A gender symbol denotes the sex of an organism or characterizes an agent by gender.
The two standard gender symbols denoting male ♂ and female ♀ are derived from astrological symbols, denoting the classical planets Mars and Venus, respectively. These symbols have been in use since the Renaissance also denoting elements in alchemy, specifically the metals iron and copper.
They were first used to denote the effective gender of plants (i.e. sex of individual in a given crossbreed, since most plants are hermaphroditic) by Carolus Linnaeus in 1751.
| Mars symbol (U+2642 ♂). The symbol for a male organism or man. | |
| Venus symbol (U+2640 ♀). The symbol for a female organism or woman. |
Read more about Gender Symbol: LGBT Culture
Famous quotes containing the words gender and/or symbol:
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)