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over time this might affect our collective consciousness in regards to the purpose & function of the eggplant; and
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can we please just get a straightforward penis emoji already?? Half the human population has a penis attached to their bodies anyway, why are we still so prude about incorporating actual penises into mainstream vernacular & daily life?
addendum:
There’s actually kind of a funny history behind the Eggplant emoji. Emoji are Japanese in origin and around the time they were taking off there was this Survivor like gameshow where one guy was confined to his apartment and he had to try and survive past the basics by applying for and winning sweepstakes items from various promotions from newspapers and magazines.
The participant’s shortened form name was Nasu - which means “eggplant” so since the guy started the challenge with literally nothing including clothes they put a little Eggplant over his junk in post. That became a Japanese cultural meme that translated over once emoji became more widely adopted.
You probably won’t see actual dick emoji in the actual set because emoji are an all ages access thing and exist on an international level. It’s actually kind of funny how different cultures use the same finite set. Like in China how the angel emoji is construed as “I’m going to end you”. One could see the things as becoming essentially a hieroglyphic set where they gain their own full individual linguistic meanings.
emoji are an all ages access thing
Last time I checked, penises are an all ages thing too. But who knows, I’m no urologist.
They are an all ages thing for some… But remember when I said international? I don’t particularly like puritanical prudishness but the conservative held belief as those things being inappropriate for all points of society is also pretty common.
I doubt those who keep the emoji want any hassle of the conservative European diaspora middle East, the Americas, facets of Africa and China getting their knickers in a twist.
In the world of stockholder retaliation some things people count as just above their pay grade.
They could include it. Give it a spot. But blank. And then it would be up to each OS if they want to include the icon on their device. That way we could at least let those less prudish nations and companies start with a common code point.
Like flags for example. They got codepoints, but Microsoft has decided to not take sides and have ignored country’s flags.
The problem with leaving it blank is that it harms communication if the other party doesn’t have that symbol. You may send it because it exists in your country but then they have no idea what you mean.
Maybe having a “tofu” missing character box is ok, but even then if a substantial amount of the world’s population isn’t going to have this character it maybe be best to leave it out.
That being said, I am still in favour.
U realise the unicode consortium only makes standards and describes the meaning the actuall image used is not up to them for instance a this🇹🇼 emoji wont show on most chinese devices if a country doesnt like a dick emoji then they can ban it.
Nope, did not realize… But tell me that even my nice progressive Canada wouldn’t have hordes of parents flipping the fuck out about little kids being exposed to cartoon porn and I wouldn’t believe you.
To be clear it’s not like I think there’s any moral issue with an emoji set of genitals. I just don’t think anybody wants to court that much bother for something already served by a cultural understanding about the eggplant emoji that already exists. In a vaccum of sex and penis innuendos an innuendo will always emerge. Even when we have the option to be explicit sometimes we opt for innuendo. I just don’t see there being a lot of value particularly in a cartoon penis. Like okay, you have a cartoon penis, there’s a moral outcry. Conservatives get mad and in the end… what exactly has been improved really?
The juice just doesn’t seem worth the squeeze.
I live to piss of all extremists and the extreme conservatives are right up there with the most entertaining to annoy. And hey there would be some dam fine jokes about the countries that ban it.
Yeah I don’t think upsetting those people who are fence sitting into opinions that make them more likely to further solidify their support for conservatives is worth it for cartoon penises personally.
They are hard enough to try and reach for serious mind changing heart to hearts without them feeling like the world is falling to general moral bankruptcy.
Ohh the world fell to general moral bankruptcy long ago.
Is that the show where the contestant came out about how horribly abusive the production was? Like he was tricked/coerced into doing it and basically imprisoned the whole time?
Oh yeah… It was horrible. Dude was traumatized.
What the fuck that sounds amazing and horrible!
Yeah the ethics of Japanese game shows and reality tv more generally particularly in the 1990’s is a fraught topic. Some of them were quite cruel.
It’s up to the app/os how emoji are rendered. You can hack your os to display whatever you want instead of 🍆 , or add support for 👨🍆 with zero width space between, but it’s less likely to be used.
