Transgender Symbol Emoji
U+26A7:transgender_symbol:About Transgender Symbol ⚧️
Transgender Symbol () is part of the Symbols group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E13.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
⚧️ is the transgender symbol. A circle with three limbs: a Mars arrow (up-right), a Venus cross (down), and a third stroked arrow (up-left) that blends the two. It stands for transgender identity, gender diversity, and solidarity with trans and non-binary people. The symbol is six years older than the transgender flag: artist and activist Holly Boswell drew it in 1993 in Asheville, North Carolina. Organizer Wendy Parker passed the sketch to engineer Nancy R. Nangeroni, who digitized it and turned it into pins that spread through trans support groups across the US.
The glyph itself (U+26A7) entered the Unicode standard in March 2005 as part of Unicode 4.1, carrying the clinical-sounding name MALE WITH STROKE AND MALE AND FEMALE SIGN. It sat there as a plain character for fifteen years. In Emoji 13.0 (March 2020) Unicode finally granted it emoji presentation, and Apple shipped it in iOS 14.2 on November 5, 2020, alongside 🏳️⚧️ and 🧑🎄.
In practice ⚧️ is quieter than its sibling flag 🏳️⚧️. The flag is loud, instantly recognizable, easy to read on a phone screen. The symbol is more like jewelry: smaller, steadier, often placed in a display name or a bio rather than a post caption. Nangeroni said it was meant to show 'the wholeness of a society, which includes the transgender.' Trans users tend to read it that way, as a declaration without the volume.
On Instagram and TikTok, ⚧️ shows up most around the two observance days that anchor the trans calendar: Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31 (founded in 2009 by Detroit therapist Rachel Crandall-Crocker) and Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20 (founded in 1999 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith after the 1998 murder of Rita Hester). TDOV posts lean bright: ⚧️ paired with 💖, ✨, 🌈, selfies, gender euphoria captions. TDOR is all candle 🕯️ + ⚧️ + 🤍, names read aloud, silence as content.
In bios, ⚧️ is a bat signal. It's shorter than 🏳️⚧️, renders reliably at small sizes, and can sit next to pronouns (she/they ⚧️, he/him ⚧️) without clogging the line. Cis allies sometimes add it for the same reason cis people add pronouns: to communicate that a space is safe to disclose in. That usage is contested inside the community. Some trans users like the allyship signal, others feel the symbol should stay a self-identifier.
On X/Twitter since the Musk takeover, ⚧️ has taken on more weight. Users reported DM link previews getting suppressed for tweets containing 'trans,' 'LGBT,' and 'BLM' starting April 2023. Pairing ⚧️ with advocacy language became a way to signal community without typing the word that gets throttled. On Russian social media, where displaying the 'international LGBT movement' has been a punishable offense since the November 30, 2023 Supreme Court ruling, usage has been pushed underground.
It's the transgender symbol. A circle with a Mars arrow, a Venus cross, and a third stroked arrow that blends the two. It stands for transgender identity and gender diversity. Holly Boswell drew it in 1993; Unicode added it as a character in 2005, and it got emoji presentation in Emoji 13.0 (March 2020).
Trans and gender-identity symbols
What it means from...
If a friend adds ⚧️ to their bio or display name, they're telling you something about how they want to be seen. Don't make it a big reveal. Use their name and pronouns, move on.
In a partner's bio or in messages, ⚧️ is self-expression, not a signal you need to respond to. If they sent it directly to you, they're probably sharing a moment. Read it as 'I'm in this body and this identity and I want you to see me.'
In a stranger's bio, the symbol is a declaration. It tells you this person is trans, or is signaling the space is trans-friendly. It is not an invitation to ask questions about their body or transition.
In a work profile, ⚧️ often appears next to pronouns in Slack or email signatures. Treat it like a pronoun line: use what's written, don't editorialize.
