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Exclusive: Google releases 53 gender fluid emoji
[As emojis] become more inclusive, each becomes less universal. Jennifer Daniel, designer at Google, thinks about this deep irony at the heart of visual language all the time. She traces it back to the age-old problem with the male bathroom symbol. "That person could be man, woman, anyone," she says. "But they had to add a little detail, that dress, and suddenly that person symbol doesn't mean person anymore; it means man. And that culture means a man-centered culture."
While Daniel can't fix our bathroom signage, as the director of Android emojis, she can fix another problem: The lack of gender-neutral symbols in texting. She can give us the zombies, merpeople, children, weightlifters that are neither male nor female. "We're not calling this the non-binary character, the third gender, or an asexual emoji–and not gender neutral. Gender neutral is what you call pants," says Daniel. "But you can create something that feels more inclusive."
Google is launching 53 updated, gender ambiguous emoji as part of a beta release for Pixel smartphones this week (they'll come to all Android Q phones later this year). Whether Google calls them "non-binary" or not, they have been designed to live between the existing male and female emoji and recognize gender as a spectrum. Given that Google collaborates with many of its rivals on emoji, it's likely that Apple and others will release their takes on genderless emoji later this year.
Daniel sits on the Unicode consortium–the organization that sets core emoji standards, including signifiers like gender and other details, that designers at Apple, Google, and other companies then follow to create their emoji. Last year, she pointed out that there were 64 emoji that, according to Unicode's standards, were never meant to signify gender. In fact, 11 don't have a Unicode-defined signifier for male or female at all–like baby, kiss, fencing person, and snowboarder. As for the remaining 53, they could be male, female, or neither.
Yet Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and, yes, Google, have often assigned genders with their designs for these emoji. It's why every construction worker across major operating systems is, by default, is a man. Unicode's standards dictated a construction "person," but tech companies decided to design them as construction men (and add women as a secondary option).
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Related: Unicode Considering 67 New Emoji for 2016
Unicode 9.0 Serves up Bacon Emoji, 71 others, and Six New Scripts
Unicode 10.0's New Emojis
Stink Over Frowning Poo Emoji at the Unicode Consortium
Microsoft Briefly Left Holding the Gun Emoji
Unicode Consortium Adding 230 New Emojis in Emoji 12.0
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JNCF on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:53PM (74 children)
☮️
My challenge to you: express the concept of peace in equal or fewer characters without using an emoji.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:55PM (13 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:24PM (11 children)
No, but she made a very specific claim. My response should be read in that context.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:08PM (8 children)
It's a stupid claim. Those things aren't expressible with one emoji without previously having trained the reader to understand the meaning. A similar result could be had for defining L to mean love or P to mean peace.
The point of words and written language is that you don't have to train people to understand every single one of them separately and within a given context. You can develop a system where people can take the letters and form words and take those words and form sentences that can be unique or generic.
There's a reason why hierogliphics are a part of so few modern languages. They're a real pain to work with as you're having to frontload a ton of work before you get anywhere. The only reason you see them still in use by the Chinese is that they need to use one writing system for a large number of different languages and the main language itself has so few syllables available that you would run into other issues.
Most languages though have dropped tons and grown enough syllables that it's not necessary to stick with so many different ways of expressing the same syllable in written form.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 12 2019, @04:46AM (2 children)
Yep. Precisely. It's like the proliferation of icons on buttons in apps all over the place these days. I have no clue what most of them mean. I want to use a mail app to do some obvious function that used to be expressed by a simple word or phrase, but now I have to guess -- does the triangle with the trapezoid and the arrow going left do what I want, or do I want the button with the circle and the arrow going to the square?
Seriously. What the hell. This is my life dealing with almost every freaking app these days, and it's been spreading to desktop software. Many apps don't bother displaying tooltips either, which used to be the way you learned some icon toolbar in saner days.
No, now you're supposed to somehow either guess or Intuit the meaning of hundreds of random symbols. It's like we're going linguistically backwards.
