So Facebook has been making some tweaks to some of its graphics. The company recently changed its already unexciting logo to one that is … even less exciting, but apparently easier to read on mobile devices.
But it’s what Facebook has done to its “friends” icon that has one lady MRA up in arms.
In a post yesterday, A Voice for Men’s still-banned-on-Twitter “Social Media Director,” known as JudgyBitch, declared Facebook’s “Feminist designers” to be “as shitty at designing as they are at equality” and offered them a virtual middle-finger in the style of Facebook’s iconic thumbs up icon.
So what has JudgyBitch in a snit this time? Well, a few months ago, Facebook design manager Caitlin Winner was struck by the fact that the site’s “friends” icon depicted the silhouette of a woman standing behind a larger man. This didn’t sit right with her. In a Medium post explaining the new graphics, she wrote
As a woman, educated at a women’s college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon; the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in.
My first idea was to draw a double silhouette, two people of equal sizes without a hard line indicating who was in front. Dozens of iterations later, I abandoned this approach after failing to make an icon that didn’t look like a two headed mythical beast. I placed the lady, slightly smaller, in front of the man.
She also removed the silly spike in the man’s hair and gave the woman a cuter ‘do as well. (Scroll back up to see the old and new icons side by side.)
Facebook quietly rolled out the new icons, as well as several other icons Winner had tweaked (including an androgynous figure that can be read as male or female or neither). But not everywhere just yet: while the new icons seem to have made it into the mobile app, the old icons remain on the site’s web version. No one seemed to have even noticed the change until Winner posted her explanation earlier this week. The reaction has been mostly positive.
But to JudgyBitch, the fact that the woman is now in front of the man is yet more proof that feminism isn’t about equality at all, but female supremacy.
I honestly think a good number of women who call themselves feminists have swallowed the lie that feminism is simply about equality between men and women …
Hire a woman’s who went to a woman’s college if you want to see real feminism is action. …
Facebook is not making a business decision – our demographic skews heavily female, so we have changed our friends icon to reflect that – they are making an ideological one: men’s proper place is in women’s shadow.
Well, if you ignore the fact that the figures are now the same size, and simply look like two people standing close together.
JB also posted an assortment of generic icons of men and women to show that Facebook could have depicted a man and a woman together without one being in front of the other, or without the two looking like a two-headed monster.
Here’s one of her examples of icon equality in action:
You may have noticed that the man is in front of the woman. JB evidently didn’t.
Hey, the Men’s Rights movement needs a steady supply of phony outrages to keep itself going, and JB has provided it with yet another one.
H/T — @TakedownMRAs
Wow. It really doesn’t take much to upset them, does it? Talk about your First World Problems!
Slow day in the maniverse I guess. O.o
Honestly, I take this kind of complaint seriously.
Pointedly redesigning things to emphasize one gender bothers me as a feminist. BUUUUUUUUUUUT, the complaint is dumb as all hell. The change was clearly well placed to de-emphasize gender difference and the people complaining are incapable of recognizing increased equality as anything other than stealing from the empowered.
In the interest of equality, what’s up with that dude’s hair!? No wonder they needed a re-design. He looks like he’s been in some sort of terrible industrial workplace accident, where he was busy being a manly-man-REAL-man(TM), one who was going his own way, until some horrible shadow-woman snuck up behind him and drove a spike into his skull! That’s the real purpose of feminism amirite!? So womenz can sneak up on teh menz and drive spikes into their skullz and call it workplace accidents!
(am I doing this right? I’m still drinking my morning caffeinated beverage of choice).
I would love to know what would satisfy a MRA? What would a world in which MRA were not necessary look like to them? I’d be interested to know if they know the answer considering they’re arguing over a stupid Facebook icon at this point.
I don’t really see a problem with the original icon, but it’s not like there was feminist outrage about it either. JB must be feeling attention-starved since she lost her Twitter platform.
I’m certain someone will create a browser add-on to “fix” this.
At least she didn’t call the icons whores. Progress!
We still get top billing on the Pioneer and Voyager plaques though.
