Google’s Sergey Brin Says Using Cell Phones Is Emasculating

What a prick. (How’s that for masculine?)

It’s weird, I understand the point he’s sorta trying to make, but “emasculating”? “Disconnecting,” sure. “Dehumanizing,” absolutely. “Isolating,” you betcha. But “emasculating”? What the hell does masculinity have to do with anything here?

It sounds like he doesn’t know what it means to me.

The idea that using a cell phone is a threat to one’s masculinity is almost as ridiculous as the idea that wearing comfortable jeans and a T-shirt and not wearing makeup or liking pink is a threat to one’s femininity.

Pretty sure he means dehumanizing. I guess they didn’t focus on vocabulary at Stanford.

Look at his beard though. You’d think he knows what masculinity is all about.

Because a real man should look you in the eye while crushing your hand in the manliest of manly handshakes? Or something?

Yeah, it’s just as emasculating as drinking diet soda! Men, you need to wear google glasses and drink Dr Pepper 10!

Somebody get Brin a dictionary, please? And then whap him upside the head with it.

He’s go a point. I mean, every time I pull up Wikipedia on my phone I always think…”Why do I even HAVE a penis?”

I kind of agree with the other comments, that he probably meant “dehumanizing” rather than “emasculating.” But, it’s kind of sad that a word that means “to become less human” is confused with a word that means “to become less masculine.”

That sounds like what he meant.

I read that as, “My phone always says, “Why do I even HAVE a penis?” Your phone was momentarily fascinating.

Or in Sergey’s mind, only males are fully actualized humans, so being dehumanized and being emasculated are the same thing to him. Way to alienate half the potential market for your product, Sergey.

‘Scuse me. I think there’s someone who needs to be thrown into space.

I read that as “manshakes” and it made a funny picture in my mind.

Are we sure he didn’t mean the first definition of it (“Make (a person, idea, or piece of legislation) weaker or less effective”), over here? -> https://www.google.com/search?source=dict-chrome-ex&defl=en&hl=en&q=emasculating&tbo=1&tbs=dfn:1

Hellllooooooo new ringtone!

LOL Manshakes sounds like the name of a dirty movie…

Yes, because the most commonly used definition of “gay” is its first Websters definition: “happy or excited: merry.”

Why do people always assume a different connotation to it?

EDIT-also, just to throw this out, your stated definition is based in its gendered origins. So…not really helping?

Common usage does not deny the existence of the alternate definitions.

Everyone is going nuts (crazy, not testicles) with how it doesn’t make sense, so I offered up an alternate possibility. While not perfect, at least it fits the sentence marginally better than any of the others.

Common usage is a systematic problem, to which there are no individual solutions for. So, no, the word you are using is still problematic. “Crazy” is not the word I would use to describe an emotional response to something; there are plenty of reasons I can think off the top of my head as to why, but I’ll refrain from derailing from the topic too much. This time :p

I can’t like your comment enough! :D

What a whiner. He probably has a tiny penis anyway. And yes that is a nasty thing to write and I did it.

Ahh, but there we go: when I used ‘crazy’ and ‘nuts’ I didn’t literally mean it. There’s no hysteria in the comments, here, of course. People are just discussing it. But my use of it was exaggerated, and frankly, wasn’t really a word choice I put too much thought into.

Couldn’t that be the case here? Maybe we’re looking too deeply at it? Sometimes we say things and they’re just loose exaggerations. I say things are “awesome” rather often, but rarely do I REALLY mean that they inspire genuine awe. :P

Truth, but then as my favorite blog likes to say, “Intention isn’t magical,”

I can see grabbing the wrong word in an off-the-cuff moment – he wanted a word for ‘rendered powerless and insignificant’ and grabbed ‘emasculating’ instead of ‘dehumanizing’.

I can also see myself making the same mistake if I didn’t think well about my word choice, since ‘emasculated’ shows up in literature to refer to someone who’s lost power, authority, or respect. It’s easy (even for me, and I’m a woman) to briefly forget it refers specifically and only to men.

Kind of like using ‘nude’ to refer to a champagne-colored dress on a black woman. The person doing it is just using ‘the name I learned for that color’, but needs to think about their word choice a bit more.

Would there be the same uproar if the speaker was a woman that said using a smartphone was defeminizing?

It makes some sense when you think about the comment in terms of traditional science. The moon is a symbol for feminine nature. The sun is a symbol for
masculine nature. The moon reflects the sun. The sun is the source.
Traditionally, a wife is a reflection of her husband which is another
metaphor for the moon/sun. Men are the source and women are the
reflectors which in turn creates life. A cell phone could be considered
feminine because a person looking at it is looking for outward guidance
instead of relying on their own internal nature.

So now you’re using the word ‘hysteria’ as well? Hmm…

Besides, even if the guy did mean the definition of ‘emasculating’ you referred to, we still have the same problem because ‘weak and ineffective’ are concepts associated with a lack of masculinity. The word probably even came about when concepts like strength and effectiveness were still perceived as the sole domain of men, thus obviating the need for it to be a universal word. The implication of his word use is still the same.

If it gives you testicular cancer, maybe.

The Channing Tatum one says it best.

“Manshakes” should be a word for those manly handshakes. Let’s make it happen.