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
Is anyone else picturing her getting a breathless call at 3 in the morning, slamming down on a bust of professor skull, jumping down a firemans ladder in the secret passage that just opened up then running over to a bank of computers where she slams her hand down on a “rampant misandry detected” button?
No of course not, she’s more over the top than that.
As long as we’re going off-topic, am I right in understanding that LEGO Dimensions is being sold with physical Lego pieces? Like, if someone wanted to make The Doctor meet Doc Brown, that person (I’m not thinking of anyone in particular) would have to buy little Doctor and Doc Brown mini-figs?
Not sure how I feel about that….
Mad Cow,
Everything you say MRAs consider men’s “rights” (with the exception of circumcision) are merely ways to make it easier for men to rape, abuse, harass and otherwise marginalize women. You don;t want men’s equality. You want men to rule as overlords who can own or disown women and children at a whim. What apathetic person you are.
I’m shocked you’d be so honest, even though you are clearly trying to make it sound as though men are being oppressed by not being able to rape, abuse, harass and marginalize women.
@Falconer
That’s like Skylanders/Disney Infinity/Amiibo? At the very least if the figs were actual Legos, you can display them AND play with them, right? Unless, like, they might get damaged and scratched and become useless…
I’m not a fan of those kinds of games. The figs are expensive. I’d rather go CGG. Five or so cards for the cost of one fig.
The Mad Cow:
Some (not all) of these issues sound OK on paper, but the way they handle them is not solving any of them.
Two things:
One, I agree about circumcision, but this issue needs to be addressed differently. It’s not a fault of women and/or feminists that men are cut. It’s a religious (and sometimes medical) discussion, so if they want to fight it, that’s where they need to open the debate. And I most often only see circumcision mentioned when MRAs want to go “why do you feminists complain about FGM, men get cut too!”, ignoring the obvious differences between the reasoning behind both and the aftermaths. Because women = evil.
Two, family courts have to decide what’s best for the children, not their parents. So people who loose custody should really take a good hard look at themselves. Sure there are injustices, they happen everywhere, but as a total, a lot of people in divorce courts tend to be blind about their own faults, only seeing those of their ex-partner. The martyrs themselves are the obvious cases of this.
I mean, yeah to minifigs, but this just seems like the crassest DLC thing ever.
I bet you can’t just buy the Doctor Who set, it’ll come with a pass for the DLC content, and if you don’t have the base game that’s useless. I guess the question I have to ask myself is, how much do I want a LEGO TARDIS?
” or well worth discussing, such as termination of parental rights and responsibilities.”
Only worth discussing if you think it’s fine to deprive children of the right to be supported by both of their parents.
@Falconer
I don’t know how accurate the wiki page is but it looks like you can actually get a set with The Twelfth Doctor, K-9, the TARDIS and a new level. There’s a link to Polygon or whatever that says this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Dimensions#cite_note-Upcoming_Packs-6
Also, there’s a Portal 2 set.
It’s probably $10 bucks or something. Or £6.05. Or €9.06 or whatever people use on this site IDK.
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100924033305/pokemon/images/e/e1/Pokedollar.png1212.90
(That’s probably not gonna look right.)
Damnit. It’s probably actually $15-20, too.
And while we have judges like the one linked in this thread- who sent three children to JAIL because they didn’t want to see their abusive father, who just happened to decide to leave town on a trip, so the kids sat there for two weeks because he was the only one the courts would let them out to.
As long as family court’s official position is still, “I don’t care how much this man beats your mother, you still need to be nice to him”, fuck the MRM. They’re full of fucking shit.
A push to revive and ratify the ERA would be cool.
Um, the man being in front isn’t the only problem. Why is the woman wearing a Darth Vader helmet?
Yep, unfair. Why can’t the guy have the cool helmet?
In this case the system worked to the benefit of a bad father. But it’s not like it doesn’t try to give the shaft to good fathers at the same time.
In that linked story, the system eventually worked. But only after Christopher Emanuel worked his ass off to get justice. Far more than any mother would have had to have done just to be the parent of her own child.
So…Judgy Bozo got her wank on because some Facebook critters no longer have stupid ’50s hair and social roles?
The Men’s HUMAN Rights Movement™, folks. Very rights. Much human. So wow.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/6a98b9e2cf64fce276767b43c132a316/tumblr_inline_nmr26rs19Y1t5wl3j_540.gif
Working through Mad Cow’s list :
–Circumcision would be illegal, except with the consent of a patient 18 years old or older.
Bad phrasing of a generally good idea. Circumcision is a valid medical treatment of some conditions, which are not limited to those over 18. The sole proscription needs to be against cosmetic circumcision.
–The U.S. Constitution would include the Equal Rights Amendment as originally written by Alice Paul in 1923.
Had to do some digging on this one. Apparently they want to exclude the Hayden rider, which was put in place to prevent the ERA from overturning labor protections for women. This is an odd one–most of the sorts of protections that were in existence at the time, meant to protect blue-collar women from excessive lifting and long hours, are either incorporated into general law or long abandoned. However, I’m not sure how the “original wording” ERA would apply to affirmative action and the like. I do think an ERA would be a better deal with the rider, but that the benefits of even the riderless ERA would outweigh the detriments.
