Editing Venus (section)

=== Symbols ===
{{Main|Venus symbol}}
[[file:Venus symbol (planetary color).svg|frameless|left|80px]]

The symbol of a circle with a small cross beneath is the so-called [[Venus symbol]], gaining its name for being used as the [[astronomical symbol]] for Venus. The symbol is of [[ancient Greek]] origin, and represents more generally [[femininity]], adopted by biology as [[gender symbol]] for female,<ref name="Schott 2005 pp. 1509–1510"/><ref name="stearn1961"/><ref name="stearn"/> like the [[Mars symbol]] for male and sometimes the [[Mercury symbol]] for [[hermaphrodite]]. This gendered association of Venus and Mars has been used to pair them [[heteronormative]]ly, describing women and men stereotypically as being so different that they can be understood as coming from different planets, an understanding popularized in 1992 by the book titled ''[[Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus]]''.<ref name="Brammer 2020"/>

The Venus symbol was also used in Western [[alchemy]] representing the element [[copper]] (like the symbol of [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]] is also the symbol of the [[element mercury]]),<ref name="stearn1961" /><ref name="stearn" /> and since polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity the symbol for Venus has sometimes been called Venus mirror, representing the mirror of the goddess, although this origin has been discredited as an unlikely origin.<ref name="stearn1961" /><ref name="stearn" />

Besides the Venus symbol, many other symbols have been associated with Venus, other common ones are the [[star and crescent|crescent or particularly the star]], as with the [[Star of Ishtar]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Liungman |first=Carl G. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=06ALKxX225IC |title=Symbols: Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms |date=2004 |publisher=HME Publishing |isbn=978-91-972705-0-2 |pages=228 |language=en}}</ref>