Talk:Gender symbol

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March 2007
Can anyone refer to a web resource that proves the meaning as a gender symbol of the saggitarius and the earth symbols? I translated the articel into german (Gender-Symbol) but omitted these symbols for lack of any evidence. --Mosmas 14:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Triangle and Circle
There is an even older symbol for gender and this symbol is commonly used in the social sciences. Triangle and Circle. Triangle stands for male and Circle stands for female. This is often seen in kinship charts (think anthropology). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.30.141 (talk) 06:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)


 * i have seen similar symbols but with a square for male.Fantiquitous (talk) 14:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * These mainly appear in sociograms and genealogical charts, and would not be widely understood as standalone symbols... AnonMoos (talk) 15:51, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Font capable of displaying the symbols
Could anyone direct me to a font that can display the symbols used on this article? Only Mars, Venus and Mercury are displayed correctly for me.Geemer (talk) 13:33, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Try http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/26A2/fontsupport.htm etc. -- AnonMoos (talk) 18:04, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much, the DejaVu fonts work like a charm. Geemer (talk) 15:34, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Child Symbol
I seek a child symbol to go along with the female symbol and the male symbol. If such a symbol exists, this article may document it. --Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.28.185.40 (talk) 20:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Don't think there's one which is a variation of the gender symbols, but child variants of the "toilet" symbols are sometimes seen; see File:Forest day 1 logo.jpg, File:Yellow school sign.JPG, File:Italian traffic signs - old - transito vietato ai pedoni.svg etc. AnonMoos (talk) 21:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * P.S. See also the Rudolf Koch gender and family symbols... AnonMoos (talk) 18:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Biological vs. LGBT uses
why are the hermaphrodite and neuter symbols is in the LGBT section? i can understand the lesbian, gay and transgender symbols being there, but the hermaphrodite and neuter symbols are listed as biological symbols in places such as my funk & wagnalls standard desk dictionary. this seems to suggest that they are the official symbols, and apply to other organisms and plants, not specifically to the lgbt culture, as this article seems to suggest. also the neuter symbol does not display correctly on my screen. perhaps we'd be better off with pictures for all. (sorry, i have no idea why my addition keeps popping up in odd places) Fantiquitous (talk) 14:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The separation is practically non-existant in the article. Several scientific biological symbols are in the LGBT section. In fact, pretty much the entire article is in the LGBT section. This is probably the most important thing to fix about the article. However, I don't know where to look for sources documenting a symbol's use in biology or genetics. 89.217.88.231 (talk) 10:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The heading titles could be rationalized a little, but I don't know that there's a great divergence between LGBT and biological sciences meanings of most of the symbols (only a few symbols are used in both systems) -- except for ⚥ which has meanings in pop culture (not just LGBT) which are strongly divergent from its biology meanings... AnonMoos (talk) 19:44, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree, the use of LGBT culture as a heading here is incorrect and unrepresentative of the symbols entire "gender" meaning - many of these symbols have been adapted to LGBT culture rather than created by it. They're uses originating in scientific rather than "gender" culture(would be more correct than LGBT). I propose this page would be more useful and encyclopaedic if it was changed to a basic list of the symbols (Symbols/unicode/name etc, ie the facts) with any relevant cultural information/use expanded on below it. If no-one objects I will do this as soon as I get chance and I can probably prepare/add some citations to the use of male/female/Hermaphrodite/neuter/transgender symbols in the Correspondence of Charles Darwin. 131.111.184.99 (talk) 12:33, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

what does male and female have to do with mars and venus?
anyone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.199.45 (talk) 09:24, 4 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The Greek deity Aphrodite was a female goddess of love and beauty, while Ares was a male god of war and valor. "Venus" and "Mars" are the names of Latin deities who were identified with Aphrodite and Ares by a process of interpretatio Graeca. When the seven Classical "planets" (sun, moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, saturn) were identified with gods and goddesses (partly under influence from Babylonian astronomy/astrology), Aphrodite/Venus was the most stereotypically feminine of the seven, and Ares/Mars the most stereotypically masculine, I guess.  Also, the planet mars was assigned to the element iron in alchemical symbolism, while the planet venus was assigned to the element copper -- and in classical antiquity, a prominent use of iron was in weapons of war, while a prominent use of copper was in bronze mirrors, again fitting in with quasi-stereotypical masculine/feminine distinctions... AnonMoos (talk) 16:26, 4 November 2011 (UTC)