Emoji combos
The pride and identity flags
Origin story
The symbol came out of a kitchen-table conversation in 1993. Holly Boswell, an Asheville writer who had already coined part of the vocabulary of modern trans identity with her 1991 essay 'The Transgender Alternative' in Chrysalis Quarterly, sketched a glyph that fused the Mars arrow, the Venus cross, and a third stroked arrow combining both. She gave the drawing to organizer Wendy Parker. Parker handed it to Nancy R. Nangeroni, an MIT-trained engineer who ran GenderTalk Radio out of Boston and had the design skills to digitize it.
Nangeroni turned the sketch into clean vector art and had it made into pins. The pins traveled through support groups: the Phoenix Transgender group that Boswell had co-founded in 1986 as the first open trans support group in the southeastern US, then IFGE conferences, then newsletters. Nangeroni's stated meaning, quoted in PinkNews, was that the symbol 'includes everyone, excluding none' and represents 'the wholeness of a society, which includes the transgender.'
The Mars and Venus glyphs underneath are old. Carl Linnaeus used them in 1751 to label male and female flowers, but they go back to astronomy. ♂ represents the spear and shield of Mars. ♀ represents the hand-mirror of Venus. The combined glyph ⚥ (MALE AND FEMALE SIGN) has been used in biology for hermaphroditic plants and animals. What Boswell did was add the stroked arrow, the third limb that carries the transition movement, and arrange all three around a common circle.
Boswell died in Asheville in August 2017 at age 66. She lived to see her glyph become the default visual shorthand for trans identity around the world, but not quite long enough to see it approved as an emoji in 2020.
Design history
- 1991Holly Boswell publishes 'The Transgender Alternative' in Chrysalis Quarterly, helping popularize 'transgender' as an umbrella term.↗
- 1993Boswell draws the symbol. Wendy Parker passes it to Nancy Nangeroni, who digitizes it and turns it into pins.↗
- 1999Monica Helms designs the transgender pride flag in Phoenix, AZ. The symbol and flag become the two anchor visuals of the movement.↗
- 2005U+26A7 enters Unicode 4.1 as a plain text character named 'MALE WITH STROKE AND MALE AND FEMALE SIGN'.↗
- 2009Rachel Crandall-Crocker founds Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31) in Michigan.↗
- 2017Holly Boswell dies at 66 in Asheville, NC.↗
- 2020Emoji 13.0 grants emoji presentation to ⚧️. Google and Microsoft co-sponsor the trans flag proposal.↗
- 2020Apple iOS 14.2 ships ⚧️ and 🏳️⚧️ on November 5.↗
Around the world
United States
⚧️ is widely used in bios, pronouns, and Pride content, but context has shifted sharply since the January 20, 2025 executive order declaring federal recognition of 'only two sexes.' The Supreme Court allowed the passport X-marker restriction to take effect in November 2025. State-level law varies enormously: Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas restrict gender-affirming care for minors while California, New York, and Massachusetts protect it. The symbol often appears in posts contrasting those laws.
United Kingdom
The April 16, 2025 Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers held that 'sex' in the 2010 Equality Act means biological sex at birth. UN experts warned of rights implications. Usage of ⚧️ in UK trans advocacy spiked after the ruling.
Russia
Displaying ⚧️, 🏳️⚧️, or 🏳️🌈 in public can now carry administrative detention of up to 15 days for a first offense and up to four years in prison for a repeat, after the November 30, 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned the 'international LGBT movement' as extremist. Russian trans users have largely moved to Telegram channels and private accounts.
Hungary
Hungary ended legal gender recognition in May 2020 and banned Pride events outright on March 18, 2025. The symbol is not illegal but is heavily chilled in public posting.
Thailand
Thailand's Marriage Equality Act took effect January 22, 2025, with nearly 2,000 couples marrying on day one. Thailand became the first Southeast Asian country with marriage equality. Legal gender recognition on IDs remains pending, but ⚧️ usage in Thai Pride content is heavy and uncontroversial.
