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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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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday May 11 2019, @06:34PM (13 children)
The one case where this does make some sense is language independent markings for basic things like 'where's the terlett at?" It's nice to be able to answer that question in any airport in the world, without necessarily being able to read and write any languages that have signage alloted to them. It's not a big deal to have 3, or even 5 languages on each sign, but there are still hundreds of languages left after you do that.
Her criticism of those sigils specifically is interesting, and to a degree insightful.
What she leaves out is crucial though. Yes, we started with a non-gendered man and then had to make a gendered woman, which in context implied the man was now a male, specifically, that much is true. But why did we do that? Why were they trying to make sigils to mark toilets that looked like people?
Why not mark the toilet with, I don't know, a picture of a toilet? Isn't that the more interesting question?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @06:43PM (4 children)
The answer is simple: Because "Teach Men Not To Rape" hadn't been invented yet, and vulnerable little girls wanted to be able to squat by themselves without having parents worry a man was going to penis their virginal pussies.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday May 11 2019, @07:02PM (3 children)
And the popularity of that custom in the US probably has something to do with it, the US is prominent, but even that path could still be accommodated by modifying the toilet rather than modifying the human silhouette. You could have a toilet plus a urinal for the gentleman's room, and a toilet plus a mirror for the lady's.
What is perhaps a bit more universal, however, is a squeamishness about referencing the toilet directly qua toilet. So for instance in English, people say things like 'restroom' instead. And even when we make a non-linguistic symbol, we make a euphemistic symbol, something that doesn't actually directly relate to the message at all. It's a silhouette of a human, that has no more to do with the toilet than the living room or the kitchen, they're all rooms for people.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:32PM (1 child)
The urinal is pretty global these days, at least in venues where the scale means it is worthwhile including them (although these days its getting quite unusual to see the old-style trough rather than individual urinals but whether there are dividers still seems to be 50/50 on individual urinals in my experience). They are also much more water efficient than flushing toilets these days which is another reason to install them in some places.
Presence of urinals in turn means that the vast majority of people want a segregated male-only room for them. But what is also true is that outside the US it is also now much more common to have doors on the stalls which go floor to ceiling which means it is possible to make them unisex without causing major fuss. So I can see a future where the segregation is urinals vs cubicles rather than male vs female (but that requires women to "give up" something which can be a politically hard choice for a decision maker to take so it's probably quite a slow change I expect).
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday May 12 2019, @04:14AM
And then your done. No trauma.
If you're too squeamish to make it through either of those routes, you wait in line for a private toilet. Big venues will have some of those too.
I don't see what stalls from floor to ceiling have to do with any of it. If someone actually crawls under the dang stall door they'd probably be spotted very quickly, at any rate scream and kick and you'll be rescued. I suppose it could be a worry at a time of day when the place was empty, but at that time you'd just go to a private toilet and lock the door anyhow if you have any worry.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by chromas on Sunday May 12 2019, @09:44PM
"Toilet" itself is a euphemism. Or at least, it used to be, back in the good old days of IBM's extended ASCII set. That's why toothpaste and shampoo are toiletries.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Saturday May 11 2019, @07:45PM (5 children)
...only in a culture that isn't engaged in drumming up fear and hate about sexuality. Here in the US, the general overall attitude and the indicator symbols that typically fall out of it are that if there is a male in a rest room, there can't be a female, because OMG Think Of The Children and Officer, that man was looking at me! Those kinds of stupidity won't be going away any time soon, either.
Personally I don't care if the person on the toilet next to me is male or female, or if the person at the next urinal over is holding a dick or something like this. [amazon.com] That's how I feel about bodily elimination issues, which strike me personally as entirely non-sexual. Peeing, defecating... these do not stimulate me sexually at all. So rest rooms, in their turn, strike me as neutral ground. Except of course for the fact that the ones I see in public are almost universally segregated by people who have highly dubious motivations, which creates sexual tension where I find no reason at all for any to arise.
Consequently, gendered signaling of any kind inside a rest room does nothing at all for/to me.