 * P.S. Classical_planets_in_western_alchemy -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:34, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Hermaphrodite Symbol
In all my gender studies, I have always seen the Mercury symbol used to represent hermaphrodites. This article is the first I have ever seen that says it is used for "virgin females." 71.91.58.31 (talk) 00:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I have no idea whether that's correct or not, but the claim is that it's used that way in certain scientific usages, not LGBT symbolism. If you think this is dubious, add a fact tag... AnonMoos (talk) 00:44, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a harmfully wrong representation of the mercury sign, labelling it a transgender sign, conflating transgender with intersex. The Mercury was used in Alchemy and in early biology and botany as a sign for Hermaphrodite. --Blivet01 (talk) 08:04, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Other gender/sex symbols
Might include some alternative symbols, or symbols from non-Western cultures: AnonMoos (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Not sure that there's a single cuneiform sign which indicated male/man in all the situations where indicated female/woman, but a single vertical stroke was used as a marker before masculine names... AnonMoos (talk) 22:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Put File:LU-awilu Cuneiform.svg in the cuneiform male cell of the table, though it wasn't used as a male symbol in all the cases where File:MUNUS-SAL-sinnishtu Cuneiform.svg was used as a female symbol... AnonMoos (talk) 21:40, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Assembled all the female and/or woman symbols into a single graphic: AnonMoos (talk) 19:44, 13 May 2013 (UTC)




 * Another image including some lesser-known or less historically important female/woman symbols: AnonMoos (talk) 07:10, 1 January 2017 (UTC)



These are not only Biological Symbols but they also define the Male and Female psychological differences
(Please excuse my poor english) The two male and female symboles although giving a symbolic biological difference between male and female in their design (Forward arrow pointing up as a phallic symbol and female cross birth giving representation) also differentiate the male and female psychological differences: MALE: Future-oriented FEMALE: Grounded into the present. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.249.57.28 (talk) 10:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)


 * That sounds semi-esoteric. The more traditional interpretations are iron spear and bronze hand-mirror.  Do you have a Reliable source? -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

See also: Volvo
What's the connection that Volvo (car/truck manufacturer) is listed in the "See also" section? 88.202.32.87 (talk) 21:32, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * It used a Mars symbol as its traditional logo -- presumably having more to do with the metal iron than with masculinity... AnonMoos (talk) 23:00, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I think the link goes to the wrong Volvo page, maybe it should go to this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars which shows the logo and also discusses it. 88.202.32.87 (talk) 23:29, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Link would be more appropriate on Mars symbol article anyway... AnonMoos (talk) 16:04, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

History of toilet symbols
Supposedly in pre-1850 rural schools in the United States, a sun symbol meant a boys' outhouse, while a crescent symbol meant a girls' outhouse. -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The source seems reasonable. The illustrations are by the modern author, though, so we can't use them directly, but it's still a good find. — kwami (talk) 04:15, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I only see one "illustration", a semi-nonsensical cartoon without the slightest aspirations to historicity. In European symbolic art, if male and female were contrasted as sun and moon, the sun usually had alternating wavy and straight rays, but I have no idea how that would have translated to early 19th-century rural American outhouse-door carvers... AnonMoos (talk) 20:29, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I'll see what I can find. Very common to have no hole at all (ventilation being elsewhere), even in duplex outhouses, or to have a heart in the door. A few crescent and star (on a single door). — kwami (talk) 22:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Aha! The Outhouse Museum in Colome, SD has a duplex outhouse with a 5-pt star in the door to the left and a crescent moon in the door to the right. I wonder then if the crescent-and-star symbol indicated a unisex toilet? — kwami (talk) 22:37, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

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Symbolism in Symbols
In the article, the author does mention where the symbols originated (Mars and Venus symbols), but I think that relating the symbols to the masculine and feminine ideals society has on the symbols would also be important to the article. For example, talking more about the connection between Mars with hard, red metal like iron and Venus with the soft metal that can turn green, copper. I think that the significance between the origin of the sign and its namesake are connected through sociological ideas about what a male and a female are, tough and soft.Sashaver82 (talk) 05:05, 19 March 2019 (UTC)


