[UTR#51-8] 1.4.3 Emoji Variation Sequences: Female/Venus and Male/Mars Signs

<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-8.html#def_emoji_variation_sequence>

> 2640 FE0E; text style; # FEMALE SIGN
> 2640 FE0F; emoji style; # FEMALE SIGN
> 2642 FE0E; text style; # MALE SIGN
> 2642 FE0F; emoji style; # MALE SIGN

Since U+240 and U+2642 double as symbols for the planets (and ancient gods) Venus and Mars, respectively, users will rightfully expect VS-16 to have an effect on the other planet symbols as well (probably including U+2647 Pluto).

Both symbols are also sometimes used to represent Friday and Tuesday, respectively, so some users may expect the symbols for the other 5 days of the week also react on U+FE0E/F.

 1. Monday ☽ U+263D Moon or ☾ U+263E
 2. Tuesday ♂ U+2642 Mars
 3. Wednesday ☿ U+263F Mercury
 4. Thursday ♃ U+2643 Jupiter
 5. Friday ♀ U+2640 Venus
 6. Saturday ♄ U+2644 Saturn
 7. Sunday ☉ U+2609 Sun or ☼ U+263C

U+2640/2 are also part of common sets of gender, sex and sexuality symbols which, again, some users will expect to have emoji forms now and – be prepared for the 🌈💩🌪 – also work in ZWJ or Open Type ligature sequences. (I’m not sure how lesbian or gay versions of emojis, as proposed before in L2/15-013 for instance, could become anything other than stereotypical through offensive.) The real-world use may be a bit different from what the annotations in the standard say, e.g. distinction of transgender and intersex or sexuality and gender identity:

> * ⚢ U+26A2 Doubled Female Sign
> = lesbianism
> * ⚣ U+26A3 Doubled Male Sign
> • a glyph variant has the two circles on the same line
> = male homosexuality
> * ⚤ U+26A4 Interlocked Female and Male Sign
> • a glyph variant has the two circles on the same line
> = bisexuality
> * ⚥ U+26A5 Male and Female Sign
> = transgendered sexuality
> = hermaphrodite (in entomology)
> * ⚦ U+26A6 Male with Stroke Sign
> = transgendered sexuality
> * ⚧ U+26A7 Male with Stroke and Male and Female Sign
> = transgendered sexuality
> * ⚲ U+26B2 Neuter

Lastly, the 2 signs are also recognized by Unicode to be alchemical symbols of copper and iron, respectively, but since that set is much larger and even more esoteric I expect not much demand for emoji versions of all of them.

In conclusion, I see no good way other than to add a lot of additional codepoints from the Miscellaneous Symbols block to StandardizedVariants.txt.

Cheers

    Christoph
Received on Fri Aug 12 2016 - 06:42:32 CDT