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
http://33.media.tumblr.com/25e69d2cc9b24ec0f393510b703f0857/tumblr_inline_n79dp82NOv1rl0z17.gif
Vulva’s have WAY more folds and space for dirt and bacteria to dwell, potentially causing illness, than penises. It doesn’t make one dirtier than the other. That’s entirely individual, based on hygiene practices. It makes one set of bits potentially dirtier than another though, which is why it’s so stupid that hygiene is used as an excuse to slice off little children’s foreskins. If it were about hygiene we’d be targeting those most vulnerable to hygiene-related urogenital disease, who are people with vulvas, not penises!
Hell yeah @Mari re: detachable shower heads, I swear those things are good for everything. It’s not just about hygiene. It’s about life enhancement.
Couldn’t it be interpreted as a contraction of “thumb is up”? ‘Cause there’s only one fuckin’ thumb there?
What, too simple?
Also:
You’re complaining about a possibly misused apostrophe and you chose to drop a sentence fragment? Forgive me if I wish I could fart directly up your nose right now.
At least give me credit for my fuckin’ perfect use of apostrophes.
@t
Marinerachel is right. It’s not about the geography of a boy’s privates being “better” than a girl’s. But bacteria and fungi like warm, enclosed places, which is why both girls and boys in diapers can get yeast infections. Saying that girls need to be especially careful to avoid infection is no more judgmental than advising a new parent to change a soiled diaper promptly.
Oh, and fuck you for wilfully misunderstanding her statement.
Fuckin’ LOL at The Mad Cow thinking people having grown weary of their sealioning bullshit means they just won the argument. Dude, no. The fact that you have too much time on your hands to troll the commentary section of a pro-feminist blog doesn’t mean you have won. We quickly run out of patience trying to explain the most basic things to willfully ignorant douchebags. “Female privilege.” Really, dude? Really?
Thanks for kicking that little shit out, David. The whining about people piling on them (ignoring that they were the one coming here, derailing like a disingenous MRA mouthpiece dumbfuck, trying to lend legitimacy to a hate group, and deliberately trying to get everyone riled up) and the comment about people misgendering them because they act like a typical MRA piece of turd troll was just the cherry on top of the shit sundae of all replies aimed at TMC being either ignored or twisted around for a gotcha. Fuckin’ tedious, that was. Good riddance.
And kudos to everyone who took the time to pick apart The Mad Cow’s shitty teal deers. And to everyone posting hilarious gifs and pics.
@Mari, Thanks! But they were willfully misunderstanding mrex, whose statement they quoted.
I have a feeling mrex is going to be just fine despite the smackdown t attempted to give them.
I haven’t really found this site to be welcoming either, but that’s only my opinion.
Goddammit, everyone opposing circumcision! What kind of man-hating feminazis are you? If we stop cutting off infant foreskins, what will we use in our dark blood sacrifices that maintain the matriarchy and power the hive mind?
The statement that girls also need to exercise good personal hygiene when taking care of genital regions is offensive bullshit to you? That’s what mrex meant. Xe wasn’t using “dirtier” in a metaphorical or sexual sense.
@alaisvex “The statement that girls also need to exercise good personal hygiene when taking care of genital regions is offensive bullshit to you? That’s what mrex meant. Xe wasn’t using “dirtier” in a metaphorical or sexual sense.”
While I agree that mrex probably didn’t mean it that way, I initially read it that way as well and found it offensive. In the context of mrex’s other posts I can see it probably isn’t what mrex intended but this still seems like the ‘doubling down’ that gets pulled up so often in other contexts (especially in relation to mental illness slurs – as it should). mrex could have worded it slightly differently with the same result. I understand you are responding to a troll and patience is limited but the ‘girl parts are dirtier than boy parts’ theme is such a constant in MRA land that I can see how people could get offended.
