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
@femac
…no, not dirty in the sense of being unnatural or fundamentally, religiously unclean, but I dunno why you’re objecting so hard to “cis women (and trans men) need to have access to hygiene products that don’t give them infections and such” and “yeah, bleeding all over stuff is kinda unhygienic.”
I lurked for a few years before diving in. I made a Our Feminist Overlord Katie joke and a Scented Fucking Candles joke on my first post to show that I’d read the site before. Nobody actually commented – I like to think I fit in well enough that people assumed I’d been there all along.
Every site has its own etiquette. This site isn’t a safe area, so people are always going to be wary of unrecognised people in case they’re trolls. Once we’re sure someone isn’t a troll, there tends to be a lot more leniency and forgiveness. You can call it cliquishness if you like; I prefer to think of it as the due diligence of a warzone.
Bless you seven of mine. Again, not a troll just really pissed off you choose to represent me as someone who did not know what hygiene was. I am not dishonestly representing you. Scroll upthread, you accused me of not knowing what hygiene was. Own it. You wrote it.
I am totally struggling here how a feminist site could be apologising over posters who claim to be feminists and still think menstruation is dirty. You might not like what I said. I stand by it anyway. And seriously, there is so much other shit going on that hurts women that needs fixing. Why is everybody turning on each other. The MRAs must be pissing themselves laughing
You’re clearly using “dirty” to mean “unclean” in a religious sense despite many people clarifying that’s not what they mean. Very explicitly. You’re now pretending you don’t understand a distinction between a word and the concept represented by that word. You are transparent.
This coming from someone who jumped in after such a long posting hiatus that nobody knows you to call us out for how horrible we are?
This is probably not the best place for a white cis-het male to step in but I think a point has been missed. People got off on menstrual blood when in fact, as I understand it, (1) it is a serious nuisance or (in many cultures) worse but not really a serious health problem per se, and (2) the real issue is the problem of avoiding urinary and vaginal infections from fecal contamination, which requires much more careful hygiene for girls and women than what boys and men have to practice, and that hygiene issue is obviously compounded when there is a lack of clean water available. Urinary and vaginal infections are not usually life-threatening, but I have never heard a woman to say anything positive about them.
As to the issue of menstruation and ritual uncleanness, the understanding of the role of menstruation in reproduction is probably relatively recent, and to primitive humans it must have been somewhat magical and even frightening to have a person suddenly bleeding with no obvious wound and no apparent ill result. And particularly if, as some people think, menstruation was fairly rare in prehistoric times because fertile women were normally either pregnant or nursing. One of the problems with religion is that primitive superstitions get enshrined as rituals and persist long after the reason they once existed has passed by.
As to the issue of hospitability, I don’t think this site is significantly hostile with one minor exception. The prohibition on ableist language bans certain words that are so commonly used that most people have forgotten what they really mean and use them without thinking. Also, the policy is a bit inconsistent — for example, “r@tarded” is completely banned, but its synonyms “moron” and “idiot” are not even criticized. It can take someone new a while to get used to the ins and outs of the policy, and sometimes a newbie gets yelled at a bit too harshly, particularly when they — through no fault of their own — happen to be the third or fourth offender on a particular thread.
This is a blog, and people here post without thinking things over for several days and submitting them to independent parties for editing and copy-editing. This particular kerfluffle, it seems to me, originated in a poor choice of words that was taken as an intentional judgment. That is, one poster carelessly used the loaded word “dirty” when, if she had had the leisure to think things over, she would have used a more neutral term such as “hygiene issue.” I think we all are sloppy and careless with our words at times, and we need to understand that often people say things here that come out sounding somewhat different than what they intend.
As a semi-regular poster, I probably get more leeway than I deserve, but the commentariat can be a bit hard on newbies at times. There is a feelings that newbies have the burden of proving that they are not trolls, and I’m not particularly comfortable with that. I don’t think you want to scare away people who might prove to be good contributors to the community.
Sevenof mine
Ha ha yes you are the total guru on how I should interpret my bleeding. Happy days. Nice you dodged the whole you are not hygienic thing. Scroll above again. You, Seven of Mine, accused me of not knowing what hygiene was (and you have the temerity to call ME transparent) I am not pretending anything here. I am STILL really cranky about the whole menstrual blood is dirty thing. and ask you here, right now, to either agree this thread maybe went a bit far on the menstruation is dirty thing or maybe you think women menstruating should be ostracised (at this point I have no idea where you stand on this but can’t think it is anywhere good).
