On a related note, it's nice to see Mark Bramhill's Person in Lotus Position on this page. He has a nice 3-part podcast series on what it takes to make an emoji:
Yes, and how would new emoji become part of the Unicode standard in secret, such that the corporate reveal would be on the same day it was added to Unicode?
A huge number of people have children during their lifetime (89% according to one quora answer [0]), and since babies require daily breastfeeding multiple times a day for at least six months, that's a lot of instances of people needing to talk about breastfeeding.
My point is emojis help us visualize things - try to give us an actual image instead of a word. But I imagine lots of people don't in particular want other people to visualize them breastfeeding.
Monochromatic signaling their boundless virtue as usual, with low effort comments. See how your comment is also meant to signal virtue to people who use the phrase virtue signaling?
The real question is: what harm has been done to you by Apple including trans and ambiguously gendered people? It makes them happier and feel more included, which is a moral good and a rare ethical low-hanging fruit.
"Virtue Signalling" is just the new snarl word for "SJW".
Anyone relying on using this essentially meaningless phrase (SJW, virtue signalling, or other snarl words) to label something is intentionally being dismissive in a derogatory manner, and is not really worth engaging.
e: see their intentional strawman below for further proof
It is ironic that gender is someone's own choice of who they choose to identify as, but Apple seems to be reinforcing that what you look like determines what gender you must be.
So in English politically correct culture calling transgender people "it" is not considered OK. Things that are "it" aren't people. You can use they/them or refer to the person or group by name.
I'd say it's maybe a tick or two below dropping the n-bomb or using whatever the racist term du jour is for a some group. It's not at the same level because a lot of people still don't know that using "it" implies that someone doesn't have personhood.
There are people who refer to transgender persons as "it" in anger and disgust because they don't want to acknowledge someone else's choice of gender and the things that drive that decision like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria.
Caveat. I am really not an expert at the whole transgender thing. I'm as tall, cis, white, and male as they come.
wearing some clothes instead of another never made you change your gender, did it ? You could say " i'm a man that likes to wear dresses" without denying being of a "male" gender...
I believe that is the intent of my reply to bsaul's comment, yes.
In this case it appears that bsaul didn't realize that "it", especially in quotes like that, is used as a slur against non-gender conforming people.
So I'll reword it this way: a gender-neutral emoji in a dress is a gender-neutral emoji in a dress. It can mean whatever the author and readers interpret it to mean. The meaning can be highly context sensitive.
We all signal virtue through any action. Not including these emoji is also signaling virtue. What do you recommend they do? It is not in their best interest as a global and publicly traded company to be intentionally exclusive.
