English Research Paper

When a Merperson is a Merman

Emoji 2019 - Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media |

Abstract

Currently, to support gender inclusive codepoints (for example, gender inclusive can be defined as male/female to an equal degree, can neither be confidently identified as male/female, etc.) all major platforms default to a male or a female design. So, if someone were to send a text to their friend from a Microsoft device, “Love a good mansplain 1F925” their friend, if reading from an iPhone will see, “Love a good mansplain 1F926” even though both of these emojis map to U+1F926. This creates all kinds of cross platform inconsistencies and in some cases reinforces stereotypes.