There’s a whole raft of new LGBT-inclusive and gender-neutral emojis headed for your phone
A raft of new LGBT-inclusive emojis are set to drop. (Emojipedia)
More than 200 new emojis have been approved and will be coming to devices soon, including a raft of new LGBT-inclusive and gender-neutral icons.
The Unicode Consortium, the organisation responsible for creating emojis, has announced new avatars for its Emoji 13.1 release, including a “heart on fire”, a “face exhaling” and even “spiral eyes”— basically, everything you need to sum up 2020.
The new emojis further improve diversity. Among them is a gender-neutral “person with beard”, as well as a “man with beard” and a “woman with beard”.
There are also new icons to represent interracial couples, with both same-sex and mixed-sex couple emojis to be made available in a variety of skin tones.
These would include the “couple with heart” emoji and the “kiss” emoji. The current options for both only include the default yellow skin tone.
The new emojis likely won’t be on devices until 2021. Unicode pushed back version 14 because of the pandemic, and many phones don’t even have Emoji 13.0 yet.
Trans flag emoji has finally been approved.
Unicode previously announced that it would be bringing in two new emojis for trans people as part of its Emoji 13.0 update. This included the trans Pride flag and the trans symbol emoji.
Tea Uglow, a trans person who works at Google and was one of those who spent years trying to get the trans Pride flag emoji, was thrilled by the news.
“For trans folk being able to say ‘transgender’ in emoji and to be out and proud and let our allies visibly support us is a huge deal for our community,” Uglow said at the time.
“We’re really happy to have finally crossed into mainstream culture. It’s been an amazing team effort around the world.”
Emoji 13.0 – and with it the trans Pride flag – has already begun rolling out on Android, and should arrive on iOS in the next few months. Emoji 13.1 is likely due to arrive on devices in 2021.
