
Non-Binary Emma D’Arcy Named Among Men of the Year for Playing a Woman
Apparently, identifying as they/them doesn’t preclude you from an award based on gender.
Emma D’Arcy has been named as one of GQ Magazine’s Men of the Year.
Caitlyn Jenner was named Glamour Magazine’s woman of the year back in 2015, so I suppose it’s a case of tit-for-tat.
In a classic case of We Support the Current Thing, GQ removed “gender specificity” from consideration for their Men of the Year award — which in 2022 also featured women — several years back.
It means a person of any gender can be included in the list.
You couldn’t possibly be more inclusive than that, unless you name an inanimate object as one of your Men of the Year. (If you’re thinking Joe Biden, you’d be technically correct, but that’s not what I meant.)
GQ could simply call their award “People of the Year”, but then it wouldn’t be subversive, so what would be the point.
I had actually forgotten that GQ Magazine was still a thing. Now I know why.
Confuzzled
For the record, D’Arcy — who plays Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s House of the Dragon — doesn’t identify as a woman or a man.
D’Arcy is a they/them, which many people find difficult to understand, much like a “Men of the Year” award where gender specificity is unimportant.
Welcome to 2022, where the Men of the Year award is open to women and a nominee is a woman who is neither a woman or a man.
Despite not identifying as a woman, D’Arcy insists she is really good at playing women in films.
The biological female (is there any other kind?) told Pink News:
“I really like playing women and I’m really good at it.”
I wonder why that would be?
She continued:
“I have all the tools necessary to play women. I lived as one for a long time; people still think I am one.”
I’m not sure what “tools” are necessary to play a woman, but I am quite sure I lack them on account of being a man. It’s just a hunch.
Not so for D’Arcy, though. Anyone who says she can’t play a woman is literally arguing with every cell in her body.
And yes, she’s even lived as a woman, which is stunning and brave.
Being able to list on your résumé that you are an actual woman who has also lived as a woman despite no longer identifying as a woman has got to help when you audition for a role as a woman.
Appropriation
But it’s not all smooth sailing for the woman claiming to be genderless who has been recognised as one of the Men of the Year for her role as a woman.
D’Arcy’s insistence that she’s not a woman raises the awkward question about non-female actors taking female roles.
Hasn’t the patriarchy taken enough from women already?
If Hollywood insists that trans characters need to be played by actual trans actors, and that homosexual characters need to be played by actual homosexual actors, is it not logical to also insist that female characters — such as the one D’Arcy plays in the highly successful House of Dragon series — are actual females?
Consistency demands Hollywood affirm D’Arcy’s non-binary identity by denying her female roles.
But they won’t, of course.
The woke are triggered if a straight actor plays a non-heterosexual role, but an LGBTQ+ actor can play any gender role they want.
The only way to make sense of any of this is to accept that it’s not meant to make sense. Then it’s easy to understand.
The irony in all of this, of course, is that no real man ever read GQ Magazine anyway!
___
Originally published at Sky News. Republished from the James Macpherson Report.
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