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clearly not everything is trying to get me. and, i wouldn't bother if it was. i'm confident that i can handle myself. you comment speaks exactly to my point tho

clearly not everything is trying to get me. and, i wouldn't bother if it was. i'm confident that i can handle myself. you comment speaks exactly to my point though. the icon is supposed to show two different USERS. not a man and a woman. and that you think that the icon is the best way to show the difference between a man and a woman is also to the point. maybe the starkest differences between a male and a female are not color or clothes. but, that IS the way many think. i think there is a problem with perpetuating that.

jeremysmyth 12y ago
maybe the starkest differences between a male and a female are not color or clothes. but, that IS the way many think. OK, I'll bite, seeing as you're going down that route. If I want to represent the differences between a male and a female (for that matter, what are they?) I can't easily put millenia of ingrained and imposed cultural norms into a small desktop icon, nor could I even summarise the last 100 years of inclusive gender thinking (and even reducing that by omitting anything controversial, because, y'know, we don't want to alienate users). On the other hand I could simply represent the differences between a male and a female by creating an icon that shows the differences that nobody can disagree with on any basis: the genitals. Personally, I think the icon shows "people" in a nicely minimal and inclusive way. I'm sure it's obvious to most (even people who might get offended by the blatant use of stereotypes) that it's meant to convey males and females, rather than family (parent and child), couples (two people holding hands), just men or women (as it could be if two gender-neutral people were there), or even something more confusingly abstract (two or more smiley faces). If you can think up an alternative that's neither confusing nor offensive to any minority (as in the linked case), while remaining attractive and minimal enough to work as an icon, I think the industry will rapidly adopt it out of self-preservation as much as anything else.
jmnicolas 12y ago
What do you propose ? A penis and a vagina on the doors[0] ? And now we offended the trans-genders ... Millions of girls have their clitoris cut (don't know the technical term in English sorry), countless women are beaten by abusive men, but you choose to waste people's time because girls are associated with skirts and pink ... As a man I'm fed up with this really small but hyper vocal minority of pseudo-feminists that tries to witch hunt people for arbitrary reasons. Of course it's easier to taunt people on the internet than to go in Africa to see what you can do about women condition. And what gets me even more is that my comment will be more justification for you to feel "persecuted". [0] you can't write "men" and "women" as illiterate or foreigners won't understand
sobetroll 12y ago
well its different users, differentiated by their sex. There are many ways to display it but they going with a simplistic approach, so what if they decide to arbitrarily choose different colors to decide whats male and whats female. Its more disturbing to me that woman can wear mens clothes, and it be considered sexy or normal, but if a man wears a dress hes looked at as weird. I mean if they used purple for woman and black for men, would you be upset with that? How about if the man was wearing a baseball cap, and the woman symbol had pigtails? There are simple ways to differentiate and status symbols we have chosen to use in a universal way. It makes things easier for foreigners and for us. I mean, I find the handicap symbol to be wrong, not every handicapped person needs a wheelchair, but that was a simple, easy to use design that shows "this person is handicapped", and I can live with that.

jeremysmyth 12y ago

maybe the starkest differences between a male and a female are not color or clothes. but, that IS the way many think. OK, I'll bite, seeing as you're going down that route. If I want to represent the differences between a male and a female (for that matter, what are they?) I can't easily put millenia of ingrained and imposed cultural norms into a small desktop icon, nor could I even summarise the last 100 years of inclusive gender thinking (and even reducing that by omitting anything controversial, because, y'know, we don't want to alienate users). On the other hand I could simply represent the differences between a male and a female by creating an icon that shows the differences that nobody can disagree with on any basis: the genitals. Personally, I think the icon shows "people" in a nicely minimal and inclusive way. I'm sure it's obvious to most (even people who might get offended by the blatant use of stereotypes) that it's meant to convey males and females, rather than family (parent and child), couples (two people holding hands), just men or women (as it could be if two gender-neutral people were there), or even something more confusingly abstract (two or more smiley faces). If you can think up an alternative that's neither confusing nor offensive to any minority (as in the linked case), while remaining attractive and minimal enough to work as an icon, I think the industry will rapidly adopt it out of self-preservation as much as anything else.

jmnicolas 12y ago

What do you propose ? A penis and a vagina on the doors[0] ? And now we offended the trans-genders ... Millions of girls have their clitoris cut (don't know the technical term in English sorry), countless women are beaten by abusive men, but you choose to waste people's time because girls are associated with skirts and pink ... As a man I'm fed up with this really small but hyper vocal minority of pseudo-feminists that tries to witch hunt people for arbitrary reasons. Of course it's easier to taunt people on the internet than to go in Africa to see what you can do about women condition. And what gets me even more is that my comment will be more justification for you to feel "persecuted". [0] you can't write "men" and "women" as illiterate or foreigners won't understand

sobetroll 12y ago

well its different users, differentiated by their sex. There are many ways to display it but they going with a simplistic approach, so what if they decide to arbitrarily choose different colors to decide whats male and whats female. Its more disturbing to me that woman can wear mens clothes, and it be considered sexy or normal, but if a man wears a dress hes looked at as weird. I mean if they used purple for woman and black for men, would you be upset with that? How about if the man was wearing a baseball cap, and the woman symbol had pigtails? There are simple ways to differentiate and status symbols we have chosen to use in a universal way. It makes things easier for foreigners and for us. I mean, I find the handicap symbol to be wrong, not every handicapped person needs a wheelchair, but that was a simple, easy to use design that shows "this person is handicapped", and I can live with that.