Outside the rest room... I do care about gender plumage WRT dressing in a traditionally feminine manner and a traditionally male manner. I react with equal amusement and disinterest to both men wearing dresses and women wearing pants. That's partially because such fashions were not normalized when I grew up, a bias which I recognize but find I am actually not interested in getting out from under, and partially because I like to see a difference in plumage between male and female. That arises from the fact that I'm not the least sexually interested in males, and I am about as sexually interested in females as it is possible to be. Plumage that unequivocally and honestly signals biological sexual identity, according to me anyway, is a Very Good Thing.
Having said that, while I certainly recognize the existence of males and females who have surgically altered their genitalia and/or secondary sexual characteristics, hormone balances, etc., in a sincere attempt to imitate being the other sex, as well as the existence of those who are genetically and/or disease-process driven into corner conditions that make them legitimately indeterminate to some degree, they all land in the same place as males do for me: not sexually interesting in the least. Some bluntly honest part of my psyche would consider it optimal if all of those people would wear pants or shorts, leaving dresses and skirts as the typical wear for those female parties who are actually female and like being female. As that's not even happening, I can sum up the current fashion circumstances with a sincerely felt "meh" for those who choose to color outside the lines, or without regard to lines at all. IOW, "Oh well."
Anyway... quite aside from what I would like to see, sexually indicative fashions are changing. It is what it is. I am already all set when it comes to having a sexual partner I am satisfied with. So at this point, I can't bring myself to really get too exercised over it, while still finding it interesting in an "Oh my, look what they're doing now" sort of way. The whole rest room "must be gendered" thing is nothing less than a deeply embedded neurosis in my culture (US culture.) I don't expect to see any significant changes at all on that front. Not while the other voters still hell-bent on electing neurotic cluetards and superstition-pandering chumps to office, anyway.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Just because someone is offended...
doesn't mean they're right.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday May 11 2019, @07:59PM (2 children)
I agree. You go there to do your business and get out, and so does everyone else, or should.
"The whole rest room "must be gendered" thing is nothing less than a deeply embedded neurosis in my culture (US culture.) "
I think you're right. What opened my eyes was spending some time in Europe, where it's rare to see that. There are single-occupant facilities, of course, but if you go to a bar or a ballpark or something like that where you're going to have large communal facilities, don't expect to see any gender markings on them. I'm pretty liberal but I still expected that to be somehow problematic, in retrospect just because I had NEVER seen it done. But I never saw a problem. If anything I think it worked better, being mixed probably encouraged people of both genders to do their thing and clear the space instead of standing around doing something stereotypical in front of the mirror.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @12:28AM (1 child)
Problem is there are some people that don't. If bathrooms were unisex, male perverts would be aiming cameras into the neighboring stall, perhaps even sexually assault women with their pants down. Sure, it can happen to men too, but the historical assumption was there were so few homos around, and they were weak, so a real man victim would permanently fix their wagon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday May 12 2019, @04:28AM
Sure, in a big country with millions of people, this might happen once or twice.
But they'd be caught. Easily. Idiots.
And that's fine. Catch them, deal with them, let the rest of us get on with life.
What kind of an idiot is going to try to snake a camera under a stall divider to get a shot of someone pooping? I get that some people do fine it arousing, I don't know why but ok they do. So what? That move gets you a screaming (female? yeah we were talking about the case of a female) kicking your camera and at least a half dozen guys are going to come running in response to her screams.
That's the sort of problem that solves itself if you just quit worrying about it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @03:29AM (1 child)
+1 for you for knowing what a pee funnel is. Best invention since sliced bread.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday May 12 2019, @03:33PM
I can definitely see where sliced bread would be less effective in this role than a pee funnel, no matter how you folded it.
Here's to a less soggy future!
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I'm having people over to stare at their
phones later, if you want to come by.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:55PM (1 child)
> It's funny to see writing being deliberately devolved, we have a proper alphabet but we somehow we need to bring back rebuses and pictographs instead.
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
>>>>Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 12 2019, @11:41PM
I was wondering how long it would take you to start the Georgia Guidestone conspiracy stuff up. You're late, yeh big beige boat-anchor.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...