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
All I’m saying is, circumcised men get shorter prison sentences if they’re on their first child.
Wait, what were we talking about again?
Khane’s mom,
Yes. Starr explicitly says that she wasn’t able to control for the details of incidents that end up charged as the same crime. As you say, it’s possible that violent men may have done more damage or shown more malice than women charged with the same crime. She also mentioned property crimes. “Destruction of Property” is an incredibly vague charge that could cover wildly different $ figures and varying amounts of danger or intimidation.
She does point out that there are a lot of possible charges in our legal system and that many things laypeople think of as the “same crime” are not the same in the law. Take assault and battery. You’d intuitively assume that the average man charged with assault probably inflicted more harm than the average woman charged with assault, but you should remember that depending on the state, “simple assault,” “aggravated assault,” “assault and battery,” “assault and battery with a deadly weapon,” and “attempted homicide” might all be different charges. (Starr studied federal courts; I don’t know what charges their code allows) She compared aggravated to assault to aggravated assault, simple assault to simple assault, and so on.
@bvh I live in a country without bidets and also with a really low circumcision rate. The hygiene thing is mystifying frankly. My son isn’t circumcised and it’s not an issue. My stbx isn’t and it really was not an issue. No one I’ve been involved here in the UK has been cut and as far as I can tell hygiene has not been an issue.
I’m baffled and kind of dismayed by this thread. I know I’m missing context because I haven’t interacted with mad cow before. I’m going to go ahead and assume that you all have good reason to hold him in contempt and distrust his motives. However:
Spamming pages of maleficent pics and enormous tl;dr macros is basically shitposting. It derails conversation about facebook, graphic design, or circumcision way more than madcow alone could; he really doesn’t post that much text.
It also makes it difficult for regulars who want to engage with him. I won’t count myself because I know I’m peripheral and not fully trusted. Isidore and Khane’s mom asked questions, Binjabreel dug up and shared a second study, and Alan offered interpretation. Bina, Weirwood, and Pandapool, I feel that you’re being disrespectful to your fellow-posters.
Calling tl;dr on him isn’t even fair. His last post was long because he answered relatively complex questions from multiple people and compared the methods used in two studies, and actually made an effort to get it right and show his work.
@bvh
Let’s not make this about the mentally ill…
Bidets are fun but they’re totally unnecessary. Wash your bits in the shower!
And speaking of unfairness, let me say this. Several times in my life, I’ve been the lone interloper, outsider, turncoat, or dissenter being criticized by a group of commenters. Some of them here, some elsewhere. One thing I’ve noticed is that when I have an adversarial interaction with a group, individual posters will respond with incompatible argument or incompatible demands, but criticize only me and not each other. It’s a no-win scenario, and it happened to madcow in this thread. People told madcow
–The gender gap either doesn’t exist or hasn’t been proved (and so you should fuck off)
–The gender gap is real, but you’re misrepresenting the causes; it’s caused by patriarchy, not feminism (and so you should fuck off)
–We already know about the gender gap; it’s true but not relevant (so you’re a sea lion and should fuck off)
2 is weird because in this thread, mad cow hasn’t tried to interpret the gap, just said it exists. Maybe you know from prior experience he’s going to blame feminism, but so far he hasn’t. People keep saying “it’s the patriarchy” as though it were a rebuttal, but it’s not, it’s just a comment.
Then group 3 says if he’s not going to make an interpretation, he’s wasting our time. We know the gap exists, so if he won’t cop to his underlying (presumably MRA) agenda, he’s just yanking our chains dishonestly. Which makes sense, up to a point.
The problem is that it can’t be both 1 and 3. Until this thread happened, I honestly thought every regular on this board agreed that there was a real and substantial sentencing gap, and that it was caused by a combination of patriarchy (in the form of benign sexism) and racism (the fear of black men, mostly) If you had said to me a couple days ago, “it would be a waste of time to engage with an MRA who started talking about gender and sentencing, because we already understand that issue), I would have agreed with that.