So, a task in a new app that used to take me 5 seconds to find under the right word on a menu or whatever now takes me a minute of guess and check to see what the freaking buttons do... And hope I don't screw something up in the process. And if it's not a common task I use everyday, then next week I get to play the same game.. and the next week... Until eventually I waste maybe 10 minutes over several weeks learning what could have just been made clear with a single English word.
Emojis are the same thing. The peace sign is known to many, but not to all. But everyone who can read English knows what the word "peace" means.
And I suppose that's about the ONLY advantage to emojis and textless icons... It makes it easy for devs to avoid translating into many languages. While making the user experience a pain in the ass.
(Score: 1) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:52PM
The main motivation behind the glyphs you see used in all sorts of modern UIs is to get you to spend (waste) more time using the tool.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday May 15 2019, @12:50AM
Pretty much any new industrial equipment is like this too. It has a touch screen with a stack of ambiguous icons on it, and you have to look them up in the manual to find out what they do. If it's something that needs actual numeric inputs, they put them all together next to a column of icons that you can sort of see what they mean, but only after you already know what they do.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Sunday May 12 2019, @06:21AM (4 children)
Disagree. Knowing the meaning of "but" and "ton," or "butt" and "on," does not allow you to know the meaning of "button." We do have to learn words individually. Words are just higher-order symbols composed of a specific set of sub-symbols. You can sometimes use knowledge of other words to infer the meaning of new and unfamiliar words, especially in the case of portmanteaus, but this is true of other symbols as well (and if you don't think thie following example is one symbol try copying it, and/or reconsidering your definition of symbols): 🌍☮️
(Score: 3, Funny) by chromas on Sunday May 12 2019, @09:03PM
Disagree. I see your comment, I see the Reply button, I put my butt on it and eop0wfrop;wszkifrwesikfr0wszfrkwifrrfokrp0e;frxedcfvkvmkr
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday May 13 2019, @02:01AM (2 children)
African, Middle-Eastern and Southern European people are peaceful?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday May 13 2019, @05:59AM (1 child)
That's a view from space. The second one looks like a trident with a ring around it.
Obviously it means the aliens from space have heavy weapons and strong shields. Be afraid.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by Chocolate on Monday May 13 2019, @10:49AM
Agreed, from that high up it probably does look peaceful.
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Sunday May 12 2019, @01:43AM (1 child)
There's an even bigger problem though which she completely glosses over, absolutely none of those emojis are vegan or vegetarian! It's horribly discriminatory that there are literally zero vegan emojis, they're all meat eaters. I think Google should immediately drop everything and prepare a complete and extensive set of both vegetarian and vegan emojis in order to address this blatant discrimination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @12:58PM
What about the halal ones? Surely someone must pay every time an emoji is used to ensure it is halal
(Score: 1) by Chocolate on Tuesday May 14 2019, @01:11PM
🍫
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ekerin on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:56PM (18 children)
The challenge with that, is symbols get re-used and re-defined through time. Case in point the skull and cross bones. Used to mean "Death" - now means "Happy Fun Pirate".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:05PM (2 children)
Point of fact: This pirate still owns a sword.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:10PM (1 child)
Yes, now, get off of my ship.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday May 11 2019, @10:27PM
Nay laddie, for I not only have a sword, but a brace of wheel locks!