It’s not even at OS level (unless you’re thinking fonts are OS level). So basically you’d just need to define a font, with certain unicodes with images you want, and make sure it ranks higher than other fonts. So the application will search for any characters in that font, and then for those you didn’t define, it’ll search in other fonts.
over time this might affect our collective consciousness in regards to the purpose & function of the eggplant
I think that that’s already happening. Personally, when I see an eggplant, I automatically think of penises, and it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
As a bonus, here are some ancient Egyptian dick hieroglyphs: 𓂸 𓂺 𓂹
Personally, when I see an eggplant, I automatically think of penises,
Same! 😆 But I wouldn’t say I feel uncomfortable about it, I feel amused and I giggle. One time I’m over at my ex-husband’s house visiting my kids and his new wife said they have a thriving garden in the backyard and she offered me this ginormous eggplant (I mean it was COMICALLY huge) and I looked at it appreciatively for a moment then burst out laughing and honestly I had no use for an eggplant whatsoever cuz I don’t cook and I’m not going to just eat the thing, I declined the offer but it was so funny. I keep wondering what my ex-husband’s new wife thought about me bursting out laughing at an innocent eggplant offering. I know she’s not so innocent that she would be naive to the double entendre, my ex husband has told me her kinks in the bedroom and that’s fine LOL
(Edit: spelled entendre the way I think it’s supposed to be spelled instead of my “smart” phone consistently spelling it in a way that looks wrong to me.
As a child of divorced parents I am impressed with the seemingly mature working relationship you and your ex husband have maintained.
Ah! that may appear to be the case from this little anecdote I just shared, but believe me there is a lot of drama, for example the stepmom told me next time she’ll let me visit them is June 2025 for my daughter’s high school graduation🤦♀️ There’s SOOOO much drama and that woman is extremely controlling, she puts on a pleasant facade but she is a domineering, authoritative, control freak, and we all just let it slide because nobody wants any drama. She’s the one that creates all the drama. So we simply let her do that because we are not interested in drama.
Sorry to hear. There will probably be a boundary that she crosses, and I’m hoping y’all can deliver some nasty consequences when that happens so she leaves y’all alone.
Nope. She’s the impervious alpha and that’s fine.
Thank you for the copy/pastable hieroglyphics 𓂸 𓂺 𓂹
I see the second one is spewing liquid, but what is the third one doing with that hook thing?
From wikipedia: phallus with folded cloth
Like a fancy butler with a towel on his arm, except, you know. On his dick.
Would the black version of the penis emoji be longer than the others? Would it be an erect or a flaccid penis? Why not both? Or better even, a full range of male excitement. The applications are endless!
(I’m joking of course but it does demonstrate the silly questions you would have to answer if you were to actually implement this)
I love this kind of thought experiment. Also, as representation is paramount, what would a vulva emoji look like ? there are so many flavours to them
Where are the tits emojis?
Are the round or saggy? Big or small? Pointy? Perky? With an upward curve like a ski jump?
Big aerolas? Small? Symmetrical? Light skin tone? Dark skin tone?
Options here people!
WE NEED OPTIONS!
… On a more serious note, having just the penis added to the emote list would be sexist. Gotta be inclusive.
Also, the reason this doesn’t happen and probably won’t happen, is that emojis are universal, so everyone gets them… Including small children. I know of a lot of people who would have a problem with that.
wait, have I been using the wrong one? 👃
Human horn.
Emojis are used very widely, including places meant specifically for young kids. These places would already censor words, but requiring emoji censorship as well is adding complexity to a problem that is already difficult to handle. Companies not on the ball with the release of sexual organ emojis would let kids see that until it’s added to their filter list. Kids wouldn’t know what it means, but it can lead to them googling for context or encourage a conversation with the predator using it if they ask about it.
Honestly, I just don’t think it’s worth the headache. Eggplants and peaches and cats are already pretty easy to understand in context, and if you need more than the emojis we already have, we do have our old fashioned words.
I’m not sure. They’re just Unicode characters, you could make a black list I guess ? but frankly if we’re going to add genitalia emoji, I feel it’s an opportunity to rethink our relationship with them (the genitalia). Don’t teach the children it’s shameful, create a generation of kids comfortable with the mention of sex.
I know this is a cultural thing, but it still baffles me sometimes. In countries where censoring any (even non-sexual) nudity for children is a thing, are people pretending that children don’t have genitalia? Why would children be confused about seeing genitals, or “not know what it means”? It’s not like they only grow in at puberty, we’re born with all our parts attached.
You could use the Phallus hieroglyph: 𓂸
Very conspicuously absent on my Windows computer
Ooh yes, How do you find that out in the wild? or is it something I should keep in my repository to copy and paste
Wikipedia has lists of unicode characters under articles about those unicode blocks, you can see the unicode blocks and future proposals here
Just last week I meant to make eggplant parm but got mixed up and next thing you know I was deep throating that sucker. Dinner was ruined.
Feel free to submit a request to the Unicode Consortium in April when they open up again but given vulva/vagina was previously declined I doubt they’ll accept penis https://www.unicode.org/emoji/emoji-requests.html
I literally used my penis instead of eggplant. Thanks Internet. Now I have a detachable penis.
This makes sense if your jalopy is a missile.
8================D~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~🍆
Edit: Sorry to everyone, but I think I just won the Internet. You’re welcome, in advance.