It turns out it’s not a waste of time, because in fact we don’t all agree. Assume that he never owns up to whatever probably-terrible agenda he has; there’s still meat for a fruitful discussion there. I suppose that if he’s previously shown himself too dishonest or incompetent to be worth talking to, then he shouldn’t be part of that discussion, but we can (and did) discuss it amongst ourselves if we’re not deluged with macros. And honestly, based on this thread, I don’t see anything disqualifying in his posts. He brought an actual study and seems to have read some of Binjabreel’s study. She says the Starr study is “ridiculous,” but I’m not sure why. It has both limits and weaknesses, and it doesn’t prove everything he wants it to, but that doesn’t make it a bad study, just a misused one. He’s made relevant responses to criticism of both the study and his reading. He may be a secret MRA troll, but he’s playing fair in this thread so far.
Yes, there is hostile cliquishness here. Friendly fire occurs. Sometimes the fire isn’t friendly – the target may be a douche or just completely wrong – but utterly disproportionate and makes the commentariat look bad.
Maybe the regulars want to do something about it. I don’t know.
Interestingly, this site seems to have the reputation of having one of the nicer and less hostile commentariats of any website.
From RationalWiki’s article on us:
…
This isn’t the first thread Mad Cow has ruined. We’re image-spamming him because we got bored after last time. Here, read this thread, and don’t immediately assume that we’re all just meanie-meanie clique-pants.
(I’ll never understand the “Clique” accusations. People treated me like a regular after my first post, and this thread proves that I don’t always agree with everybody! Perhaps it’s because I’m just not a smug asshole who thinks rules were for other people and it’s my way or the highway, I dunno. Point is, if I can fit in here, anybody can.)
*Rules are for. Mmm, delicious grammar, om nom nom.
@ marinerachel
What about those of us who *can’t* do handstands?
Re the sentencing disparity thing:
I think it’s been established that there is a gender disparity in sentencing; I don’t think that was in dispute. The issue is as to what the cause(s) are. I’ve suggested there are three:
1. Dependant children being a factor that affects whether someone gets a custodial sentence.
2. Stereotyping resulting in women being seen as more sympathetic.
3. Women being treated worse for crimes involving children; again because of stereotyping.
As to point 1, that hasn’t really been refuted. I’m using dependant in the sense that of the children living with a sole carer. Merely paying child support does not equate to having dependant children in the sense we mean here. There’s a difference between physically removing a parent and merely removing a source of income. The income can be replaced by benefits; a parent cannot be physically replaced and for reasons outlined before courts are reluctant to take a step that means children will have to go I to care.
As to point 2, as I said before, I don’t think it’s feminism that’s trying to prolong the stereotypes. So whilst this is an issue it’s not one that can be blamed on feminism. Like I say, I’d like to see a study that looked into whether women judges women more leniently; I doubt they do.
As to point 3, here’s an example from across the pond. A judge reserving the bile for the woman. This tallies with the general trend for women to be seen as especially abominable when they go against their supposed caring ‘natures’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2732644/You-vilest-b-I-ve-met-Judge-lets-rip-contempt-woman-sentenced-30-years-sexually-abusing-children-boyfriend.html
Lawyers are aware of all these factors and play on them when it comes to mitigation.
There are similar ones at play in relation to ethnicity. It’s almost a cliché that a standard plea is “As a member of the close knit [insert here] community the real punishment is the shame that he’s brought on his family” etc. It’s perhaps not surprising then that in England the hierarchy of leniency goes: Chinese, Asian, White, Black.
Gender and punishment is an issue in criminal justice. There’s a lot of material out there about it. I was involved in a key case that considered one aspect (R v Morgan-Smith). That was actually about one guy who stabbed another guy but it considered murder generally, and when murder should be reduced to manslaughter. One of the aspects considered was the different reasons (and ways) that women kill as opposed to men. If you’ve got access to the law reports it’s worth a read.
I’m going to explain how I wash my genitals in the shower now so this is your friendly TMI alert:
I put my foot against the shower wall, direct the stream of water over my vulva and use my hands to spread my labia to ensure water reaches between all the various folds.
Maybe read the threads with Cow boy before whining about regulars posting gifs? Just a thought.
Be careful; showers kill more Westerners than terrorists!
I would totally believe that. At my heaviest I was leaning against the shower wall and the tile actually gave way.I could have died!
LG,
Agreed on both points.
isidore13,
Other than your personal interest in it, as demonstrated by multiple questions directed to me? Well, it’s about gender equity, and some of David’s favorite targets talk about it. It seems like a pretty good fit as a topic.
