Google Tackles Discrimination with Gender-Neutral Emojis in Android P Beta 2

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Google has begun the rollout of Android P Beta 2 update which, among Adaptive battery and App Actions, also brings 157 new emojis such as a superhero, lama, hot/ cold face, etc. and some aesthetic changes to a few old ones. However, a notable change introduced by the latest update is gender-neutral emojis.

The ‘family’ emoji now represents a gender-ambiguous pair of parents, while a ‘couple with heart’ emoji shows a pair of gender-neutral individuals. However, there is also an option to select the specific combination of genders for any of the two emojis. For example, you can choose an emoji of a heterosexual or gay or lesbian couple by specifying the gender.

Google Tackles Discrimination with Gender-Neutral Emojis in Android P Beta 2

These emojis are not new, as they are already present in the Unicode Standard. The only change is that Google is now taking a different approach as part of which, a gender-neutral or gender-inclusive emoji will be presented as a result, if the gender of the members in a family or couple is not specified.

Google Tackles Discrimination with Gender-Neutral Emojis in Android P Beta 2

In previous builds of Android, searching for a ‘family’ emoji would always present an emoji consisting of a man and a woman, which was outdated for modern times.

The same happens in case of a ‘couple with heart’ emoji query, which shows a heterosexual couple by default. The ‘family’ and ‘couple with heart’ are the only emojis that adopt the non-binary approach of depicting a gender-neutral emoji.

As per an official Emojipedia blog post, ‘While this update is not a return to gender neutral blobs, it does recognize that a choice of Woman-Man, Man-Man, or Woman-Woman couples may not be a good fit for people who don’t identify as either gender’. The changes are now live for users running the Android P Beta 2 build, and will be rolled out on a wider scale when it is released publicly later in July or August this year.

SOURCE Emojipedia
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