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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Pregnant 'person' emoji, for gender inclusivity.

226 replies

Indigofig · 28/01/2022 15:58

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10451689/Apple-adopts-latest-emoji-including-pregnant-MAN.html

I know it is DM, but this has really angered the feminist in me. AIBU to feel like this? Or is it justified?

OP posts:
babyjellyfish · 29/01/2022 12:52

I can't help but think it's not very progressive to suggest that masculine looking person who is pregnant is a man rather than a woman who doesn't conform to feminine stereotypes.

TheKeatingFive · 29/01/2022 12:54

it's not very progressive to suggest that masculine looking person who is pregnant is a man rather than a woman who doesn't conform to feminine stereotypes.

Exactly

Mummyoflittledragon · 29/01/2022 12:57

@erinaceus
You’ve just answered your own question the emoji ought to be “Pregnant transman”. A man cannot get pregnant. Language is important.

Transwomen are not women, they are transwomen. TWAW makes biological women a sub class of woman (cis) with transwomen the true women. The same applies to men, albeit TMAM doesn’t have the same momentum or pose a physical risk to men’s safety.

erinaceus · 29/01/2022 13:02

@Mummyoflittledragon I think that's fair enough 🤷🏽‍♀️

You'd have to ask the Unicode consortium to rename it. There is a blog post about the emoji which explains some of the (somewhat bizarre) thinking behind it:

blog.emojipedia.org/why-is-there-a-pregnant-man-emoji/

jellyfrizz · 29/01/2022 13:05

Yes. We need to remove the stereotypes from woman rather than redefining woman as the stereotypes.

babyjellyfish · 29/01/2022 13:11

@jellyfrizz

Yes. We need to remove the stereotypes from woman rather than redefining woman as the stereotypes.
This is the thing with inclusive language.

You have a group of people who have chosen to exclude themselves from the word "woman" because they believe it means something other than female person (something to do with stereotypical femininity, I guess?) and then in a medical context they want us to come up with alternative words for female person (such as "pregnant person" or "birthing person") so that they can be included. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me.

I also wonder how many people who suffer from such debilitating dysphoria that they are triggered by being referred to as a woman are deliberately getting pregnant and having babies. If being referred to as a woman upsets you, surely being confronted with the reality of your very female body as you go through pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum is going to be an awful experience?

whenthedoveslie · 29/01/2022 13:21

@SirChenjins

Not at all - there’s nothing petty about fighting to ensure that biological reality isn’t trumped by the kind of ‘men can experience womanhood’ nonsense we’ve seen on here.
This one thousand times!
Pedalpushers · 29/01/2022 13:46

There are plenty of lesbians who identify as women but dress in a more stereotypically male fashion. Lots of different sorts of people in the world and I don't see an issue with all of them getting an emoji.

Bosky · 30/01/2022 15:26

Whatsapp has removed the symbols for male and female. The only one left now is for transgender.

Obviously totes transphobic to allow symbolic representation of biological sex.

erinaceus · 30/01/2022 15:38

@Bosky

Whatsapp has removed the symbols for male and female. The only one left now is for transgender.

Obviously totes transphobic to allow symbolic representation of biological sex.

Huh -- that's bizarre.

I looked into it a bit and it is up to the manufacturers which emoji they implement, so I guess you could ask the tech companies to not implement the pregnant man one, or boycott the companies that did, but I do rather feel that might be pissing in the wind at this point.

babyjellyfish · 30/01/2022 15:42

@Bosky

Whatsapp has removed the symbols for male and female. The only one left now is for transgender.

Obviously totes transphobic to allow symbolic representation of biological sex.

No they haven't. All three symbols are there.
erinaceus · 30/01/2022 15:50

@babyjellyfish I think it might be Apple that don't have them, not WhatsApp. They're not showing up on my Apple device, and there are no listings for Apple for them in Emojipedia:

Male sign emojipedia.org/male-sign/
Female sign emojipedia.org/female-sign/
Transgender symbol emojipedia.org/transgender-symbol/

babyjellyfish · 30/01/2022 15:54

Oh, still here on my Samsung.

notanothertakeaway · 30/01/2022 15:59

Interesting that the transman is blue, a colour traditionally associated with men

I'd love to move away from pink = girls, blue = boys

They could have had a very neutral bland looking figure that wasn't too obviously male or female, just a neutral figure with a pregnancy bump. That might have kept everyone happy

erinaceus · 30/01/2022 16:11

@notanothertakeaway

Interesting that the transman is blue, a colour traditionally associated with men

I'd love to move away from pink = girls, blue = boys

They could have had a very neutral bland looking figure that wasn't too obviously male or female, just a neutral figure with a pregnancy bump. That might have kept everyone happy

They do (in addition):

emojipedia.org/pregnant-person/

As far as I can tell, the idea is:

For skin tones, initially Emoji representing body parts started off yellow which supposedly represents a sort of neutrality. Later, realistic skin tones were added. In the interest of racial diversity, a palette of skin tones is available so different races can be represented.

