Said Adele, accepting the Brit Award for Artist of the Year and referring to the change to gender neutrality, after years of awarding the best female and the best male, quoted in a NY Post column, "Good on Adele for celebrating female — not gender-neutral — achievement" by Maureen Callahan.
Callahan writes that Adele is being "slandered a TERF — a trans-exclusionary radical feminist." I'd like to see the wording of that "slander," because I can't even understand it. How are trans people involved in gender neutrality? It seems to me they're at the opposite extreme. Adele says "I really love being a woman," but isn't that what a trans woman would say? Gender is especially important, not neutralized.
What would be "trans-exclusionary" would be to keep the male and female categories but refuse to allow artists to compete for the award that goes with their declared gender. You could even say that switching to gender neutrality just as trans people are coming to the fore is trans-exclusionary — a bit like reacting to racial desegregation by closing the public swimming pool.
Quite aside from the TERF charge, there's the problem of excluding artists who declare themselves non-binary, notably Sam Smith. Here's an article from The Guardian from last March: "Sam Smith excluded from gendered categories at 2021 Brit awards/Solo male and solo female categories mean no room for chart-topping non-binary singer, who calls for awards to reflect society."
A Brit awards spokesperson later responded, saying: “Sam is an extraordinary British artist and we agree with what they have said today. The Brits are committed to evolving the show and the gendered categories are very much under review. But any changes made to be more inclusive need to be just that - if a change unintentionally leads to less inclusion then it risks being counterproductive to diversity and equality. We need to consult more widely before changes are made to make sure we get it right.”
There are winners and losers — in awards and in structuring and re-structuring awards — and maybe the best answer is screw awards. This is art, not sports.
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56 comments:
Prizes are inherently exclusionary but that stigma can be overcome by giving prizes to everyone.
Good for Adele. I hope she doesn’t back down to the transgender, diversity and equality Brits. We all know she’s a woman and also that she deserves the award. There should be three categories: a Female, Male and all the other. This is total bullshit and its spreading everywhere.
Sounds like a way to save a few bucks. Cut the number of prizes in half.
Owen, I think this is the opposite of what you suggest. Instead of prizes for everyone, cut the number given
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Soon, very soon for some individuals, will be hung on the woke petard. I for one will enjoy the piñata party that follows.
How about everyone gets an award? Just like peewee sports.
Beside these self-congratulatory award shows are BS anyway. Just look at the Oscar’s. Ugh! No thanks.
A prize is a social message. Its uniqueness is a big part of its information (information is “the difference that makes a difference”). By destroying the uniqueness the information is erased. But better incoherence than hurt feelings.
Sorry honey, expressions of those particular kinds of sentiments are strictly reserved for biological men that declare themselves to be women. Thank you for your understanding.
If they changed the award category for Sam Smith to make up for the grievance, then they needed to award Sam Smith. They didn’t, you TERF!
It’s always the story. You need to make this reasonable adjustment to be inclusive and once you show compliance, then only obedience is acceptable.
Separate categories because the roles do different things. You can't compare the two easily.
If Sam Smith is truly non-binary he wouldn't accept a best male or best female award since he claims to be neither. Just like I wouldn't accept a best female award because I'm not a woman. Of course, with men setting records in women's swimming it's clear that not everyone feels the same way I do. If he gets his wish that awards that 'reflect society', nothing will change because the majority know that men and women aren't the same thing and you don't get to choose which you are. We have biology for that. (and as an aside, not only do you not get to choose, no one's sex is assigned at birth. the sex of a newborn is there for all to see).
Stay away from those people. Insanity might be contagious.
". . . maybe the best answer is screw awards. This is art, not sports."
Except the same problem arises in sports, as we have just witnessed in the brouhaha over the swimmer in Pennsylvania.
Maybe the solution is to say screw people who refuse to recognize that society consists of men and women.
Owen wins with the first comment.
Forget it Jake, it's Twitter.
