Gender Non-Specific Awards

I have always found it weird. It's not like sports. And now that we have lots of gender non-conforming people with high profiles, it seems an obvious shift. That said, I expect crankiness when the awards go one way or another, and also that it will ignite discussion of role imbalances in the plays chosen to be presented.

In 2012 the Grammy Awards merged the Pop Male, Pop Female and Solo Instrumental into Pop Solo Performance. They did the same in the Country and R/B categories as well.

The Distinctive Baritone said: "What if it’s two men or two women?"

Then it's two men and two women. In that scenario, those two men or two women would have gotten the most votes from the Tony committee and would therefore have won the award fair and square.

As someone mentioned above, I think the biggest potential problem is that we would have too many men winning the awards. However, I would argue that we've reached a point where there are enough strong roles for women each season that there would be a FAIRLY equal division. the way I figure this is by looking at the parallel categories and thinking about who probably would have won out of the two winners. For example, if we look at this past season: Cynthia Nixon would almost certainly have beaten Michael Aronov, I think Rachel Bay Jones probably would've beaten Gavin Creel, and I think Laurie Metcalf probably would've beaten Kevin Kline. Hard to say about Bette vs. Ben, but Bette certainly would've had a shot at it. This is all subjective of course, but that's where I'm coming from with this point.

NOWaWarning said: "The only thing I don't like about the idea is it cuts the number of acting categories in half. So I hope they could introduce some new categories to balance it back out. Maybe separate comedies and dramas like the Golden Globes, or add an ensemble award, or something else."

That sounds like an interesting idea! "Best Leading/Featured Performance in a Dramatic Role" and "Best Leading/Featured Performance in a Comedic Role". So for this last Tonys it may of have been Bette, David, and Andy for Comedic Lead, and Ben, Eva, Christian, etc for Drama (although the moms probably would've been slightly different to fill out each category, u know).

To me this move makes sense, there's no reason to separate these categories by gender.

Call_me_jorge said: "Why can’t the categories still be split between Featured and lead?"



Unless I missed or misunderstood one of the above posts, I don't think anyone is contesting the Featured/Lead split. Only the gender difference. So you'd still have Featured performance in a play, and leading performance in a play, etc. They just wouldn't be gendered. If they were to split it by comedy/drama, it would:

Best Leading Comedic performance in a Musical

Best Leading Dramatic performance in a Musical

Best Featured Comedic performance in a Musical

Best Featured Dramatic performance in a Musical



And then the same for plays.



EDIT: I also agree with the post above that it should be changed to "supporting" rather than "featured."

Updated On: 11/2/17 at 05:38 PM

I was posting from my phone yesterday and couldn't easily cut/paste, but here is the text from yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:

"But it’s another innovation, also announced at the ceremony, that will likely define next year’s event. Theatre Bay Area is nixing the practice of giving separate awards to male and female actors. All acting categories will be “gender nonspecific,” though the organization will still give two awards in each category, to ensure the same number of actors get honored. The progressive move makes much-needed space for transgender actors; more subtly, it’s a call for the industry to stop treating women’s acting contributions as separate from and thus unequal to men’s. Your move, Tony Awards and Oscars!"

Call_me_jorge said: "Why can’t the categories still be split between Featured and lead?"

Is this in response to my post? If so, my apologies, the "Leading/Featured" was supposed to signify that there were two categories for each, so still four acting awards as their is now.

The Distinctive Baritone said: "Non-binary people - I’m guessing - make up less than 1 percent of actors."



yes, and we’d like that to change in the future. And when it hopefully does, we’ll need a new system.

Your restaurant analogy doesn’t follow because gluten free food can co-exist with gluten food. The restaurant can offer both. Gender neutrality and gender non-neutrality cannot exist together in this case. Sometimes it can - a school can provide all-gender bathrooms as well as men’s/women’s bathrooms elsewhere in the school. But the same does not apply to awards categories, unless we get so many non-binary contenders that they can fill heir own category, which likely won’t happen until many years after the first few non-binary actors begin competing for Tonys.

But even if that does happen - notice the other key part of this issue that many people have already mentioned: there is simply no logical reason why female actors’ performances and male actors’ performance should be viewed as so artistically distinct that they cannot compete against each other. It’s completely arbitrary.