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @05:52PM (14 children)
👌
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 11 2019, @06:12PM
Space too. That sign means "arsehole" in Brazil, if I remember right...which fits pretty well with the people apparently trying to co-opt it :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @06:29PM (8 children)
It's funny I see this. I read an article less then a half an hour ago that described the difference between the "OK" sign, the "circle game" sign, and the racist sign. "OK" sign has curved fingers, the "circle game" one is straight or curved fingers below the waist, and the racist symbol is straight fingers. You know, despite the fact that the whole racist version started as a joke and the "OK" sign has been used with both straight and curved fingers for some time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:11PM (7 children)
The OK sign never has a racist connotation to it, that's an urban legend. Now, it does sometimes mean asshole in certain parts of the world, but the meanings for it are either OK or asshole, not anything to do with neo-nazis and the like.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:24PM (3 children)
Okay, asshole.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:50PM (2 children)
With pictograms, please.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 12 2019, @12:32AM (1 child)
Nobody appreciates my humor. Sigh.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @01:00PM
You humor failed due to not being in modern image form
please resubmit your 💩
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:08PM (1 child)
You're either ignorant of the meta-issue or being disingenuous. The white-nationalists and adjacent allies deliberately exploit the ambiguity and plausible deniability of the sign. They're playing a game. Sartre, someone who I am not usually much a fan of, figured this out a long time ago. Though he was speaking specifically of antisemitism and antisemites, and words not symbols (which isn't actually much of a distinction) he said the last word on this subject and his insight is perfectly transferable to this specific case:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @10:14PM
I'm not ignorant, the only people claiming that sign as a white power sign is the media, it wasn't until after the media asserted the connection to those groups that it started to spread and in most cases is more accurately connected with trolling rather than an actual hand signal.
Yes, they do often times take advantage of ambiguity, but this isn't one of those cases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @09:38PM
I literally said that the racist use started as a joke. More specifically, to show how dumb the news is on reporting stuff they see online.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:01PM (3 children)
Well, I have no idea what that symbol is supposed to mean, and I'm not interested enough to research it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @11:34PM (2 children)
It means your dick will fit between the tip of my finger and my thumb: 👌
(Score: 1) by Chocolate on Monday May 13 2019, @11:43AM
This is the size of your brain on drugs: 👌
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:32AM
Do you have a small hand? Cause measuring that with mine, well, it's all good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:18PM (14 children)
That's the CND's logo and they can go fuck themselves. It doesn't mean peace.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:39PM (13 children)
You, and the white-supremacist-referencing-AC below, both knew what the symbol meant before reading the rest of my comment. Also, words have multiple meanings as well.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Saturday May 11 2019, @07:45PM (12 children)
Sorry, but whether AC fucks himself or not, that remains the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Seems it means something different to you. That's the trouble with single characters.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:54PM
Can confirm, it doesn't seem to matter how hard I ride my dragon dildos, the CND still exists. Sometimes I think the wikipage is gone, but so far it turns out I've just knocked the ethernet cable out, forgotten to remove my blindfold, obscured the screen, or otherwise only slightly erased them. I'll tie harder, as I still have hope of it one day working and the UK being free to decommission the dangerously outdated reactor designs the CND forced on the UK.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:55AM (10 children)
It's also a problem with words.
Alice: "Did you deliver the parakeet to that man, or flip him off?"
Bob: "I gave him the bird."
This doesn't mean that we don't have primary associations with words, or other symbols. A word is just a higher-order symbol composed of sub-symbols, after all. What was your primary association with the symbol I posted? Was your first thought the CND logo, or the generic peace sign? What is your honest interpretation when you see it on a bumper sticker? My impression is that people in this thread are being purposefully obtuse to make a point, which is cute, and something I applaud on some level, but also besides the point I was making.
