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
Well, that escalated quickly.
@t, so far you’ve been the one making antagonising posts to the community, not the other way round. Maybe take a time out for a bit.
@t and femac, you do realise that you’re both complaining about the community here jumping on people over the smallest thing, while doing exactly that to mrex and alaisvex respectively?
I mean, come on now.
@misha5678
Sorry but since when was female menstruation being dirty a small(est) thing. Is this something you actually support? I mean, come on now. Are you actually supporting menstrual blood being dirty?
@ femac. There is a word: hygiene. Do you know what it means?
I mean people are talking about proper hygiene and you’re responding as if they’re trying to justify the religious notion of things being unclean as in morally impure. You don’t appear to be arguing in good faith here.
@femac,
I’m not trying to tell you how to perceive menstruation, nor I saying that menstruation itself was bad for you. What I was saying was that we know from today that not having access to running water can make it difficult for everyone, including women who are menstruating to clean themselves. Specifically, the rags that women use in place of pads or tampons and have trouble cleaning thoroughly unless they have the ability to boil water can cause reproductive tract infections, UTIs, secondary infertility, and anemia, as the second link that I provided stated. My point wasn’t that it made women dirty. My point was that if you did not have the ability to clean it up or if you did not have products that were properly sanitized to control it, it could cause problems. And yes, I am aware that childbirth was a leading cause of death for women. Are you aware that women also died of other things, including diseases that spread easily because of a general lack of sanitation, just as men died of such diseases?
Okay, let me see if I’ve figured it out: Femac is saying that working to donate pads and tampons to impoverished/disaster-ravaged countries is “Shitting on women,” because giving women easier access to basic hygiene is exactly the same as menstrual taboos, because ???
Am I close? I honestly can’t tell, I’m out of coffee.
@sevenofmine
Are you accusing me of being a feral dirty arse disease carrier? Like typhoid Mary? Because I had the temerity to challenge some comments on this thread that menstrual blood is not inherently dirty in itself? Maybe you would feel more comfortable with the redpillers because that’s where this kind of place this kind of ignorant comment usually comes from.
I am not suggesting you are a redpiller but really, you are accusing me of not knowing what hygiene is? As a woman? Who has menstruated form the age of 13 to nearly 50?
Shit I should be dead by now with crotch rot and not knowing how to hygiene myself. Good to know.
And no SFHC, total fail. Try again
For fucks sake, any bodily fluid can cause hygiene problems. Do you just sit there and not blow your nose when you have a cold letting snot flow everywhere because Kleenex and decongestant meds didn’t exist in prehistoric times? Any bloodily fluid can transmit disease if someone else comes into contact with it. We’re a lot safer healthier now that we have sewage treatment, ways to deal with mucus, pads and tampons, etc,
And nobody was saying menstrual blood was the most fatal thing in all the world.
Trying to spin helping low income women, women in developing countries, and disaster victims access pads and tampons as some sort of antifeminist and misogynistic act is just bizarre to me.
Actually, I’d also been lurking for years, but only started posting recently (not because “CLIQUES!!!” or anything, I’m just painfully shy and find it hard to break the ice). The difference is that I learned the rules and local etiquette while I was lurking, while you and T clearly did not.
Wait, why the fuck am I even responding like these two are here in good faith when they’re blatantly not. Gonna blame the lack of coffee again.
And I would assume that everyone here opposes douches (literal douches not douche as an insult!) because they are hygienically unnecessary and can in fact disrupt the bacterial balance in the vagina and cause infection and because they are marketed in a body shaming menstruating women are unclean kind of way.
That however, is different from using a tampon, pad, sponge, cup, whatever to keep the blood flow under control. Because yes, bodily fluids are unsanitary when not contained and because who wants period blood stains all over their clothes, sheets, and sofa? There’s a world of difference there.
I realise that I am risking *something* by saying this, but this is annoying me. I do not like this preoccupation with genital cleanliness. I believe it to have cultural and capitalist origins, and is not especially relevant to health and not being stinky.
Personal info to follow: I do not wash my vulva – ever! That is, when I sit in a bath I do not do anything but allow water to cleanse. I am surprised that anyone would mention soap – it can be irritating. ‘Feminine’ hygiene products I find disgusting shaming money making products – and using rag for menstruation is no less hygienic – I used cloth for years, as do other ‘environmentally aware’ and also poor women. I have also NEVER told my boys to wash their genitals – and I have told them to avoid soap. I do not know if they heed my advice ,but we are all genitally healthy and not stinky!
@ femac
No. I’m not. I’m accusing you of pretending that you can’t distinguish between people talking about basic hygiene and people talking about religious uncleanness. In other words, I’m accusing you of being a troll.
For what it’s worth, I always found WHTM extremely welcoming. Like SFHC, I lurked for a long time until I was sure I had learned the rules of the community because I do not want to cause harm to anyone by leaping without looking. The mere thought is awful to me. And this coming from a white cishet man.