Argentina
The 2012 Gender Identity Law) let people change legal gender by administrative procedure without surgery or a judge, a global first. 2021 added an X marker. Milei's 2025 government has restricted gender-affirming care for minors, but the legal recognition framework remains.
Holly Boswell, an Asheville, NC writer and activist, drew the symbol in 1993. Organizer Wendy Parker passed the sketch to engineer Nancy R. Nangeroni, who digitized it and turned it into pins. Boswell died in 2017 at age 66.
In Russia, displaying ⚧️, 🏳️⚧️, or 🏳️🌈 in public can trigger administrative detention (up to 15 days for a first offense) or prison (up to four years for repeat offenses) after the November 2023 Supreme Court ruling. Hungary has banned Pride events since March 2025. The symbol itself is not listed as banned in most countries, but local enforcement varies.
Search volume spikes by period
When ⚧️ shows up the most
- 🗓️March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility: Founded 2009 by Rachel Crandall-Crocker. Bright, celebratory. Selfies and euphoria posts.
- 📢Nov 13-19, Trans Awareness Week: The run-up to TDOR. Education, fundraisers, mutual-aid threads.
- 🕯️November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance: Founded 1999 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith after the 1998 murder of Rita Hester. Vigils, name-reading, silence.
- 🏳️🌈June, Pride Month: Global Pride spikes. ⚧️ often paired with 🏳️⚧️ and 🏳️🌈 in brand and community posts.
Search interest
Often confused with
The transgender flag. Same community, different visual. The flag is a ZWJ sequence combining 🏳 + ⚧ + variation selectors; ⚧️ is the underlying symbol.
The transgender flag. Same community, different visual. The flag is a ZWJ sequence combining 🏳 + ⚧ + variation selectors; ⚧️ is the underlying symbol.
The restroom pictogram. People sometimes read ⚧️ as a bathroom sign because bathroom signage has copied the look. The emoji is identity, not facilities.
The restroom pictogram. People sometimes read ⚧️ as a bathroom sign because bathroom signage has copied the look. The emoji is identity, not facilities.
Men's room sign. Pictogram of a figure, not a gender symbol. Used for physical spaces and maps.
Men's room sign. Pictogram of a figure, not a gender symbol. Used for physical spaces and maps.
Women's room sign. Same category as 🚹, not the identity symbol.
Women's room sign. Same category as 🚹, not the identity symbol.
The male sign. A Mars glyph on its own, not the trans symbol.
The male sign. A Mars glyph on its own, not the trans symbol.
The female sign. A Venus glyph on its own, not the trans symbol.
The female sign. A Venus glyph on its own, not the trans symbol.
⚧️ is the transgender symbol (the glyph). 🏳️⚧️ is the transgender flag, a ZWJ sequence that places the symbol inside a white flag. The symbol came first (1993, Boswell). The flag came six years later (1999, Monica Helms). The flag dominates search volume and social posting; the symbol shows up more in bios.
Do's and don'ts
- ✗Treat it as a restroom sign. It's identity, not facilities.
- ✗Use it ironically or to mock trans people. The community uses the symbol as a declaration of safety, that reading matters.
- ✗Assume every ally should add it to their bio. Opinion inside the community is split.
- ✗Confuse it with the ♂️, ♀️, or ⚥ standalone glyphs, they are related but not the same.
It depends who you ask. Many trans people welcome cis allies adding it to their bio as a safe-space signal, the way cis people add pronouns. Others feel the symbol should stay a self-identifier. If you're cis and unsure, 🏳️⚧️ or a 'trans rights' line in text carries similar weight without the ambiguity.
It doesn't, actually. Bathroom signage has borrowed the look over the years because designers grabbed the nearest 'combined-gender' glyph. The emoji predates most gender-neutral bathroom signs by decades. Many US airports and universities have since moved away from half-man half-woman figures in favor of toilet pictograms plus 'All Gender' text.
Fun facts
- •Holly Boswell drew the symbol in 1993 in Asheville, NC, six years before the transgender flag was designed. Wendy Parker passed it to Nancy Nangeroni, who digitized it. Source: PinkNews.
