potential gender-neutralization on Gitmoji

[mahtabmotlagh]

Discussion

I realize it's been discussed in #1223 but I thought I bring it up as well. both for 💄 and also 👔 . There must be icons that are objective and cannot be tied to gender. While I believe a female person can wear a necktie and a male person can wear liptick if they choose to, the icons could 'advertize' a different view to what a styling or a logic is and make it subjective.

The workaround of teams using their own makes sense. but if developers have outsourced this 'resource' they won't spend time modify it.

Validations

• [X] Follow our Code of Conduct
• [X] Read the Contributing Guide.
• [X] Check that there isn't already an issue requesting the same feature.

[julealgon]

The icons do not represent people, they represent intent in commits. The fact that some images might be related to woman or men in real life is completely irrelevant.

Strongly disagree with this and would love for identity politics to not be tied to such a technical, objective library/extension.

[mahtabmotlagh]

sure. but choices that are closely associated to people i.e. mostly used by a certain group, could imply that those intents usually come from those groups. I live in a country that a business person can wear t-shirts and sneakers at work if they want to. so association of tie to a business logic is outdated on few levels.

[julealgon]

I live in a country that a business person can wear t-shirts and sneakers at work if they want to. so association of tie to a business logic is outdated on few levels.

It really isn't. The fact that, yes, dress codes and strictness overall is changing/getting relaxed over time doesn't mean there isn't a very strong association between suits/ties and business. To propose the contrary based on a localized, minority perception is just disingenuous IMHO. Even if you live in a place where zero business employees wear ties/formal wear, the association is still immediate an obvious even to those people.

[mahtabmotlagh]

I'm not really following your arguments sorry. I'm simply saying a shirt and a tie at the immediate glance is perceived a male thing. whereas logic or business logic in reality is not restricted to male resources. I have same angle to lipstick. it's a female thing. and styling is not an intent or action restricted to female resources.

[julealgon]

I'm not really following your arguments sorry. I'm simply saying a shirt and a tie at the immediate glance is perceived a male thing. whereas logic or business logic in reality is not restricted to male resources. I have same angle to lipstick. it's a female thing. and styling is not an intent or action restricted to female resources.

It does not matter at all if its a male or a female thing. They are still associated with "business" and "style" all the same respectively, and are absolutely great at that.

The fact that "business logic in reality is not restricted to male resources", for instance, is utterly irrelevant here.

[mahtabmotlagh]

I guess this is where we don't agree "It does not matter at all if its a male or a female thing."

[connorjs]

First, @mahtabmotlagh - have you seen/heard real concern for 👔 and 💄? I hear your concern, but also am interested to know if there's impact behind it.

Second, Some historical issues for business logic that I saw.

• 230 came first it seems, but 🧠 (:brain:) was not widespread yet, although it did mention 💼 (:briefcase:)

• 723 introduced it

Therefore, related question: What is the stance on having alternative emojis? Such as 💼 OR 👔 to express business logic?

• This widens the learning curve maybe,
• But seems like a natural way to evolve

Note: I periodically check on gitmoji (I love this thing), so treat this as "I commented while here" rather than intentionally coming for this conversation.

[mahtabmotlagh]

@connorjs I don't have statistics behind my point, if that's what you are asking for. but I'm confident that those two icons are associated to genders. Based on observation, more women wear lipstick and more men wear neckties. I also have heard it a lot that men are more rational than women, and women are more emotional than men. The concern would be generalizing this, even with little details in our days. and I also believe things don't have to grow to a concern before we rethink them. We can be proactive and creative. I'm not worried that use of these emojis are gonna make the world a worse place, and changing them is not gonna make the world better. it's just a detail which can follow a change that's been happening in bigger picture of life. :)

I'm reading #230 and I don't get what happened to briefcase emoji? that would have been a good alternative.

[connorjs]

@julealgon - Was the 👎 on my comment to a specific part, or all of it?

I guess I’ll re-ask my main question: What is the stance on having alternative emojis? (two emojis for the same thing)

[julealgon]

@julealgon - Was the 👎 on my comment to a specific part, or all of it?

It was in regards to your question.