In any case, almost all of my comments on this issue have been in response to direct questions from other commenters, most of whom expressed doubt (or even outright denied) that the gender gap exists at all. Since the gender gap does in fact exist, I provided evidence. Which was then called “absurd” and “ridiculous,” despite being an extremely thorough and credible study by an experienced researcher who previously examined the racial gap in criminal sentencing. So I defended the study against blatantly false claims by Binjabreel and Paradoxical Intention (who has yet to reveal their secret “valuable information” refuting the gender gap), at which point crickets.
You asked me what the point was in talking about the gender gap at all. I wonder if you would mind if I asked you a couple questions based on my response:
1. It exists. Agree?
2. It matters. Agree?
Please feel free to be as clear and concise as you like.
Khane’s Mom,
To a certain extent, the initial charges themselves account for motive and circumstances. O.J. Simpson was charged with murder in the first degree, whereas the hypothetical woman you describe would likely be charged with second degree or less. So those two would not be compared as apples and apples in a sentencing study. It might be true that initial charges sometimes get reduced in response to new revelations about motive before trial (which would be relevant to Starr’s paper), but I don’t know if there is any reason to believe that it happens often, or that the frequency would be different for women and men.
Tessa,
Yes, women with children fare better in the system. Researcher Kathleen Daly calls this “familial paternalism” on the part of the judiciary, and she speculated in the late 1980s (from limited data) that familial paternalism might account for all of the gender disparity that researchers had long observed in the criminal justice system. Maybe judges were just trying to protect children.
It was this reasonable hypothesis that Ann Martin Stacy and Cassia Spohn set out to test in their 2006 Berkeley paper.
And the idea did not stand up. At all.
Partly because women without children still fare much better than either category of men. You can remove all women with children from the data, and it still shows a pronounced bias toward women. Child care simply does not explain the gender gap. It can’t. That’s why Stacy and Spohn say this in the paper’s conclusion:
I know that Binjabreel said of this paper, “When you really dice the data, it seems to come down to having dependent children and it being a first offense.” But Binjabreel has an extremely unique dicer that only produces results for Binjabreel and would surely cause Stacy and Spohn to fall on the floor laughing. Binjabreel’s bizarre assertion is completely unsupported by the actual paper. The paper literally says the opposite. Right there in the conclusion in plain language.
Stacy and Spohn are completely in line with Starr. Both papers find a huge gender gap that is not explained by child care. Stacy and Spohn find that this gender gap persisted despite the federal government’s introduction of sentencing guidelines that were designed to remove bias. Wherever judges were given any leeway in sentencing, they found a way to favor women, whether or not they had children. Starr found that the gender gap is present well before the sentencing phase — the entire system found a way to favor women over men at every turn.
For some reason, the criminal justice system wants to favor women, even when we try to get it not to. And we’ve known since 2006 that child care is not the reason. The reason remains mysterious even to researchers who dedicate themselves to trying to figure it out.
Orion,
Thanks for the defense. I do appreciate it.
Just so you know, while I have been intentionally and gleefully called a “he” by the commenters here, I am a big, fat, old cisgender woman. With a scowling resting face. Thus, “The Mad Cow.” I prefer “she.” No apology necessary — I completely understand the assumption. For the most part I try to keep my identity separate from my ideas, as I try to keep others’ separate from theirs.
As far as feminism goes, I have never blamed it for anything here or anywhere else, and I have no plans to. Early in this thread, in fact, I criticized MRAs for blaming feminism for the sentencing gender gap, because it’s impossible that feminism is responsible. The gender gap precedes feminism. Who/what is responsible for the gender gap? My position is, I believe, exactly the same as that of Stacy, Spohn and Starr: I don’t know.
As far as why I am so popular with the cool kids, it all started when I showed up in another thread and compared an unhinged MRA to Valerie Solanas. There’s no coming back from that. I assume that I will be under permanent suspicion for ideological noncompliance, and that is a condition that I find familiar and comfortable.
Very interested in your thoughts on Starr.
Orion,
How is posting random gifs in response to boredom with a tedious troll any different than numbers ninja or talking about bras or periods? We’re not expressing contempt for no reason or just to be mean and cliquish. In fact I’ve found this to be the most welcoming site I’ve ever visited. That’s why I spend so much time here.
If you or anyone else wants to engage with mad cow’s derailment and sealioning that’s fine. But I’m not going to just forget that zie stunk up the other thread with bullshit.
