By David Futrelle
The Unicode Consortium — the mysterious cabal in charge of the world’s emojis — is adding several hundred new emojis this year, including a bunch catering to the disabled (e.g., a guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid in it, a variety of wheelchairs) and others celebrating everything from falafel to sloths.
But one particular emoji in the new set is causing a bit of a stir: the “pinched hand,” officially designated as a symbol for a “small amount” — but which many have taken to mean “a small amount of penis.” Indeed, a post on Vice welcomed the pinched hand as
an emoji that’s perfect for easily humiliating men when they’re being disgusting online or, you know, being men.
Not everyone is so thrilled. On Reddit, angry dudes in an assortment of man-centric subreddits are protesting what they see as a deliberate attempt by the alleged SJWs of the Unicode Consortium to mock some of the world’s most sensitive men. (They’re also not too keen on the Vice article.)
The most common response from the mangry mob? To call for a new “big vagina” emoji they can send to women. “When’s the ‘cavernous vagina’ emoji coming out?” demanded one Redditor in the Jordan Peterson subreddit.
In the Braincels subreddit — Reddit’s main incel forum — one man put some of the blame for the emoji on supposedly “sissified” men. “270 ’emo’ icons,” he wrote,
yet not a single one to signify an overused vagina to serve as an analogous complement to the small penis
wonder why the double standard?
could it be that american “men” are sissified wimps who have accepted their place underneath the bottom of the totem pole?
Other vagina-obsessed Reddit dudes wondered why there was no emoji they could use to embarrass slutty women by mocking the flappy, roast-beef-like labia they are convinced every woman develops if she sleeps with more than a handful of men over her lifetime.
“[W]e need a roast beef flap emoji,” insisted one incel Redditor, winning himself more than two dozen upvotes for his important contribution to the debate. (Never mind that bitter incels were sending pictures of roast beef sandwiches to women online long before the “tiny dick” emoji was a thing; I know feminist writers and activists who’ve gotten dozen if not hundreds of the things.)
Mangry Redditors also lamented how unfair the new emoji is to the world’s small-dicked men, who apparently deserve the gold medal in the Oppression Olympics. “Men with small penises have no social voice or leverage,” wrote one apparent member of this oppressed minority in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
This is why ppl/society can say anydamnthing to and about us and it’s never viewed as “wrong”
Some lamented what they saw as a body-shaming double-standard. “I never understood this,” one perplexed Men’s Rights Redditor confessed,
it’s okay to mock a man for the size of his penis, despite the fact that he has literally no control over it, but it’s not okay to mock a woman for being a slut when that’s 100% her own decision.
In the Braincels subreddit, the regulars were even angrier about not being allowed to mock women’s physical appearance, despite the fact the dudes on the Braincels subreddit do this every day, all day long. As one incel put it:
Funny how the only things men get body shamed about are things we can’t change (face, height and dick) but women literally just have to not be fat.
Another incel Redditor added a rhetorical suicide threat to his complaint:
I’m gonna fucking hang myself, no woman would ever come close to being made fun of like this for anything they can’t control. It’s so fucking unfair, I just happen to exist with a small dick so I guess I deserve to be made fun of by everyone.
No one would ever praise the existence of a small boob emoji, because a hand symbol for it doesn’t even fucking exist.
If being shamed for having a small dick makes you feel like dying, dude, might I suggest unsubscribing to the Braincel subreddit? No one talks shit about small dicks more than incels. Nowhere else but in incel forums have I seen dudes redefine “small dick” to mean anything less than 8 inches long. Nowhere have I seen more resistance to women telling insecure men that they really don’t care much about dick size and that in fact it can be painful to have large penises inserted in your body.
There were the inevitable laments about Chad and his allegedly huge dick. The “tiny dick emoji” isn’t mocking all men, one Reddit incel insisted.
its mocking unattractive men with small dics. big dick chad and tyrone aint bein mocked here. misandry is code for anti-ugly male.
One Men’s Rights Redditor insisted that the fact that some women are looking forward to having an emoji to send to dudes who fill up their inboxes with unsolicited dick pics means that women in general lack even the most basic understanding of honorable behavior:
Remember, women never learned what honor is. This is straight up hate. They never get taught what honor is. Honorable men don’t go for the weakest spots. They also don’t call people fragile for rightfully being hurt by meanspirited comments about those weakest spots.
Another Men’s Rights Redditor responded to this comment with an even more unbelievably ignorant one:
I can’t actually think of a time in history where women were openly slagged off and insulted by men just for being women.
Uh, how about RIGHT NOW. In the MEN’S RIGHTS SUBREDDIT. In the VERY COMMENT YOU’RE RESPONDING TO.
Also, you might want to consider THE ENTIRE REST OF HUMAN HISTORY.
Naturally more than a few of the angriest men threatened — oh, sorry, warned — that women using the new emoji should expect a furious reaction from the men they send it to. (As if women aren’t already well aware that men often lash out over the tiniest slights.)
