“Apple thinks ‘vagina’ is an inappropriate word,” Radhika Sanghani reports for The Telegraph. “So much so that the global company will not let its users have the biological term engraved onto an iPad bought from its site. Any attempt to do so comes up with a message saying: ‘Inappropriate message text.'”
“That same error message pops up if you ask for ‘clit’ or ‘boobs’ to be engraved on your product,” Sanghani reports. “But, where female genitalia is deemed inappropriate, male genitalia is not. ‘Penis’ does not bring up any error message at all. I know this because I just tried it.”
“Bizarrely, it doesn’t allow ‘boobs’ but will let you have ‘penis’, ‘willy’ and even ‘dick’ engraved on to your tablet,” Sanghani reports. “It also allows ‘breasts’ – but we could easily be talking chicken… Dr Christine Welch, of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Winchester, says: ‘It sounds to me quite gendered. It’s effectively saying it’s OK to use some words that are about the male body and not the female body. What if you wanted to give it to someone as a present saying, ‘Well done for the Vagina Monologues?””
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
“Hope you love this iPad mini as much as you love your pussy… er, kitty cat.”
Nice take MDN
Sadly it is a reflection of the world we live in now,
the portal controller can allow or disallow content that does not appeal to their liking.
This statement applies to all people in authority, for example:- Religion, Government, Clubs, Schools etc.
Even Human Rights is not exempt from this aspect as what is one person’s human rights, can another persons human wrongs by dint of culture and religious beliefs.
Just Saying.
Or some half asleep kid working for peanuts entered words into a database out of some dictionary of vulgar terms that was created by some other half asleep kid working for peanuts….
Working for penis?
It’s called censorship.
Get used to it. Google has it, the media has it, the press has it.
It’s been around for 100s of years.
Whoever runs the portal controls te censorship.
Yes comrades!
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Some people have all the time…
Ummmm … is whoever wrote this stupid? “Willy” is a fairly common nickname for people named William, as is “Dick” for Richard.
… Penis, I have no explanation for. If you’re going to censor genitalia, censor it. Don’t specifically target one gender or the other.
And what about “boobs” as a collective noun for the Congress of the United States?
Boobs is OK.
But even worse is clueless for the White House and the Senate.
Besides, censoring the most natural things in the world — a source of life — like vagina or penis is ridiculous puritanical hypocritical “morals” that have nothing to do with any of actual morals.
This article is the very definition of a slow news day…
The women out there will hate this, but I guess “It is still a man’s world”
Pffft. It’s The Telegraph. Not to be taken seriously. But, just in case a menacing cyborg should emerge from a saucer and approach me (like Patricia Neal) some day, the iPad I am desperately clutching bears the inscription Klaatu barada nikto.
Not taking any chances.
Even in 1951 they had safe words. 🙂
Klaatu barada nikti! hannahjs 🙂
So this one is allowed: “Please don’t love this iPad mini as much as you love my penis. You won’t have time to cook for me anymore”?
Or is it too long?
Sorry, but this is the PC world we live in today. Men AND women must deal with it.
Nothing PC about allowing penis but not vagina… quite the opposite
I’ve only had iProducts engraved a couple of times, and always regretted it. One, a graduation gift, is being kept by the graduate even though an upgrade is overdue. In both cases, the resale value is diminished by the inscription. And I’m having a difficult time thinking of an inscription containing the banned words (and the related unbanned ones) that would help the resale value.
There are an awful lot of very angry women with nothing important to do in this world except chip away at any little bit of nonsense they can possibly attribute to their fantasy war on women. Gender studies indeed. It was my impression the entire concept of gender has been under assault for over a decade now. I fully expect gender to be regarded as quaint within a generation or 2.
You know, when we achieve our quest for EQUALITY in every way, and we get rid of gender based everything, including clothes and we all wear grey overalls, shave our heads bald, and take names like Citizen 117417, and we eliminate the concepts of wealth, ownership, individuality, and so on.
Women have been regarded as “persons” under the law for a tiny number of years. The insane gender split in society has not been eradicated, any more than racism has disappeared. So women are sometimes angry. So what? Do you feel angry about the massive disenfranchisement going on in North Carolina right now — where CITIZENS who have been voting for decades now have massively increased difficulty to do so. (I.e. because the stupid Supreme Court negated the laws around voting rights.)
Painting your over-the-top derisive picture of gray overalls is no more pertinent to today’s society than if I substituted blacks in your scenario and went on a rant about some who get angry now and again.
Guess he must have struck a nerve.
Disenfranchisement?
OK, explain exactly and precisely how the Supreme Court ordered the exclusion of select citizens from their right to vote.
If not, go back to your basement sonny.
Just call me THX 1138!
People who worry about this stuff must think they’re going to live for 3 or 4 hundred thousand years. I think watching wood rot would be a more useful expenditure of time.
What about Mike Hunt? Or how about Big Pussy? Or for you old-timers – Pussy Galore!
So, besides Apple, has this person (I hope that term is gender neutral) looked at ALL other companies that do engraving on their products to see if there are similar banned words/slang?
So I can’t engrave “Richard Harddon” for a custom iPod Touch gift?
Time for the Monty Python Penis song:
Just an oversight.
I think there will be some new words added to the Inappropriate list.
This isn’t censorship, a private (or publicly traded) company has the right to not use any words on their product they wish.
You can always engrave your words on your iPad after you buy it.
Would “¿Como Va Gina?” be ok for my latino girl Gina ?
A tempest in a teapot. Move along, nothing to see here.