Look, it is fucking ridiculous that so many people here would be linking to articles instead of actually asking real women how menstruation actually feels and how it affects them. This is supposed to be a feminist site
WWTH
Why is everybody turning on each other. (my initial question)
This coming from someone who jumped in after such a long posting hiatus that nobody knows you to call us out for how horrible we are?
WWTH. There are plenty of people who know me here. The fact you aren’t one of them doesn’t mean what I am posting has no merit. If you want to take me to task for what I posted, I am more than happy to defend my position (assuming my position had merit when I posted it – not always true 🙂
I ask you to take me on the merit of what I post. Good or Bad.
Screw me over if you don’t like what I say, but al least read what I say before you judge
What the fuck is even happening here.
I don’t know, Panda. I do not know. Guinness World Record attempt at unseating the Nolan thread and the glossary for “Most trolls in one thread”?
@non-trolls
Apparently none of us are real women now. O_o
@femac
Did you forget that there are many people with vaginas here who know how vaginas work just as well as you do?
We have a couple of trans men here, too. “Real women” seems transphobic in that light, but I’ll be extraordinarily generous to Femac (because I have coffee now, yay!) and assume it wasn’t meant that way.
@femac,
Didn’t you say that you use soap, water, and tampons for hygiene? If so, how can you not see how not having access to running water and pads/tampons would be an issue?
Seriously. I’m rereading this and
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/ert.gif
Just, are we, I mean, just…what.
Well, a Google site search for “wehuntedthemammoth.com” and “femac” turns up a couple of threads from 2012 that femac commented on (e.g., here and here), and the icons look the same, so she’s been lurking for a while, about as long as I’ve been commenting.
And we shall now pause to let them come forward and vouch for you.
Now, my memory’s famously unreliable, but a few comments three years ago is a very thin base to expect the average person to recall you on.
Immediately antagonistic. No support. Dismissive of other comments. Normalizes experiences. Hypocritical.
Meh.
I do not have menstruating plumbing, so I don’t have any standing in that argument, but it seems to me like everyone should have the knowledge, capacity and tools to clean their bits? Maybe? If they want to?
I mean, maybe someone else doesn’t want to listen to Taylor Swift and Shake It Off after they’ve been to the urinal, but I’m self-conscious about it.
I’ll say this- I been posting and lurking here for years now, and I have no fucking clue who you are, femac.
On this thread, though, you’ve been acting like shit. So I do have that to go on.
Do you read history? In Egypt, they used shit as medicine. In medieval times, they thought good smelling herbs would keep away the plague. In the 19th century, doctors used wooden handle surgery tools and didn’t wash their hands.
No one knew anything about cleanliness. That’s why Christians thought Jewish and Muslim people were cursing people in Þe olden tymes because they had basic hygiene in their religion. People were dumb about cleanliness.
It’s dirty in the way everything coming out of the body is dirty, from urine to shit to snot. (Or even fluids that aren’t actually supposed to leave the body, like stomach acid, blood, brain fluids, etc.) There’s a reason it’s exiting the body instead of staying in, and that’s because it rots and festers within the body and can cause nasty infections. Leaving in a moon cup, for instance, is not at all fucking advisable. (Would not read that link if you have a sensitive stomach.)
It’s natural, healthy and shouldn’t be shunned and be called “gross” because it’s “dirty” but the fluid definitely not hygienic and should be properly cleaned up when it comes out.
Ditto on having no clue who femac is. Although not a regular poster, I spent a ridonkulous amount of time last year backtracking on old posts and commentary. I think someone like femac would be hard to forget.
What’s with the constant “ask a real woman (femac, the online and only) about menstruation” spiel? I’m pretty sure I have lady bits. I’m also pretty sure I honk to high heaven from said bits if I don’t wash regularly when it’s lady week. As many other women do. Due to menstrual blood not having magical properties and being a potential breeding ground for bacteria like any other form of bodily discharge. But as femac seems to be the only voice of womanhood present and the only one we should all be turning to, I guess my experiences of soreness, rashes and one particularly memorable infection don’t count.
Seemingly the voices of those other women represented in articles cited by other commenters don’t count either.
Just for clarity, I don’t think I nor anyone else is saying that menstrual blood is “dirty”. What it is, is a biological process just like any other that can lead to uncomfortable conditions for many women if not cleaned up regularly. If you don’t need to use pads or hygiene products, cool. I agree that many feminine products out there are nothing more than a money-making crock. But many women (myself included), whether because of hormone levels or food intake or a fondness for non-breathable jeans, do need to use some products fairly regularly due to differing hygiene requirements.
