Non-binary actors are officially part of mainstream culture. Among their number: former Disney child pop star Demi Lovato, the high-profile performer who played Princess Diana in Netflix’s The Crown, Emma Corrin, pop star sensation Sam Smith, performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, and singer and actor Janelle Monae, who appeared in the Oscar-nominated Hidden Figures.
The public emergence into mainstream culture of these performers poses exciting challenges and questions. Queensland’s Matilda Awards recently ditched gendered categories for its performer awards, following a trend first established by Melbourne’s Green Room Awards and later followed by the Sydney Theatre Awards (a decision which led to one of the Sydney Theatre Awards’ co-founders quitting after claiming the decision to remove gender from awards categories was ‘woke, PC and otherwise downright offensive‘).
