Apple recently started rolling out an iOS 15.4 beta software update for iPhone developers and testers that introduced some new features, including a pregnant man emoji. The company’s decision to include the emoji comes after these emojis were revealed by the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit body that regulates how these emojis appear online. The industry body also releases new emojis each year that Android and iOS smartphones include with the latest software updates. It appears the inclusion of the pregnant man emoji has stirred controversy as Republican leaders and right-wing commentators indirectly deem it unnatural.
Why did Unicode include the pregnant man emoji in the first place?
Unicode released 37 new emoji codes back in September 2021 as a part of the Unicode 14.0 database. It included emojis like “melting face,” “biting lip”, “troll”, “beans”, “pouring liquid”, “pregnant man”, and “pregnant person.” The pregnant man and gender-neutral pregnant emojis were included to boost efforts to make “gender options consistent” for all emojis, Emojipedia – an emoji reference and tracking website. The website quoting a senior Emoji Lexicographer Jane Solomon notes, “The new pregnancy options may be used for representation by trans men, non-binary people, or women with short hair… People of any gender can be pregnant too. Now there are emojis to represent this.
What are people saying online?
Following the update, Sean Spicer, who served as White House Press Secretary to Donald Trump and the current host of right-wing Newsmax network, mocked Apple’s decision. In a tweet, he said, “In college I satisfied the science requirement by taking geology — now I see what I missed — those biology classes would have helped explain the new pregnant man emoji.”
