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A gender symbol is a
pictogram A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
or
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
used to represent
sex Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones (ova, oft ...
and
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
, for example in biology and medicine, in
genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kins ...
, or in the sociological fields of
gender politics Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these id ...
,
LGBT subculture LGBT culture is a culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. It is sometimes referred to as queer culture (indicating people who are queer), while the term gay culture may be used to mean "LGBT culture" or to ...
and
identity politics Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these i ...
. In his books (1767) and (1771),
Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
regularly used the
planetary symbol A planet symbol (or ''planetary symbol'') is a graphical symbol used in astrology and astronomy to represent a classical planet (including the Sun and the Moon) or one of the modern planets. The symbols were also used in alchemy Alchemy (from ...
s of 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 on
public toilet A public toilet, restroom, public bathroom or washroom is a room or small building with toilets (or urinals) and sinks for use by the general public. The facilities are available to customers, travelers, employees of a business, school pupils ...
s in some countries. The modern international
pictogram A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
s used 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.Sex-segregated public bathrooms existed since at least the 1880s, originally labelled in writing. The stick-figure pictograms were popularized with their introduction by British Rail in the 1960s
The genius behind the stick figure toilet signs
BBC Future (2014): "One of the best early examples of intuitive global signs for public lavatories was that created for British Rail in the mid-1960s. ..In the 1970s, the British example was developed on a more comprehensive basis in the United States. In 1974, the US Department of Transportation commissioned the American Institute of Graphic Arts to create a set of pictograms to be used throughout public transport networks whether road, rail, air or sea." "In Poland, meanwhile, you can come across lavatories indicating 'gents' with a triangle and 'ladies' with a circle, while in Lithuania men are represented by an inverted pyramid and women by a pyramid standing the right way up."


Biology and medicine

Gender symbols on a public toilet in Switzerland 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 by
Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
in 1751 to denote whether flowers were male (
stamens The stamen (plural ''stamina'' or ''stamens'') is the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Collectively the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filame ...
only), female (
pistil Gynoecium (; ) is most commonly used as a collective term for the parts of a flower that produce ovules and ultimately develop into the fruit and seeds. The gynoecium is the innermost whorl of a flower; it consists of (one or more) ''pistils'' ...
only) or
perfect flower Plant reproductive morphology is the study of the physical form and structure (the morphology) of those parts of plants directly or indirectly concerned with sexual reproduction. Among all living organisms, flowers, which are the reproductive s ...
s with 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

Kinship charts use a triangle for male and circle for female.
Pedigree chart A pedigree chart is a diagram that shows the occurrence and appearance of phenotypes of a particular gene or organism and its ancestors from one generation to the next, most commonly humans, show dogs, and race horses. Definition The word pedigree ...
s published 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 1871 ''System 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 River distinguished gender in the words of the language being recorded by writing male kinship terms in all capitals and female kinship terms with normal capitalization. This 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 as
Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Co ...
, who placed females to the left).