For gender, Emoji are gendered, so you have "male swimmer" and "female swimmer" (for example). The idea is to move towards gender-neutral emoji, with male and female options. Which is fine for most situations, such as representing careers or sports. But to me does seem a bit bananas when it comes to representing pregnancy which is a uniquely female experience.

YouSetTheTone · 30/01/2022 16:22

‘Pregnant person’ is bullshit. If you’re a pregnant woman who has gender dysphoria you’re still a pregnant woman and will be the mother of the baby on the birth certificate.

Removing the word ‘woman’ from common use regarding pregnancy, maternity care and maternity leave has NO benefits for women. None.

I will not be complicit in mangling language in order to ‘be kind’. I want to be genuinely and truly kind to women by NOT participating in it.

‘I’d rather be rude than a fucking liar’.

erinaceus · 30/01/2022 17:34

The idea of pregnancy as a gender-neutral event seems to be buried quite deeply in the mindset of the people defining the Emoji.

The document with the proposal for these emoji reads "Pregnancy has been indiscriminate of gender throughout history" which strikes me as out-and-out untrue -- even if you consider gender to be largely a social construct. (Document is linked at the bottom here emojipedia.org/pregnant-person/ )

Strikingly (to me) one of the handful of remaining gendered emoji is "woman in headscarf" (i.e.hijab) which there seem to be no plans to render gender neutral.

babyjellyfish · 31/01/2022 07:41

@notanothertakeaway

Interesting that the transman is blue, a colour traditionally associated with men

I'd love to move away from pink = girls, blue = boys

They could have had a very neutral bland looking figure that wasn't too obviously male or female, just a neutral figure with a pregnancy bump. That might have kept everyone happy

The transgender flag looks like this: 🏳️‍⚧️

Blue for a boy, pink for a girl, white for non binary.

VelvetChairGirl · 31/01/2022 07:47

Its clearly a real ale drinker and I hope it gets appropriated as such

RavenclawDiadem · 31/01/2022 08:01

People don't get pregnant. Women do.

YouSetTheTone · 31/01/2022 10:29

internal-journal.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full?fbclid=IwAR1GmMyg9yC58i3SargXSSpsw1NgaVoD6raB8cz40YuEgx9VxFTr5A4m4OQ

This article very clearly and compassionately lays out the importance of retaining sexed language when talking about pregnancy, birth, lactation, breastfeeding and newborn care.

babyjellyfish · 31/01/2022 12:15

@YouSetTheTone

internal-journal.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full?fbclid=IwAR1GmMyg9yC58i3SargXSSpsw1NgaVoD6raB8cz40YuEgx9VxFTr5A4m4OQ

This article very clearly and compassionately lays out the importance of retaining sexed language when talking about pregnancy, birth, lactation, breastfeeding and newborn care.

Wow, that article is very dense. Every sentence reads like it's making a new point. It's as if the author has set out to say as much as possible as quickly as possible. Some really interesting points though which I hadn' considered.
IsabelHerna · 02/02/2022 10:55

the most womanly...

I am going through IVF, I'm 40 and even though I will do all that I can, there is a possibility that I will never see a positive pregnancy test.

Am I not woman enough? No! I don't understand why everytime in these threads there is so much friction. why dont we let each other be and just be supportive?

NotBadConsidering · 02/02/2022 11:37

Freddy McConnell made a statutory declaration to a GRC panel to “live as a man” then was pregnant within weeks. No one is saying women who don’t or can’t get pregnant aren’t women, people are saying that declaring your intention to “live as a man” is meaningless if it means doing the most woman thing possible.

And that’s not to say to be defined as “woman” you have to get pregnant, it is to point out the obvious: that “woman” is defined as an adult human female, a female being one of the two sexes, the sex evolved to produce large non-motile gametes and give birth. If you were trying to explain to visiting aliens what is the single most conclusive difference between the two human sexes that can’t be open to interpretation, it would be this. It couldn’t be hair, or face, or even breasts, because there is too much overlap. But the two completely different roles in human reproduction is unequivocal in their description of the differences between males and females. If you produce small, motile gametes - sperm - there can never be a single doubt, not a single overlap. That alien species trying to figure us out would know that person is male, no ifs, no buts. And if you produce non-motile gametes and get pregnant, unequivocally female.

So getting pregnant is the single most discerning biological act that signals a person is female, ie the most woman thing someone can do. If that process isn’t fully functional Flowers, it still signifies “of the female sex”, in the same way that the observing alien species would not look at a person with one leg and come to the conclusion that humans might not be a bipedal species.

A man cannot get pregnant.

TheKeatingFive · 02/02/2022 11:42

why dont we let each other be and just be supportive?

Of course, but not to the point where I'm expected to deny (or gloss over) biological reality under the guise of this 'support'.

The truth matters.

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