I guess I’ll re-ask my main question: What is the stance on having alternative emojis? (two emojis for the same thing)

I find it highly redundant, confusing and unnecessary. It would suddenly force me to have to parse multiple icons to have the same meaning when looking at commit lists and I think the added overhead is uncalled for and goes against the purpose of this effort to begin with (improve readability/make associations faster).

As mentioned earlier, I'd rather we keep politics, social justice and wokeism out of this repository. I consider anyone who is offended or triggered in any way by a blue suit emoji or a lipstick emoji in any context as someone in need of specialized medical assistance.

[connorjs]

That’s valid reasoning for no duplicates. Thanks for clarifying.

No comment on the last paragraph.

Cheers all

[cruzdanilo]

I consider anyone who is offended or triggered in any way by a blue suit emoji or a lipstick emoji in any context as someone in need of specialized medical assistance.

i don't think this kind of comment should be allowed by the contributing guidelines.

[julealgon]

I consider anyone who is offended or triggered in any way by a blue suit emoji or a lipstick emoji in any context as someone in need of specialized medical assistance.

i don't think this kind of comment should be allowed by the contributing guidelines.

And I totally respect your right to have that opinion. I disagree with it though since I don't believe I've made any disrespectful remarks but just stated what I consider to be a fact. If such an innocuous image causes anyone any significant discomfort, I'd immediately recommend that person to seek at the very least a psychologist to understand what is happening. It's definitely not healthy behavior.

[carloscuesta]

Hey!

I left this open to hear what the community thinks about this but the conversation got a bit out of control. I honestly think that the author of the issue has a valid point, even if you don't share the vision and opinion of it.

Sometimes it's hard to understand that because we all come from different cultures, backgrounds and personal situations but this is not an excuse to make a disrespectful comment to someone that raised a valid opinion with a different point of view.

@julealgon as per our code of conduct I'll block you from interacting within this repository.

I'm sorry to see that this got a bit out of control, please let's keep the healthy discussion we were having here as many valid opinions were raised 🙏🏼

[carloscuesta]

First, @mahtabmotlagh - have you seen/heard real concern for 👔 and 💄? I hear your concern, but also am interested to know if there's impact behind it.

Second, Some historical issues for business logic that I saw.

• Add 🧠 for logic/bussines rules changes #230 came first it seems, but 🧠 (:brain:) was not widespread yet, although it did mention 💼 (:briefcase:)
• 👔 for Business Logic #723 introduced it

Therefore, related question: What is the stance on having alternative emojis? Such as 💼 OR 👔 to express business logic?

• This widens the learning curve maybe,
• But seems like a natural way to evolve

Note: I periodically check on gitmoji (I love this thing), so treat this as "I commented while here" rather than intentionally coming for this conversation.

I think this is a great point of view!

I'm not a big fan of changing emojis once they're added as I previously mentioned on different issues, however the possibility is always there we can release a major version and change it.

Therefore, related question: What is the stance on having alternative emojis? Such as 💼 OR 👔 to express business logic?

Answering this, I would prefer changing the emoji rather than having alternate versions for the same one, just to keep it simple.

I think that using 🧠 now for business logic would be feasible as it should be supported almost everywhere and we can also find an alternative for the 💄, my question is, should we add this breaking change to the convention? 🤔

cc @johannchopin @vhoyer I would like to hear your thoughts on this as well if you have the time! 😊

[mahtabmotlagh]

Thanks for bringing the conversation back to the topic @carloscuesta .

The fact that some of us may hold on to an idea so tightly about something like emojis to the extent that we discard sanity of a different opinion about it; seems to make the topic even more relevant.

I also don't think having two items for one purpose is efficient.

Carlos what do you mean by "breaking change"?

[johannchopin]

Hey all 👋 it's indeed an interesting topic.

For me this kind of discussion raises 2 main questions:

1. Why should we do it?
2. What would be the impacts?

I will start by answering the second question.

What would be the impacts?

Replacing these gitmojis will induce a breaking change because the convention will not be the same anymore and some tools using this convention will be forced to migrate to handle the new emojis. As this convention is very popular in the developer community it is necessary to avoid breaking changes as much as possible.

Why should we do it?