I would have let it go but when it was defended more than once I found it a bit off. mrex DID say ‘girl’s privates were arguably far dirtier than boys’ and also referred to menstruation as part of that and compared it to smegma which she saw as cleaner. The idea that menstrual bleeding is dirty features prominently in a number of religions as well as MRA land and I do not believe I have ever seen any scientific evidence that menstrual blood is dirtier than smegma (Happy to be corrected and not sealioning – just not aware of any evidence to support this) I personally don’t know if one is cleaner than the other (or care) but when it appears to be assumed (and you have a history of multiple religions talking about women being unclean and to be excluded from society during their menstruation) this is a perception that I personally feel should be challenged.
@Femac
My reaction to that statement was an extreme reaction and obviously too harsh. Every fucking day im told how inferior i am and then im so so disgusting because i have a vagina.
I notice how the regulars nitpick the most tiny things and even see some regulars say “fuck you” to others over small shit. Ive been around since NWOslave MrAl and Steele. And i never wanted to comment because this place is so fucking hostile, Hellkell really sealed tge deal and so did the thread of doom. Just because two new people say its not hostile, doesnt mean it is. I also find some of these new regulars to be so gleeful when new people leave quickly.
And at the same time, the lack of feminine hygiene products also causes health issues for those girls and women. However, they’re not being secluded for reasons of physical hygiene. Their being secluded for ritual uncleanliness. It’s entirely possible to push back against that stigma while also addressing the lack of proper hygiene products, which many feminists are doing by getting these women access to pads, which are sanitary and don’t put users at risk in the way that the rags that they use and have to constantly change and rewash do. Basically, there’s a difference between understanding that you need a pad or something else that’s sanitary to regulate the flow and knowing how to clean the one’s own vulva and believing that you’ll cause crop failure if you go near the fields. There’s also a difference between the MRA beliefs about menstruation and understanding that one can actually manage it pretty well and that one can just wash up with no harm done if there’s a mess. Maybe mrex phrased it badly, but it’s obvious that in context, she was referring to physical hygiene and saying that girls could also manage their hygiene by proper bathing.
@alaisvex ‘And at the same time, the lack of feminine hygiene products also causes health issues for those girls and women. However, they’re not being secluded for reasons of physical hygiene’
‘Those girls and women’ “lack of feminine hygiene products’????? I am one of ‘those’ just so you know.
Where are you coming from? I am pushing 50 and have welcomed all those technological advances (ok only tampons as opposed to tampax which need an applicator to shove it up you) but there was NEVER a lack of feminine hygiene products. Soap and water (or even water alone if you are stuck in the middle of nowhere) works just fine. ‘Feminine hygiene products’ apart from soap and water and tampons are just marketing wankers attempts to get the dollars from the wimmenz. Again this is just an assumption that the wimmenz menstrual blood is so dirty we need extra special products so the planet doesn’t die off. And da wimmenz can keep reproducing.
Go back and look at history. Childbirth was the number 1 reason women didn’t survive. Jeez the menstruation thing was never an issue
Um…that’s not true. Look at places like Nepal, where even before the earthquake, lack of access to pads, tampons, or any other sanitary means of controlling blood flow was causing problems.
http://www.ibtimes.com/nepal-earthquake-push-immediate-relief-leaves-menstrual-hygiene-behind-1905601
@mrex
I am sorry I came in too hot instead of just saying “hey, that statement is offensive to me.”
Was I at a bar? Yes. Ugh.
I am simultaneously watching my grandmother and brother die? Yes
Is my support system, ie husband, also dead? Yes.
Was I just told this week that “we will never vote a woman on the board.”? You’re fucking right I was told that. That’s right. I’m a fucking disgusting woman who will bleed all over the boardroom out of my dirty privates. But senile, literally senile, old men can be there and when they die I will be passed over.
It is interesting how I have seen phrases taken out of context, I believe willfully (I can say it was willful as you have done to me), that are less offensive and yall will dogpile a newbie.
I retract my “fuck you” statement to Mrex.
I do not retract my other statements regarding the hostility and “cool kids” mentality that is here.
