Talk:⚤

RFV discussion: August 2016–April 2017
Currently has 2 senses (the second one with 1 quotation). Please check if they are able to be attested or if there are any other senses for this symbol.


 * 1) sexual intercourse (between man and woman)
 * 2) Collectively, gays and lesbians, or LGBT people.

Also, the Unicode PDF for range 2600-26FF says this character means "bisexuality". I tried to find this sense too in Google Books, but I wasn't able to.

I'm just guessing, but it could also mean heterosexuality. An anon originally created the entry with poor formatting and defining it as "heterosexuality". Maybe I was too quick to delete that sense, it actually looks plausible. (but I didn't find uses for it either)

I tried searching for: heterosexuality symbol, bisexuality symbol, interlocked male female, interlocked venus mars, bisexuaity unicode, female male gender symbols, female male sexuality symbols, etc. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 08:28, 9 August 2016 (UTC)


 * About 1st meaning, it is well-known in my country. Instead, I am not sure with the 2nd. --Octahedron80 (talk) 08:34, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I've seen it used on forums to tell users that you identify with both genders for any reasons, sometimes being that you're gender fluid or bigender or whatever else. Philmonte101 (talk) 16:51, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't know how you would really search for usage of this, but my sense is that while the "bisexuality" or "LGBT" meanings may possibly be known within certain groups, the general public (in the United States at least) is much more likely to associate it with heterosexuality. (For one random example which I happened to note down, it was used in an NBC Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment in 2007 to illustrate coverage of a study which claimed that women prefer men with prominent chins for short-term relationships, but men with rounder chins for long-term relationships.)  You can also see commons:Category:Heterosexuality... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:29, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


 * It was used on the Weekend Update segment of the Saturday Night Live episode that's being broadcast right now (rebroadcast of December? episode) to illustrate a story that brain scans didn't turn up significant differences between male and female brains. When Saturday Night Live uses the symbol, it seems to refer to comparisons or interactions between males and females... AnonMoos (talk) 04:27, 11 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I've been trying to search this symbol by reading some magazines and books about sex on Google Books, but it seems too hard to find. It seems that this RFV is probably going to fail. The entry has only one citation, which can be moved to Citations:⚤.
 * There is an SMBC comic in which the symbol appears, but I forgot to save the link. Either way, it would only count if that comic was published. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:44, 12 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The citation already included also suggests the meaning "a heterosexual awareness of the differences and diversity between men and women", which seems to be similar to the way SNL Weekend Update uses the symbol, but which isn't listed as a definition on the entry. By the way, the meaning "heterosexual sex" might be better suggested by the symbol on the left below than by the symbol on the right (in the eyes of some, at least): AnonMoos (talk) 22:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I found the SMBC comic that uses the ⚤ to mean "heterosexual sex" but does not count for attestation purposes because the internet is not "durably archived media". Here it is: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-04-27 --Daniel Carrero (talk) 09:52, 16 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't want to know what armadillo means in that context... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] You would think that being broadcast on national network television would count for something, but I have no idea how to cite SNL, or whether that's possible. (I'm not really a Youtube person, so it would be better for someone else to do it, if it can be done.) AnonMoos (talk) 08:47, 17 September 2016 (UTC)


