Some social media critics were not pleased with these progressive emoticons.
The Apple emoji factory ruffled feathers online after churning out a new batch of emoticons for the new iOS 15.4, which includes a graphic of a pregnant man.
The most divisive addition seemed to be three new, gender-bending emojis: a pregnant man, a gender-neutral pregnant person and one bearing a crown. The move is part of the emoji maker’s continued efforts to make digital discourse more inclusive by rolling out nonbinary emoticons, among other smileys.
“Among the 838 new characters in #Unicode14 are 37 new #emoji, along with new emoji sequences, that are expected to show up [on platforms] sometime next year,” Unicode Consortium, the company responsible for creating new emojis, teased on Twitter last September.
However, the latest progressive emojis didn’t sit well with many on Twitter, who accused the cartoon symbol creators of going too far.
“How a man can be pregnant are insane?” tweeted one detractor, while another wrote “Tell me it isn’t so that they are making a pregnant man emoji with this new update… we have failed as a civilization.”
“The new pregnant man emoji was submitted by the twitter gay porn mafia i just know it,” scoffed another.
Reps for Apple did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
According to Emojipedia, this new lineup of expressive symbols will include a melting face, face with peeking eye, a face with a diagonal mouth, a dotted line face and a naughty lip-biting depiction, which creators have described as ideal for expressing “flirtation or arousal,” per the Sun. Also available are seven brand-new hand gestures and 25 multiracial handshake symbols, which span the color spectrum from white to black and many pigments in between.
The new operating system is still in the beta stage; however, the final version will feature a whopping 37 emojis, MacRumors reported Thursday.
Emojis aren’t the only noteworthy features on the IOS 15.4. The beta also comes with the ability to use Face ID while wearing a mask by recognizing “the unique features around the eye area to authenticate.”
These updates will reportedly be available to the public when the iOS 15.4 debuts sometime in the spring, Emojipedia reported.
This isn’t the first time the Apple emoji factory has stirred the pot with gender-neutral symbols. In 2020, Apple debuted a sexually-ambiguous Santa Claus emoji with the iOS 14.2 beta release, angering conservative critics, who accused the emoji-makers of perpetuating the so-called war on Christmas.
This post first appeared on Nypost.com
ncG1vNJzZmhqZGy7psPSmqmorZ6Zwamx1qippZxemLyue82erqxnkaW9rbGMq6ClnaNivK%2B4yKecZpuinsGqr9JmrqKsmGK9s7HGp5inrF2irq95zq2fnqpdpb%2Bws9Geqqyhppp6prnOo6CsZw%3D%3D