Unfortunately I've lost the source for this depiction of some recent additions to the world of emojis. I do remember the discussion noted that among the new emojis was one of a pregnant man.
At the risk of being insensitive, I have to ask what purpose that emoji serves? To whom would one send that, and what would be the intended message? Note that I'm new enough to the world of emojis that I'm still satisfied by writing :-)
Addendum: my question answered within 10 minutes by several readers. Tx.
There are some AFAB (assigned female at birth) men who become pregnant and bear children. Or, maybe it is a way for the male half of a couple to say "we're pregnant"?
ReplyDeletePeople who present male, and use he/him pronouns can get pregnant, if they were born with uteruses. Admittedly not super common, but also less rare than folks think.
ReplyDeleteFor me it's to recognize a person who is pregnant rather than assuming gender in the situation. As Elaine and Eric mention, there are folks who were AFAB and there are also non-binary people as well. So it's about inclusivity and recognizing all people.
ReplyDeleteI'm 100% in favor of being respectful and inclusive of everyone. Personally, I'd use the emoji when trying to convey how I feel after overeating.
ReplyDeleteFor me this is a public recognition of those of us with poor self control during a big Thanksgiving dinner.
ReplyDeleteI assumed it was an emoji of a man with a beer belly.
ReplyDeleteAll you people with your imagined x-ray vision seeing a wee fetus need a reality check, men do not get pregnant.
Careful Mr. Rocket. Statements like that will get you in trouble on some social media platforms for fomenting hate towards LGBTQI+ people. I apologize if I messed a letter or two.
DeleteI don’t see a pregnant man among those emojis. I see two pregnant women wearing different colored shirts and different hairstyles.
ReplyDeleteOn the left, there's a contingent of ideologically anchored activist who see gender as an inherently oppressive phenomenon. In this vein we have entire books arguing that sexual differences are performative, as opposed to manifestations of sexual dimorphism. "Let the erasure of gender begin!!!" Sometimes ideological commitment leads to magical thinking. Magical thinking is usually expensive. All that said,there's a "market" for this kind of emoji.
ReplyDeleteIt's all just for levity, like most emoji's. Guarantee you that 99.9% of the time it is used, it will be in gest.
ReplyDeleteBut's cool.
I'll join you in the risk of being insensitive. MEN DO NOT HAVE BABIES. Period. That's not meant degrade anyone or the such. We know that it is a SCIENTIFIC FACT that human men do have children.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, am not going to join in the insanity just because someone who is biologically A wants to be B. Why should I lie and say, "Well, she was born John Wilson"? No. HE was born John Wilson. HE later identified as female. So far, so good. But he is NOT a female.
I will act with as much respect as possible. I would not purposely hurt someone's feelings. But neither am I going to go against commonsense, science, and truth.
Agreed AaronS, if someone wants to choose a different haircut and wardrobe it doesn't affect me, it's none of my business, knock yourself out.
ReplyDeleteHowever, don't ever tell me what to think, or what I must say, as that's a nonstarter.
Both emoji represent pregnant people. It's that simple.
ReplyDeleteIf we can take gender out of the pregnancy equation, why not age? How about a pregnant six year old boy emoji? Or a pregnant 90 year old man? Other species? How about a pregnant stallion or bull emoji? What about plants? Could a saguaro cactus be swollen with child? While we're at it, inanimate objects? A pregnant parking space with a baby bump? And yes to cars getting pregnant. And I don't care if it's a male F-250 or a female Prius, as long as there's free offspring and we never have to visit another dealer.
ReplyDeleteAn important thing to remember in group responses to questions like this is that, independent of the shrill fear and anger, people are already living their lives. Whether one understands or refuses to understand that gender and biological sex are not the same thing, the decision is made on an indiviaudal level. No matter how many exclamation points one types, no matter how red-faced one gets, there are pregnant dads out there.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me a lot about how I used to hear things like "there's no such thing as gay marriage" while I was growing up, but not only did I get married but I also just went to my son's wedding this past weekend. THere are emojis for both of those situations, too.
