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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: 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?