Can we please stop these idiotic calls to de-profanify all things and pretend everything’s for every situation.
Are you aware we invented clothing super super super early on, and that humans tend to wear loincloths when there’s no other need for clothing?
Stop trying to greenfield rewrite culture. It’s like trying to tear down a bridge you’re standing on.
I don’t get this, it should be enough to choose for yourself to use or not use profanity, but somehow it isn’t. Why?
There is no good answer to that question. Too many don’t understand the importance of context/intention, and unfortunately they are also the same ones that get easily offended on behalf of everyone else. Part of the “but, the discussion should be more about meeee, and my feelings, and how offended I am”-mindset.
Which is why “kid cosplaying as early days MJ” manages to offend anyone. Why you cannot watch the Community episode on D&D. Why they likely wouldn’t dare make Tropic Thunder today. Why many git-branches are renamed to
main, etc, ad nauseum.Even though unicode group could (and IMO should) define all things useful, I don’t see why “male-genitals-flaccid”, and variations, couldn’t be specified. Doesn’t require any application level visual implementation. But those that do, and have good reason to, can use a specification, rather than make up their own. Not really a big deal, of course.
If you can have
"1F646 🙆 face with “ok” gesture, described as a person with arms raised above the head forming a “circle”, interpreted as “OK sign” (derived from the Japanese gesture for “OK”). Intended as gender-neutral but represented as a woman on most platforms
Just, throw in a penis or two. It’s… fine
We can’t even have a gun or a middle finger emoji. I doubt we’re getting a penis one anytime soon.
Well there is🖕and 🔫 in UTF 8 at least, so it is kind of there as an emoji.
But as the UTF 8 pistol is shown as a water gun this very much shows why a penis will always be denied.
The gun emoji used to be a real gun, but controversies made Apple change their emoji into a water gun. Other companies followed suit.
Because the way to prevent mass shootings is to remove people’s ability to convey the concept of gun in communication.
It’s a flawless plan with no possible downsides.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant, a gun in UTF 8 had already produced a shitstorm of controversies, a penis (and vagina to complete the set) would most likely break the Internet due to the outrage of puritans and other people with strong opinions.
We don’t have an emoji face for sadistic glee either. For the longest time the only angry face was a devil face.
😈 sadistic glee, see he’s got a little mischievous smile there
Here’s an oddity … people use 🍆 “eggplant” for penis, and 🍑 “peach” for butt, but there doesn’t seem to be a general consensus on which emoji to use for vulva. Some options include:
- Flowers such as 🌷 “tulip” or 🌹 “rose”
- 🐚 “spiral shell”; compare South American Spanish concha
- 🦪 “oyster”; which has a visible pearl (i.e. clitoris) on many systems
- Food items whose names are used as slang for vulva, such as 🍯 “honey pot” or 🌮 “taco”
- 👛 “purse”; compare the origin of the word “pussy” in English
- Any of the various cat emoji, also for “pussy”
(Really there are plenty of other options for penis as well, such as 🌽 “ear of corn” or 🕹 “joystick”, but folks seem to have settled on the eggplant.)
I’m old enough to remember when a peach was a vagina.
You know, I can eat a peach for hours.
I’ve seen plenty of people online use cat emojis for vagina.
I use the peach emoji to indicate pussy, and/or implied as any fleshy hole a man would want to penetrate.
I’ve always thought the peach was for that.
I think it was originally for that but thots started associating it with their butt
I’m sure it’s not a surprise that this post was reported. From what I saw, the conversation remained focused on society and anatomy and remained far less graphic than a basic anatomy textbook. Thanks everyone.
It was also reported for not having the whole thought in the title.
Great post.
Thank you for your thoughtful detailed analysis. I will consider it a compliment for this popular-ish post.
I vote for having penis, balls, butt, labia and titty emojis.
Where does it end? Anuses (anii?), dildos, ball-gags, pierced v. unpierced, big boobs, small boobs, all in each skin tone…
The eggplant is fine. Maybe a sausage or hotdog would be better in the long run and easier to implement.
Unironically all great suggestions
Where does it end?
It never ends. We want it ALL!
What I don’t get is that a dick the size or shape of an eggplant would just not work, for anything.
Japanese ones are a lot thinner.
Carrots on the other hand are the opposite, being much thicker than the ones in the US
I always thought incorporating a drawing into legit character encoding is not a good idea.
Unicode has ~150k characters, many of which are not supported by any fonts on most people’s computers. They still have space in the encoding system for another 900k. They have the space.
For comparison, the Basic Multilingual Plane in Unicode (the most “useful” part with most modern languages) only contains 65k characters and ASCII only contains 128 characters.
We got space. Its not like a new language with unique character sets are just gonna pop up any day now. Maybe if we found intelligent aliens.
