Gender-neutral stick figures

[jack]

I've been playing a lot of draw something[1] and this has led to drawing lots of stick figures.

And I realise that I fell into the traditional trap of using an unadorned stick-figure for for a generic person, but also for "man", and using a stick figure with a skirt for "woman", because those are the most recognisable.

And I really don't like doing that. What SHOULD I do?

One thing is to find some way of indicating "male stick figure", even if it's still gender-stereotypical, eg a hat. That way, at least I'm not contributing to the assumption that generic stick figures are men, even if I'm not fighting it.

Another would be always draw a stick figure with a gender marker, so at least I send a message of "stick-figure world contains people of all genders". But in some ways that makes it worse, making it look as if (a) gender were important for stick figures and (b) there were only two genders of stick-figures.

Probably the best would be to draw stick figures with a coloured rectangle instead of a line for a body, because that way you can vary the drawing a bit without being ostentatious about it. But I'm worried that it stretches my art skills too far :)

Is there a "right" way of drawing stick figures?

I also find it difficult to draw vikings without drawing helmets with horns on them, but I'm sure most people I know know the truth of the viking helmets, so I'm not perpetuating misinformation (and even if I am, it probably doesn't matter as much).

[1] As "cartesiandaemon". Anyone else want to play, tell me your username!

Comments

[simont]

A hat doesn't say "male" to me, it says "xkcd character" :-)

I have a vague feeling I've seen a beard (== more or less random scribble beneath the chin) used as a maleness-marker in this sort of situation, though I can't remember where.

[mair_in_grenderich]

draw a stick figure and add arrow/cross from head to indicate male/female?

[jack]

I assumed the prominent XKCD characters were male, alas...

And yeah, beard is another (etymologically-approved! :)) marker of male-ness.

[jack]

Yeah, I debated the male/female symbols. On the one hand, they're fairly clear and non-judgemental. On the other hand, (a) some people don't know what they mean (b) they may be too close to writing for draw something (c) it seems to be drawing attention to it again. And (d) the origins of them are a bit gender-stereotypical too.

But I think if I'm specifically drawing "male" or "female", I should use them: they're a much less offensive choice than a skirt/absence of skirt, and that's more important than whether they're technically within the "drawing" rules or not.

[simont]

Yes, I expect the Hat Guy is male (though I don't recall whether that name for him originates with Randall). That wasn't the point: my point is, if you put a hat on your stick figure I don't assume it to mean generic male, I assume it to mean specific character from xkcd about whom we know lots of stuff unrelated to gender and that probably confuses my idea of whatever you were trying to represent with the figure!

[jack]

Ah, sorry!

I guess I could draw a different hat? Does "fedora" convey "stereotypically male" more than "hat guy" or "well-dressed style icon"? :)

[gerald_duck]

How can you tell the difference between a skirt and a dress on a stick figure? :-p

(I think my preference would be to leave the figures steadfastly gender neutral unless necessary, and hope like crazy that when it is necessary, the reason why it's necessary informs the workaround. And, for that matter, informs the precise kind of sex/gender distinction that's necessary.)

[(Anonymous)]

a much less offensive choice than a skirt/absence of skirt

Half trolling, half not - I thought the symbols represented sex organs, at which point a chosen expression of gender (eg a skirt) could be less offensive than a strictly biological 'do you have a penis / womb'. Although now I've read the wikipedia article I can find no evidence they're anything to do with phalluses and wombs...

[jack]

Wikipedia suggests the Mars symbol is commonly thought to have a spear, so maybe phallic, even if not literally phallus. But I don't know if that's accurate; there might have been a scientific tradition to use them for physical characteristics.

But even if not, I think it's a problem that the symbols are gender essentialist, and I agree with the inherent/choice argument. Except you often want to say "women" not "people who choose to wear skirts". I suspect that they may possibly offend fewer people, and hence are arguably still a better choice. But I'm definitely open to superior choices.

[pseudomonas]

I think I'd draw my stick figures neutrally unless it's important they be marked in which case annotate them with ♀ or ♂.

[pseudomonas]

(if they're a church with a spire, that first one goes the other way up)

[jack]

LOL

[hatam_soferet]

If I need to indicate that a stick figure is male, I draw a cock and balls on it. Funnily enough, I've not needed to specify that a stick figure is male when talking to small children, so it hasn't come up. But if I did, I would use a beard.

Statistical analysis

[gerald_duck]

Incidence of comments on your two most recent postings, across Livejournal and Dreamwidth:

	LJ	DW
Text messaging etiquette	9	5
Gender-neutral stick figures	1	13

This might just show that when a critical mass of commentary appears on one of the sites, people follow suit. On the other hand, it could show a demographic difference.

Re: Statistical analysis

[jack]

LOL. Good question. I suspect a positive-reinforcement effect, but it probably does also vary with people.

[kaberett]

I feel quite strongly that using beards to indicate gender is just as wrong as using skirts to indicate gender.

In re gender symbols, I would point out that you can also use trans symbols and various other combinations so that you're not relying on a binary.

[kaberett]

[ow. it is not just about "less offensive", it is about "how much it fucks up my day". See also: terms you don't get to describe me in.]

[azurelunatic]

When I was doing a workplace comic using full-outline (bathroom person style) stick figures, the important distinction was supervisor or not-supervisor, and I used a name badge to distinguish that.

There's hairbow/bowtie.

[ptc24]

It would be useful to know a bit more about what's going on in Draw Something.