Public toilets

The modern gender symbols used for
public toilet A public toilet, restroom, public bathroom or washroom is a room or small building with toilets (or urinals) and sinks for use by the general public. The facilities are available to customers, travelers, employees of a business, school pupils ...
s, for male and and female, are pictograms created for the
British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...
system in the mid-1960s. Before that, local usage had been more variable. For example, schoolhouse
outhouse An outhouse is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a toilet. This is typically either a pit latrine or a bucket toilet, but other forms of dry toilet, dry (non-flushing) toilets may be encountered. The term may als ...
s in 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.Eric Sloane (1972, 2007) ''The Little Red Schoolhouse: A Sketchbook of Early American Education''. Doubleday & Co.; Dover Books. The British Rail pictogramsoften color-coded blue and redare 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 a
tuxedo Black tie is a semi-formal Western dress code for evening events, originating in British and American conventions for attire in the 19th century. In British English, the dress code is often referred to synecdochically by its principal element fo ...
. These symbols are abstracted to varying degrees in different countriesfor example, the circle-and-triangle variants 24px (female) and 24px (male) commonly found on
portable toilet A portable or mobile toilet (colloquial terms: thunderbox, portaloo, porta-john or porta-potty) is any type of toilet that can be moved around, some by one person, some by mechanical equipment such as a truck and crane. Most types do not require ...
s, 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 written words ( for male and
Radical 38 or radical woman () meaning "woman" or "female" is one of the 31 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of three strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 681 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. ...
for female). File:Toilets unisex.svg, Standard
American Institute of Graphic Arts The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization for design. Its members practice all forms of communication design, including graphic design, typography, interaction design, user experience, branding and identity. T ...
(AIGA) symbols File:Female symbol on public restroom.JPG, Non-AIGA women's symbol on a legally mandated circular background in USA File:Male symbol on public restroom.JPG, Non-AIGA men's symbol on a legally mandated triangular background in USA File:Gender Neutral Bathroom.jpg, Gender-neutral sign in USA, composed of legally mandated circle and triangle File:All gender restroom sign.jpg, Idiosyncratic unisex restroom in USA (see
LGBT symbols Over the course of its history, the LGBT community has adopted certain symbols for Identity (social science), self-identification to demonstrate unity, gay pride, pride, shared values, and allegiance to one another. These symbols communicate i ...
) File:5754-Linxia-City-Xiguan-Lu-public-toilet.jpg, Public toilet in China, with female silhouette to the left and male to the right File:Restroom (4652458500).jpg, Idiosyncratic symbols in Japan File:CAM00224 Washroom (11211245793).jpg, Humorous symbols in Austria File:Toalett (Budapest) 1.svg, Semi-triangular tuxedo and dress shapes in Hungary File:Toilet Promenadengalerien Linz - sign.jpg, Triangle-plus-circle symbols in Austria File:Wojska Polskiego WC Jurata (cropped).jpg, Circle and inverted triangle in Poland File:Sigiŝoaro, duseksa necesejo, 1.jpeg, Sign in Romania, with men's and women's shoes representing gender File:Separate tiolets for three genders.jpg, Male, female and
hijra Hijra, Hijrah, Hegira, Hejira, Hijrat or Hijri may refer to: Islam * Hijrah (often written as ''Hejira'' in older texts), the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE * Migration to Abyssinia or First Hegira, of Muhammad's followers ...
public toilets in India


Sexual orientation and gender politics

Since the 1970s, variations of gender symbols have been used to express
sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...
and
gender politics Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these id ...
. Two interlocking male symbols are used to represent
gay men Gay men are male homosexuals. Some bisexual and homoromantic men may also dually identify as gay, and a number of young gay men also identify as queer. Historically, gay men have been referred to by a number of different terms, including ' ...
while two interlocking female symbols are often used to represent
lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
s. Since the 2000s, numerous such variants have been introduced in the context of
LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...
culture and politics. Some of these symbols have been adopted into
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
(in the
Miscellaneous Symbols Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
block) beginning with version 4.1 in 2005.


Encoding


See also

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Alchemical symbol Alchemical symbols, originally devised as part of alchemy, were used to denote some elements and some compounds until the 18th century. Although notation like this was mostly standardized, style and symbol varied between alchemists, so this pag ...
*
Astrological symbols Historically, astrological and astronomical symbols overlapped. Frequently used symbols include signs of the zodiac and classical planets. These originate from medieval Byzantine codices. Their current form is a product of the European Renaissan ...
*
Fertility symbol Fertility was often mentioned in many mythological tales. In mythology, fertility deities exist in different belief systems or religions. Fertility deities A fertility deity is a god or goddess in mythology associated with fertility, pregnancy, an ...
s *
LGBT symbols Over the course of its history, the LGBT community has adopted certain symbols for Identity (social science), self-identification to demonstrate unity, gay pride, pride, shared values, and allegiance to one another. These symbols communicate i ...
*
Miscellaneous Symbols Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
Unicode block


Notes


References


External links

{{Sexual identities Gender and society Human gender and sexuality symbols