 * As stated several times above on this page, in classical antiquity, iron was prominently associated with weapons of war, while copper was prominently associated with bronze hand-mirrors, which had stereotypical masculine and feminine associations respectively... AnonMoos (talk) 06:04, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Deleted fundamentally erroneous section, "Symbols and stereotypes"
I deleted this section partly because it reads like someone's essay plan but mainly because it is based on a erroneous foundation that has persisted to this day despite being dismissed repeatedly over the past 200 years. These symbols do not refer to the 'shield and spear of Mars or Venus's looking glass', they are evolutions of the initial letters of the Greek names of the planets. For an explanation, see the New Scientist article by Dr. William Stearn. Consequently, the citations supporting the material I deleted fail the wp:reliable source test. There is certainly a need for some material on the symbolism but this is not it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:54, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, Stearn was very likely wrong about that. But it's off-topic for this article anyway, a content fork of the same speculations in the planetary symbols article, which are more up to date. — kwami (talk) 04:07, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Links to phallic male and female symbols like in Celtic and Scandinavian, and all over the world?
What is the scientific name for these? I assume there are wikipages to them. Shouldn't this article hold links to them? e.g. [Https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2020/02/exploring-britains-landscapes-of-love-and-lust https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2020/02/exploring-britains-landscapes-of-love-and-lust] and Yoni. Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 14:57, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The article calls them fertility symbols, not gender symbols. "Gender symbols" are a form of shorthand whereas these have far more extensive associations. But certainly worth listing in See Also if not already there. (Lingam and yoni are just Sanskrit names for penis and vulva). So not an obvious omission to my eye but others may disagree? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Unicode
Part of the reason why this article was not formerly fully sourced to Unicode was that Unicode defined U26A4 as "bisexuality", while in the real world this is used much more often to mean "heterosexuality". But from what's linked to from the article now, it seems that Unicode has fixed this... AnonMoos (talk) 18:01, 3 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Unicode is not a RS for anything other than Unicode. I reduced the table to symbols covered in this article (the rest is now at LGBT symbols) and changed the wording to what is on the Unicode charts. But we shouldn't suggest that is in any way authoritative as to what the symbols mean or what the wording for gender should be: it's just a guide for which characters to choose for which symbols. For example, Unicode doesn't define which triangle should be used for 'male'. The white triangle is noted as the one to use for "trine" (the astrological aspect), which is a simple triangle; the elemental symbol for fire is a very similar triangle, but in some versions has decorative details added, which wouldn't be appropriate for the male symbol in a kinship chart.
 * It wouldn't matter, really, whether 'bisexuality' had been corrected to 'heterosexuality' or not, because Unicode doesn't determine how symbols are used. There are other misleading things in the Unicode charts; you wouldn't expect from Unicode that the 'transsexual' symbol, for example, would be used for unisex bathrooms. There are plenty of errors in other fields -- for example, Unicode has the palatal and alveolar click letters reversed relative to modern usage -- and people ignore them as irrelevant. — kwami (talk) 03:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I know all about certain Unicode idiosyncrasies (the Hebrew-alphabet diacritics were given completely wrong "combining class" assignments in the early 1990s, which caused problems displaying pointed Hebrew texts in certain software programs using certain fonts well into the 21st century, but because such assignments are "immutable", the dumb obvious errors must be propagated unchanged into eternity, without any corrections being possible). But I'm not sure that there's any big problem with referring to Unicode in this article where the meaning listed for a character in the Unicode standard is unproblematic.  However, "bisexuality" is most definitely not the most common or well-known meaning for U26A4, which caused a problem back when it was the only meaning listed for the character in Unicode... AnonMoos (talk) 20:23, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I think I've got the Unicode stuff worded in a way now that doesn't imply it's anything other than Unicode. If something's really divergent from common usage, we could add a fn clarifying it, but the fact that what we say are male and female symbols (in genealogies) Unicode just calls a 'white square' and 'white circle' makes it pretty obvious that the real-world uses of a symbol are not dependent on the Unicode definition. And the table now speaks of "associated wording" rather than "associated meanings" to reinforce that point. — kwami (talk) 22:17, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I think I found the problem. In botany, perfect flowers, symbolized ⚥, are more often called 'bisexual' these days than 'hermaphroditic'. — kwami (talk) 03:41, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

March 2021
We need to add the cis and trans gender signs to this article -- 15:28, 8 March 2021 71.195.245.66


 * I'm not sure what those would be. Flags would not be relevant to this article. AnonMoos (talk) 00:19, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The table already contains these. What extra is being sought? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:35, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

"⚧️" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect ⚧️. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 10 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. – MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 18:24, 10 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Rd'd to LGBT symbols, along with half a dozen other rd's here, as that's where it's discussed. — kwami (talk) 03:50, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Good solution. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:31, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Origins of planetary symbols
...don't belong here and I deleted the para. It was a WP:FORK of planetary symbol and related articles. Also, the Stearns ref we had was dated and now known to be wrong: only Jupiter and Saturn are known to derive from abbreviations (zeta + stroke and kappa-rho + stroke, respectively). Mercury is universally thought to be a caduceus, and Mars very likely a spear and shield (early forms were just an arrow shape, maybe a spear but hard to tell what it was). Venus is unclear; a hand mirror is as good a guess as any, but we really don't know.