Even if it were accepted that this particular symbol is so ambiguous as to confuse the average viewer (which I highly doubt) the point I was making could work just as well with an alien head, a pistol, a star of david, or any other number of other emojis. Surely there is one you could pick that has a level of ambiguity on par with common words.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday May 12 2019, @12:26PM (9 children)
I'm not sure what you are getting at there (you think I am lying?), but my first (and only) thought was that it is the CND logo. Until this thread happened, I did not even know it was ever supposed to mean anything else. Honest. Maybe it's because I am in the UK where the CND originated.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 12 2019, @04:59PM (8 children)
I didn't think you were lying so much as phrasing a truth in trollish way, like if I argued that it were equally valid to interpret a Hitler-mustache as a Chaplin-mustache (Chaplin had one first!), when we all know that the primary association is a Hitler-mustache. Yet I do think of both men when I see such a mustache; the subject is so subjective that one can be purposefully obtuse and argue for it without strictly lying. I accept that I was wrong (in your case -- I'm pretty sure the white-supremacist-referencing-AC is still trolling), and I appreciate your clarification. The US/UK difference seems particularly explanatory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:35PM (7 children)
It is a simple fact. That is a hate symbol:
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/national-alliance [adl.org]
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/volksfront [adl.org]
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/volksfront-flag [adl.org]
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/life-rune [adl.org]
There are some mods that downvote facts they don't like here.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:57PM (4 children)
1) All of your examples are upside-down peace signs; this is like arguing that because "И" is a symbol used be nihilists, "N" is also this same symbol.
2) Even if you had examples of the exact same symbol being used, my primary association argument stands. I can accept that a UK viewer legitimately thinks of the CND logo as their primary (or even only) association. Is your primary association with a rightside-up peace sign really a white nationalist symbol?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @06:15PM
Why does the "primary" association matter?
Does it matter if this guy's [cbssports.com] primary association was the "circle game" [dictionary.com]?
He is still banned because the symbol incited hatred regardless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @06:17PM (2 children)
Hit send too soon.
I wouldn't notice the difference between that symbol being upside down vs rightside up unless someone pointed it out to me. Most people are probably the same.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 12 2019, @06:41PM (1 child)
I am not the Cubs, and I don't have to be consistent with their decisions. I can see why an organization might ban someone for putting an asshole joke in their TV feed, or photobombing in general, but without further knowledge of the man making that gesture I'm not willing to call his use of that symbol hateful. To me, that reads as an asshole joke.
I feel like this is absurd, and I don't believe you're discussing this topic in good faith. You must confuse the letters "b," "d," "p," and "q" a lot, troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @06:49PM
Most people aren't looking at that symbol all day. I see them like once a year. I remember it as a Y inside a circle. I'm sure if you go ask random people what a peace symbol looks like you'll get both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @08:51PM (1 child)
ADL trafficks in opinions, not facts. 卐
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @12:34PM
By context you seem to reference Nazis here but easily this could have been for something far older. Fishing for feedback?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:20PM (5 children)
Be careful, that is also a symbol of white supremacy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:23PM (4 children)
0/10
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:30PM (1 child)
So long as we're willing to cede symbols to them at the slightest request, they'll nab it sooner or later.
We should really just laugh in these 🤡s faces and ignore them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @09:57AM
thats the symbol for "will put on makeup for money", honey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:30PM (1 child)
Wow, ignorant people downvoting facts within seconds of being posted to this board:
>"White supremacists tried to copy the symbol"
https://www.quora.com/History-What-are-the-different-things-an-upside-down-peace-sign-can-mean [quora.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:33PM
copy -> co-opt
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday May 11 2019, @05:15PM (2 children)
you do know that that symbol is actually meant to mean "Nuclear Disarmament" right? It is a combination of the flag semaphores for N and D.
It was later taken to be the symbol of the whole "Anti-war Peace Movement". Though I've also heard it used as a warning of a painful death. Seems some ancient culture would crucify people upside down on it for heresy. So when I see it I don't automatically think "Peace". If someone sent me a card with just that symbol on it with no name I would have to ask myself if they mean "peace" or "I hope you die a painful death".
The problem with using single symbols to convey concepts is that unless you already know the current cultural reference and context it was used in it would have no meaning to you at all, or the wrong one from what was intended by the person originally using it.
The biggest criticisms I've heard of the written Chinese language is the number of symbols it has, over 50 thousand, for words and concepts. The more complex the symbol set of a language the more likely that it can be misinterpreted. And that leads to misunderstandings, persecution and sometimes wars.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:14PM
Chinese has between 50k and 100k total characters that have appeared somewhere in some book, but even a professional scholar of the language is unlikely to know more than 20k. Most people only know a few thousand of them that are used regularly, the balance of the rest are either obscure, archaic or very narrow in usage.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:08PM
Lilith Velkor was a fictional character.
