Another awards show decided to continue “more woke nonsense” and remove the Best Actor and Best Actress category — to be gender neutral — in a move being criticized by journalist Rebecca Reid and others on social media.
During the London-based journalist’s appearance on “Good Morning Britain” Monday, things got heated after Reid explained how the removal of these categories is going to “hurt women” who she said are “already under-represented in the industry,” reported the Daily Mail.
The annual Soap Awards decided to replace the Best Actor and Best Actress Award with the Best Leading Performer Award instead.
“I mean it would be better if women were on an equal playing field with men wouldn’t it,” Reid shared. “But unfortunately we know that’s not really the case in a lot of industries. Particularly in music and in performing arts where women, generally speaking win fewer awards.”
“And generally speaking particularly older women tend to be disadvantaged,” she added, providing a stat about how she said women over the age of 40 fail to get number one hits. “So, we’re not looking at a world where women were treated equally. If we were, then we wouldn’t need these categories at all.”
“But the problem is we need categories so that we can build women up,” Reid continued.
'All that's happening here is that we're moving with the times.'@IndiaWilloughby says it's good the awards are 'moving with the times' and 'being inclusive' and non-binary people shouldn't be forced into male or female award categories. pic.twitter.com/Q3GfcvlX0C
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 18, 2022
Broadcaster India Willoughby disputed Reid and said that it was all just part of “moving with the times” and being “inclusive.”
“All that’s happening here really is that we’re moving with the times,” Willoughby argued, stating that “younger people particularly” are “identifying as non-binary” and she said it’s not fair forcing artists to go into the male and or female categories.
She argued this wasn’t a “woke” thing and said she’s getting tired of hearing the “expression war on woke” in the papers.
Reid said she wasn’t talking about trans people because she said “trans women would be judged as a women and a trans man would be judged as a man.”
“What we are talking about is non-binary people who are at best 0.4% of the population, so a tiny number of people,” Rebecca added, the outlet noted. “What we are seeing here is a bit of an over-correction.”
“The reality is almost half the people are women, and only less than 1% of people are non-binary, so we are correcting to include a small amount of people,” the London-based journalist continued.
'We need categories so that we can build women up.'
The Soap Awards have announced it is ditching best male and female categories for best leading performer. But with stars worrying this will make it harder for female actors to win – is it wrong to ditch the categories? pic.twitter.com/EDWlVz1Mcp
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 18, 2022
Reid’s comments were similar to those on social media who blasted the move and called it “woke nonsense.”
“What’s the need in changing the names of the categories … who was getting offended by it?” one person tweeted. “World’s gone nuts.”
Another wrote, “More woke nonsense. There are actors and actresses. Even transgender or just the confused maintain they are one or the other. Worlds [sic] gone nuts.”
“We need categories, as different types of performances are better when performed by either male or female, LGBT performers still fall into one of these groups, and you can identify as anything you want, but you still fall into one or the other biological groups,” a third person shared.
The Soap Awards follows a move by The Brit Awards which took away gender classifications this year. Adele famously faced a backlash after she said she loves “being a woman” at the gender neutral awards show, as previously reported by The Daily Wire.