The purpose of gitmojis is to provide a quickly identifiable visual of a concept. Thus the modification of style file allowing to embellish an interface is illustrated by a lipstick 💄 being generally recognized as a utensil allowing to embellish a face. The same goes for the concept of business logic illustrated by a tie 👔 symbolizing an executive's regulatory outfit. In these two cases I don't see a link with a particular genre because both can be applied to both.

In my opinion it is even more disturbing to modify them due to their potential link with a genre because it will come down to defining that there is a given genre for both.

So thanks a lot @mahtabmotlagh for this though but @carloscuesta I would not recommend doing the change on those two gitmojis.

[connorjs]

Quick comment: We may not end up with a breaking change for this specific case, but maybe we open a "staging" issue where we track potential changes if a breaking change did come (batch then together).

Potentially, we would want to limit comments on that tracking/staging issue and have it serve as a central place to see things, but individual issues hold their own discussions (like this one).

[vhoyer]

What would be the impacts?

Also it's important to consider that it is a breaking change of meaning behind the emoji, consider the case where this emoji has already been out there for awhile, and whenever someone might be scrolling through a list of emojis and find a deprecated emoji, it might lead to someone going to the gitmoji.dev website only to not find the old emoji, which in my opinion is something we want to avoid as much as possible.

That said we already have cases where we did break the convention for example when we decided not to support technology specific emojis so the idea is not totally of the table, only on e that we wish to avoid.

[vhoyer]

Quick comment: We may not end up with a breaking change for this specific case, but maybe we open a "staging" issue where we track potential changes if a breaking change did come (batch then together).

Potentially, we would want to limit comments on that tracking/staging issue and have it serve as a central place to see things, but individual issues hold their own discussions (like this one).

thinking of ways to mitigate the problems with breaking changes, if we are gonna do it, is to have them batched together, but also maybe we could have a different section on the website to have the old emojis listed, just as a way to not lose history and not force the users to search the gitmoji repository directly. But I'd let further discussions of how to handle breaking changes in a different issue only when we decide to have another breaking change as there are lots of aspects to discuss about it like, frequency of major releases and what not.

[vhoyer]

I'd like to preface my comment with a commentary that I personally don't think those items should be tied to any gender, and I have friends who identify as women that wear neckties, and friends who identify as men that use makeup, granted they are the minority.

Now considering the main point of the issue, I don't feel particularly well suited for discussing this as in my position of a white cis hetero man, hence I'm coming from the privileged position, still I feel I must contribute more concretely to this discussion given my position, so I recognize there is a problem of the common view of those itens as gender specific, and would like here to point out some things:

I specially think that the lipstick emoji represents the visual change of something, which is the intent behind the commit, so well that it is difficult to find another emoji well suited to it, besides maybe :nail_care: which is kinda better because I know a lot more guys who use nail polish then ones who use lipsticks but it has the same problem to be generally tied to a gender.

In my opinion it is even more disturbing to modify them due to their potential link with a genre because it will come down to defining that there is a given genre for both.

I don't agree with this statement from @johannchopin, as I don't think we changing the emojis is the same as defining there is a given genre for the items those emojis represent. I also feel it's deeper than that, there is nuance to the topic. I think we would be hearing the community; we should consider the change not because there is a clear connection to gender in those items, but because there are people fighting the stigma that having a gender comes with, if there are people that don't feel well because of an emoji of all things, why not change it, you know?

Borrowing a expression I've heard from friends of mine in the black community: "It isn't enough not to be racist, we must be anti-racist", and because of this sentiment, despite my wishes not to introduce this kind of breaking change, I'm more inclined to suggesting we change the emojis (to alternatives we still need to find).

And as a plan to mitigate future problems, regardless of how we decide to go about :necktie: and :lipstick:, more than trying to be extra aware of those kind of concerns I wish to ask for your help, @mahtabmotlagh, to watch the repository for suggestions of future emojis and lend your point of view in an attempt to prevent potential new cases of the same issue.

Anyway, this is my opinion, but I think the final decision should be yours, @carloscuesta (sorry not to be more helpful :sweat_smile:)

[carloscuesta]

Hey!

Thanks for all the feedback. Raising an open question here: If we consider changing the emojis, what would be the alternative for 💄 and 👔 ?