I actually had to scroll up to refresh my memory as to what this thread was about because this sea lion so thoroughly derailed it. If every thread zie posts in is going to have some “I’m totally not an MRA but they have good points and are a legit movement” crap, I’m going to mock in various ways.
Don’t like it? Tough. There are a million places that are welcoming to misogyny apologists. This isn’t one of them.
You could have at least asked why we were posting gifs instead of engaging rather than just assuming we’re disrepectful.
… The other thread just reminded me: Didn’t Orion derail a thread once with “I’m not saying Anita deserves harassment, but here’s why Anita deserves harassment”? Or was that somebody else?
@Binjabreel:
“All I’m saying is, circumcised men get shorter prison sentences if they’re on their first child.”
That made me laugh at loud.
@orion
I’m all for fruitful discussions. Sentencing is a difficult issue, and there’s potential for a useful exchange of ideas. But based on what I’ve seen of Mad Cow, I’m convinced they’ve chosen to focus on it not because they want to have that exchange but because they know they can drag it out forever.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
I’ve been treated well here too. Even after lurking for some time, I’ve found the ableism rules difficult, but it occurred to me during a recent thread that’s been very good for me. I have a mental illness myself, and being here has helped me realize how much self-hate and self-blame I still need to deal with about my diagnosis. I’d fooled myself I was managing well by being flippant and referring to myself as “crazy.” I think that’s why I often feel better after reading threads here, even though the subject matter is often dire. There’s a lot of dire information in the news, but how people interpret and handle it matters.
@ marinerachel, heh, I do the same thing to wash up my privates, or I just use a soaking wet wash cloth and a bunch of rinses. Smegma forms in between the labia and under the clitoral hood in girls as well. Greater risks/consequences of FGM aside, I don’t think anyone here would support removing part of a girl’s vulva because of “hygiene”, even if it was “safe” to do so.
A lot of the problems with boy’s hygiene happen when well-meaning adults (including some medical practitioners!!!), forcibly retract the foreskin before it’s ready. It’s normal for a boy’s foreskin to be attached to his penis, sometimes until puberty. Until then, a boy’s genitals will take care of themselves, just as a girl’s vagina will. Forcing a boy’s foreskin back causes tearing, scarring, and introduces bacteria that cause infection.
@epitome of incomprehensible
Yeah, I had my wisdom teeth, (all 5 of them, yes that’s 5, not 4), out while awake as well. Isn’t most oral surgery done while awake in the US? It’s more of an issue to knock people out, and while it’s unpleasant to have a surgeon leaning on your jaw trying to reach your back teeth so he can break them apart, as an young adult, you can understand that it’s surgery, that you can ask for painkillers if your in pain, and most importantly, that any unpleasantness will soon be over. In contrast, newborns, completely lacking a frame of reference, have no idea what is happening to them, cannot self-sooth like older boys and men, and only feel the pressure of the procedure, and any pain or fear involved.
I have no idea how many adult circumcisions are done awake, but simply having the the option of general anesthesia being available, is a pro, not a con. People who feel that it’s preferable to operate on newborns because newborns are unaware of pain, or fear, or rough treatment, are mistaken.
For washing privates, nothing beats a hand-held shower head. It’s not only good for cleaning, it’s very, uh, stimulating.
EJ, that RationalWiki article was written in 2013, and may have been based on impressions formed years before that. This used to be a different place. The great trolls of old — I’m especially thinking of NWOslave and Meller — said shockingly offensive things, advocated consistently horrible policies, posted countless overlong screeds and used blatant dishonesty in their conversations. They got a more respectful hearing than Mad Cow has. People asked them questions about their views — out of morbid curiosity, to be fair — and talked to them without overt hostility. Other posters expressed boredom with the trolls and suggested that they be ignored or banned, but they did it in text, not with enormous images.
The hell they did. And there have been plenty of people on this thread who’ve asked A Mad Cow polite questions and tried to engage with him. The rest have got bored. Pandapool’s following up on a promise she made him in the other thread.
People still call for bannings. And for a long time, David had images turned off because the trolls would post really graphic pictures, and it was triggering for some people. Lately, pictures post again because of global changes that WordPress made (is my understanding).
There have been arguments between regulars for as long as I’ve been here. Sometimes it feels like the only thing that changes is the arguers.