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Comment by minivan | Hacker News Reader

"o>-<|= for messages of interest to women"

I'm glad we are past that.

Past what? Topics interesting to women? Though I agree that this emoticon is ugly and it took me some time to understand what it symbolizes.

Past the point where we thought that ideas should be or even can be segmented into those interesting to women vs those interesting to men, which is a rather silly idea rooted in gender unfounded stereotypes and possibly a bit of sexism.

We're not even close to past that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women%27s_magazines

https://m.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes

It's still acceptable to categorize clothing stores by sex as well.

Tsssh. Toilets too. :-)

"The new fragrance, for her"

"Manpurse" (as in, saying "purse" implies "woman")

Razors for men and for women, exactly the same thing but one is pink, one is blue

Bicycles for women with different frames (because they always wear skirts, y'know)

Running shoes for women (pink) and men (blue)

I could go on...

> Bicycles for women with different frames

This one in particular I never quite grasped. I mean, there've been a couple times, when I stopped short and came off the seat and pedals, that I really wished, in an extremely immediate and visceral fashion, that my bike's top tube wasn't quite where it was.

On the other hand, I suppose the "women's bike" design probably lacks something in rigidity by comparison, so I suppose there's an argument either way.

So I had heard that women's bikes were designed that way to allow room for riding in a dress.

Apparently people still do this: https://letsgorideabike.com/2012/06/04/how-to-bicycling-in-a...

That's exactly what I've always been told. If you're wearing a skirt/dress, the bar on a guy's bike will push your skirt up and create a scandal :O

So "girls' bikes" have a dip in the bar so there's room for a skirt/dress. Still, I wonder if there's a reason they just didn't make all bikes like this to make it cheaper for the manufacturers.

I'd imagine the straight bar could offer more rigidity or I guess maybe it costs slightly more to make the curved version with a longer bar and the process of making the curve. If that's the case, I guess margin-shaving bike manufacturers only made as many of the curved model cycles as they had to in order to address the demand from skirt/dress-wearing customers.

And toys. The local Target has "girls" and "boys" sections. I'm wondering what my daughter is going to say when she finally notices that half the stuff she likes is filed under "boys."

But more specifically, that the default topic is those interesting to men, needing no special indicator.

Funny. I'm just a couple years removed from that thread (I was an undergrad then) and I don't even "get" that emoticon. A person standing on a platform with her arms in the air?

Edit: nevermind. Was explained while I was typing.

What does it represent? I doubt understand it

It's a skirt

It represents a person (presumably a woman) wearing a dress/skirt.

  o>-<|=

  o    head
  >    arms raised
  -    torso
  <|   skirt
  =    legs

It's a woman on a pedestal, like the expression: "women should be placed upon a pedestal." The phrase is usually understood to mean that men should treat women with respect, treating them as if they are more important than themselves.

Wow, that's a lot of downvotes. Mind telling me why?

Well first, that's not an expression that anyone uses. If there is one, it's the opposite of that. Also, your interpretation of that is incorrect.

Putting something on a pedestal is bad. It's pretending that it's perfect. If you put a person on a pedestal, you remove their humanity and flaws and aren't treating them like a person.

Thanks for the insights, I've must have understood the expression differently.

I did find references to the contrary like [1] where the interpretation I've always had is expressed. Why are you so certain?

[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/relationships/1064051-what-do...

Those references all seem to be negative as well. Which one do you think agrees with you?

I'm in my 50's, and it was a common expression when I was a growing up.

I didn't down vote you, and I have no special insight into why others have, but my guess would be that at least some of those votes were meant to indicate disagreement with your interpretation: I think more people see the equal sign as representing legs, rather than a pedestal.

If I were to speculate further, I would suspect that some people are wary of interpretations of ambiguous texts that unnecessarily imply sexist/culturally fraught meanings.

Thanks for taking the time to share that.

I also thought pedastal. I guess it has been a long time since I've seen a woman wear a skirt. But I think your interpretation of why is off. I was looking for something sexist (as per OP) so the pedestal fit that for me. I presumed it was an inside joke amoung guys. But since someone pointed out the skirt I know know I was reading into it incorrectly

I can't understand the confusion here - which bit is hard to follow, the graphic or the sexism?

I don't see it, anybody care to explain?

It's a woman in a dress, like you might see on a bathroom door

The <| is a skirt.

It sort-of looks like a person standing on a pedestal...

It's a girl with a skirt/dress.

Virtue signaling much?

We are?

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