This year's collection of new emojis for smartphones has been announced by Unicode Consortium, and includes a gender-neutral Santa, men in wedding dresses and the transgender flag. 

Unicode Consortium is the non-profit organization that manages smartphone emojis and its list of annual additions always attracts attention. 

Last year's list received complaints because even though it added same-sex couples it didn't include the transgender flag. The call for this to be included came from Google and Microsoft plus many more petitioners.

Discussing the proposal, Unicode said:

“Google, Microsoft, and the individuals listed in this document believe that adding an emoji illustrative to our life experiences isn’t just about creating technology that should be accessible to everyone — it’s about fostering culture that is inclusive of users around the world.”

They also say that since the introduction of the gay pride flag in 2016, the Transgender Pride Flag (blue, white, and pink) has been the most requested emoji. 

Apart from the transgender flag, this year's list of 117 new symbols and contains some useful, some bizarre and several  'why would anyone ever use that?' emojis.  In the latter section, there are anatomically correct hearts and lungs, a woolly mammoth, a dodo, bubble tea, accordion, a headstone and a sink plunger. Of course, you may well have looked in vain for a woolly mammoth emoji several times.

Emojipedia has a roundup:

There are a number of cross gender emojis - woman in tuxedo, man with bridal veil, and both female and gender-neutral Santas. Alongside the mammoth and the dodo you can now get polar bears, beavers, and black cats, as well as cockroaches, worms and beetles.

Other emojis that caught my eye include a magic wand, pinata, nesting dolls, and of course the trans flag.

You can check out the full set on the Unicode website. 

More Information

Unicode Consortium

Emojipedia

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