The debate has roots in older conversations about whether carving out places in a male-dominated field for one group, in this case women, comes at the cost of excluding others.

Proponents of gendered categories say that absent such distinctions, men would dominate the nominees and winners.

“Merging gender categories would create a cosmetic definition of equality in an industry where we know that equality does not exist,” said Mark Harris, who covers Hollywood’s awards season for Vanity Fair. “It’s placing this huge bet that sexism is so solved that it doesn’t need to be paid attention to anymore. It’s so solved even though a vast majority of voters in awards groups are men. It’s so solved even though actresses have absolutely no shortage of important and fascinating things to say about the way gender inequities persist in the industry.”

Melissa Silverstein, the publisher of the site Women and Hollywood agreed, noting that in prize categories that are nongendered, like director, producer and cinematographer, very few women are recognized. In 2017 , Steve Pond of The Wrap found that in fields where acting awards divided by gender were scrapped, men indeed disproportionately bagged more nominations and wins. At the gender-neutral awards handed out by the Television Critics Association, Pond determined that over two decades, men won the individual drama and comedy acting awards seven times out of 10.

But Dillon and other nonbinary actors argue that gendered categories give the false appearance that prime roles for women are far more prevalent than they actually are. If the best actress category was axed and the vast majority of the nominations went to cisgendered men, Dillon said, “We would have to deal with the inequality that still is in Hollywood and always has been when it comes to gender as well as race.”