A Jordan Peterson fan spelled out his “warning” in ponderous detail:
Once you mock someone, you better have your shit straight, because in my mind that is an invitation for me to make fun of your looks. You think men are insecure about their penis? yeah, not as much as women are about their weight, face, hair, etc.
Gosh, ladies, men might call you fat! I bet you never saw that coming!
This will just be devastating to anyone that uses it due to opening themselves to backlash from men who are amicable until provoked.
“Amicable until provoked” … by a tiny picture of pinching fingers.
I hold back insults because I truly do not wish to harm someone psychologically, and I’m not sure why these women would seek to do it, but if they do it to someone who hasn’t done anything to deserve it they are open to getting owned.
This Men’s Rights Redditor was a bit blunter:
I can guarantuee this emoji will cause more murders than the real gun emoji (the one that they had to replace with the water gun) ever could
But the most, er, imaginative response of all to the new emoji came from the Braincels subreddit from several Redditors who have convinced themselves that the new emoji might so enrage men that they collectively decide to put an end to feminism altogether.
“The small dick emoji is just what we need,” wrote an incel calling himself whilefalling
I predict this will be a tipping point for men. It will wake up an entire generation of young men to the blackpill, and it will enrage men to the point where they can’t take it anymore.
I predict a surge of interest in men’s rights/anti-feminism. I predict a surge of men coming out as incels. I predict a surge of ‘misogynist’ insults on social media websites such as Twitter. Call my dick small? I’ll call you a slut. I’ll say your breasts are small. These insults will become more socially acceptable, as a blowback to female misandry.
Gynocentrism can only last for so long. Men are angry, and they’re about to get really angry.
An incel called JucheforWhitePeople seconded that emotion:
This emoji just might be the kind of acceleratioism that we need.
Yes, let’s encourage these thots to be as hypergamous and bitchy as possible. Encourage them to openly say that all short and small-dicked men should die. Let them be as racist as they can to ethnics.
An entire generation of men is going to be blackpilled by the excesses of their toxic femininity. Their copes and hollow platitudes will only fall on deaf ears after that.
Men will stand up and inevitably put an end to feminism. There will be no going back when even the cucks can longer defend what foids are doing.
I hate to break it to you, dude, but angry men have been raging against feminism from the moment it was born, and feminism has survived. The “pinching finger” emoji isn’t going to bring millions of angry dudes to the barricades to overthrow feminism and bring about The Republic of Gilead on earth.
I have mixed feelings about the “tiny dick” emoji myself. On the one hand, it does stigmatize those with small penises, who really don’t deserve this petty form of body shaming.
On the other hand, IT’S JUST A FUCKING EMOJI and I’m guessing that the overwhelming majority of those who get it sent to them will be 1) dudes with roughly average-sized penises who’ve sent pictures of these penises to women who never asked for them or 2) the sort of dudes who go around calling women “foids” to their face.
Also, the emoji can be used for other things. like indicating to someone that that you’re CRUSHING THEIR HEAD.
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Not super on board with ‘small dick’ jokes, I have to say. Body snark doesn’t become okay just because the target has a penis.
That said, I’m pretty sure the Consortium didn’t deliberately intend this usage in particular, so the claim that this is somehow indicative of anti-male bias in the tech industry (haha, I know) seems pretty hard to back up.
[Edit: As an aside, David, the plural of ‘emoji’ is ‘emoji’, as it comes from Japanese, which doesn’t mark number.]
In other words, the shoe being on the other foot for the first time in six thousand years?
@Citerior Motive
When English “borrows” a word it typically applies its own rules for conjugation, pluralization, etc. As it happens, both “emoji” and “emojis” are accepted as correct in written English.
As for body shaming, I agree 100%. However, this initially came up as a way to respond to unsolicited dick pics, and if someone opts to respond to that kind of forced sexual discourse with some small amount of cruelty I can’t really blame them.
Just a heads-up: The first two links in the article are (currently) malformed, and thus broken.
https://youtu.be/l5obLmJ4O9E
Ok, I’ll play nice and post the dick free PC version.
I think the REVOLUTION OF MEN’S RIGHTEOUS BODILY SHAMED RAGE is already decades late.
I bet it still feels like shit to be judged by your body, as if the rest of your mind, talents, and soul don’t count. Perhaps men who are hurt by this could use this as a taste of “bitter medicine” to develop some empathy for how women feel, reflect, and fight for a society that objectifies NO-ONE’s body?
Nah. Where are the roastie emogjiisssss???! How am I supposed to punch down now? WAAAAHHHHH!!!! Women are lucky to be sexually objectified!!! I wish I had that kind of sexual attention!!!
(This post contains sarcasm. But not about how shitty and hurtful it is to judge someone by their dick size. Fuck that).
This emoji is surely the Kids in the Hall ‘I’m crushing your head’ symbol.
Hmmm, I got to wonder, either the consortium did not see this particular usage for the emoji, in which case, geez, they need to get out more, or the consortium did see this particular usage for the emoji, in which case… thanx!
@ Kupo:
When English (more correctly, when Europeans) borrow ANYTHING, they apply their own rules, and the “borrow-ee” should be greatful the Europeans don’t kill them ..
