys and that org’s binary gender distinctions when submitting for “Billions” in 2017 — a distinction they labeled a “false dichotomy.” Dillon ended up not submitting at all for the 2023 Tonys when appearing in “Macbeth” on Broadway alongside Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga.
It’s a recent pattern seen with other non-binary actors in the awards conversation, such as “Yellowjackets” star Liv Hewson choosing to sit out of Season 2 submission entirely because “there’s not a place for me in the acting categories,” as they told Variety exclusively in April 2023. But despite Dillon opening up the door for a conversation with SAG-AFTRA and other award bodies, no one has been willing to walk through, they say.
“I engaged in conversation with them about abolishing their, frankly, genitalia-based awards,” Dillon recalls to Variety. “And they just told me flat out that they weren’t going to do it.” Despite all the headlines and conversations around implementing gender-free categories, the movement has softened in the years since Dillon wrote that open letter — especially with the ongoing attacks on queer and trans rights.
With the Gotham Awards going gender-neutral in 2021, shows like the Independent Spirit Awards followed closely behind by embracing gender-neutral categories across lead and supporting categories for its 2023 ceremony. Larger, more historic institutions like the Oscars and the Emmys haven’t moved the needle, however (aside from the Television Academy allowing actors to have “performer” engraved on their statue, if they so choose.)
Motion Picture Academy CEO Bill Kramer told Variety in June 2024, “It’s in the early exploration stage and one of many conversations about the future of awards and the Oscars.” The organization has prioritized spearheading new categories for casting and stunts.
With the past few years now as precedent, the Spirits have awarded an equal number of men and women (including Mikey Madison and Jeffrey Wright), while the 2024 Gotham acting awards only went to men. The biggest argument against gender-neutral categories has been the fear that women will be systematically disadvantaged and always lose to the men. “The Last of Us” star Bella Ramsey, who identifies as non-binary, recently said on “The Louis Theroux Podcast” that it “is really important that we have a female category and a male category” to preserve “recognition for women in the industry.”
Dillon cites award shows like the Spirits as important because they are setting a “tenor” for why gendered acting categories don’t need to exist. “Our job is to award art, and art doesn’t have a sex or a gender,” they explain. “The idea that, if you take the best actress category away to make space for all the other marginalized gender identities, there won’t be enough for women, plays into the patriarchal idea that we need to pit minorities and marginalized communities against each other. Separating people on the basis of sex or gender is actually discrimination under the constitution.”
With three years of gender-neutral categories to look back on, Film Independent acting president Brenda Robinson says the category shake-up is about so much more than the organization itself.
“This wasn’t something that happened in one board meeting or even one year of conversation, and I emphasize that because I want the industry to know how much thought was put into this to make sure we got it right,” Robinson says. “We were thinking about what it meant for us to be a beacon of inclusion in the industry and actually set the tone for how awards shows should go.”
The Spirits expanded their combined categories to 10 nominees, along with the introduction of a breakthrough award that is also gender-neutral. “We think the ways we’ve created equity through our award show is not only a reflection of the world we live in, but representative of the industry and what we want it to look like,” Robinson adds.
Having external nomination committees for each category, which are kept confidential even from the Film Independent board, has been the organization’s method of ensuring that the people voting “represent our mission and values and really stand for what we want to see in the industry.”
As a member of both the Academy and BAFTA, Robinson has observed that other awards shows are “well-intentioned across the board. I think the reality is that there’s sometimes resistance to change because people are very used to tradition. The public loves these categories, they love to see the competition.”
Robinson also cites practical considerations as a factor, with the potential move from five to 10 actors in the same category affecting the length of the show and the campaign season becoming more “unwieldy” with the increased number of people competing in the same category.
Historical precedent for gender-neutral acting categories exists, as the Emmys had a category celebrating outstanding individual performance in a variety or music program until 2008, which saw winners like Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Ellen DeGeneres hit the stage. Elsewhere, the MTV Movie & TV Awards, which appears to be on a bit of a permanent hiatus, dropped gender-specific categories in 2017. And other awards shows outside of the film industry, like the Grammys, have been gender-neutral since 2012.
Despite the world “living through times of uncertainty,” Robinson says she strives to remain strategic to keep pushing the Spirits forward. “This has been my advice to the organization: We are not going to change who we are or what we believe in,” she says. “We will never back down from our mission of being inclusive, of being a place of refuge for stories and storytellers alike. And now is not a time to retreat.”
Even if organizations like the Academy were to double down on their commitment to traditional acting categories, Dillon chooses to remain optimistic for what the future — even one still far away — might hold.
“The Academy members are not all cis people, so that is why I have hope, because people who vote on the art are going to start reflecting more and more the people who are making the art and ostensibly aren’t being recognized yet,” Dillon says. “I’m really not interested in exclusivity. I’m interested in inclusivity.”
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