- •U+26A7 was added to Unicode in March 2005 as a plain text character, but waited 15 years to get emoji presentation in Emoji 13.0 (March 2020).
- •The trans flag emoji 🏳️⚧️ is not a 'real' codepoint: it's a five-character ZWJ sequence that combines 🏳 + ⚧ with variation selectors and a zero-width joiner. Technical detail here.
- •Emoji 13.0 introduced 117 new emoji. Five were gender-related: the trans flag, the trans symbol, Mx Claus, woman in tuxedo, and man with veil. TechCrunch coverage.
- •Nancy Nangeroni, who digitized the symbol in 1993, went on to co-found the first Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil six years later with Gwendolyn Ann Smith, after the 1998 murder of Rita Hester. Source: GLAAD.
- •Monica Helms designed the transgender flag in August 1999 after speaking with Michael Page, who had designed the bisexual flag the year before. Helms said the design 'just came to me.' Smithsonian.
- •The original Helms flag was accessioned by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History on August 19, 2014.
- •The trans flag proposal for Emoji 13.0 was co-sponsored by Google and Microsoft, an unusually public co-sponsorship for a politically-charged emoji. Out.com.
- •Holly Boswell's 1991 essay 'The Transgender Alternative' in Chrysalis Quarterly helped popularize 'transgender' as an umbrella term, two years before she drew the symbol.
Trivia
For developers
- •U+26A7 alone is text style. Add U+FE0F to force emoji presentation: ⚧️ = .
- •Use U+FE0E for explicit text style: ⚧︎ stays monochrome in fonts that support both.
- •The trans flag 🏳️⚧️ is a ZWJ sequence: . Treat it as one grapheme cluster.
- •In hex attributes on eeemoji.com this is stored as (without the variation selector).
The character U+26A7 entered Unicode 4.1 in March 2005 but was plain text for 15 years. Emoji 13.0 (March 2020) added emoji presentation with the variation selector U+FE0F. Apple shipped it in iOS 14.2 on November 5, 2020.
Unicode often uses descriptive compound names for symbols added before emoji presentation. The original character proposal in 2005 described the glyph visually: a male sign ♂ with a stroke, plus a male-and-female sign ⚥. The community name 'transgender symbol' was added later as the CLDR short name when emoji presentation arrived in 2020.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
How do you use ⚧️?
Select all that apply
- Transgender Symbol, Emojipedia (emojipedia.org)
- U+26A7, Unicode Codepoint (codepoints.net)
- Transgender Symbol, EmojiAll (emojiall.com)
- The fascinating origin story behind the famous transgender symbol, PinkNews (thepinknews.com)
- All about the transgender symbol, LGBTQ Nation (lgbtqnation.com)
- Holly Boswell, LGBTQ Religious Archives (lgbtqreligiousarchives.org)
- Creator of transgender symbol dies at 66, Windy City Times (windycitytimes.com)
- Chrysalis Quarterly 1991 Flashback, Dallas Denny (dallasdenny.com)
- Transgender Flag, Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)
- Who designed the transgender flag, Smithsonian (si.edu)
- Rachel Crandall-Crocker on TDOV, NPR (npr.org)
- Transgender Day of Remembrance, GLAAD (glaad.org)
- Apple finally has trans flag and trans symbol emojis, Out.com (out.com)
- TechCrunch: gender-inclusive Emoji 13.0 additions (techcrunch.com)
- Russia Supreme Court bans LGBT movement as extremist, HRW (hrw.org)
- UK Supreme Court on woman definition, NPR (npr.org)
- Thailand marriage equality takes effect, Al Jazeera (aljazeera.com)
- Death of Nex Benedict, Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)
- Biden TDOV / Easter controversy, CNN (cnn.com)
- Trans Hydra meme, Know Your Meme (knowyourmeme.com)
- Twitter LGBTQ term suppression, PinkNews (thepinknews.com)
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