Gender symbol

"♀" and "♂" redirect here. For their use for Venus and Mars, seePlanet symbols.

Gender symbols on a public toilet in Switzerland

Agender symbolis apictogramorglyphused to representsexandgender,for example in biology and medicine, ingenealogy,or in the sociological fields ofgender politics,LGBT subcultureandidentity politics.

In his booksMantissa Plantarum(1767) andMantissa Plantarum Altera(1771),Carl Linnaeusregularly used theplanetary symbolsof Mars, Venus and Mercury –♂,♀,☿– for male, female and hermaphroditic (perfect) flowers, respectively.Botanists now use⚥for the last.

In genealogy, including kinship in anthropology and pedigrees in animal husbandry, the geometric shapes△or□are used for male and○for female. These are also used onpublic toiletsin some countries.

The modern internationalpictogramsused to indicate male and female public toilets,🚹︎and🚺︎,became widely used in the 1960s and 1970s. They are sometimes abstracted to▽for male and△for female.

Biology and medicine

♀♂⚥ △□○
Gender symbol
InUnicode	U+2640♀FEMALE SIGNU+2642♂MALE SIGN U+26A5⚥MALE AND FEMALE SIGNU+25B3△WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE U+25A1□WHITE SQUAREU+25CB○WHITE CIRCLE

The three standard sex symbols in biology are male♂,female♀and hermaphroditic⚥;originally the symbol for Mercury,☿,was used for the last. These symbols were first used byCarl Linnaeusin 1751 to denote whether flowers were male (stamensonly), female (pistilonly) orperfect flowerswith both pistils and stamens.(Most flowering and conifer plant species are hermaphroditic and either bear flowers/cones that themselves are hermaphroditic, or bear both male and female flowers/cones on the same plant.) These symbols are now ubiquitous in biology and medicine to indicate the sex of an individual, for example of a patient.

Genealogy

Minimal kinship chart: a male and female producing male and female offspring

Kinship chartsuse a triangle△for male and circle○for female.Pedigree chartspublished in scientific papers use an earlier anthropological convention of a square□for male and a circle○for female.

Before a shape distinction was adopted, all individuals had been represented by a circle in Morgan's 1871System of Consanguinity and Affinity of Human Family,where gender is encoded in the abbreviations for the kin relation (e.g. M for 'mother' and F for 'father').W. H. R. Riversdistinguished gender in the words of the language being recorded by writing male kinship terms in all capitals and female kinship terms with normal capitalization. That convention was quite influential for a time, and his convention of prioritizing male kin by placing them to the left and females to the right continues to this day though there have been exceptions, such asMargaret Mead,who placed females to the left.

Linguistics

Inlinguistics,a 'grammatical gender' system is a specific form of anoun classsystem, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. Inlanguages with grammatical gender,most or all nouns inherently carry one value of thegrammatical categorycalledgender,typically 'masculine', 'feminine', and 'neuter'. In addition toU+2640♀FEMALE SIGNandU+2642♂MALE SIGN,Unicode encodes a symbol for theneuter gender,U+26B2⚲NEUTER.

Public toilets

Main articles:Public toilet § Society and culture,andUnisex public toilet

The modern gender symbols used forpublic toilets,🚹︎for male and🚺︎for female, are pictograms created for theBritish Railsystem in the mid-1960s.Before that, local usage had been more variable. For example, schoolhouseouthousesin the 19th-century United States had ventilation holes in their doors that were shaped like a starburst Sun✴or like a crescent Moon☾,respectively, to indicate whether the toilet was for use by boys or girls.The British Rail pictograms – often color-coded blue and red– are now the norm for marking public toilets in much of the world, with the female symbol distinguished by a triangular skirt or dress, and in early years (and sometimes still) the male symbol stylized like atuxedo.

These symbols are abstracted to varying degrees in different countries – for example, the circle-and-triangle variants(female) and(male) commonly found onportable toilets,to the extreme of a triangle△(representing a skirt or dress) for female and an inverted triangle▽(representing a broad-shouldered tuxedo) for male in Lithuania.