I think you mean there are people who dress like men and identify as male but remain biologically female, who are pregnant. So an emoji of a pregnant female in men's clothing makes sense. But, an emoji of a pregnant man is unicorn territory. Of course there are unicorn emojis, so there is consistency. As to "gay marriage": for this there is evidence.
DeleteKind of disappointed to see this degree of fear-mongering, slippery-sloping and generally bigoted discourse here. So you like your gender and your sex parts. Congratulations. If someone else's threatens a person, then that seems like it's more of a "you problem," and maybe that person needs to figure out how they're going to survive all the horrible oppression they're experiencing. Nobody's forcing anyone to question their own gender. Nobody's forcing anyone to marry someone of a gender they don't want to marry. People want to be respected, and in the absence of better arguments than "boys are boys and girls are girls," maybe it's best to start with respect and suspend the bigotry. There are bigger problems in the world than an emoji which is ambiguously gendered and ambiguously pregnant.
ReplyDeleteI don't see "fear." I think it's a question of suspension of disbelief in the context of biological realities. To refuse to suspend disbelief is also a "right."
DeleteAnd, is it possible that an ideologically driven erasure of cultural validation for sexual dimorphism, might hold its own tyranny? That is, at what point are gender differences, for those who insist they exist, worth validating on behalf of the many who must sort out life, confined to heterosexual bodies, due to the "interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences."
Granted, the wider culture validates human sexual dimorphism in innumerable ways. But then, nature, as I observe it, validates sexual dimorphism right down to the very existence of species. Is this an "appeal to nature" argument? Perhaps. But, I think at some point, there will be resistance to over-reach, where ideology challenges biology and I think that's healthy.
I don't think I'm bigoted with respect to people with various sexual orientations--orientations I've defended my entire adult life. I do see myself as a nature-based thinker--also my entire life. I have more reverence for biology than I do for ideology.
And, in my little world, the dominant oppression I see is very much rooted in destitution/poverty, irrespective of race, gender or sexual orientation. (Specifically in the arena of the brutalized chronically homeless in California, who come in all races, genders and sexual orientations.)
In sum, a pregnant female who dresses like a man and and claims to be a man is free to do so. If this pregnant female claims to be a father, this is also their right. It is also my right to claim that the word "father" has a dictionary and biological meaning. And that you can only stretch the meaning of words so far before they become meaningless. And that maybe that's not how you fight oppression.
Thank you Benjamin and Jeff for some positivity in this thread. While commenters like Crowboy and Aaron S may talk about different things in their posts, what's clear is that they are really, really angry about people who are living their lives differently to them. Much like gay marriage, how does the existence of trans guys having babies make your life worse in any way?
ReplyDeleteAlso, while there is certainly not an agreement among scientists, there are plenty of biologists who do not think that binary gender is a "scientific fact": https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/feb/19/nature-sex-redefined-we-have-never-been-binary
And I am going to guess that all of them are more qualified to comment on this than the angry commenters.
And also Crowboy hasn't been keeping up with current affairs. There have been successful IVF pregnancies in cis women over 70. There have also been successful pregnancies in cis women with a uterus transplanted from someone else (eg https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31766-5/fulltext ). While I am not aware of any pregnancies in people assigned male at birth who have had a transplanted uterus, and especially not men in their 90s, with current medical technology a 90 year old cis man could get pregnant.
I find it interesting when the emotional state of the interlocutor becomes the subject. Here are some things I'm angry about: the anthropogenic destruction of the biosphere, the horrific way we exploit 30 billion domestic/food animals, the way we treat the homeless in my f-ed up city. So, yeah I'm angry. But, there is nothing in my presentation suggesting I'm angry about said emoji. My rhetoric contains not one expression of anger. So, the "argument" is an ad hominem gambit: If I disagree, I must be defined by "fear" or "anger." No points in a debate. But, this routinely passes for argumentation on Facebook.
DeleteTo take a step back from all of the gender-related commentary--
ReplyDeleteI might have used one to apply to my husband both during my pregnancy and during the post-partum period. I was fine during that whole time, but both impending and early fatherhood hit him hard. The only thing is that the way it affected him was too serious for an emoji. I still think he met most of the definition for post-partum depression, just without having been pregnant to begin with.