Just think how much money the awards committee will save by eliminating the male and female categories for Brit Award for Artist of the Year! They would have to added a zillion new categories for non-binary, bird-brain, all-binary, sept-binary, hex-binary and reptile-binary, just to mention a few additional categories. It's a win for the committee, but a loss for everyone else!
Get woke, go broke. These things just continue to destroy themselves. I’ve never been a huge fan, but now, I wouldn’t even give a seconds thought to any of these awards shows anymore. They are jokes.
“... non-binary singer, who calls for rewards to reflect society.” Okay! Let’s have a category for gender dysphoric people and maybe add one for schizophrenics, who probably outnumber them.
OTOH, if “gender irrelevant” means rendering feminists irrelevant, it is worth considering. Although, the transgenders may have already done that — certainly in sports.
You could even say that switching to gender neutrality just as trans people are coming to the fore is trans-exclusionary — a bit like reacting to racial desegregation by closing the public swimming pool.
Yes, it's a way to punt the issue by eschewing it. Like using "myself" instead of deciding whether to use "me" or "I" in a sentence.
“ and maybe the best answer is screw awards.”
Might seem exclusionary to bolts and washers, even downright mean to nuts.
The minority of the minority of the minority of the minority making the rules that everyone else has to live by. The backlash era coming will be interesting to see.
Adele brings home the hardware
"...people who refuse to recognize that society consists of men and women."
There is nobody who fits that description. However, there are people who say it's now OK for men to take prizes that were previously reserved for women.
She loves being a woman? Off with her head! to the gazpacho!
Ed Sheehan should’ve won.
They should add an award for best non-binary artist and the three of them can take turns winning it each year.
non-binary defund the police antifa-Nazi category. That's why I tune in!
Really really?
Someone buy this woman a new adverb.
Supposedly she writes her own songs. I'm now dubious about whether she actually writes her own lyrics...
The problem is that people use the awards as a sign of quality. That's especially true when you're looking to listen to music from the past. Or read an author from say 40-100 years ago.
A lot of people have read Steinbeck and Pearl S. Buck because they got Nobel Prizes. And the same is true of music. How many more people would've given Mr. Smith a listen if he'd won the "Male Solo music award"?
But in theory, "Awards for Art" are silly.
These awards, like so many others (cough - OSCARS - cough) are promotions, advertisements, pretending to recognize excellence in an art form while merely pulling more paying rubes into the freak show. The pandering of the awards shows is simply product placement in media on another level of shamelessness. To get exercised over a faux controversy generated by an advertising campaign of an awards show is to lose all perspective on reality. Get a grip.
Would anyone reading this blog have heard or cared about this award show without this fake outrage as a hook to generate free social media coverage of the self-promotion involved?
You may not know your gender, but your gender knows you.
You may not care about biology, but biology cares about you.
It must be tough for Sam Smith. His having a beard reminds people that he is a man. His having to shave it off everyday would keep reminding him that he is a man.
"I really love being a woman," is exclusionary to "trans-women" because they are not women. They are men. They know it. Their friends know it. The media knows it. The radical trans activists know it. Everybody knows it. "Trans" people are mentally ill frauds and society would do better to pity them for their condition and try to get them actual help, instead of forcing people to play along with the lies they and their enablers tell them.
"I really love being a woman," is exclusionary to "trans-women" because they are not women. They are men. They know it. Their friends know it. The media knows it. The radical trans activists know it. Everybody knows it. "Trans" people are mentally ill frauds and society would do better to pity them for their condition and try to get them actual help, instead of forcing people to play along with the lies they and their enablers tell them.
"who calls for rewards to reflect society"
So, best male singer and best female singer, like at least 99.5% of society?
Just like actors, these moronic singers (the successful ones, anyway) get paid massive amounts of money because they have a unique talent to entertain people.
It might take a long time to hone that talent, but it is neither physically exhausting nor dangerous.
And they get paid enormous sums of money, yet that monetary reward doesn't seem to be enough.
They demand accolades and worship.
