It’s always great to see the emergence of a young actor.
One of my favorite examples is a bit from Game of Thrones season six. John Snow, Sansa Stark, and Davos Seaworth — trying to muster an army to face the House Bolton — travel to Bear Island to meet with the young but feisty leader, Lady Lyanna Mormont. Ultimately she agrees to help by supplying a limited number of fighters, saying Bear Island’s legendary warriors are worth many times their own number in battle. Davos responds, “If they are half as ferocious as their Lady, the Boltons are doomed.”
The scene offers an early glimpse of the fiercely talented actor Bella Ramsey, who this week was nominated for a best actress Emmy for playing Ellie in The Last of Us.
Ramsey is non-binary, neither male nor female. Their nomination in a gendered category is an issue that the show’s creator said he addressed with them before submitting their work for consideration. There is rightly disappointment that a non-binary actor can only be placed in a gendered acting category. And some see a silver lining in Ramsey’s nomination as a means to create awareness around trans visibility and inclusion.
But why?
Why must we rationalize these choices?
Why are we so willing to accept acting awards that are gendered, or, perhaps more precisely, segregated by sex?
It seems an anachronism; a throwback to an era where the sexes were segregated in order to preserve the idea of fairness toward women. The old separate but equal canard. The bias is implicit, leaning into the notion that when women and men are forced to compete against each other, men will prevail. So we keep them segregated in order to maintain the illusion of male superiority.
Non-binary actors disrupt that construct and ask us to reconsider sex segregation as a method to differentiate abilities and talent based on gender.
For example, three of the four co-stars of Succession have been nominated for lead actor in a drama series while the fourth, Sarah Snook, was nominated in the lead actress category. While it might be difficult to single out any of them that’s the whole point of an awards show, right? Reward the best of the best. So if Snook wins in the actress category and, say, Kieran Culkin, wins for actor, how does that reward the best performance in the series? And what is really the point of differentiating them? They are essentially the same roles in the same production. Why should they be judged separately?
Separa means to emphasize differences. For acting award categories, differences in roles, such as starring versus supporting, seem like a legit distinction based on screen time, lines, and importance to the story. So does separating awards based on categories like drama, comedy, serials, and feature-length movies.
But gender is a constructed difference. That’s why there are no separate categories for directors, writers, producers, technical awards, etc. Just for actors.
So, rather than trying to figure out how to fit non-binary actors into binary categories, let’s get rid of gender-segregated awards categories and just give awards to the best performances.