The BIFAs look to the future by intro­duc­ing gen­der-neu­tral act­ing categories

In the sum­mer of 2020, actor Asia Kate Dil­lon – a star of TV’s Bil­lions, and note­wor­thy as one of the small screen’s few non-bina­ry per­form­ers por­tray­ing a non-bina­ry char­ac­ter – made a pub­lic state­ment urg­ing the Screen Actors Guild to drop the gen­der spec­i­fi­ca­tions of their awards program.

Dillon’s argu­ment was sim­ple, explain­ing that they don’t per­son­al­ly fit into either the male or female cat­e­gories, and that excel­lence doesn’t need to be sep­a­rat­ed by gen­der in the first place; SAG was uncon­vinced, and instead instruct­ed Dil­lon to choose whether to com­pete along­side male or female actors.

This frus­trat­ing episode may soon be part of an ever-more-remote past, in light of a heart­en­ing devel­op­ment announced today. The British Inde­pen­dent Film Awards have ruled that start­ing with the upcom­ing 25^th annu­al awards cer­e­mo­ny, they’ll do away with the male and female cat­e­gories and opt in for a more unpre­dictable, inclu­sive, and for­ward-think­ing sys­tem for recog­nis­ing each year’s achieve­ments in the cinema.

Dead­line reports that the BIFAs will now nom­i­nate actors of all gen­ders across five total awards: Best Lead Per­for­mance, Best Sup­port­ing Per­for­mance, Best Joint Lead Per­for­mance (giv­en to two or some­times pro­vi­sion­al­ly three actors for roles that share top billing in their giv­en sto­ry), and Best Ensem­ble. The new­ly gen­der-irre­spec­tive awards now match the Break­through Per­for­mance award, which was open to men and women from the start.

While this sys­tem removes the guar­an­tee of male-to-female par­i­ty ensured by the gen­dered act­ing dis­tinc­tions, the advan­tages out­weigh the imper­fec­tions. In lump­ing all nom­i­nees into one of two iden­ti­ties, any­one out­side of a rigid, restric­tive notion of gen­der finds no place in an insti­tu­tion that can make careers and pump up salary asks.

It’s an issue that’s only going to grow more preva­lent as the main­stream under­stand­ing of gen­der con­tin­ues to grow past the bina­ry, and oth­er awards pro­grams would do well to take notice. It’s only a mat­ter of time until the BAF­TAs or the Oscars find them­selves in a quandary more imme­di­ate than the­o­ret­i­cal, with a hope­ful nom­i­nee that demands to be acknowl­edged as they are.