The reason why unicode emoji was created in the first place is because certain Japanese-based social platforms were already using them, but they were largely incompatible with each other. The original emoji set was meant to combine all of those, plus a bit of generally useful stuff, plus a complete set of country flags. This is why there’s a bunch of seemingly weird stuff in there which likely wouldn’t be made into an emoji today like ? or ? or ?.
Additions since then have essentially been guesses as to what people would make use of, without being obscene or offensive to the vast majority of the world’s population. Exceptions are being made for inclusivity, which can be considered offensive in parts of the world, particularly the LGBT stuff. The Unicode Consortium tries to be careful about this, as unintentionally offensive or virtually never used symbols are part of the code forever. In the case of the pistol, they knew that this might be controversial so they recommended a squirt gun as an alternative image… which most platforms ended up using instead, because it did turn out to be controversial in some parts of the world.
The Consortium does accept a lot of outside input – primarily from the social platform developers, but also some from the general public – but ultimately it’s all guesses, since it’s not possible to know whether people will use something until they do… or don’t. Which requires permanent code inclusion.
They’re not going to include an image of a “big vagina” because that’s globally obscene. They’re not going to include some abstract symbol or hand sign meaning that because either no such thing exists, or it’s really obscure. They already have a symbol for “cut of meat” (?) so a more specific “roast beef” symbol isn’t a priority. They’re not interested into catering to tiny minority groups, obscure cultural references, or specific causes, at least not without a damn good reason. So… even if they were sympathetic, it’s still absolutely not happening.
Correction, because the edit window closed:
I meant to say something like “while also being non-obscene and inoffensive to the vast majority” which has rather different implications than what I actually wrote. Outside of the inclusivity stuff, they’re deliberately very conservative.
These people have nothing better to do with their time than to look for insults in all sorts of things, don’t they. I’m crushing their heads with my thumb and forefinger for that.
I’m against all bodyshaming in general, small dick included. Trans men don’t need to see that. Buuuuut can an exception be made for jackwagons sending someone an unsolicited dickpic? Yeah.
It’s not like there aren’t already 26 Unicode characters that can be rearranged in various ways to degrade, threaten, and insult women. Or any number of animal, fist, middle finger and poop emojis.
If white supremacists can hide behind “that’s not a white power symbol, it’s an OK/circle game/three point shot/asshole-in-sign-language symbol”, then women should be able to hide behind “I wasn’t making fun of your dick, I was simply trying to catch a fly with chopsticks”. Those humorless MRAs can’t take a joke.
It’ll be a shibboleth for old timey Doctor Who fans because they’ll see it as a Davros reference.
Dear sir: Even if this were accurate, nobody would know you had a small dick if you didn’t insist on showing it to everyone.
If you ever wanted evidence that they really do think it’s all about their dongers
These people make me wish that the Total Perspective Vortex was real.
What. Bit of a stretch to think that’s about dicks when it’s so perfect for ‘this close’. And anyway, isn’t the universal hand gesture for ‘small penis’ derisively wiggling one’s little finger?
All this does is show how utterly devoid of creativity MRAs and incels are. The meaning of emojis is adapted through cultural context all the time. The peach and eggplant emojis now almost always mean butt and dick respectively. The lobster is used by trans people after a Unicode update that included the lobster but failed to include the trans flag. The fact that these people want the Unicode Consortium to give them an icon that specifically means “You have a wide, overused vagina” shows the depths of their entitlement.
…I would not at all be surprised if the oyster symbol (?), which is one of the newest ones, eventually comes to mean vulva/vagina. (It doesn’t appear on my computer yet and probably won’t show on anyone else’s for awhile, but I decided to include the code for it anyway.)
Incels predictably responded to this in the worst possible way. Equally predictably, a writer for a mainstream progressive publication had no problem with body shaming if it is against the “right” targets.
@Scildfreja
You brought your A-plus GIF game, as usual! Bonus points because Goldblum.
Come now, Weird Eddie, you say that like the Whites were the only imperialists to borrow words from other languages (Chinese has several from its several thousand years of conquest), or that they only borrow from subjugated peoples, which is poppycock.
Or, for that matter, that English loanwords were only added by the Britishers.
I also note that unless David was exaggerating for the sake of humor, the vast majority of the “several hundred new emojis” are just skin-tone variants of existing characters which did not previously have skin-tone variants, and the vast majority of those are just multi-person images which potentially allow for each person to have a different skin tone – the latter of which is optional, and I suspect the majority of platforms won’t support it. I’m not sure how you’re even supposed to input those on most devices anyway.
Yeah, I know I’m kindaaa missing the point of the discussion, but I have a hard time badmouthing even terrible people, and emoji is one of my particular areas of interest, so…
I see this emoji and did not see “small dick”. Had “small dick” not been suggested, it may never have occurred to me.
I see “little”, I see Maxwell Smart saying “missed it by that much”, I see “this close”, as in “you almost got it”.
But NOW I will forever think “small dick” emoji because of these everything’s-always-about-meeeee Reddit twits.