In an African tribal setting, men have a men's culture and there are ways men can experience all such things (in this case, a new life born into the world) as men. In our culture, men have football and guns and trucks.
DeleteI suppose I should add "pearl-clutching" as well, since we're running the risk of destroying the English language and ripping apart the fabric of reality. Biological functions are just that. A number of animals express sex functions as a response to environmental factors. Human beings are frequently born intersex, and we know that incalculable harm has been done to children by assigning them a gender based on whatever of their parts seem to make the most sense - and then performing surgery on them so that the rest of us can be comfortable with their presentation. Humans are typically conceived with specific chromosomal combinations, but even those combinations are not a constant, and any number of conditions involve added or missing components relative to the modal state. Biological realities have no bearing on the fact that becoming upset about someone identifying and behaving as a man while pregnant is not about language or sexual dimorphism. It's about behavior that makes some of us uncomfortable, yet harms no one. Further, semantic arguments are moot not only considering the fluid nature of the English language (a theme explored on this blog I might add) but also because a number of world languages do not employ gendered pronouns in the same way. A number of cultures recognize and embrace behavioral/sexual difference. I think it's worth examining what's really making us uncomfortable in these situations. It wasn't that long ago that we were dividing people up by the bumps on their heads, and the Catholics we're refusing communion to people with Celiac because God demands gluten. We're not going to lose function as a culture based on this. If anything, we're going to lose function based on the ambiguity of emoji in general, and the resulting declining capacity to communicate emotion without them. I have no research to back up that last claim. There is plenty for the rest.
ReplyDeleteI AM a nervous sort. It's good I don't literally wear pearls.
DeleteAs to your point about intersex being "frequent": https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
I think I heard the word "bigot" a bit ago?: As someone with many generations of Catholic ancestors,I'm deeply offended by your gluten comment. (Well, I'm trying to be offended.)
This has turned into a surprisingly long, informative, fairly intense, and reasonably civil discussion mostly about sex and gender, but I'm still unclear as to why one would use it, to whom would one append these various emojis (not just the pregnant male).
ReplyDeleteIf my personal interests include photographing butterflies, playing golf, gardening, language, and the Minnesota Gophers and I send an old friend a yearly birthday greeting, would I append pix of butterflies and golf balls, and sports logos etc at the end??
Should I email someone to say "I drove [emoji car] to the University [emoji building] today in a bad snowstorm [emoji snowflake] for a xray [emohi CXR] and the result was good [emojis smiley face, confetti]. It adds nothing that's not already known or implied. I would feel like I was creating a rebus, not sending a message.
I seem to be out of the loop with regard to this development. :-)
I'm about half your age, so I might not be the best representative of "young" people, but among my peers emojis are rarely used as a literal replacement of written words, but rather to add some sort of flavor/excitement/ornamentation to a message. So it's more like "I'm going to the beach today! [seven identical emojis of palm trees, perhaps followed by three cocktail emojis and four beach ball emojis]".
DeleteThanx, Drabkikker. That viewpoint would make an emoji more of a decoration than a communication item. Unlike say a bumper sticker on a car, which declares to the world "this is who I am/what I believe."
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji
DeleteTwo subjects: The emoji as graphic confetti and the emoji as embedded with anthropological significance--99.9% being the former. As to the latter, I find the "pregnant man" emoji an interesting artifact. Especially in a time of collapse, precipitated by a species with an increasingly "autistic" relationship with the natural world. On the other hand, it could all be seen as amusing. Existential absurdity. Playfulness. As always, a matter of struggle or surrender. Both are valid in their time and place and I won't claim to have the wisdom to know the when and the where. https://emojipedia.org/emoji/%E2%98%AF%EF%B8%8F/
DeleteEver read the book 'Because Internet'? Linguist looks at how English has changed with the advent of the internet. The chapter on emojis (and how they evolved from emoticons and kaimoji) suggests that they are gestures, adding the context that text otherwise lacks.
Delete"See you later :P" is playful, while just a naked "See you later" is aggressively neutral.
Maia, I've not read that book, but I would accept the thesis, because English seems to change with everything. I'm fascinated by the process and enjoy seeing new permutations of the language - including "aggressively neutral." :-)
Delete