In elementary schools, the pictograms may be of children rather than of adults, with the girl distinguished by her hair. In themed locations, such as bars and tourist attractions, a thematic image or figurine of a man and woman or boy and girl may be used.

In Poland, an inverted triangle▽is used for male while a circle○is used for female.

In mainland China, silhouettes of heads in profile may be used as gender pictograms,generally alongside the Chinese characters for male (Nam) and female (Nữ).

Some contemporary designs for restroom signage in public spaces are shifting away from symbols that demonstrate gender as binary as a way to be more inclusive.

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  StandardAmerican Institute of Graphic Arts(AIGA) symbols
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  Non-AIGA women's symbol on a legally mandated circular background in US
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  Non-AIGA men's symbol on a legally mandated triangular background in US
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  Gender-neutral sign in US, composed of legally mandated circle and triangle
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  Accessiblegender-neutral sign icon
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  Idiosyncratic unisex restroom in US (seeLGBT symbols)
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  Public toilet in China, with female silhouette to the left and male to the right
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  Idiosyncratic symbols in Japan
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  Humorous symbols in Austria
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  Semi-triangular tuxedo and dress shapes in Hungary
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  Triangle-plus-circle symbols in Austria
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  Circle (female) and inverted triangle (male) in Poland
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  Sign in Romania, with men's and women's shoes representing gender
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  Male, female andhijra(trans) public toilets in India
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  Signs in theReal Jardín Botánico de Madrid;the male is depicted with a largeupper bodyand the female with widehips

Sexual orientation and gender politics

Lesbian and gay male interlocked gender sex symbols

Main article:LGBT symbols

Since the 1970s, variations of gender symbols have been used to expresssexual orientationandgender politics.Two interlocking male symbols (⚣) are used to representgay menwhile two interlocking female symbols (⚢) are often used to representlesbians.Two female and two male symbols interlocked representbisexuality,while an interlocked female and male symbol (⚤) representsheterosexuality.

The combined male-female symbol (⚦) is used to representandrogyneortransgenderpeople; when additionally combined with the female (♀) and male (♂) symbols (⚧) it indicates gender inclusivity,though it is also used as a transgender symbol.

The Mercury symbol (☿) and combined female/male symbol (⚥) have both been used to representintersexpeople.A featureless circle (⚪︎), neuter symbol (⚲), and the Alchemical Symbol (🜬) are used to represent bothasexualityandnon-binarypeople.

Since the 2000s, numerous variants of gender symbols have been introduced in the context ofLGBTculture and politics.Some of these symbols have been adopted intoUnicode(in theMiscellaneous Symbolsblock) beginning with version 4.1 in 2005.

Encoding

These symbols are those that havecode pointsallocated by theUnicode Consortium.For additional symbols, seeLGBT symbols § Encoding.

For information on entering these symbols in a document, seeUnicode input.

Unicode Standardname	Symbol		Additional remark in standard
U+2640♀FEMALE SIGN		♀
U+2642♂MALE SIGN		♂
U+26A5⚥MALE AND FEMALE SIGN		⚥	Intersex, androgynous; hermaphrodite (in botany)
U+25B3△WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE		△	Trine
U+25BD▽WHITE DOWN-POINTING TRIANGLE		▽	Hamilton operator
U+25A1□WHITE SQUARE		□
U+25CB○WHITE CIRCLE		○
U+1F7D5🟕CIRCLED TRIANGLE		🟕
U+1F6B9🚹MENS SYMBOL		🚹︎	Man symbol; men'srestroom
U+1F6BA🚺WOMENS SYMBOL		🚺︎	Woman symbol; women's restroom
U+1F6C9🛉BOYS SYMBOL		🛉︎
U+1F6CA🛊GIRLS SYMBOL		🛊︎
U+1F6BB🚻RESTROOM		🚻︎	Man and woman symbol with divider; unisex restroom

See also

• Alchemical symbol
• Astrological symbols
• Fertility symbols
• LGBT symbols
• Miscellaneous SymbolsUnicode block
• Sex symbol– Person or character widely regarded as sexually attractive