Brits get rid of separate male & female awards

I will definitely be boycotting The Brits now. Bloody ridiculous thing to do. What next? Gender neutral Olympics? Football? Tennis??? Where do we draw the line?

He couldn't possibly enter a 'mens' category....

@SinisterBumFacedCat that is interesting - is that data readily available?

Would it be churlish of me to say I hope Sam Smith doesn't win?

I was thinking about the sports personality of a year as a similar process which has never been sex segregated. Women and men's sport has quite different levels of visibility so that's perhaps unfair that there hasn't been a women's award. The last female winner was Zara Phillips in 2006.

Think of all the years, decades, where men who wore skirts or make up won music awards.

No one bothered to ask them if they were non-binary and wanted to be nominated

Of all the career roles surely being a musician has always been the one where men could be feminine in presentation with zero negative reaction, in fact frequently with positive ones, excessively positive ones in some cases.

SS clearly needs a music history lesson.

I just saw on the news the news reader refer to the non-binary man as ‘they’. The news reader could have just used the persons’ name.

So there it is in the mainstream going out as an accepted way of speaking to the whole of our society.

Slow Clap Sam Smith. Well done for screwing over women.

Another example of women not being allowed anything for ourselves. Destroyed by an egotistical male. Nothing much changes.

Female artist get about 20% airplay across radio stations, on some it’s minuscule (Absolute Radio). This has made an uneven playing field even worse.

A lot of issues in a lot of places could be solved by having a women's prize/race/game/place for women, and a 'freestyle' where men, NB people, people with sex differences, anyone could place.

Men would still win 99.9% of the freestyle events but it would be inclusive. And women wouldn't be invisible.

This is quite old but it shows that women are under represented at the Grammys:

news.usc.edu/135288/in-music-industry-female-songwriters-and-producesr-are-outnumbered-by-men/

I think the problem is that incredibly successful individual performers like Beyoncé, Adele and Taylor Swift hide the fact that it's harder for women to find jobs and get recognition as songwriters, producers etc.

Ah so the male dominated industry will now have a male dominated award show too.

Their album, Love Goes, reached number two in the UK chart, but they felt unable to enter the gender-based categories.

It's a sex based category, Sam, not gender based. Poor Sam, so hard done by but somehow has enough clout to influence far reaching decisions.

All you have to do is look at last year's Brit Awards mixed-sex categories. There was 25 where men or women could have been nominated or won. Only in one of them was a woman nominated.

Here's an up-to-date analysis on the Grammys, annenberg.usc.edu/news/research-and-impact/annenberg-inclusion-initiatives-annual-report-popular-music-reveals-little

It goes into some detail to explain why women are underrepresented both in the music industry as a whole and in nominations. Unless there are dedicated categories for female musicians, this is just going to keep on happening.

We could have a legitimate discussion about the pros and cons of positive action, where you have all-women shortlists for an election, because that directly (but lawfully) discriminates against male candidates.

But award categories split into best male and female do not discriminate in any way. Sam Smith was nominated last year in one of those mixed-sex categories, and chose to forgo a nomination in the male category. That's not discrimination.

In my view, a non-binary identification is an expression of a personal belief in an ideology. No Brit award category reflects beliefs. There are a few, select male and female categories because otherwise women are rarely nominated. And if women are not nominated, they have less chance of winning.

This is from the BBC article about this:

Artists like Sam Smith and Will Young had previously called for the change, saying the current system excludes non-binary artists.

Smith, who is non-binary, missed out on a nomination at this year's awards.

Their album, Love Goes, reached number two in the UK chart, but they felt unable to enter the gender-based categories.

Do people really believe that if someone identifies as non-binary it means that they no longer have a sex?

I heard this on the bbc. They said it was to include non-binary and not to base it on the gender artists 'identify' with.
They then said Grammys have done this for 12 years and so far awards have been 50-50. 50% for male 50% for female. That means zero awards in 12 years for people identifying as non-binary.
Woke but not woke to justify woke.
Confused? I am!

The Dutch have already done this for film and TV awards and guess what not one single woman won

BBC news also reported that this was done at Sam Smith's behest.

What influence Sam has!

Christ. Like the music industry isn’t already one of the most rampantly misogynistic that I can think of. I mean, of course they would do this.

Just heard this reported on ITV News, the poor presenter slipped up on the pronouns which has already been picked up on Twitter...

"The Brits Academy have been under pressure from musicians including Sam Smith, a former winner, who'd argued the current categories excluded non binary artists like him, those who identify as neither male nor female."

Another great stride towards ensuring males dominate once more

They’ll have to come up with some eminently patronising ‘honourable mention’ or ‘good try’ award that can be shoehorned in to show some diversity.

I hate this too and the implications for female artists - but genuine question, is there a way that women can be a 'forced focus' without discriminating against anyone who doesn't ID as male or female??

I know that this move negatively impacts a much bigger number of artists (women) than it helps (NBs / trans) but equally, I'm not 100%
comfortable with the alternative of just accepting that some artists would be automatically excluded as they wouldn't fit the 'male' or 'female' award.

I'm genuinely looking for an alternative approach.

Does any know the history of the Brits? Did it used to be neutral then split as it's male dominated?

Fortuitously Adele will probably sweep the board, but it’s still a rubbish idea