PIERS MORGAN: It's a pity there's no award for the most pompous, politically-correct personality on the planet because Emma Watson would be shoe-in, whatever gender she claims to be

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Every time I hear actress – sorry, gender-equal actor - Emma Watson pontificate in public these days, I die just a little bit more.

Of course, this might be her very intention.

But even by Ms Watson’s standards of jabbering, PC-crazed nonsense, she’s now excelled herself.

At last night’s MTV Movie & TV Award, she was the first winner of the inaugural ‘gender-neutral’ Best Actor category.

Emma Watson won the first MTV Movie Award of the night in the first ceremony that didn't separate nominees based on gender 

 Non-binary Asia Kate Dillon, from the show Billions, announced the winner and handed Emma her award

To ram home the message, ‘non-binary’ (that’s apparently somebody who ‘identifies’ as neither male nor female) actor/actress Asia Kate Dillon, from the show Billions, announced the winner.

‘The first acting award in history that doesn’t separate nominees based on their sex says something about how we perceive the human experience,’ Ms Watson said.

It certainly does, yes.

It says to me that we’ve all gone barking bloody bonkers.

Gender has become a very complex thing in modern society.

But to me, it’s very simple.

I come from the increasingly unfashionable school of thought that says there are just two genders: male and female.

They are wonderfully similar and compatible in many ways, and very different in others.

I am 100 percent in favor of full gender equality between men and women, and fully supportive of those who wish to transgender because they feel they were born the wrong sex.

But I am 100 percent opposed to the concept of there being 157 different ways (at last count) to ‘self-identify’ one’s gender, and equally opposed to the consequential rising demand for ‘gender neutrality’.

'Last night, I noticed Ms Watson wore quite an eye-catching racy outfit to accept her gender-neutral award. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate if she had worn gender-neutral clothes?'

Things are getting so ridiculous now, it won’t be long before Lady Gaga demands maternity units where it is forbidden to say if you have had a boy or girl because the baby is unable to ‘self-identify’.

Think I’m kidding?

In Cardiff, Wales, a university recently tried to have the word ‘mankind’ banned in case it offended anyone.

Is ‘woman’ next for the PC chop because it contains ‘man’?

Where does this madness end?

Not with Emma Watson, that’s for sure.

‘Acting is about the ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and that doesn’t have to be separated into two different categories,’ she declared in her speech.

OK, so let’s now imagine this idea is taken to the main acting awards season, featuring the Oscars, Emmys and Golden Globes?

First, there would be half as many awards, obviously.

So half as many people would get recognised for their acting work as currently do.

For many of the Hollywood luvvies I know, this would be a torture right up there with water-boarding.

Second, what if by chance, men won the first five years of gender-neutral Best Actor awards simply because they genuinely happened to give better performances than the women in that period?

Can you even begin to picture the global outrage that would ensure?

Rabid feminists, led by the likes of Emma Watson, would stamp their feet and scream that the only reason men were winning was was…wait for it… ‘SEXISM!’

Madonna would immediately call for a march against this disgusting oppression of women.

And Donald Trump would get the blame - because he’s Donald Trump.

Last night, I noticed Ms Watson wore quite an eye-catching racy outfit to accept her gender-neutral award.

Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate if she had worn gender-neutral clothes?

Or would that not, as she well knows, have garnered her the global media coverage that she so aggressively coverts with her body – as we saw when she recently went topless for Vanity Fair?

Momentous occasion: 'The first acting award in history that doesn't separate nominees based on their sex says something about how we perceive the human experience,' the actress, 27, said

Hot, leggy, sparkly number = lots of attention.

Dull, black trouser-suit… not so much.

Then there is the issue of the role for which Ms Watson won her gender-neutral award.

She played Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

A more gender-specific role in a more gender-specific film it would be hard to find.

Far from promoting feminism, as Ms Watson has comically tried to claim, it actually promotes old-school misogyny.

The title ‘Beauty’ is the classic physical-based stereotype for women that Watson purports to abhor. 

Why did she not demand Beauty be changed to Ugly? Wouldn’t that have been a far more empowering feminist message to those women less aesthetically gifted than Ms Watson?

Watson is seen above as Belle in the movie Beauty and the Beast

As for ‘Beast’, could there be a more alpha-male stereotype title for a man? Especially one who is hairy, hard-drinking and does lots of hunting?

Even worse, he starts off a handsome prince but then gets turned into a hideously ugly beast as a punishment for his flaws.

So the message couldn’t be clearer: beauty is good, ugly is bad.

Ms Watson told the MTV audience: ‘I’m so proud to be part of a film that celebrates diversity, literacy, inclusion, joy and love the way this one does.’

Sorry, WHAT?

Beauty and the Beast is about a savage male beast who kidnaps a beautiful woman. She falls in love with him due to some weird Stockholm Syndrome type situation, forgives him for all his terrible behaviour, and then tries to make him a nicer person.

So, she’s basically in an abusive relationship in which her only asset is her sexuality and the movie’s subliminal theme is therefore that if a woman is pretty and sweet natured she can change an abusive man into a kind and gentle man.

In the end, the beast turns back into a handsome prince because, presumably, ugly people cannot possibly be truly happy.

If I said that on Twitter, Emma Watson and her Harry Potter mates like JK Rowling would crucify me!

Also, as in the original fairy-tale, Belle is stuck at home doing the housework.

Ms Watson, being an ardent feminist, demanded Disney turn her version of Belle into an ‘inventor’.

Very laudable, but what did she invent?

Belle dances with The Beast in the movie. The former Harry Potter star said when accepting her award last night: 'Acting is about the ability to put yourself into someone else's shoes and that doesn't have to be separated into two different categories'

Ah yes, a washing machine. So she could do even more housework in a more efficient way!

I could have bet my entire life’s earnings that the first winner of this gender-neutral MTV award would be a) a woman and b) an outspoken feminist.

It if had been a man, all hell would have broken loose.

But here’s the real problem with trying to create a gender-neutral competitive world: it will never work.

Why?

Well, let’s take Ms Watson’s thinking to its natural conclusion.

If she truly wants gender-neutral competition, then she should include the Olympic Games in her campaign.

Men and women would no longer compete in the current myriad gender-specific events; instead, they would compete against each other.

I guarantee this idea would last right to the moment we got to the closing ceremony of the first gender-neutral Olympics and women hadn’t won a single medal.

Not because they are less important than, or mentally inferior to, men but because men and women are simply different physiological creatures.

When you put the strongest, most powerful and fastest men up against their female equivalents, the men will invariably win.

So every single medal podium in the gender-neutral Olympics would be men-only.

I think we can all confidently predict what Emma Watson would scream about that:

‘SEXISM!’