[connorjs]

For business logic

1. 🧠 (:brain:) - preferred
2. 💼 (:briefcase:)

[connorjs]

For UI and style files... less certain as shown in this thread. Some thoughts follow (ordered alphabetically by short code).

Emoji	Short code	Reason	Link
🌼	:blossom:	Flowers* convey beauty	Emojipedia
🦋	:butterfly:	Conveys the idea of pretty, beautiful, good looking. Can also suggest "transforming" the UI into something nicer.	Emojipedia
🖼️	:framed_picture:	Conveys art and style (🎨 already taken)	Emojipedia
💄	:lipstick:	Current	Emojipedia
💅🏻	:nail_care:	See vhoyer’s comment	Emojipedia
🧣	:scarf:	Gender-neutral (sometimes-)stylish accessory	Emojipedia

*Various flower emoji exist, but blossom had the easiest short code imo and exists on GitHub (ex: 🪷 (:lotus:) may be nicer, but is newer). See Emojipedia flower search

From this list, I would vote for 🖼️, 🦋, and 🌼 as my top 3 (in that order).

[vhoyer]

In regards to the UI/style files I think I would prefer to replace:

:art: with :broom: (see https://github.com/carloscuesta/gitmoji/issues/1169); and :lipstick: with :art:

[johannchopin]

:lipstick: with :art:

Please please don't introduce such breaking changes.

[cruzdanilo]

please, don't change the current 🎨 to 🧹, it completely changes the semantics of the original emoji. the current description is "improve structure/format of the code", and it's not about cleaning.

[mahtabmotlagh]

looking at the comments that were marked as outdated, I understand that the idea is to find an emoji that's not used for other purposes? if that's the case, what are the options? for business logic I agree with conorjs suggestions. for styling, I also thought pallet emoji would be good but it's used for something else.

[vhoyer]

well, @connorjs proposed some options, but really, we could choose from all the available emojis (as long as they are available in github, gitlab, and bitbucket), do you have any in mind @mahtabmotlagh ?

https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html

[mahtabmotlagh]

I don't what would be a breaking change. so I'd also say 🎨or paintbrush for styling could be good ones.

[vhoyer]

breaking change would be changing an emoji that already exists or changing the meaning of an emoji such as that the previous definition don't fit within the new definition anymore.

Using the :art: is a no go because we are already using it in another gitmoji.

so, we add one more option to consider that is :paintbrush:

[carloscuesta]

I don't what would be a breaking change. so I'd also say 🎨or paintbrush for styling could be good ones.

Sure let me explain:

So back when we released Gitmoji we had an initial set of emojis defined for every type of commit.

The list kept growing overtime as soon as people suggested new additions and so on.

From the moment an emoji is introduced and people starts using it on commits if we ever change the meaning of the gitmoji, looking back at those commits can be confusing as they used to have a meaning that it's not there anymore.

I believe that 💄 was introduced in the very first release so that's what we consider "breaking change" and why we put so much thought when it comes to adding and changing emojis that are already there.

That's why we suggest (and I did) when people is not happy about a specific emoji, to "own" their convention based on gitmoji and use their preferred list of emojis, given that it can be very hard to define a list that works for every use-case.

[mahtabmotlagh]

🖌️ looks like a good alternative.

[Tydax]

Hey all 👋 it's indeed an interesting topic.

For me this kind of discussion raises 2 main questions:

1. Why should we do it?
2. What would be the impacts?

I will start by answering the second question.

What would be the impacts?

Replacing these gitmojis will induce a breaking change because the convention will not be the same anymore and some tools using this convention will be forced to migrate to handle the new emojis. As this convention is very popular in the developer community it is necessary to avoid breaking changes as much as possible.

Why should we do it?

The purpose of gitmojis is to provide a quickly identifiable visual of a concept. Thus the modification of style file allowing to embellish an interface is illustrated by a lipstick 💄 being generally recognized as a utensil allowing to embellish a face. The same goes for the concept of business logic illustrated by a tie 👔 symbolizing an executive's regulatory outfit. In these two cases I don't see a link with a particular genre because both can be applied to both.

