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'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

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Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#51

Post by rfw »

beaker52 wrote: post #39

I noticed that someone criticised the blood droplet as "Ambiguous and multi functional". I've noticed a lot of this kind of attitude around discussions of race, LGBT and women's issues - activists pushing for "exclusive rights" to things like emojis, words, activities, places for specific groups. That isn't very inclusive. I feel like the most outspoken "social activists" have good intentions but don't really know wh…

Inclusivity is about wanting to better include minorities or disabled people in spaces where they may have been discriminated against and affecting their livelihoods, e.g. the workplace.

Using a definition of inclusivity here without a consideration for power dynamics between the parties involved is totally uncharitable: as you've observed in your comment, there is no barrier to actually denying "exclusive rights" to activists, so it's more a matter of respect to the people who want to use the symbol (e.g. the pride flag, which few people have issues with it being used to exclusively represent LGBT groups) to make their cause more visible, rather than a lack of "inclusivity".

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#52

Post by DanBC »

briandear wrote: post #44
onion2k wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot more women than there are blood donors. Periods, something that directly affects half the population at some point in their life, is going to be a much more common point of discussion than donating blood.

Is a period a topic of normal conversation? “Hey Susan, are you going to the blood drive? Have you checked your glucose today? By the way, how’s that period of yours coming along?” What’s there to say about periods? Seems a bit polite to be discussing periods in normal conversation; about as uncouth as one discussing bowel movements or mucus coloration. Of course there are legitimate reasons to talk about a period, b…

> What’s there to say about periods?

I think girls should have the same level of access to education as boys, and currently they don't because girls need access to tampons and pads. Some schools do not provide these. Some schools do provide these but girls need to ask for them. (You can see how normalising talk would help there).

If a school does not provide these products a girl's family has to be able to afford them, and we know that curently in the UK some families feel they can't afford them. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/international-womens-day-...

One of the reasons people feel these products are too expensive is the VAT added to the price. People talk about periods because they're talking about tax reform.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#53

Post by planktonite »

I don’t understand why emojis are a part of Unicode. Unicode was an effort to unify the world under one character set, which is a grand and historic idea. Emojis are not grand and they will sour with time and I hate them. Why did we add all this nonsense mush to the fundamental literary foundation of human civilization? It’s only logical to make a fundamental and foundational thing as simple and intuitive as possible. Emojis were a huge mistake and one that is now baked into human society probably forever.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#54

Post by Dylan16807 »

dvt wrote: post #13

Outrage culture at its finest. NPR cites a few tweets. Let's analyze: [1] has 13 likes; [2] has 8. No one cares about emojis this much. Real activists (not Twitter keyboard warriors) don't care about emojis, they care about, you know, actual social progress. It took this group like 2 years to get 54,600 signatures when joke petitions like [3] are in the same ballpark. I mean, give me a break. But articles like this a…

I'm not sure what people object to in your post, but it's important to call news outlets out when they use some random tweet that 50 people have seen as a "representative" view. If you use any tweets you can pretend almost anything is a common opinion.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#55

Post by planktonite »

hgdsraj wrote: post #23
saagarjha wrote: post #5

I'm not sure I understand why people think that we should add the other emojis that were suggested. Emojis are in no way supposed to represent every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about; that's why many of them end up representing other things based on context (for example, the eggplant or peach emojis). The blood emoji is fine, but the soiled underwear is just…weird. That would be like asking for…

This isn't "every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about". This is something that half of the world population experiences roughly monthly for some number of years. Certainly it's more frequently experienced than the emojis - though I appreciate those. So it's clearly something that should exist. The underwear might seem odd but it's no weirder than the smiling poop emoji...

The poop emoji and the used toilet paper emoji represent something that 100 percent of the population does daily, so by your own logic they are vastly more qualified for emojihood than a period emoji.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#57

Post by salex89 »

Funny how these things can have different meanings. Here I read menstruation, threat and what not. If somebody sends this to me, I would instantly think:"Going to donate blood?". This droplet emoticon , or a variation of it, is very often used as the blood bank/transfusion center logo on my country, and based on Google, in some surrounding. You can see it around on t-shirts (donors get a t-shirt and they wear them proudly), vans for gathering blood away from the center, public announcements and calls.... Basically a like a logo, not sure how official. I felt humble the second I've seen this emoji.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#58

Post by rfw »

josteink wrote: post #50
beaker52 wrote: post #39

I noticed that someone criticised the blood droplet as "Ambiguous and multi functional". I've noticed a lot of this kind of attitude around discussions of race, LGBT and women's issues - activists pushing for "exclusive rights" to things like emojis, words, activities, places for specific groups. That isn't very inclusive. I feel like the most outspoken "social activists" have good intentions but don't really know wh…

They don’t care. The only thing they care about is virtue-signaling. With our current outrage-culture, it’s literally a competition in virtue-signaling at this point. When you look at the movement from this point of view, lots of the utterly irrational behavior starts to make sense.

Dismissing a position as "virtue signaling" is fundamentally lazy.

Ironically, aren't you "virtue signaling" right now about how you're sincere enough to be able to look down on people who do it?

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#60

Post by oliwarner »

beaker52 wrote: post #39

I noticed that someone criticised the blood droplet as "Ambiguous and multi functional". I've noticed a lot of this kind of attitude around discussions of race, LGBT and women's issues - activists pushing for "exclusive rights" to things like emojis, words, activities, places for specific groups. That isn't very inclusive. I feel like the most outspoken "social activists" have good intentions but don't really know wh…

I agree. That's when I disconnect from the discussion.

I think everyone deserves an equal stab at life. Nobody should be discriminated against for their beliefs or what's in their trousers... But the methods used by some to reach that end are appalling.

Equality isn't accomplished by publicly shaming everyone for every little social infraction. It deliberately excludes the people you need to improve to achieve equality. That turns your cause into a circlejerk and ultimately hurts those who you're trying to represent.

But that's what politics is these days.

Red Vs Blue. Us Vs Them.

Edit: I've witnessed the score of most of these comments fluctuate wildly. It's a shame that inclusivity has to be so divisive.

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