BRITs consider making awards gender neutral

[Thomas P 18,377]

7 minutes ago, ReginaGeorge said:

Y’all sound like you’re all for it but I think it’ll change once male artists dominate those awards and win everything  Excited to see meltdowns of hose who are for this.. 

VMAs did this and men don’t win everything there 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

Award Shows are truly becoming a thing of the past, huh?   

[HighwayGuy 1,498]

GOOD. We all exist on a gender spectrum anyway. The male/female categories just reinforced the concept that you're either masculine (male) or feminine (female). Get with the times y'all

[Bear 7,515]

I think this is a good thing. Not only is it more inclusive to people outside the gender binary, I also like the idea of having the award based purely on talent and merit rather than a grouping that doesn't really make sense for the category.

I do completely see your point about potential sexism that exists in certain voting comittees, but if anything I'd rather it was brought out into the open so we can face any problems head on. The current system almost hides it by dividing certain awards beetween male and female and potentially not putting them on an equal footing in terms of value.

[Enzo 37,977]

48 minutes ago, Runway said:

Because "pop vocal album" and "pop solo performance" are just code word for female music, if they removed the pop categories, no pop girl would win at all

Shape Of You and Divide won two year ago tho (??? 

The general fields categories are for everyone, not only pop girls, what did you expect? That's why there are pop categories

Pop girls cannot win every year, there is more music waiting to be rewarded, Taylor and Adele winning AOTY twice seems enough 

[PunkTheFunk 121,511]

Has everyone forgotten that the Grammys are gender neutral? We're all still alive aren't we? 

[The Z 17,852]

1 hour ago, Enzo said:

So does a man and another man (? 

Come on, it's WAY EASIER for women to sing. Most of men physically can't have a wide vocal range like women

[The Z 17,852]

After all, gender neutral or not, Sam Smith can submit their songs in the categories that they want 

[Rio 5,088]

Hmmm. Dunno about this, the grammys are gender neutral already tho i guess

[MaryJaneHolland 77,348]

Just for Sam? Lmao

Don't fix it if it ain't broke

[Rio 5,088]

3 minutes ago, KEVIN STEVE said:

After all, gender neutral or not, Sam Smith can submit their songs in the categories that they want 

Are they actually allowed to do that though? Will they submit in both male and female categories?

[Dominic 11,922]

Good

[The Z 17,852]

4 minutes ago, Rio said:

Are they actually allowed to do that though? Will they submit in both male and female categories?

I think so, but they'll only be nominated in one of the two categories obviously

[StrawberryBlond 13,287]

6 hours ago, Enzo said:

What even

Are you male and that's why you can't understand the magnitude of what this means for women's representation and chances of winning? Before, female categories meant that women were guaranteed awards. Now there's no guarantee whatsoever. I don't know why thinking this is bad sounds so unreasonable.

6 hours ago, Karl said:

Can't they base the awards on Sex rather than gender to solve it? Sam is still male sex assigned so wouldn't that mean he would still be in the Male category, rather than having them as gendered?

That's exactly what I think. I'm using "gender" when I mean "sex" here as that's the preferred word I use as everyone knows what you mean when you say gender. Male and female categories is a reference to what's between your legs. Trans artists should be re-categorised as that's a very different thing and actually involves a change, so it wouldn't be right to do it any other way. But if you're biologically male and have no desire to change it, then you should be in a male category, end of. These categories never had anything to do with personal gender identity, it was purely a category based on biological fact. But now the definition's changing because some people think how you feel about your gender should be taken into unnecessary account. Just like celebrity dance shows that want to take into account your sexual orientation and have same sex partnerships ( even though professional women aren't trained to lift, along with other factors of unfairness). People want to have their cake and eat it and aren't bothered how it affects others.

5 hours ago, James Gibson said:

I endorse it, there's really no need to split it (just like in acting awards).

I think it's better to hand out awards for its music genre: pop, rock, rap etc (or in film/tv categories for drama, comedy, limited) where these categories actually matter when selecting the best of the year since its totally different styles of bodies of work to judge. Judging by someone's gender is truly unreasonable

That's not how these awards are categorised, though and there's no getting away from that. Plus, categories like rap, rock and electronic would definitely be male dominated wins, lets be real.

5 hours ago, neptugne said:

Grammys: exists without gender

Y'all: ??!?!?! how what where when why!!! women are over

5 hours ago, Adarsh said:

The Grammys are literally like that. Why are you guys even complaining lmao

4 hours ago, PunkTheFunk said:

Has everyone forgotten that the Grammys are gender neutral? We're all still alive aren't we? 

They can just about get away with it (though they should never have retired gender segregated vocal awards) because they have tons of award opportunities. Not only are artists up for genre specific awards, there's the big 4 awards as well as other stuff like best composing/arranging/packaging, best song for visual media, best music video and suchlike. The BRITs have a mere 12 awards in the entire ceremony (they used to have 13 but dropped Best International Album) and some of them are specialised awards with just 3 entrants. It's already a mega exclusive club. Women will be so locked out if it's knocked down to just 10. Unless Gaga gets a massive comeback with mega million sales, she'll never be nominated for a BRIT again, never mind win it, if these awards are neutralised.