Also, Mars and Venus were not always iron and copper. In one early source, Mars was copper. Only gold, silver and lead for the Sun, Moon and Saturn are invariable in surviving mss. — kwami (talk) 03:48, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comments I made in various places above about iron spears vs. bronze hand-mirrors were not really about the origins of the symbols, but how they were interpreted over long periods of time... AnonMoos 20:32, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing more refs for the Venus symbol deriving from her necklace. So far I've only seen mention of that 1934 pub, which I haven't accessed yet. Looking at pix of the 2nd-c engraving, I can't say I see a necklace myself, though that might just be a problem with the image quality. — kwami (talk) 03:46, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Rendering the toilet facilities pictograms in different colours
just a note re your recent edits that added &#xFE0E; after the pictogram: on Chrome, I see no difference with or without. It looks like the default font only has an emoji-like rendering. In both 🚹&#xFE0E; [with variation selector] and 🚹 [without], I see a white figure on a square blue background. Perhaps it is different with Safari or Bing?

BTW, I also tried this syntax 🚺 to try to change the background to red, woth no effect (and then decided it was trivia anyway and dropped the whole idea).

This is just an FYI to save you repeating the exercise unless you really want to. Otherwise no reply expected. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:35, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * For me, the plain characters display as blue and red emojis, whereas the VS forces them to display as black and white text. If you see an emoji regardless, then you probably don't have a font installed that supports them as text. Ideally, they should display as text unless you use a VS to make them emojis, but it doesn't always work that way.
 * I wouldn't expect adding a color tag to have any effect on an emoji, since they come in pre-set colors. I tried the color tag on the text variant of the symbol, but that didn't make any difference either, at least for me. Don't know why. — kwami (talk) 18:40, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

"Associated wording"
Rather than keep changing the article, let's see if we can agree an ultra-succinct wording for that column heading.
 * On past experience, the simple "Associated wording" seems somehow to invite well-meaning IP editors to 'improve' the text.
 * "Unicode associated wording" doesn't seem to work much better.
 * "Unicode-given associated wording" is not accurate: the wording is given by the Unicode Consortium
 * "Unicode Consortium-given associated wording" is accurate but dire

How about "Meaning assigned by Unicode Consortium"? (Is "meaning" the correct word in this context?) John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:39, 30 June 2022 (UTC)


 * "Associated wording in Unicode Standard" or "Associated Unicode Standard wording"? — kwami (talk) 20:38, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @John Maynard Friedman I'm unsure what to do here, and it's not aided by the fact that this is slightly bikeshed-y now that I think of it.
 * I made the Unicode-given edit assuming "Unicode" can also refer to the Unicode Consortium, but I mostly agree with your other points. I don't know which terminology is accurate ("associated wording", "meaning", or etc.), so I might check Unicode documents later. I'm also split on whether to simply re-add the "the assoc. wording here is from Unicode" footnote.
 * For now, I lean towards Associated Unicode Standard wording (what Kwamikagami recommended) or Unicode Standard associated wording as I think that including "standard" clarifies even more that the wording is from Unicode documents. LightNightLights (talk) 07:05, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I like Associated Unicode Standard wording too, so I declare a consensus! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:04, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Potential contradiction
Under the "Public toilets" section, an image of a Swiss public toilet is labeled "Biological gender symbols on a public toilet in Switzerland". Typically gender is seen as a social concept, and sex is biological. This is a minute detail but I suggest the removal of the word "biological" from the image's label to avoid any unnecessary confusion.

Lumenfre (talk) 05:36, 24 September 2022 (UTC)


 * But they are biological symbols, and opposed to genealogical. We could change 'gender' to 'sex'. — kwami (talk) 09:02, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately sex symbol is already taken. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:16, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * In my experience--because of the societal connection between sex and gender--the Mars and Venus symbols are interchangeable for either sex or gender. The latter point seems to be the consensus based on this article's title, so I think it makes sense that the "Biological" be omitted from the label and keep the rest the way it is. An article title change is a topic for another talk section. Lumenfre (talk) 03:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

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