Css doesn't matter.
Any way that gets the pseudo-element to "protrude?" (sorry for my lack of words) as the graphic above will do it.
Well… but if jQuery can target them, there must be a way to exclude it, even if that means to add an extra mouseover to the :before to temporarily remove the li's, or manually trigger the li's mouseout.
Regardless of the element not being a real element "and therefore not exist in the DOM", I'm sure jQuery doesn't think $('#menu li') == $('#menu li:before')
Probably you are jumping ahead to where the problem will be and I'm still far behind, but if they are not the same thing, and both of them can be target, there must be something I can do. Probably not the way I'm asking because of the reason of my question: I'm not a jQuery expert ;)