In my opinion it is even more disturbing to modify them due to their potential link with a genre because it will come down to defining that there is a given genre for both.

So thanks a lot @mahtabmotlagh for this though but @carloscuesta I would not recommend doing the change on those two gitmojis.

I would agree with this. While I am conscious that one cannot abstract our point of view completely from society, I like to think that this project manages to use symbols that manage to do that at the very least when it comes to gender stereotypes. I worry this may complicate symbolism if we need to take into account typical gender associations when choosing emojis. A lipstick 💄 is associated with looks and colours, so that is why it is associated with interface styling (looks, and colours). I personally do not see any ties to gender and its stereotypes.

I can see it more fairly with “logic” being associated with a traditionally masculine piece of clothing could be problematic (which it could also be when it comes to other cultures where a tie does not necessarily represent “business”, “logic”, or “work”, so potentially the briefcase 💼 could be a good replacement. However, as I mentioned, abstracting symbolism from current society stereotypes is very difficult in my opinion, so I am not sure how much of this is achievable.

[advaithasabnis]

In my opinion it is even more disturbing to modify them due to their potential link with a genre because it will come down to defining that there is a given genre for both.

However, as I mentioned, abstracting symbolism from current society stereotypes is very difficult in my opinion, so I am not sure how much of this is achievable.

I would agree with this. What if 3 years in the future, the briefcase 💼 is mostly used by a specific gender or a specific age group. What if lipsticks fall out of fashion and almost no one uses them 10 years down the line. That generation of programmers won't relate the lipstick 💄 to visual changes or looks and colours like most did when it was added. I think it is a good idea to ask the community and see what most makes sense when adding an emoji but I'm not a big fan of changing emojis once they're added.

[mahtabmotlagh]

well I guess then it comes down to a stand gitmoji needs to take. Are these symbols to illustrate current "concepts" or they are to challenge stereotypes and biases. Either way, world is changing constantly and swiftly. so then the next question is how flexible the implementations are or can be, to adapt to these societal changes.

[carloscuesta]

well I guess then it comes down to a stand gitmoji needs to take. Are these symbols to illustrate current "concepts" or they are to challenge stereotypes and biases. Either way, world is changing constantly and swiftly. so then the next question is how flexible the implementations are or can be, to adapt to these societal changes.

Hey! I'm not sure if I understood this comment properly, specifically this part:

it comes down to a stand gitmoji needs to take. Are these symbols to illustrate current "concepts" or they are to challenge stereotypes and biases.

Gitmoji is an emoji guide for git commit messages, aims to be a "standardisation" cheatsheet where people can refer to when using emojis on commits.

We don't represent the way people uses a specific emoji nor the different "meanings" behind it.

[carloscuesta]

I would agree with this. While I am conscious that one cannot abstract our point of view completely from society, I like to think that this project manages to use symbols that manage to do that at the very least when it comes to gender stereotypes. I worry this may complicate symbolism if we need to take into account typical gender associations when choosing emojis. A lipstick 💄 is associated with looks and colours, so that is why it is associated with interface styling (looks, and colours). I personally do not see any ties to gender and its stereotypes. I can see it more fairly with “logic” being associated with a traditionally masculine piece of clothing could be problematic (which it could also be when it comes to other cultures where a tie does not necessarily represent “business”, “logic”, or “work”, so potentially the briefcase 💼 could be a good replacement. However, as I mentioned, abstracting symbolism from current society stereotypes is very difficult in my opinion, so I am not sure how much of this is achievable.

I agree with this point of view, perhaps what we can do to minimise the impact on changes is to switch from 👔 -> 🧠 ?

I would agree with this. What if 3 years in the future, the briefcase 💼 is mostly used by a specific gender or a specific age group. What if lipsticks fall out of fashion and almost no one uses them 10 years down the line. That generation of programmers won't relate the lipstick 💄 to visual changes or looks and colours like most did when it was added. I think it is a good idea to ask the community and see what most makes sense when adding an emoji but I'm not a big fan of changing emojis once they're added.