 * : I don't think that appearing on TV counts as "durably archived media". If you find something on a book, hopefully it'll still be available if someone decides to check it in 200 years. How do you find the TV report of that specific SNL Weekend Update? Even if it's on Youtube somewhere despite all odds, Youtube videos get deleted all the time. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 17:40, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm not any kind of expert on sourcing or sourcing policies, but it seems to me that if you're going to include wordless symbols (without any particular associated pronunciation), then you need to allow yourself to look for cites in places where wordless symbols are found, or else you're pretty much pointlessly defeating yourself in advance. Not including the most commonly-understood meaning of the symbol (in the U.S. at least) makes the entry as a whole fairly useless... AnonMoos (talk) 07:12, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Citations in durably archived media (basically, books or Usenet) are important. IMO, if we can't prove that the symbol is used, then it's not actually used that much to merit an entry. In Category:Translingual citations, you can see some citation pages for emoticons. Those pages for emoticons with fewer than 3 citations usually don't have actual entries, (eg.: Citations:⊂(◉‿◉)つ), but if we find 3 citations for them, they can have entries.
 * Same with the word cissplain. According to the talk page, it may have to be deleted soon, because it does not have 3 citations from books or Usenet. (but it may be recreated later if properly cited) It has some citations at Citations:cissplain that are from the random internet websites and thus are not durably archived, and don't count. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 09:41, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * They probably wouldn't meet your high standards, but I just recently noticed that someone had added footnotes to the heterosexuality meaning on w:Gender symbol... AnonMoos (talk) 12:59, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * About the high standards you mentioned, WT:CFI says: "A term need not be limited to a single word in the usual sense.", but it does not define clearly what other things besides words are accepted. It is, however, clear enough about which citations we accept: if you want to prove that a normal word like ocean exists, you must provide citations from durably archived media. (ocean won't get deleted any time soon, because it's obvious that we could get 3 citations if we wanted) For symbols, we don't have any other standards -- 3 citations are needed for those, too. I think it's reasonable, because web pages are really ephemeral and random. If we allowed citations from the internet, we would probably get flooded with redlinks and protologisms everywhere. If you disagree with me, feel free to use WT:BP to try to make a policy proposal about citing stuff from TV or from the internet, but you are going to need to address problems like the ones I mentioned if you want to convince other people.
 * It's true that these footnotes don't meet my (or, CFI's) high standards. I checked the 4 links that were added in the Wikipedia article, serving as footnotes to the specific symbol. They are all from non-durably archived sites and so don't meet CFI. Three of those are mentions (explanations of the meanings) instead of actual uses; it's like saying "Wiktionaryphobia means fear of Wiktionary" instead of saying "I get panicked around here because of my Wiktionaryphobia" and it's the reason why we don't have a ton of words for phobias that are listed everywhere. The 4th link is just an image board. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 16:44, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the intended meaning of "A term need not be limited to a single word in the usual sense." was that a term can actually be a phrase consisting of multiple words. --WikiTiki89 17:27, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * By that logic, does * meet CFI? I know it's not the same; the asterisk is a normal symbol that exists on keyboards. But maybe all symbols actually don't meet CFI, including the asterisk and the planet/gender symbols. In any event, logically "A term need not be limited to a single word in the usual sense." is not restricted only to single words and multiple-word terms: in the list below that sentence, one of the items is: "Characters used in ideographic or phonetic writing such as 字 or ʃ.", so the examples indicate that at least kanji and IPA are accepted. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 18:09, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I know we include things like that, and we should, but that sentence is not the justification for it. --WikiTiki89 18:15, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is any other place on the CFI that justifies including the asterisk and/or the gender symbols, is there? The way I see it, that sentence ("A term need not be limited to a single word in the usual sense."), and the whole of WT:CFI, are the correct place to explain what types of entries we should have in the main namespace. If the section is unclear about the possibility to include certain symbols, it should be edited to reflect the actual rules, provided we reach any consensus from discussions and votes. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 18:28, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * There's never been a consensus on how to define exactly what should be included, that's why it's not in CFI. We can't make a policy of something we don't agree on. --WikiTiki89 18:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Relatively pointless yet relevant digression: XKCD:1726. - Amgine/t&middot;e 16:15, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

RFV failed. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 03:44, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May 2022–January 2023
Translingual. Rfv-sense: "Heterosexual". Plausible, but I'd like to see citations. For what it's worth, Emojipedia calls it the "Bisexual Sign". 98.170.164.88 07:44, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * RFV-failed. No citations have been added in six months and the three pre-existing citations mean three different things, two of them opposite to each other.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

⚪
The Unicode standard does mention it: (not sure it counts as a use technically). Would still be good to have quotations of use, I think, as we generally require them for emojis. 98.170.164.88 07:56, 16 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Unicode annotation for both. Both also in e.g. D.R. McElroy (2020) Signs & Symbols of the World: Over 1,001 Visual Signs Explained. The only question would be which of several Unicode rings corresponds to the intended meaning, but that's where the Unicode annotation comes in. Plausible some might use it for bisexuality, since there is no Unicode character for that, but sure you didn't confuse it with ⚥, which is botanical bisexuality? Also, these are not emojis. kwami (talk) 08:12, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The white circle displays as an emoji for me, the interlocking gender signs do not. I guess Emojipedia has entries for some symbols that aren't technically emojis. And I am certain they are referring to this character and not another with their "Bisexual Sign" label: . Twitter has results for both meanings, apparently a slim majority of "bi". 98.170.164.88 16:19, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * With some hopefully better refs, we could definitely add the bi meaning to ⚥, then.
 * The white circle displays as an emoji for me too, and badly, but then whichever font my browser is choosing for these things is screwy. There are a number of symbols, such as the signs of the zodiac, which are not inherently emojis but have emoji alts. This is one of them. kwami (talk) 17:12, 16 May 2022 (UTC)


 * There's a whole previous 2016 discussion at Talk:%E2%9A%A4. "Bisexuality" apparently refers to a botanical meaning in this context, not an LGBT meaning. AnonMoos (talk) 22:41, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
 * "Bisexual" in the botanical context (hermaphroditic "perfect" flowers or plants) are represented by ⚥. Unicode only has "heterosexuality" for this character. If we only have Emojipedia as a ref, I'm afraid this fails. I'll rv. myself and remove it, pending someone finding a RS. kwami (talk) 05:15, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I found something similar in Nixon & Düsterhöft (2017) Sex in the Digital Age, p. 150, where they say,
 * "Another common symbol used within bisexual spaces are the interlocking male and female gender symbols. These symbols are taken from the astrological symbols for Mars and venus and intertwined to signify men attracted to men, men and women attracted to each other, and women attracted to women. This symbol is frequently shown in black, but is also commonly shown in pink, blue and purple."
 * There is no illustration, but the wording suggests they mean the quadruple symbol Bisexuality symbol (bold, color).svg rather than ⚤. kwami (talk) 05:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

☼
Alt symbol for 'sun', but not sure ever used in astron, astrol. or alchem. kwami (talk) 17:18, 16 May 2022 (UTC)


 * RFV-failed. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)