5 hours ago, Alan123 said:

The Grammys used to have a “Best Pop Vocal Performance”, then went to have Female and Male. I feel like they’re gonna go back to just one category as well. 

Edit: holy **** they already did since 2012. 

Another way women get locked out. They have very different voices to men so gender segregation makes 100% sense here and yet they removed it.

5 hours ago, Thomas P said:

Some people in here 

Removing gendered awards pushes society forward. Gender neutrality is vital in these award shows cause they serve as a microcosm of actual society. 

anyways 

Segregating them shows how society actually is made up, though, 50/50. Men and women on an equal footing. I don't know how this move can possibly be applauded when it's hard enough to get nominated when you don't have #1 hits as it is but if women have to compete in a male category then it's an absolute certainty that only the biggest names will stand a ghost of a chance of nomination in future, never mind win. As I said previously, gender segregation meant that women were guaranteed to go home with awards at the end of the night. Now there will be no guarantee whatsoever. How does that push society forward? It pushes it back. You know how Grammy awards are all gender neutral now? Remember the infamous 2018 Grammy ceremony? Barely any women went home with awards and the chairman made a really cringey speech about how more women need to start stepping up? Out of 86 awards given out that night, just 17 were won by women. it's also worth pointing out that just 9.3% of nominees between 2013 and 2018 were female. That's the reality of gender neutral awards - men will always be given top billing no matter what. Only a man could win the award for best pop album with a mere 62 score on Metacritic (the lowest of all the nominees) against 4 women with high scores. Expect shockers like that across the board if this system rolls out across all awards committees.

5 hours ago, ReginaGeorge said:

Y’all sound like you’re all for it but I think it’ll change once male artists dominate those awards and win everything  Excited to see meltdowns of hose who are for this.. 

Exactly what I was thinking. Just today there was a topic in conversation area about how much gays love female pop stars and actively wish male success would die down. Oh, yes, the gays love their female pop stars. They also think, that in support of their LGBT community, they should support gender neutral awards for gender nonconformists. But then the nominees are announced and the categories are full of heterosexual, cisgendered white men as far as the eye can see and their ultimate fave female couldn't even get a place, certainly not their second favourite. Then the actual awards get awarded and women barely get a lookin. Then we'll see how much they support gender neutral categories.

5 hours ago, HighwayGuy said:

GOOD. We all exist on a gender spectrum anyway. The male/female categories just reinforced the concept that you're either masculine (male) or feminine (female). Get with the times y'all

These categories are nothing whatsoever to do with personal gender indentity. They're about biology. Of course a trans individual should be welcome to be re-categorised because they have a diagnosible condition and are in the process of changing to the way they want to be. But if you're happy with the way you were born and have no desire to change it, you're male or female and that's it. These categories are nothing to do with your personal feelings.

4 hours ago, Bear said:

I think this is a good thing. Not only is it more inclusive to people outside the gender binary, I also like the idea of having the award based purely on talent and merit rather than a grouping that doesn't really make sense for the category.

I do completely see your point about potential sexism that exists in certain voting comittees, but if anything I'd rather it was brought out into the open so we can face any problems head on. The current system almost hides it by dividing certain awards beetween male and female and potentially not putting them on an equal footing in terms of value.

Talent and merit deciding awards seems to be unlikely these days, given who's winning. In an ideal world, they're basing it on talent but we know that's not the case. And even if any problems were brought into the open, how's it going to change anything? The awards are still gender neutral, hence, unbalanced. And separating them does put them on equal footing, for then they're 50/50.

4 hours ago, Enzo said:

Shape Of You and Divide won two year ago tho (???

You've just proven their point. That song and album really weren't that well received by critics. Even Joanne got a higher score than Divide. But a man still won over the 4 women in his two categories despite having the worst critical reception. And to add insult to injury, he wasn't even in attendance and not because he was ill or had a prior engagement but because he just couldn't be bothered and reportedly stayed at home with his girlfriend. As is the way in life, women try their hardest, have all the odds stacked in their favour and still lose.

4 hours ago, KEVIN STEVE said:

After all, gender neutral or not, Sam Smith can submit their songs in the categories that they want 

That's not how it works. You can't just choose where you'll submit your songs. You can choose what you want to submit but how it all gets categorised is at the Grammys discretion.

[Bear 7,515]

1 minute ago, StrawberryBlond said:

Talent and merit deciding awards seems to be unlikely these days, given who's winning. In an ideal world, they're basing it on talent but we know that's not the case. And even if any problems were brought into the open, how's it going to change anything? The awards are still gender neutral, hence, unbalanced. And separating them does put them on equal footing, for then they're 50/50.

I disagree in acknowleding that sexism might exist but also saying they are on an equal footing by seperating them.

It almost makes the female category feel like a booby prize. "Congrats you did the best.. for a female but if you were against males we wouldn't have given it to you". It takes away from the point of the awards and that represents a real problem to me and something we should address, and in my opinion I think removing the boundaries is the first step to do that so we can see what we are dealing with (and makes it more inclusive to people who are non-binary at the same time).

I do agree we need to be pragmatic because we are not in an ideal world and challenging that innate sexism if it were to be exposed would not be easy. I do think it's worth trying and fighting for though, I really believe it makes the most sense for everyone