This is also a potential problem, we can't control the way emojis will change in the future so the best we can do is try to filter the suggestions as much as possible and be careful when adding new symbols 🙏🏼

[mahtabmotlagh]

well I guess then it comes down to a stand gitmoji needs to take. Are these symbols to illustrate current "concepts" or they are to challenge stereotypes and biases. Either way, world is changing constantly and swiftly. so then the next question is how flexible the implementations are or can be, to adapt to these societal changes.

Hey! I'm not sure if I understood this comment properly, specifically this part:

it comes down to a stand gitmoji needs to take. Are these symbols to illustrate current "concepts" or they are to challenge stereotypes and biases.

Gitmoji is an emoji guide for git commit messages, aims to be a "standardisation" cheatsheet where people can refer to when using emojis on commits.

We don't represent the way people uses a specific emoji nor the different "meanings" behind it.

@carloscuesta I honestly don't know exactly how this fits into developers' daily work. When I asked my developer colleague about the lipstick emoji for styling, he said he didn't choose it and he has used gitmoji which is why I wrote to you in the first place. If an icon is labelled for example as business logic, it's natural that it's used for business logic type of releases. That to me is a "stand". does it make sense?

[iriki]

Identity politics and cultural marxism should not belong in any part of society and must be buried forever inside the School of Frankfurt where it should have never left.

[xunleii]

Hey all wave it's indeed an interesting topic.

For me this kind of discussion raises 2 main questions:

1. Why should we do it?

2. What would be the impacts?

I will start by answering the second question.

What would be the impacts?

Replacing these gitmojis will induce a breaking change because the convention will not be the same anymore and some tools using this convention will be forced to migrate to handle the new emojis. As this convention is very popular in the developer community it is necessary to avoid breaking changes as much as possible.

Why should we do it?

The purpose of gitmojis is to provide a quickly identifiable visual of a concept. Thus the modification of style file allowing to embellish an interface is illustrated by a lipstick lipstick being generally recognized as a utensil allowing to embellish a face. The same goes for the concept of business logic illustrated by a tie necktie symbolizing an executive's regulatory outfit. In these two cases I don't see a link with a particular genre because both can be applied to both.

In my opinion it is even more disturbing to modify them due to their potential link with a genre because it will come down to defining that there is a given genre for both.

So thanks a lot @mahtabmotlagh for this though but @carloscuesta I would not recommend doing the change on those two gitmojis.

I strongly agree with this too. For me Gitmoji is currently the standard for at least last 2 years and making this kind of changes would impact the comprehension of many projects' history. I think we should keep in mind that we are not talking about a programming language or an API implementation that can be "easily" modified, but rather about something that leaves a permanent record in a project history (history that should not be modified).

On the other hand, I can understand that some emojis are less obvious for certain cultures than for others. Personally, I don't really get the meaning behind :bento:, :card_file_box:, :clown_face: or :thread:. However, the website and the documentation around Gitmoji are really well done and it takes me less than 10s to find what an emoji means.

well I guess then it comes down to a stand gitmoji needs to take. Are these symbols to illustrate current "concepts" or they are to challenge stereotypes and biases. Either way, world is changing constantly and swiftly. so then the next question is how flexible the implementations are or can be, to adapt to these societal changes.

I agree that the world is constantly changing, and that's why standards are important to me: to provide a "global" and "shared" way of defining something. As @carloscuesta said, Gitmoji aims to be a "standardisation" cheatsheet where people can refer to when using emojis on commits, not to represent the way people uses a specific emoji nor the different "meanings" behind it. I think we should consider emojis as semantic items that could be replaced by anything (word, number, ...) rather than as symbols referring to concepts that go out of Gitmoji's context.

That is why I also suggest not to change :lipstick: and :necktie:. For me, this would open the door to many other changes according to the sensitivity of each, making this standard unusable for long term projects. As @carloscuesta, I think that if we really don't like the current Gitmoji choices then we should just define our own cheatsheet.

Thanks @mahtabmotlagh for this topic, it is interesting to see how other people interpret emojis, but I agree with @johannchopin and I would not recommend doing any changes.

[carloscuesta]

Hey!

Thanks for all of your inputs!

After reading the whole thread a few times, I think we should maintain the convention as is!

Thanks for all the inputs here, I really appreciate them ❤️ and also to @mahtabmotlagh for raising the issue 🙏🏼