Jameela Jamil Suggests Non-Binary Categories, Rather Than Non-Gendered, at Award Shows

Never one to shy away from taking a potentially controversial stance, the "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" actress is speaking out against discussions of shifting to non-gendered categories for major award shows. Her fear has actually come true in some instances.

In a lengthy post to her Instagram, Jamil posed the argument that while non-gendered categories might be a benefit for non-binary individuals, it could be extremely harmful to women.

As an example of her concern becoming reality, the BRIT Awards went gender neutral this year, replacing Best Male and Best Female Artist with Artist of the Year -- and saw only male nominees. The goal was inclusivity, but that's not at all what happened.

There's also to consider the Oscars themselves -- who are among the shows considering this -- where women appearing in major categories like Best Director is still an anomaly and something worthy of headlines, as Jamil pointed out in her caption.

"If we now have enough non binary to restructure entire awards shows, which is GREAT," she posts, "then we should add rather than run the accidental risk of erasing no?"

She argues that there would be an inevitable backlash from women should gendered categories become a reality because we will "have created  only one spot for a winner amongst 10s of thousands of actors, in a world that favors men."

"I don't think it will help women or NB (non-binary --ed.) to minimize the amount of possible winners," she argued. "We should look to EXPAND the possibilities so that both GNC (gender non-conforming --ed.) people and women have a fair shot in an industry that for a long time struggled to treat others equal to men."

In her caption, Jamil compared the idea of genderless categories for acting to the idea of doing this in sports. She wrote that if they were to try this, "it is highly unlikely that aside from the odd year of affirmative action, for optics, that anyone other than a cis man is going to win, because they dominate that world."

Instead, she believes the solution -- at least for now -- lies in "more visibility, more categories, more winners to represent more people. ❤️"

In her final slide, Jamil acknowledged that she "was terrified of even writing something as benign as that in this climate of social politics," but felt empowered to do so through the support she'd been seeing when she first posted it in her Instagram Stories.

On the post to her main page, she added to her caption that despite "thousands of people" encouraging her to post this to her main page. She also that that "they agree with this, but for some reason feel too afraid to say it publicly," which she called "ridiculous."

"This is a post about inclusion, not exclusion. It's about making more space. About adding seats to the table. We need to be able to ask and discuss these things with love, compassion and honest logic."

"To build the world we want we have to work incrementally with the world we actually have first," she concluded her thoughts in the slideshow. "If we leapfrog progress with utopian ideals that ignore current proven systems we will collapse everything we are working towards."

In a post-script to her caption, she also threw out the idea -- as many have begun espousing in recent years -- of doing away with award shows altogether. Instead, she says she's hoping to explore solutions to this situation "beyond destruction."

Her declaration came as some non-binary performers are having to choose between Actor and Actress categories, while some others are opting to not be considered for awards because they don't feel there is a space for them.

Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee became the first-ever non-binary acting winners at the Tony Awards, though both had to submit in Actor categories in order to achieve this milestone. Meanwhile, Justin David Suliivan withdrew their consideration over the binary categories, telling Deadline the current structure does "not hold space for people like me."

Clearly, there is a conversation to be had here about how to address this lack of inclusivity in the current structure. Jamil just wants to make sure an overcorrection to accommodate non-binary performers doesn't inadvertently cause a whole different issue.

You can check out her entire statement, and caption, below.