–Men would have the right to accept or reject parental rights and obligations during the period of time in which a woman can legally obtain an abortion, men would not be legally responsible for children they did not biologically father, and paternity fraud would be punished as fraud.
This is three claims mashed up to one, probably to make it harder to argue against. Breaking it down to its components, Hell No, Sometimes and Hell No. (On the Sometimes: A man suspecting he’s not the father of a newborn should have the right to request a paternity test and be let out of obligations if he’s not the father; a man who has raised a kid for 7 years and then gets it in his head to abandon the kid, no–the harm to the child is much more vast at that point.)
–Affirmative action based on gender would end.
No, no, no.
–VAWA would be abolished, women’s shelters audited, “patriarchy theory-based models of domestic violence” rejected, primary-aggressor and mandatory-arrest laws ended, and DV programs funded for men as well as women.
No, whut, whut, no, no, yes. (Googling “Primary aggressor law” led only to MRA sites, and the Rational Wiki article on the MRA, but no original sources. There was a reference to Colorado law in the RW article, but I couldn’t turn it up. I do agree that in cases where the woman is the active abuser, well, she should be removed from the home and prosecuted, same as the guy, and I’d like to see stronger intervention in DV in general–you know, like most feminists.)
–Family courts would not be funded from Title IV-D, joint custody would be the default in divorce, DV would not be allowed to be alleged without a criminal conviction, alimony would be abolished, child support would be rare, prenups would be binding, and marriage would be based on contract law.
The Title IV-D funding is a bit byzantine, and requires a big-picture investigation. This MIGHT be a legit point–though I suspect it’s covered with a lot of hyperbole and conspiracy theories. That said, what I know about custody cases where the father actually tries for custody in the first place, I’m inclined to discount the rest of the list–most of it is a formula for abusers to hold women hostage through their kids.
–Sexual assault would be handled exclusively by criminal courts and not college tribunals, alleged rape victims would not be protected by shield laws, and penetration would not be required to define a criminal act as rape or sexual assault.
The ‘criminal court or nothing’ bullshit is all about making certain that rapists never suffer any consequences. Shield-law elimination is all about increasing the stigma. Third element is fine, and is a change that’s already been occurring.
–Men would not be denied the right to form campus groups.
Men can form campus groups just fine. This is obviously a smoke-screen for specific hate groups, like AVfM and whatever their associated group is–CAFE, or something, I think?–to get official recognition. Fuck that.
–Infanticide would always be considered murder, even if committed by the victim’s mother.
Either this is complaining about abortion rights, in which case, fuck them, or it’s a delusional crock of shit, in which case, fuck them.
As a graphic designer (I have a degree and everything!), the new icon’s much better. Though, and I think Kirby brought this up, if you zoom out, it’s next to impossible for you to distinguish the details.
If there was to be some kind of revision, maybe just making round heads would work better? No details to worry about when it’s small, no worry about what gender the little characters are (Though, if you think about it, who says that it can’t just be a tall woman in the back with short hair and a shorter man in the front with longer hair? HUH?) which would also be good for the nonbinary and genderqueer folks who use FB.
I still think JB’s looking for things to carp about, and perhaps it’s been a little dry lately.
@ Freemage
Infanticide is an offence in some common law jurisdictions. Basically where a mother kills her child within 12 months of its birth and it can be shown that, at the time of the killing, she was suffering from post natal depression and that was a contributing factor, then she can be charged with infanticide rather than murder.
It was introduced back in the day when we had the mandatory death penalty for murder in England. We still have it because there’s a mandatory life sentence for murder (although the actual tariff doesn’t have to be life).
In England it probably could be abolished as the same circumstances would be covered by ‘diminished responsibility’. That applies to any mental impairment and reduces murder to manslaughter which means there’s no mandatory sentence.
They seem to be saying that it should always be treated as murder though.
Oh, on the subject of belated paternity determination–I’d also support a change in the law to allow the man who has been raising a non-biological child unawares to sue the actual biological father, if known, for child-support (including back-payments for the time already raised).
Alan: Okay, that explains my complete bafflement, since as far as I know, there’s no distinction in the law on the grounds of the age of the victim in the U.S. I can see just putting it under the diminished capacity rules, but if they’re arguing that someone suffering from diminished capacity cannot have that factored into their charge or sentencing, we’re solidly back to fuck them.
@Paradoxical
http://i.imgur.com/63jxz3S.png
Can I get paid?
@ Freemage
Apparently you don’t have it in the US anyway; so not sure what they’re whinging about.
Interesting article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/when-infanticide-isnt-mur_b_279703.html
lol has this woman no other problems in her life?
My feeling is that MRAs like to focus on infanticide because it is the one kind of homicide where women are the majority of perpetrators. I don’t believe it has anything to do with abortion, at least at AVFM, which is pro-choice.