In light of the above (i.e menstrual blood isn’t magic, a lot of women are prone to negative consequences if they don’t keep to their own personal standards of hygiene, nobody said that it was ‘dirty’ but could lead to unsanitary conditions) don’t you think you might be the one who has to apologize for going a bit too far on the “menstruation is not dirty thing”?
@ Misha
‘lady week’ might be my new favourite euphemism.
I also like “fallen to the Communists” but that’s because of that brilliant bit in ‘The IT Crowd’ (“Well they do have some strong arguments”)
I just tell people I’m a communist for the week. I had to explain the joke to a friend of mine by explicitly telling him I was on my period, but he understands the code now.
I just say I’m on my period because I am not clever.
Thank you to everyone who stuck up for me. I’m so glad that you guys understood my intent! Sorry I’ve been gone for a few days. I’ve been busy with the family.
@t, no need to apologize, I wasn’t bothered. Sorry to hear about your grandmother, brother, and husband. Sorry that I triggered you. I understand your concerns with the word “dirty”. Yes, I’m aware of how anti-sex and scared of the female genitalia many misogynists are. But hear me out.
I understand “dirty” being a loaded word, however “dirty” isn’t synonymous with “disgusting”. “Dirty” just means that there’s stuff there, that it’s not 100% sterile, and yes, an *healthy* vagina & vulva are a rich hot spot of bacteria, yeast, and other flora. The genitals are by no mean unique here, if it makes you feel any better, your mouth is far “dirtier” than your vagina is. When you hear a dentist/doctor talking about the mouth being one of the “dirtiest” places on the human body as they do, xe is not insulting you, xe is speaking of the potential of something going wrong and an infection of some sort starting up.
@grumpyoldmangina
There’s equal concern with vaginal flora getting into sterile places as gut flora. It’s why women need to pee after sex/masturbation. I got reoccurant UTIs as a teen, and was told very strongly by my urologist that my UTIS would continue until I stopped being so lazy about peeing after jilling off late at night. 🙁
@femac
“and also referred to menstruation as part of that and compared it to smegma which she saw as cleaner”
Yeah, that’s *NOT* what I said *at all*. I said that *in addition* to girls producing literally an *equal amount* of smegma as boys, girls *also* menstruate. (Smegma only builds up into a cheesy substance when its left for a period of time.) We can’t circumcise boys because of smegma (the “dick cheese” excuse) and then get all pissed when the same excuse gets aimed at women. Healthy genitals produce lubrication. That’s what they do. It’s a feature, not a dysfunction.
Anyway, that’s the reason for the snark in my comment. I was snarking against the idea of boys genitals being “disgusting”; it wasn’t intended to mean that *girls* genitals were disgusting instead. But then again I could probably be beaten with a manual outlining how intent isn’t magic and still remain oblivious on the ways of keeping my foot out of my mouth. 😉
“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.”
a. You say that water (and maybe soap) are the only “feminine hygiene” products needed, ignoring that the greater meta-discussion was hygiene when soap and water weren’t available.
b. There’s several logistical mistakes in your post. I’ve had this discussion with MRAS several times, and they *always* fuck up the logistics. (I mean, besides the fact that judging by their insults they seem to think that women only require feminine hygiene products because they have seen which causes them to have “floppy vags”). Many men seem to underestimate the amount of fluid lost during menstruation and seem to think that women could get by without pads or tampons of some sort (homemade or otherwise) and just rinse off with water a few times a day, many men fuck up the logistics of how feminine products work (ie. Thinking that Tampax *have* to be used with the applicator, and not realizing that all you have to do is pull it out to have a normal tampon), and not factoring in the reality that menstrual blood is a *waste product* (like urine, and shit,) and *is* absolutely *unsanitary*. (I know guys like to pretend that women don’t poop, fart, burp, or pee, but we do.) Combined with you attitude that basically amounts to how stupid and spoiled western women are for thinking tampons and pads are important, I think your slip is showing, bro.
C. “Go back and look at history. Childbirth was the number 1 reason women didn’t survive. Jeez the menstruation thing was never an issue”
Yeah, and most those childbirth deaths were from infection. Yes, many of those infections were caused by doctors with poor hygiene, but caused by infections that were constant in the woman *due to poor feminine hygiene*.
Swing again?
Again, thanks for the support guys. You guys are awesome proof as to how non-cliquey this place is. I’m by no means even a regular here, you guys are awesome. *hugs*
@mrex
We’re “cliquey” as in we don’t tolerate ignorance about basic science, history or how the world actually works. That’s what people mean by “cliquey”: We don’t tolerate people who say the sky is plaidweave.
@mrex
Not a problem. =) I’m sure Femac will laugh at this, but I hate seeing people get dogpiled on for totally imagined non-reasons.