Chicago magazine | Arts & Culture August 2018: The Joseph Jefferson Awards, honoring the best theater in Chicago as deemed by a volunteer committee, made the inclusive move this year to eliminate the gender binary in its performance categories. No longer will the nominations be divided into actors and actresses; instead, each category for principal and supporting role will consist of one pool — representing all genders, with at least 10 nominees and two winners.
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This article describes the Joseph Jefferson Awards’ inclusive move to eliminate the binary in awarding best actors and their subsequent, and decidedly not inclusive, nomination of mostly men. Award shows recently have been criticized for their lack of diversity in nominees and winners, and the Joseph Jefferson Awards’ decision was probably in response to this very common criticism, While I appreciate their elimination of the separate categories for men and women—especially because those categories don’t allow for people who identify as neither male or female—the resulting nominations are very discouraging. I can’t really think of an easy solution to this problem; going back the original categories might be an easy way out but I don’t think it’s the right one because it will still not include people who identify as nonbinary. The choice to do away with the binary in the awards was the right one and I think, and hope, that as time goes by—maybe even at the next round of awards—there will be a more inclusive pool of nominees.
I’ll start by praising the Jeffery Awards for a step in the right direction eliminating gender binary categorization. Growing up watching award shows I always wondered why men and women weren’t being compared directly to each other, why it was separated. And though I didn’t know what being nonbinary meant when I was younger, I know see the importance of inclusion for all gender identities. So, I won’t even go so far as to say the committee made a mistake by nominating mostly men. Change takes time, it’s a process, and there is an adjustment period when the status quo changes. I don’t believe that the committee intentionally ignored nonbinary actors and neglected women, I simply think that given their new parameters, they may not have had the best strategy for nominating actors.
It’s important that we recognize that most of the people in this committee are from a different time, as stated in the article, and the important thing is that they are listening to criticism and responding. They’re making an effort to change with the times. And since we only have one year’s worth of nominations at the moment, there’s no telling what next year will look like. At the end of the day, they made a positive change, and there is no reason to believe they won’t continue to open their minds and make more positive changes – leading to more diverse nominations – in the future.
This is really exciting and disappointing at the same time. Changing how we think about gender is for most people going to be a slow progression, but this is a powerful step. I wonder if not most of the nominees being men has less to do with purposely picking men and more to do with number and complexity of roles. I see the outcome as a symptom of the problem rather the a problem in itself. Often times there are fewer roles for women and non-binary people. For women, often roles are either a one-dimensional love interests or the sexy side kick and there are too few non-binary roles. Hopefully better roles for women and non-binary people will be created, allowing them to be a larger percentage of the nominees. Also, this is only year that the awards have not been separated by gender so it is not enough of a sample to determine a trend.
I think that the initiative the Jeff awards took in making the awards non binary is a good one. They are attempting to move forward and include more people in their ceremony. It is nice to know that some places are attempting to be more inclusive of others gender identity, especially since our culture is so cisnormative. I think that it's an admirable first step toward changing the entertainment industry into one where everyone is celebrated equally. However, I am sad that the nominations are skewed toward men. Many award shows, such as the Oscar's, have faced a lot of backlash from their lack of diversity in nomination pools. In this case, the lack of women and non binary people is causing the heat. Why would they get rid of the gendering of awards if they're just going to nominate men? It seems as though the committee who decides the nominations needs to learn and adapt more to this new way and I hope that next year the nomination pool is more diverse.
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