Male and female emoji have been merged into gender-neutral emoji that are relevant to you
I fail to see why this is “more inclusive” or “open”. I mean, I’m all for people who are gender-neutral, I have no problems with this, but considering that the vast majority of the population isn’t gender-neutral, it’s actually less inclusive, by definition. Either provide more possibilities or go ahead and just say that there are fewer options. But don’t bend over backward to appease a small amount of people by normalizing everyone. :(
The way I see it is that Unicode emoji tried to be gender-inclusive by adding a “female” modifier (emoji + zero-width joiner + ♀️).
This reinforces a false binary, and the way it’s implemented in mainstream emoji design reinforces gender stereotypes. Women have long hair, makeup, and pink clothes; men have short hair and blue clothes; that sort of thing.
Gender isn’t something that can be seen, and so I don’t think adding more and more gender options makes sense. In my opinion, it would be much better to offer stylistic choice, such as “long hair” or “makeup”, as options unrelated to gender, since that’s what they are.
I don’t agree that having fewer gender options makes it less inclusive. It isn’t saying that every emoji represents a non-binary or agender person or anything. It simply does not specify a gender, and so they aren’t excluding anyone on basis of gender.
Edit: it’s like how the basic facial expression emoji were never gendered to begin with, and so there is no need to add more gender options to them.
Additionally, I find it odd that they’ve chosen to reduce the set of available choices when it comes to gender, but they’ve greatly expanded the choices when it comes to race. I think they should decide whether they want to provide options for things like race, gender, sexuality or not provide options.
I poked around and found a relevant pair of questions in the FAQ on the race and gender questions. They don’t specifically compare the two decisions, but the rationale for each is there.
Non commercial makes it pretty much unusable for anything. Not even open source can touch it.
I fail to see why this is “more inclusive” or “open”. I mean, I’m all for people who are gender-neutral, I have no problems with this, but considering that the vast majority of the population isn’t gender-neutral, it’s actually less inclusive, by definition. Either provide more possibilities or go ahead and just say that there are fewer options. But don’t bend over backward to appease a small amount of people by normalizing everyone. :(
The way I see it is that Unicode emoji tried to be gender-inclusive by adding a “female” modifier (emoji + zero-width joiner + ♀️).
This reinforces a false binary, and the way it’s implemented in mainstream emoji design reinforces gender stereotypes. Women have long hair, makeup, and pink clothes; men have short hair and blue clothes; that sort of thing.
Gender isn’t something that can be seen, and so I don’t think adding more and more gender options makes sense. In my opinion, it would be much better to offer stylistic choice, such as “long hair” or “makeup”, as options unrelated to gender, since that’s what they are.
I don’t agree that having fewer gender options makes it less inclusive. It isn’t saying that every emoji represents a non-binary or agender person or anything. It simply does not specify a gender, and so they aren’t excluding anyone on basis of gender.
Edit: it’s like how the basic facial expression emoji were never gendered to begin with, and so there is no need to add more gender options to them.
Most of the time it can but not on something as tiny and reductive as an emoji without having to use things like clothes color.
Sure, you can guess, and odds are you’d be right a lot of the time, but it still isn’t defined by any kind of outward appearance.
Additionally, I find it odd that they’ve chosen to reduce the set of available choices when it comes to gender, but they’ve greatly expanded the choices when it comes to race. I think they should decide whether they want to provide options for things like race, gender, sexuality or not provide options.
I poked around and found a relevant pair of questions in the FAQ on the race and gender questions. They don’t specifically compare the two decisions, but the rationale for each is there.