The Screen Actors Guild, which puts on the SAG Awards, has rejected a call from Billions star Asia Kate Dillon to abolish gender specific awards categories. The actor claimed that the categories needed to be changed because referring to performers as male or female will “erase non-binary identities” and “serve as an endorsement of the gender binary at large.”
The SAG Awards Committee says that the categories will remain the same for this year’s awards because a “larger conversation” needs to happen before making such a change, according to a report by Variety, which obtained SAG’s response letter to Dillon.
The report added that SAG suggested abolishing gender specific awards categories may one day happen, as the committee agreed that “the work is by no means done” when it comes to making people who believe there are more than two genders feel included at awards ceremonies.
The committee also claimed that changing its awards categories to one non gender specific category “raises significant concerns in terms of gender parity as well as racial and ethnic diversity.”
Asia Kate Dillon — who has long advocated for the removal of gendered acting awards since last year — responded to the SAG committee in a letter saying she is “disappointed to learn” that gender specific categories will not be abolished for SAG’s 2021 awards ceremony in January.
“I would hope we might also share a goal of creating acting categories that are inclusive of all sexes and genders identities,” said Dillon, suggesting an alternative. “There are at least 64 known gender identities and at least five known biological sexes.”
“Whether you are using the words in reference to assigned sex at birth or to gender identity, dividing your acting categories into female and male is, while well-intentioned, exclusionary and therefore discriminatory,” the actress added.
Dillon also suggested that having female and male categories has not contributed to furthering “racial and ethnic diversity.”
“To be honest, I struggle to understand how having female and male acting categories has done anything to ensure racial and ethnic diversity,” she said, adding that the SAG Awards “remain overwhelmingly white.”
The actress — who was asked to be a part of the SAG Awards’ motion picture nominating committee — concluded by stating that she is declining the offer over the acting categories’ “current exclusionary form.”
“In closing, I decline participation as a judge of the acting categories in their current exclusionary form,” said Dillon. “But I look forward to our continued conversation.”
The John Wick 3 star presented a gender-neutral acting award to Emma Watson at the MTV Movie & TV Awards in 2017.
Watch below:
#MTVAwards: Asia Kate Dillon presents gender-neutral acting award to Emma Watson https://t.co/bDgVu89Ks2 pic.twitter.com/YoyydJv4Ty
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 8, 2017
“This year has been full of firsts for me. I am the first openly non-binary actor to play a non-binary character on a major television show,” Dillon said. “And now it’s so cool to be here presenting the first acting award ever that celebrates performance free of any gender distinction.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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