A gender symbol is a pictogram or glyph used to represent either biological sex or sociological gender (a terminological distinction originating in 1950s sociology) in either biology, medicine, genealogy or selective breeding, or in sociology, gender politics, LGBT subculture and identity politics.
Pictograms used to indicate male and female public toilets became widely used beginning in the 1960s.
The shape of the Mars symbol has been likened to an iron-tipped spear (i.e. a weapon mainly used by men) and shape of the Venus symbol to a bronze mirror or a distaff (associated with women in the past).
Video Gender symbol
Biology and medicine
The two standard sex symbols are the Mars symbol ? (often considered to represent a shield and spear) for male and Venus symbol ? (often considered to represent a bronze mirror with a handle) for female, derived from astrological symbols, denoting the classical planets Mars and Venus, respectively. They were first used to denote the effective sex of plants (i.e. sex of individual in a given crossbreed, since most plants are hermaphroditic) by Carl Linnaeus in 1751.
They are still used in scientific publications to indicate the sex of an individual, for example of a patient. Pedigree charts published in scientific papers now more commonly use a square for male and a circle for female.
Maps Gender symbol
Sociology
Gender pictograms are frequently used to mark public toilets.
Since the 1970s, variations of gender symbols have also been used to express sexual orientation and political ideology. The first instance of this was the use of two interlocking male symbols to represent male homosexuality. Since the 2000s, numerous such variants have been introduced in the context of LGBT culture and politics. Some of these symbols have been adopted into Unicode (in the Miscellaneous Symbols block) beginning with version 4.1 (2005):
Pagan gender symbols
The pagan symbols for male and female were popularized by Dan Brown in his novel, The Da Vinci Code.
In the novel, the pagan symbol for male, resembling a rudimentary phallus, is depicted as the original icon for male, known as the blade, it represents aggression and manhood and is still used today on modern military uniforms to denote rank.
The pagan symbol for female, resembling a cup, vessel, or the shape of a woman's womb, is also depicted as the original icon for female, known as the chalice, it represents femininity, womanhood, and fertility.
See also
- Alchemical symbol
- Astrological symbols
- Miscellaneous Symbols Unicode block
Notes
External links
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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