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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

#91

Post by josteink »

rfw wrote: post #65
int_19h wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inclusivity is a word with a broad meaning, and that's not it. Has it also been recently redefined in terms of "... + power (and we'll tell you who has how much power!)" in the social studies dictionary, same as racism?

1. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/inclusivity > The practice or policy of including people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those who have physical or mental disabilities and members of minority groups. 2. Without an understanding of power, is there a useful definition of "inclusivity"? Or is it just a whitewashed feelgood platitude that can't mean anything in the end, because if…

> 2. Without an understanding of power, is there a useful definition of "inclusivity"?

Absolutely. The only thingn adding vague references to “power” does is make a plain and simple concept confusing and unclear.

The “power”-aspect is only added by sexists and racists trying to justify their own bigotry, or in the sadder cases: people trying to raise their social status within aforementioned group by doing virtue-signaling.

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

#92

Post by black-tea »

ubercow13 wrote: post #73
black-tea wrote: post #14

Period activists? There are people who dedicate their entire lives to increase human rights for others. Those are activists. What is getting a picture of a drop of blood on my phone supposed to achieve? I know women have periods. What am I supposed to do about it? Keep your problems to yourself.

I don't really understand what you're saying, who should keep their problems to themselves? Are you saying you're offended that this emoji exists because you don't want anyone messaging you about periods?

I'm saying there's nothing I can do about it so yes, just keep it to yourself. I don't go on about my own problems to everyone and I certainly don't decide to turn to "activism" to get a little picture that helps me to tell people about it.

There are real problems in the world. This is a waste of time and effort.

Of course predictable my comment is flagged for not toeing the feminist line. I didn't use foul language. I didn't attack anyone. I just refuse to pander to the victim complex of a few loud women.

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

#94

Post by black-tea »

DanBC wrote: post #48
black-tea wrote: post #14

Period activists? There are people who dedicate their entire lives to increase human rights for others. Those are activists. What is getting a picture of a drop of blood on my phone supposed to achieve? I know women have periods. What am I supposed to do about it? Keep your problems to yourself.

Do you know that girls are excluded from school when they have their period? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seclusion_of_girls_at_puberty Or that girls avoid school because they cannot afford tampons or pads? This doesn't just happen in poor countries, it happens in the UK: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/international-womens-day-...

Do you know that in the UK girls consistently do better at schools than boys year after year? Whatever problems they have it doesn't seem to affect them much.

Worry about your own problems. 75% of suicides in the UK are men. 70% of homeless in the UK are men. This is happening while people like you are busy worrying about whether women can effectively communicate about periods on whatsapp.

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

#95

Post by aeredhel »

black-tea wrote: post #94
DanBC wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that girls are excluded from school when they have their period? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seclusion_of_girls_at_puberty Or that girls avoid school because they cannot afford tampons or pads? This doesn't just happen in poor countries, it happens in the UK: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/international-womens-day-...

Do you know that in the UK girls consistently do better at schools than boys year after year? Whatever problems they have it doesn't seem to affect them much. Worry about your own problems. 75% of suicides in the UK are men. 70% of homeless in the UK are men. This is happening while people like you are busy worrying about whether women can effectively communicate about periods on whatsapp.

> Worry about your own problems.

> men, men, more men

So should we worry about our own problems, or about men's problems?

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

#96

Post by KozmoNau7 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #34
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A drop of blood is a traditional symbol for blood donors, and I wager that is the context where it will end up seeing the most use. That is certainly how I would use it.

But this is the only blood emoji there is. A drop of blood may be a traditional symbol for blood donors, but blood, the substance, is a traditional symbol for all kinds of different things. And I'd expect this to get used anywhere someone wants to reference "blood" in a cutesy way.

It's very specifically a drop of blood, not a splatter or a smear or a stain.

Maybe it'll be used more in context of vampires.

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

#97

Post by repolfx »

sgift wrote: post #21
plainOldText wrote: post #11

Also: > A new "people holding hands" emoji will let users mix and match > different skin tones and genders, with 171 possible combinations.[1] This reminds me of the article "Code Inflation". [2] [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/692260599/interracial-couples... [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7057573

"Code inflation" talks about programs expanding even when they already can do everything needed (e.g. true going from empty to 8k bytes). That's not the case here. These combinations didn't exist before, so the functionality is expanded, not just the code size.

I love emoji but they aren't needed for anything. You can always discuss periods using ordinary words.

I have to admit that whilst emoji are fun the apparently endless growth in them combined with the way they break essentially every assumed invariant about text and thus create explosions of bugs all over previously working software is ... a bit concerning.

At this point, why not just define a set of code points that let you embed an SVG into the character stream? It'd result in fewer cases of broken text where new emoji are rendered by apps that are all of six months out of date. Actually defining an endless series of semantic code points just seems like a dead end for the Unicode Consortium that opens it up to relentless attacks by activists and political nonsense because it's changed its mandate from encoding languages to defining new ones.

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

#98

Post by ubercow13 »

black-tea wrote: post #92
ubercow13 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand what you're saying, who should keep their problems to themselves? Are you saying you're offended that this emoji exists because you don't want anyone messaging you about periods?

I'm saying there's nothing I can do about it so yes, just keep it to yourself. I don't go on about my own problems to everyone and I certainly don't decide to turn to "activism" to get a little picture that helps me to tell people about it. There are real problems in the world. This is a waste of time and effort. Of course predictable my comment is flagged for not toeing the feminist line. I didn't use foul language.…

In what sense is menstruation stigma in the developing world not a 'real' problem?

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

#99

Post by black-tea »

aeredhel wrote: post #95
black-tea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that in the UK girls consistently do better at schools than boys year after year? Whatever problems they have it doesn't seem to affect them much. Worry about your own problems. 75% of suicides in the UK are men. 70% of homeless in the UK are men. This is happening while people like you are busy worrying about whether women can effectively communicate about periods on whatsapp.

> Worry about your own problems. > men, men, more men So should we worry about our own problems, or about men's problems?

Our own. I'm a man and virtually everyone here is a man too.

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

#100

Post by DanBC »

black-tea wrote: post #94
DanBC wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that girls are excluded from school when they have their period? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seclusion_of_girls_at_puberty Or that girls avoid school because they cannot afford tampons or pads? This doesn't just happen in poor countries, it happens in the UK: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/international-womens-day-...

Do you know that in the UK girls consistently do better at schools than boys year after year? Whatever problems they have it doesn't seem to affect them much. Worry about your own problems. 75% of suicides in the UK are men. 70% of homeless in the UK are men. This is happening while people like you are busy worrying about whether women can effectively communicate about periods on whatsapp.

I work in suicide prevention - I'm well aware of the statistics and I spend most of my time looking at the wider determinants of mental ill-health and suicidality in middle aged men.
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