WASHINGTON: British singer and songwriter Adele has been criticised for saying that she "loves being a woman" while recently accepting the first gender-neutral artist of the year award at the 2022 Brits awards.
According to Fox News, the new category replaced the separate best female and best male artist categories from previous Brits award shows. It's unclear what caused the Brits to change the name of the award category.
Adele was presented with the awards for best artist, album and song of the year. "I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and being a female artist. I do!" she said while accepting the award. "I'm really proud of us, I really, really am," she added.
Adele's speech led to social media users criticizing her for being anti-trans and others coming to her defence. "Please, no, ADELE can't be a TERF," one social media user wrote, according to Page Six.
"So...Adele's a bit terfy then? Good, good," another user wrote. The acronym 'TERF' stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist."
Another social media user defended Adele, and claimed the singer "stands with trans rights."
"Using this to be transphobic and sayings--t like 'i stand with adele' while adele would hate you for being transphobic? she stands with trans rights and if you don't then you don't really stand with adele. gtfo," the user wrote.
As per Fox News, Adele has not publicly commented on the debate her speech started. Instead, she shared a short thank you note on Twitter following the awards show.
She wrote, "What a night! Thank you @BRITs, thank you Sally and Tom for being so accommodating. Thank you to everyone who was there in the crowd, you were so loud and loving! Congratulations to all the other winners and nominees, keep on smashing it!"