It is a testament to the zeitgeist's confusion of categories of nature and culture that a woman's commitment to being a woman can be taken as a provocation, as happened now at the Brit Awards.
The British singer Adele, who received three of the most coveted trophies, took the liberty of taking a dig at the organizers after her freestyle.
Last November, they decided to abolish the division of awards into male and female categories and to award the awards gender-neutrally for the first time this year, as other music awards, including the Grammys, are already doing.
Gina Thomas
Features correspondent based in London.
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In her acceptance speech, Adele shared her thoughts with the cheering crowd at London's O2 Arena.
She can understand the name change, but she still loves being a woman and an artist: "I'm really proud of us." In one fell swoop, the star catapulted herself into the circle of the disparaged, where, among other things, the Harry Waiting is Potter author JKRowling, who has been branded with the linguistically unspeakable acronym "TERF" for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" because she didn't want to describe the female gender in terms like "menstruating people".
The Conservative Daily Telegraph headlined its report saying that Adele had now entered the culture wars of the day.
By not offering gender-specific awards, the Brit Awards responded to Sam Smith's criticism that, as a non-binary musician, he felt excluded from male and female categories.
Smith said after the 2021 Brit Awards that the time had come for awards to reflect the society in which they were presented.
The Brit Awards rendered obedience.
They replaced the four awards for best male and female UK and international solo artist with two gender-neutral awards.
The aim is to celebrate the artists "exclusively for their music and their work" and not for "how they identify or how others see them".
In the "newspeak" of political correctness, the organizers dutifully promised
Everyone wins everything
This promise provoked contradiction, not only because “inclusive” and “relevant” are buzzwords for members of the anti-Woke lobby.
The pugnacious TV presenter Piers Morgan fumed that it won't be long before it's against the law to call yourself a man or a woman.
Culture Minister Nadine Dorries, who is usually quick to the point when it comes to criticizing "Snowflakes", warned from a feminist perspective of the danger of a return to male dominance in cultural awards.
And in keeping with the dodo's motto in Alice of Wonderland that everyone must win and all prizes must be taken, others suggested that the new criteria meant the chances of winning would be halved.
Piers Morgan was back at it with a sarcastic comment on Adele's "audacity" to ignore "gender neutral nonsense" and being proud to say she's female.
"She is clearly a bad TERF that needs to be canceled immediately."
However, Nadine Dorries' fears that the new criteria could mean a step backwards for equality did not materialize.
If anything, this time male artists would have reason to feel disadvantaged.
Female artists, if they can be called such, won in ten of the fifteen categories.
This raises the question of whether it makes any sense at all to divide culture awards by gender, which, in contrast to competitive sport, guarantee equal opportunities.
The Women's Prize for Fiction, set up in 1996 to address perceived discrimination against female authors, became a target last year when the jury longlisted a trans writer for the first time.
In an open letter, critics objected that
the decision conveys "strongly that female authors are unworthy of their own award and that it is okay to allow males to appropriate our honors." Prize ceased to be a women's prize.
The organizers, in turn, contradicted this with a declaration that they wanted to oppose "every form of discrimination on the basis of race, age, sexuality, gender, identity and all other protected characteristics".
The term "woman" includes any person legally recognized as such.
in which a male author became eligible, the prize ceased to be a women's prize.
The organizers, in turn, contradicted this with a declaration that they wanted to oppose "every form of discrimination on the basis of race, age, sexuality, gender, identity and all other protected characteristics".
The term "woman" includes any person legally recognized as such.
in which a male author became eligible, the prize ceased to be a women's prize.
The organizers, in turn, contradicted this with a declaration that they wanted to oppose "every form of discrimination on the basis of race, age, sexuality, gender, identity and all other protected characteristics".
The term "woman" includes any person legally recognized as such.
A daughter of Nigerian immigrants who raps under the name Little Simz won the Best Newcomer category at the Brit Awards.
She said she was living proof that with hard work, you can achieve great things, no matter where you come from.
Or, one might add, in the true sense of equality: no matter what one identifies as.