BAFTA has announced that award nominees will have to pick and side and choose whether they want to compete as ‘actors’ or ‘actresses’, after deciding that gender-neutral categories don’t really work or make sense in this format.

It could be that they saw last year’s Brit Awards, where organisers decided on gender-neutral categories in order to appease non-binary Sam Smith. Despite being celebrated as an ‘inclusive’ decision, it resulted in no women being nominated for the Best Artist award because of the categories merging, which was just one issue that critics saw coming from a mile away. In fact, no non-binary artists were nominated for the award either…

BAFTA revealed that they were engaged in ‘proactive and thoughtful consultation’ on the subject of gendered acting categories and were speaking to ‘sector peers, industry stakeholders and experts’. It looks like they’ve made a sensible decision in the end, after seeing how counter-productive it was for the Brit Awards.

And so, non-binary performers like Emma Corrin, Emma D’Arcy and Bella Ramsey are now in a bit of a pickle. Their non-binary identities are a big deal to them, but they will now have to decide whether they are men or women in order to be included at the BAFTAs.

A BAFTA spokesman did announce one potential compromise, though; while the actor and actress categories will remain, the certificate and mask could carry the term ‘performer’ if that was preferred by the winner.

Now, you could ask, why don’t they just introduce a third category for gender-neutral performers, and that way everyone is happy and represented in their own group. I guess maybe that will be an option one day, but currently the number of non-binary performers is so small that it wouldn’t really capture the essence of an award show, which is to celebrate the absolute best of the best.

In any case, I think most people will agree that the people at BAFTA have done the right thing here. In a world where people are constantly complaining that organisations are becoming too “woke”, it seems the tide is now turning the other way and that common sense ultimately prevails where it has to.

For the time non-binary Emma D’Arcy said she’s “really good” at playing women, click HERE. Hmmm.