Assistant Sociology Professor couldn't take pictures with her phone: "for one simple reason: Good smartphones are designed for male hands,"

chalbersma · 2013-11-14T18:33:42+00:00

Couldn't she have bought a smaller phone to fit her feminine hands? The Xperia Mini for example?

TracyMorganFreeman · 2013-11-14T19:48:28+00:00

Or...good smartphones need to sell, and smartphones that are too small for male hands won't sell as well.

I’m 5 foot 2 inches on a good day and my hands are simply not big enough for effective one-handed use of the kind of phones that I want to use for my work.

Then um...use both hands.

I used to be able to do all that on smart phones just a generation ago.

I merely want a design that acknowledges that women exist, and women often have smaller hands than men.

Yeah, as someone with very large hands I hated it, but realized the expense of having larger phones with a reasonable battery life hadn't been invent yet so I freaking dealt with it. I wasn't "written out of the phone world", I was subject to economics.

Tech designer men, especially tall or average-sized men: Imagine a world in which all keyboards were designed for hands like mine—and you had to type all day for work.

Imagine that even extra large gloves don't fit right while living in New England or working with machinery. Imagine numerous things being too small.

I spend a little extra time find products that do fit me or adapt.

r, imagine a world in which you sat in economy class airline seats all day, every day to work. That’s what it feels like to live in a world designed for someone else. (Although airlines do this for profit, the effect is the same: I have little to complain about economy seats because they fit me even though they are painful and torturous for many people

So...products are designed within deviations for the majority of their customers. This is economic reality, and something which adults acknowledge and either adapt or be willing to pay extra for more legroom or better fitting anything.

The effect will become more pronounced as the next three billion people come online using their phones. People in the developing world are, on average, much shorter and have smaller hands.

That would mean the market would adapt and there would be more phones that fit her hands...

All practical “solutions” out there involve that I pay a penalty for not having a man’s hands.

Imagine being a 6'4 left handed person with quite large hands even for my body size. I manage to function in everyday life just fine despite being much further from the median in body size and proportions.

Blemish · 2013-11-14T17:14:02+00:00

" "For most men, it’s just one small, added benefit. For many women, though, it’s a reminder that the tech industry doesn’t always remember or count your existence."

2013-11-14T18:24:32+00:00

Did she provide a design that supposedly would work better for women, with a description of features that improve its use for them?

If not, why should anyone take her seriously?

Miracle_Fruit · 2013-11-14T20:03:58+00:00

Buy large smartphone, complain about smartphone being too large. Sexism!

Mitschu · 2013-11-14T23:56:02+00:00

I’m 5 foot 2 inches on a good day and my hands are simply not big enough for effective one-handed use of the kind of phones that I want to use for my work.

Entitlement in a nutshell.

Yes, I could buy a Chevy Spark, but I prefer the storage capacity of a Ford 450. And the fact that I can't handle the 450 isn't a sign that I picked the wrong vehicle, but that the vehicles are sexist against me. Why should I have to sacrifice size if I want a vehicle small enough for me to drive?

wysiwyg2 · 2013-11-14T21:33:52+00:00

Good smart phones are designed by the markets demand for them.

As a guy with rather large hands (4xl gloves) I have to use two hands to take a photo, my pinky just to use the swipe keyboard.

Her complaint about 'good smartphones are designed for male hands' is bullshit. What she should be bitching about is that everything is designed for the average person where the market aims to hit 70%(estimate) of the population who fit the 'normal' aspect of human physiology. The other 30%(estimate) who fit outside the 'normal' have to 'deal' with the fact that they are not 'normal'. As a 6'6 person I find it difficult to find vehicles that I can sit upright in and/or comfortably sit in, airline seating where my knee is crammed into the seat in front of me. Should I blame this on companies building things for women and thus forcing me to pay a 'premium' to get a size that I do need? No, That's stupid, I know that it's because I am not of 'average' size, thus I have to deal with it.

PerniciousOne · 2013-11-14T21:45:32+00:00

Damn these men creating devices which work effectively for most men. Nothing can ever be my fault for choosing a device which does not suit my needs or skillset.

Rant over, I chose an iPhone with a mophie juicepack pro so I could have enough battery life to last through my 12 hour shifts. It is a little small in my hands so is it apple's fault that my big fingers occasionally hit the wrong buttons? Sheesh deflecting all personal accountability is an art now.

raptorrage · 2013-11-14T22:22:56+00:00

My hands are exactly six inches, where it meets my wrist to my middle finger. I have tiny hands. I'm typing this off my galaxy s ii, that I selected because it was on sale, and it fit my hands. Christ, I even otterboxed it without an issue.

My boyfriend has huge hands and sausage fingers. His giant fingers frequently hit two keys at once.

It's stupid to act like you're being oppressed when a company is going to make their phones to fit the median demand.

JaydenPope · 2013-11-14T22:48:38+00:00

Buys a larger smartphone, bitches that she can't use it with one hand....

use your other hand ಠ_ಠ

giegerwasright · 2013-11-15T02:14:45+00:00

If this is your great big crusade, you need to pipe the fuck down and let the adults deal with real issues, princess.

thehumungus · 2013-11-15T04:05:53+00:00

Bahahahaha, what a clown.

That's a fucking huge "phone" too. It's not like she just got the normal model and was surprised at how awkward it was, she got the big-ass one.

The_Patriarchy · 2013-11-15T13:48:24+00:00

BULLSHIT. I have fairly large hands (glove size L/XL) and can't use the vast majority of phones. They're designed to be usable by the largest number of people, which tends to mean children, women, and men with small to medium hands. People with large hands get excluded on just about every phone but the "phablets" they've recently started making, and do you know who is ridiculously more likely to have large hands? Men. But it's not even a sexism thing. They aren't explicitly trying to exclude men or anything like that. They're just trying to reach the widest possible userbase.

KillJoy575 · 2013-11-15T18:56:54+00:00

Wow, what stupid crap to complain about.

TheGDBatman · 2013-11-16T06:50:08+00:00

This person is an idiot. If you want to take a good picture, buy a goddamn camera. Smartphone cameras take shitty pictures.

humanityisavirus · 2013-11-16T08:05:15+00:00

Smartphones are fucking rectangles.

They're designed to be gawdy novelty ridden abuses of the opportunity of living in a time where you have access to such amazing and useful technology.

JJrodny · 2013-11-14T20:09:27+00:00

This link is so outrageously feminist, it's a strawman for MRM to attack and derride. I would love to see this posted to 2Xchromosomes or feminism and see the response. I'm sure it would be similar to here. No one agrees with what she has said. This is just a post of a whiny little girl.

Title	Assistant Sociology Professor couldn't take pictures with her phone: "for one simple reason: Good smartphones are designed for male hands,"
Author	Blemish
Upvotes	40
Comments	43
Date	November 14, 2013 5:12 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1qmimp/assistant_sociology_professor_couldnt_take/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/assistant-sociology-professor-couldnt-take.1158836 https://theredarchive.com/post/1158836

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