Try explaining this to the roadies and key grips who make their lives possible.
Once, in a tech company, our department did an all-hands push to get a product out the door on schedule. We worked huge hours (no overtime) but got it done.
One employee asked our boss, 'So we go it all done on time...what do we get?'
She said, 'You get to keep your job.'
That's real life.
Fuck narcisist entertainers...
"Adele says "I really love being a woman," but isn't that what a trans woman would say?"
Yes and no. You are taking Adele literally but not seriously. The TERFers hear her roar loud and clear. "I really love being a real woman."
I have a stupid question. If a sexual body part is not in use, doesn’t that make it neutral?
Sort of like Schrödinger's cat, is both alive and dead until you look.
In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.
Neutrality is really the constant, unless you’re a porn star or something.
Adele should declare herself a cocker spaniel and enter the Westminster Dog Show.
She could demand her own breed category and sue if she doesn't win.
How is that different than a person born with XY chromosomes, a penis and testicles, who develops into an adult male under the influence of high levels of testosterone, declaring himself female, and then demanding to be considered a woman?
The transsexual movement is 10% gaslighting by cynical people who want to burn western civilization (Soros-type), 89% mass psychosis (Beatlemania), and maybe 1% true mental disorder.
I saw the two stories about Adele, and both quoted idiots on Twitter. Not the blue checkmark idjits, but basically anonymous idjits.
In other words, fake news jinned up by reporters desperate to start a fight.
When I was working for a newspaper, there were times I felt like I was a piano player in a whorehouse.
It's not a gender/sex thing.
It's whatever moves product with the least resistance.
Well look at that. Sam Smith didn't win in the gender neutral category, either.
Sex inclusive, but gender (e.g. masculine, feminine) references suggest a chauvinistic ideology (e.g. feminism), perhaps even toxic, and, in the modern model, transphobic, including homopholic, which is notoriously, socially transexclusive (e.g. bisexual).
Adele is awesome. One of the few celebrities I think I would enjoy a conversation with. Her new album is amazing.
Imagine if she had said, "I really love being a no longer fat woman and being a no longer fat female artist".
- Krumhorn
(my preferred adjectives: brilliant/awesome)
The feminists began this and it is now eating them alive.
Ah luv Ahdeow
Real American said...
" 'trans-women' ...are not women. They are men. They know it. Their friends know it. The media knows it. The radical trans activists know it. Everybody knows it."
True. If they were women, we wouldn't need a special term for them, we would call them "women."
Someone say fifteen minutes of fame?
What is radical about her position?
And isn't being trans mostly about wanting to be a member of the OPPOSITE sex. Opposite as in two opposing sides. A binary choice, one might say.
It sounds like you are trying to apply logic to this.
You cannot square this circle.
The British are award-happy when it comes to comedy. I've been against the awardification of standup here in the states. It creates a crust. Upper, maybe. But it passes for quality when it ain't. George Schlatter tried to get this awards crap going here in the u.s., back in the 90s, but thankfully it rattled apart.
In current environment, a mixed gender approach would exclude straight males, because toxic.
It's not a physical contest where XY has an advantage over XX.
Just have one artist of the year award and be done with it.
You're mixing up gender differences with sex differences, which is understandable, because this is what the all-powerful activists embedded in the Justice Department and elsewhere in and outside of government want you to do.
Transgenderism and the 59 or 63 genders have usurped our attention, and distracted us from the reality of changing gender roles. The "metrosexual" controversy of a decade or generation past was probably more relevant to the experience of more people.
How are trans people involved in gender neutrality?
They hate it. Because gender neutrality removes their ability to play their performative insanity in public. See GG and demands that letting GG use a unisex bathroom weren't enough.
"Sam Smith excluded from gendered categories at 2021 Brit awards/Solo male and solo female categories mean no room for chart-topping non-binary singer, who calls for awards to reflect society."
The awards DO "reflect society", where teh vast majority of us aren't freaks pretending our beliefs are more important than reality and / or Science.
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