That said, it is true that the cross that folk were crucified on had many different forms, and IIRC, Saint Peter was crucified upside down at his own request, so it's vaguely possible that his cross looked like that. Quite unlikely, as it was much easier to fix two strong pieces of timber together, and that would require at least three, and a bit of carpentry doing joint work. (Still, to please a big enough crowd people are willing to do all kinds of extra effort.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @06:33PM
ᛉ Peace. You just used the symbol used to denote your own genocide, and just believed the BS that it meant "peace".
In the same way, "Islam is a religion of peace" -- Islam means Submission. When all are made to Submit, there will be peace.
My challenge to you: Convey a simple meaning using such a symbol without me being able to show you that you're an ignorant fool who knows nothing about the magic of symbols, nor their use in mind controlling the masses into accepting the whim of the wizards that rule you.
George Orwell Called, he wants his Newspeak reduction of language back...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:41PM
> ☮️
nice crosshair.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:46PM
☮️ is the flower power [wikipedia.org], a symbol of passive resistance and non-violence ideology.
My challenge to you: express unambiguously "mourning" in a single pictogram.
---
My point: the fact that one pictogram can represent a concept does not invalidate the idea of "many of them are needed to express everyday concepts"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:48PM
How does a tiny blob that sort of looks like a pink panda represent peace? Better to simply use the word "peace".
If English is too long for you, go for the Latin pax. If you prefer the message of the hippies, go with ND ("nuclear disarmament", displayed as the semaphores for the letters in a circle), though without context the simple letter pair won't mean much to anyone.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @11:16PM (1 child)
For you it may mean a concept of peace, but for me this symbol represents a cultural confusion of so many minds flushed out by drugs abuse and disorientating propaganda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @11:55PM
And for me, it denotes fertilizer.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 12 2019, @01:06AM (1 child)
I'm not sure how to break this to the person who said that, but if you take a generic meeple-shape and put a dress on it, it means woman, not man. I'm sure that doesn't fit with whatever SJW crusade they're on, which from the above quote seems to center around blaming men for everything, but sheesh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 13 2019, @12:51PM
I think she is right lets define the now man-shape to be human-shape and then one with a dress as woman-shape, then the new man symbol gets a big penis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @07:02AM
My challenge to you: express the concept of evil in equal or fewer characters without using an emoji:
🧕
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday May 12 2019, @11:59AM (3 children)
But to communicate the concept of peace, I'd use a word: peace
One is clearly shorter than the other.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:29PM (2 children)
This is fundamentally a limitation of your input device, it's like arguing that I type an uppercase "A" as "A" whereas I type an uppercase "B" as "B" so it takes more characters to type "A" than "B." Emojis can be embedded directly into html without referencing their codepoints explicitly through other characters. Don't worry, I found the perfect tool to solve your problems: https://www.engadget.com/2015/11/04/hardware-emoji-keyboard-emojiworks/ [engadget.com]
😉
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday May 12 2019, @10:36PM (1 child)
Wouldn't those entities be 6 bytes in UTF-8? Whereas "peace" is 5.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday May 12 2019, @10:36PM
Pax
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Monday May 13 2019, @02:27AM (2 children)
You picked a best case. On the average she's right.
My challenge, translate the Thing Explaining
Better yet, translate the pages of Lord of the Rings that describe the door to Moria.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday May 13 2019, @03:01AM (1 child)
Challenge not accepted, I never argued that words aren't useful; if that were my argument I wouldn't be using them.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Monday May 13 2019, @03:15AM
😏🐔
✌️
(Score: 1) by Chocolate on Monday May 13 2019, @12:37PM
Sure, but why did you post the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [wikipedia.org] symbol?
Bit-choco-coin anyone?