What each gender symbol means
♂︎ means male and ♀︎ means female; both come from the old astronomical symbols for Mars and Venus. ⚥ merges the two into one sign and is often used for androgyny or intersex people. ⚧︎ adds a third arm with a stroke and is widely used as the transgender symbol.
⚲ (neuter) and ☿ (Mercury) are often chosen by non-binary people, although there is no single official non-binary sign. ⚦, ⚨ and ⚩ are male-sign variants with a stroke; ⚦ is the arm that appears inside ⚧︎.
Couple and relationship signs
⚢ (two female signs) is widely used for lesbians and ⚣ (two male signs) for gay men. ⚤ interlocks a female and a male sign and is often used for a heterosexual couple.
Genealogists have their own set, named directly in Unicode: ⚭ is the marriage symbol, ⚮ divorce and ⚯ an unmarried partnership. They are handy in family trees, next to a date, for example ⚭ 1998.
Using gender symbols in forms, bios and design
Most of these signs live in the Miscellaneous Symbols block of Unicode, so they show up on almost every phone and computer. ♂︎ and ♀︎ can switch to color emoji on some devices, while the restroom signs 🚹 🚺 🚻 are always emoji.
In Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt + X: 2642 for ♂︎, 2640 for ♀︎, 26A5 for ⚥ and 26A7 for ⚧︎. On Windows, Alt + 11 and Alt + 12 give ♂︎ and ♀︎. For more detail on the two main signs, see the male symbol and female symbol pages.