I'm used to games like Pictionary where you're working against the clock; from what I read here, it seems like you're a bit more relaxed and can take your time over things.

In particular, I'm interested in how often it's necessary to specifically communicate gender - or whether it's merely useful to communicate gender (for example, when trying to draw some specific person, that's one fact among many you have about them, maybe you don't need to specify it in order to uniquely identify one individual). I was about to say this was a bit of information, but then I realised that if you were called upon to communicate "male" more often than "female" (I expect this would be the case if you were communicating stories from the average newspaper, for instance), then in information-theoretic terms it's less than a bit - furthermore it would probably stay less than a bit even if your set of possibilities expands beyond two, and you could even say it was less than a bit if you didn't know what the full set of possibilities was, or if the full set of possibilities was an infinite set. Anyway, how would you go about making an efficient coding scheme for that less-than-a-bit of information?

(I'm not sure whether I'm trying to justify the status quo here, or to make people think about where it might come from.)

[mair_in_grenderich]

yeah, it doesn't really solve your (b) two genders problem. perhaps for a gender-neutral character you could explicitly add a gender-neutral marker. eg arrow in the north-east, cross in the south, question-mark in the north-west. or use a ? instead of a straight line for the body... (um, I just tried that, and it looks like a pregnant person, peeing. So maybe it's not a great plan). In fact after some experiment nothing looks good ):

[mair_in_grenderich]

one has a triangle starting at the neck, the other at the waist?

[jack]

ROFL. Yeah, I was very tempted.

[jack]

LOL. Yeah, that's a good comparison.

[liv]

It does record how long it takes to guess a drawing, so in some ways there's an incentive to create something that will be guessed as speedily as possible. But since they've made the really interesting choice to make the game collaborative rather than competitive, you can easily choose to play it so that it's just an exercise in seeing how well you can communicate with a friend without using writing. Or even to try and see how artistic you can be drawing with your fingers on a touchscreen - some people aim for detailed, beautiful drawings rather than speed.

If you're drawing a specific person, I agree you don't need to show what gender they are, if your friend knows who the person is they likely also know their gender and certainly know what gender presentation markers they do or don't have. Eg I wouldn't randomly put a beard on Justin Bieber just to communicate the fact that he's male, because JB doesn't have a beard!

But sometimes you're drawing, like, a category of people where the gender is relevant information. Eg if you're drawing "mother" or "bride" you need to convey that the female parent or spouse is intended. And if you're drawing "policeman" or "man-trap" it is arguably helpful to the guesser to tell them that your stick figure is male.

[liv]

Using non-binary symbols is a good idea! The issue is that this is a Zynga game; they quite often ask you to draw "fireman" or "princess" or indeed "brother" or "wife", but never ask you to draw "transgender person" or "stone butch". Most of the time, if what I want to convey is "person", I am happy that a stick figure can be whatever gender the viewer wants them to be, they're just a generic example of a person. Eg a stick figure playing football is a footballer, not a male footballer. But what to do if the word I'm trying to illustrate is explicitly male or female? There's no reason that a fireman wouldn't also be a trans guy, but I would feel weird including his birth-assigned sex in a simple, symbolic drawing of a hypothetical person.

[spacelem]

XKCD, Abstruse Goose, and Cyanide & Happiness all handle female characters by giving them hair (male characters are bald).

Order of the Stick gives everyone hair (except for those who are actually bald) and differentiates by drawing the body shape slightly differently (so it's arguably not a true stick figure comic, but I'd say it's close enough).

--Edit--
Obviously today's XKCD has to be the exception.

[momentsmusicaux]

That's not really going to work when drawing for/with kids though!

[momentsmusicaux]

At least beards are biological. Skirts, bowties, hairbows (the last two suggested elsewhere on this post) are just social convention.

But then that won't work for drawing child stick figures.

Obviously today's XKCD has to be the exception.

[jack]

LOL.

[kaberett]

No.

Just No.

You do not get to gender me based on your perceptions of my biology.

[kaberett]

With "fireman", I'd make the argument that that's "man" in the older, gender-neutral sense ;)

(And yes, I object to masculine pronouns as ~gender-neutral~, but am actually okay with arguments being made for "man" as gender-neutral. I prefer to use terms that are more recognisably neutral, and I'm typically uncomfortable with arguments from etymology rather than usage - prescriptivst rather than descriptivist, I suppose - but the -man suffix is one I will shrug about.)

[dreamatdrew]

ERROR: Argument not based in fact.
I know Generally-Reguarded-As-Male persons who could not grow a beard to save their life, and I know Generally-Reguarded-As-Female persons who at the end of the day have a 5-o-clock shadow to contend with. The presence, absence, or quantity of hair growing from a person's body does not count as an actual reliable gender marker, even if one sticks to the binary categories.

[momentsmusicaux]

Well in that case, stick figures shouldn't have arms or legs. Not everybody has those.

[kaberett]

Okay, for serious, this is not okay. The things you are saying? They are really shitty, and really hurtful, and have resulted in me getting nauseous and choked up and adrenaline-spike-y every time I think about them.

I strongly suggest you do some more reading before you keep talking about this topic. Relevant keywords include "biological essentialism", "binarism", and "cissexism". Julia Serano's blog is excellent, as is CN Lester's. You should also consider reading disability rights activism blogs - for example, the archives at FWD/Feminists With Disabilities - because seriously, I cannot believe you thought it was acceptable to pull that out as ~stunning counterargument~.