That’ll probably come back and bite us in the ass. If there’s one thing I learned from Sci-Fi TV shows it’s that there’s alway at least one planet that’s run by Amazons.
@Chris, so often I have wondered this myself. I even asked the guy heading that UK political party when Buzzfeed did a thing on him and he was replying in the comments what a woman’s place in his ideal world would be. Oddly enough, he didn’t answer, and I’ve never seen any MRA actually answer directly. Wonder why… *sardonic expression*
Gor?
This is why I no longer bother to read Judgybitch, she’s getting so desperate and boring. Though the fact that she and her ilk like to accuse feminists of seeking out offense does make this latest effort of hers kind of hilarious.
Having the male icon standing behind, but being taller, reminds me of the poster for Towering Inferno where they tried to show equal billing for Paul Newman and Steve McQueen by showing one name first (on the left) then the other slightly higher up on the right. Doing their best to please everyone, except Ms Judgypants.
Gor.
Yeah… so… try zooming out your browser on JB’s blog post and step back a bit until the icons shrink down to around this size:
http://sandbox.kendsnyder.com/IM/square-Linux.png
There’s way too much detail in most of them that makes the icons look ugly, and the ones that are simple enough aren’t in keeping with facebook’s style or don’t fit in the square (like the image JB got from Winner’s blog post of the three new profiles side-by-side).
I’m not even a graphic designer and I can see the issues here.
The rest is just something I’ve noticed from the MRM for quite some time now. There is a Line Of Equality(tm) drawn in the sand between men and women, and for the longest time now that line has been shifted way over to give men the larger share. When anyone tries to adjust the line in any way to make things more fair, misogynists immediately launch into hyper-scrutiny mode.
“You can’t move the line, what if you move it too far? Two wrongs don’t make a right, you know. I’m going to set up this super-focused hi-tech microscope and aim it at what I think is the middle (obviously you can’t look). If you go even one micrometer past even when drawing the new line, even if your hand slips a little, you prove yourself to be just as sexist, and we put the line right back where it used to be.”
Oh no, the woman is in front of the man now. Never-mind that they’re closer to the same size now, or that the woman is slightly smaller to make up for being in front now, or that having the man in front wouldn’t exactly be much better.
Nope, one tough judgment call on one icon on one application means feminism is now a hate movement.
NINJA’D.
Well, what’s the point of anything if JudgyPants can’t be judgy about it?
GLaDOS cannot allow this disrespect!
@SFHC:
I don’t know, I thought the exchange you and Nequam were having was pretty sweet. I imagined you looking at each other, one asking, “Gor?”, the other nodding and confirming, “Gor.”
Or maybe I’m just easily amused.
And she didn’t even comment on how in the new version the woman, an obvious feminist because duh, is now standing on the left, while the man, the good conservative, is on the right. Hidden political messages, people! 😀
But in all seriousness: I didn’t notice the man-woman depiction in the previous version and I didn’t notice it got changed. Too small of an icon. I think it’s good they’re both now equal size, I wish they could stood side by side too, to avoid people getting all worked out over such a small matter.
Making the old female icon the same size as the male one needed to happen. That was just silly. Not so sure she needing to put ahead.
@bvh
I think the main point is that the icon thing doesn’t even matter. JBitch and Co are just looking for straws to clutch in trying to prove feminism is a hate movement.
#WhiteMenWhine
That icon of the hand flipping the finger is really bothering me. Try flipping someone off. It’s okay, I’ll wait… Did anyone stick out their thumb in the Facebook “like” fashion? Besides that, it’s so sloppily edited. I know, I know, it has nothing to do with being an MRA, but as a graphic designer, it just really bugs me.
@NothingClever,
good point. Sticking out your thumb while flipping the finger feels really awkward.
From most people, I’d have a reaction along the lines of, “Why is this something you even care about.” From the MRM, however, I’m not overly surprised that they’d have nothing better to think about.
I don’t know why any red blooded Manly-Man Menz would be up in arms about the feeeeemalez being in front. What better way to ogle her butt?