Maybe I’m misreading things, but why does it seem so important for some people that a community is welcoming to people who don’t bother to learn and follow the rules of said community? How is it fair to expect that others care about your feelings when you don’t make an effort to care about theirs?
Comedy Gold. No SFHC from your comments, no you are totally a newcomer, also WWTH there is NEVER an excuse to pretend menstruating is the same as blowing your nose. Jesus really?? WTF?
Also SFHC, Why am I responding to these douches? Well first of all I am not a douche. I am a woman who has been on this site since 2011 and bothered to raise my head against the parapet this time because I was really pissed off when people just assume menstruation is something abstract and dirty, like it doesn’t matter. And the community made excuses for mrex (who I am totally not going after – I am far more cranky about the apologists in the interim) All of you. You all get crankypants when you are not happy with other people’s comments but how hard would it have actually been for just one of you to say ‘ooops we might have worded that better’ To be fair Alaisvex went there (sorry not pointing the finger at you)
but the rest of you accused me of multiple violations including sevonofmine who pretty much accused me of being unclean (do you know what hygiene means?). Yes I do and have been healthy for many years just so you know.
@ femac
I asked you if you’re familiar with the word, not the practice. Which is why I used the word “word” in the actual post. I then clarified further what I meant. Twice. One of them before you even raised an objection. Which you still raised despite my clarification. You are transparently trolling.
I’m not going to argue about hygiene and menstruation. This thread is a chance for me to link one of my favourite stories from last year.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26260978
The horrible details …
After his wife and his mother had left the house because of his obsession …
Best of all.
This is a man who knew so little about his wife’s body that he didn’t realise that periods came monthly. He learned, and then he learned some more. Now? He’s come up with a way for poor women to start a business making cheap pads and, as a bonus, their daughters can continue their schooling and widows like his own mother don’t have to send their 14 year old sons out to work instead of staying at school.
Good news is hard to find. But this is a super-duper industrial strength (literally) classic good news story.
I don’t need an excuse for stating the basic biological fact that bodily fluids are not sanitary. I don’t want to encounter anybody else’s menstrual blood, spit, snot, semen, poop, pee, pus or any other bloody fluid. There are times that’s unavoidable, like taking care of little kids, but able bodied and minded adults should damn well be cleaning their bodily fluids.
I really don’t understand the mentality that lurking for years is an acceptable reason for leaping in with an antagonistic comment out of nowhere. Obviously if you’re deliberately antagonistic and we have had no positive interactions with you, we’re going to suspect trolling or at least bad faith arguments.
If you live in your neighborhood for a few years and don’t interact with your neighbors, are you going to show up at a block party, antagonize everyone and then complain about how mean and cliquish they are when they don’t like that behavior?
If you don’t get along with people, the problem may just be with you, not everybody else.
@sevenofmine.
Nopes No I am not trolling. I am just really cranky you are dismissing me and my experiences as a woman. You DID post a comment that pretty much accused me of not knowing what hygiene was. At least own your words and if you if you think you went too far admit it. if you think you didn’t I am cool with that but just own your position. I am an actual woman who is pushing 50. And I am incredibly offended by the apologist shit relating to menstrual blood being dirty on this thread. Check it out with the dark lord and ask yourself why my original comments didn’t go to moderation the first time I posted this time (hint -cos I already posted here before)
I am honestly completely bemused why getting cranky over menstruation should have me relegated to some level of Dante’s hell but this is not actually about you guys and how you are currently running the comments section. Its about wankers pretending menstruation is somehow dirty.
At my end anyway
I didn’t lurk for a huge amount of time — though I did go on a binge read through old posts and comments — and *despite* the fact that I made a bit of a fool of myself at first, people didn’t jump on me. They were much more patient than I probably deserved, actually.
I have seen a bunch of similar stuff happen — quite a few people have made rough entrances before getting used to the culture of the site.
So, no, the site isn’t cliquish, it just has rules and doesn’t bend over backwards to tolerate trolls.
WWTH – There is a huge difference between blowing your nose and menstruating. I am truly struggling here. I do not understand how you could make that connection. Or try and justify it. It is not about pee and puss and all that stuff it is just something you cannot avoid ever. You can’t get the flu injection and ‘magic’ no menstruation ever… it is just something you are lumbered with until it doesn’t happen anymore (which is totally outside your control unless you are ridiculously rich in which case they sort that shit for you at a price)
@ femac
My position is not what you’re dishonestly representing it to be and I’ve clarified it as many times as I’m going to. Troll elsewhere.
Also, it just occurred to me that these two are simultaneously lording around how long they’ve supposedly been here, accusing us of being cliquey and hostile to new posters, and being hostile to me for being “Too new.”
Heh.