If award shows were given superlatives, MTV’s Movie Awards would win Most Woke: This year, the show went platform-agnostic, adding television and web content, and did away with gendered categories—something praised by the night’s winner, Emma Watson.

"The first acting award in history that doesn't separate nominees based on their sex says something about how we perceive the human experience," said Watson, recipient of Best Actor for Beauty and the Beast.

"MTV's move to create a genderless award for acting will mean something different to everyone. But, to me, it indicates that acting is about the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and that doesn't need to be separated into two different categories.”

Watson was presented the award by Asia Kate Dillon, a regular on Showtime’s Billions and the first gender-nonbinary actor to play a nonbinary role on television.

Dillon praised MTV for focusing on performance, not labels. “Tonight, we celebrate portrayals of the human experience because the only distinction we should be making when it comes to awards is between each outstanding performance.”

The Movie Awards has always been one of the most inclusive, beginning in 1993 when Sharon Stone won Best Female Performance for playing a bisexual femme fatale in Basic Instinct. (Okay, maybe that’s not the best example.) Four years later, Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly were the first non-hetero pairing nominated for Best Kiss with Bound. Most of the other same-sex smooches in Movie Award history have been played for laughs, but Sunday’s show was so powerful because the winning kiss, between Moonlight’s Ashton Sanders and Jharrel Jerome was so tender.

Accepting the award, the straight-identified actors encouraged more exploration of the human experience.

“I think it’s safe to say that it is okay for young performers, especially us minority performers, to step out of the box,” said Jerome. “This award is for that. It’s for artists who need to step out of the box and do whatever it takes to tell a story and whatever it takes to make a change, to get people to wake up.”

“This award is bigger than Jharrel and me,” Sanders added. “This represents more than a kiss. This is for those that feel like the others, the misfits. This represents us.”

Several winners could fall into the “misfits,” category: Lil Rel Howery (Best Comedic Performance in Get Out), Black-ish (Best American Story), 13th (Best Documentary), and RuPaul’s Drag Race (Best Reality Competition) make it clear that programming that addresses something other the white, heterosexual, cisgender American experience are valued by viewers (and studios).

Some moments didn't need a lot of attention, but were amazing nonetheless: Millie Bobby Brown wearing her GLAAD "Ampersand" pin, Cara Delevingne with her shaved head, and Milo Ventimiglia and Lonnie Chavis, who play father and son on This is Us, accepting Best Tearjerker. No one addressed that a top-rated network series focuses on an interracial adoptive family—they didn't need to.

Taraji P. Henson (who won Best Hero and accepted Best Fight Against the System for Hidden Figures) said she and co-stars Octavia Butler and Janelle Monae “understood” that the movie “was bigger than all of us.”

“We understood the task at hand. We understood that this is a part of history that needed to be re-implemented into the blood and veins of American history,” she added. ”For me, it was very important because I grew up with an understanding—no one ever told me that girls couldn't do math and science. But there was an understanding that it was for boys. I remember getting this script and being very upset, because it felt like a dream was stolen from me. And it became my mission, and everyone's mission who was involved with this film, to dispel that myth. So that another young girl wouldn’ grow up thinking that her mind wasn't capable of grasping math and science. If it were not for these women, we wouldn't be in space."

Henson ended by reminding the audience of the importance of diversity, inclusivity and intersectionality. “God is very clever. He made us all different for a reason, so we better figure it out.”

Vin Diesel echoed that sentiment in accepting the Generation Award for the Fast and Furious franchise: “I gotta thank a generation that was willing to accept this multicultural franchise, where it didn’t matter what color your skin was or what country you were from. When you’re family, you’re family.”

Tracee Ellis-Ross revealed she was going off-script before presenting Henson the award with Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

“Thank you for your work, your voice and how you use it, “ the Black-ish star told Waters. “Thank you for being an example for all of us, especially in these times.”

Waters replied that actors and singers “have a unique opportunity—the ability to speak out and inspire change. Each of these stories pushes back against the bullies and uses its platform to unite us all.”

Even the fact that a fairly traditional Disney film, Beauty and the Beast, won movie of the year seems transgressive: As Watson pointed out, the story celebrates “diversity, literacy, inclusion, joy, and love.”