The upcoming MTV Movie and TV Awards will not have gender-specific categories for awards involving actors and actresses.
The categories formerly titled “Best Actress” and “Best Actor” will now be changed to “Best Actor in a Movie” and “Best Actor in a Show,” according to Entertainment Weekly. The awards show also changed from focusing on just movies this year, changing its name from the MTV Movie Awards to MTV Movie and TV Awards.
The move follows the Grammy Awards’ decision to eliminate gender-specific category titles in 2011, but has some concerned about how the decision will impact women’s chances to win awards. An analysis of movies released in 2014 found that women had only 28.7 percent of speaking roles in films, or 2. 5 times fewer such roles than males, ABC News reported.
UCLA sociology professor Gabriel Rossman spoke to ABC before the decision, speculating that eliminating gender categories “would probably lead to a male-dominated awards, and that in turn would lead to a culture backlash.”
“You could easily imagine an #OscarsSoMale hashtag on Twitter,” Rossman continued. “It would just get ugly.”
But eliminating gender categories would be a positive development for non-binary actors like Asia Kate Dillion, who wrote a letter to the TV Academy stating that the gender categories leave actors out who don’t identify as male or female, EW reported.
The Academy replied that performers were free to submit to any category for any reason, leading Dillon to enter as supporting actor because “actor is a non-gendered word that I use,” EW reported.
MTV Movie and TV Awards will air on May 7 and be hosted by Adam DeVine.
Some on Twitter thought the decision smacked of political correctness gone amok.