I find it interesting how a couple of other commenters have agreed with me regarding the unfriendliness and yall have ignored those comments.
http://www.wateraid.org/us/the-water-story/the-crisis/menstrual-hygiene
@alaisvex
I call shenanigans right here. Are you seriously suggesting that women from prehistoric times (and women have menstruated forever – it is not exactly a new thing that cropped up in the last few years) did not know how to clean their own bodies prior to ‘feminine hygiene products’? You seem to be shitting on women here and I have no idea why.
You do get with the Nepal thing that women living there probably wanted their loved ones to survive first and foremost and worried about the lack of products a wee bit later. It was life and death at that time and it seems you are suggesting that menstrual blood is so dirty it could kill you more than a catastrophic earthquake and buildings collapsing and all that stuff. Again, I have no idea where you are getting your intel from but as a mother myself I would gladly forgo tampons until the day I died if people dug my daughter out from the ruins of Nepal and she survived.
You have gone so far beyond doubling down.
@t
You can’t introduce yourself with…
… And expect us to fall over ourselves to be nicey-nice to you. You just can’t. Not here, not on any other website, not in real life. That’s not how human interaction works.
But especially not here, where probably 9 out of every 10 new posters are trolls. I think we have more trolls shit on us every week than we have regulars.
… Shit, I think this ridiculous thread alone proves that last bit. I can’t even tell what’s going on anymore.
Also ‘t’ sorry, I made an incorrect assumption that when you posted you were not madcow in disguise. I have t shirts with the manboobz logo and fondly remember NWOslave etc. My bad. I was cranky on the whole women bleeding = dirty thing too.
@femac,
You can’t have actually read the links if you think that that’s what I was claiming. Also, yeah, I think that everyone in prehistoric times had more trouble keeping their bodies clean without the modern conviniences that we have today. They certainly found ways to make due, but that doesn’t mean that their reduced ability to keep themselves clean didn’t cause them health problems.
@ sfhc. ‘t’ is not introducing themselves. I remember them from long ago. No one is expecting you to fall all over yourself however this site does have some history. Some of which seems to have preceded when you arrived
Scented.
No where do say i expect anything from you.i literally did not ask for forgiveness but it was a sincere apilogy to mrex. I have been lurking for years. Many. And you and a few others are the reasons for my clique statements. And you and many others are the reason i will go back to lurking.
Alaisvex
‘You can’t have actually read the links if you think that that’s what I was claiming. Also, yeah, I think that everyone in prehistoric times had more trouble keeping their bodies clean without the modern conviniences that we have today. They certainly found ways to make due, but that doesn’t mean that their reduced ability to keep themselves clean didn’t cause them health problems.’
Way to miss the point. The point was there WAS no problem in prehistoric times keeping your body clean. It was childbirth that killed you. Why are you still trying to assert that menstrual blood is so dirty? It just isn’t. It is a normal function from a fertile woman. Shit, I just got offered an out from menstruation and I was SO tempted to take given my age however both the gyny AND the endocrinologist AND the neurologist (after I got a growth that weighed in at 2kg from my uterus extracted – benign luckily) All of them, every one pointed to the fact I have a horrible degenerative spinal disease and should have been in a wheelchair nearly ten years ago. The reason they give why I am still stalking this planet is because my hormones are replicating a young persons and that’s why I am still able to walk. IE. The reason I am walking and not in a wheelchair right now is because I bleed. Horribly actually and mostly 2 weeks a month. They offered me the ‘don’t bleed’ option but it came with the with the rider that those hormones that kept me bleeding late were the same ones that had arrested the degenerative condition I suffer from.
Bad news, on the current hormone levels, I will be capable of conceiving until I am about 65. With a daughter close to 30, not an option I wish to take. Having said that I really like walking so will take my chances.
Seriously, where do you get off telling me about menstruation and how I should perceive it.
“I don’t expect anything of you but I want you to know that you’ve failed to meet my expectations for a comment section I want to participate in!” Words! How do they work!?