A Guide to LGBTQ+ Pride Flags
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- By Ruby Allen from The GALA Pride and Diversity Center
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For thousands of years, across many cultures, flags have been used as symbols of identity and community. We are all familiar with National flags, State Flags, or maybe even flags representing our cities or organizations. If we, for example, have a flag to represent us as citizens and residents of the United States of America, why are flags representing specific identities important?
For members of marginalized communities, flags like the American flag may not feel like they include us or represent us. In the case of the American flag, this flag was created during a time when women, immigrants, people of color, queer people and other minority groups were not treated equally in society. The American flag was not created with the intention of representing these groups. Pride flags, as well as many other identity based flags created by other minority groups, were created as a way to represent the underrepresented, as well as build community and act as symbols of safety and acceptance.
LGBTQ+ Flag
The original Rainbow flag was created in 1979 by artist and gay rights activist Gilbert Baker. The design had eight colors, each representing a specific aspect of gay pride and liberation. Over the years, the design has been simplified and modified to represent members of the LGBTQ+ community who are particularly marginalized, even within the LGBTQ+ community. Today, you may see the Progress flag variation, which has added colors to highlight the inclusion of Trans* people and people of color within the LGBTQ+ community.
Gay Men’s Flag
The first Gay Men’s flag was originally created by the artist Valentin Belyaev, sometime in the mid-2010’s. The flag was inspired by the design of the Lesbian flag. While this flag is one of the less common pride flags, next time you see one in the wild, you will be able to identify it!
Lesbian Flag
The lesbian community has used, and continues to use, many different pride flags over the years. However, the most common one currently used is the orange-pink striped flag. This flag was created in 2018 by blogger Emily Gwen. The orange-pink flag has both a 7 and 5 stripe variation, with the colors representing gender nonconformity, independence, community, unique relationships to womanhood, serenity and peace, love and sex, and femininity.
Bisexual Flag
The Bisexual flag was created in 1998 by artist and activist Michael Page.The pink represents attraction to the same gender, the blue represents attraction to the opposite gender, and the purple represents attraction to any/all genders. The purple stripe in the flag is the color that results in overlapping the pink and blue stripe. This color scheme was chosen to represent how bisexual people often blend in unnoticed in both the queer and straight communities.
Asexual Flag
Asexual people are people who experience limited or no sexual attraction to others. Asexuality, like many identities, exists on a spectrum, and people who identify as asexual widely vary in their experience of sexual attraction. The Asexual pride flag was created in 2010 by members of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), an online community for people who identify as asexual. The black stripe represents Asexuality (lack of sexual attraction), the gray represents Gray-Asexuality (limited sexual attraction), the white represents Allosexuality (people who experience sexual attraction, but are allied with the Asexual community) and the purple represents community.
Intersex Flag
Intersex people are people who are born with sex characteristics (including chromosome patterns, gonads, genitals among other characteristics) that do not fit into societally accepted notions of the male/female binary. Estimates vary, but according to InterAct, an organization advocating for the rights and acceptance of intersex people, about 1.7% of people are intersex. This may seem like a tiny percentage, but there are roughly the same amount of redheads in the world, and most of us have met a redhead! The intersex flag was designed in 2013 by intersex activist and researcher Morgan Carpenter. The colors yellow and purple were chosen because they do not have a gender association like blue and pink. The circle was chosen to symbolize wholeness and completeness, challenging the narrative that intersex people are imperfect or incomplete when compared to people who fit into the typical male/female binary.
Nonbinary Flag
Non-binary people are people whose gender identity is outside the man/woman gender binary. Non-binary identities fall within the Transgender umbrella, meaning people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Non-binary people have varying experiences of gender, with some identifying as a third gender (neither man or woman), some identifying as more than one gender, no gender, or fluctuating between gender identities. The Non-Binary flag was designed in 2014 by artist Kye Rowan. The yellow stripe represents people outside the gender binary, the white stripe represents people with multiple genders, the purple represents people who identify as a blend of genders and the black represents people who identify with no gender.
Pansexual Flag
Pansexual people are people who experience sexual or romantic attraction towards people of all genders. Pansexual identities fall within the Bisexual umbrella, meaning sexual identities that experience attraction to multiple genders. While bisexuality has always included attraction to people outside of the gender and sex binary, people who identify as Pansexual emphasize their attraction to others regardless of gender identity or expression. While someone who identifies as bisexual may have preferences towards the gender or gender expression of those they are attracted to, pansexual people typically consider themselves to have no such preference. The pansexual flag was created in the 2010s by Tumblr blogger Jasper V. The pink stripe represents attraction to women, the blue stripe represents attraction to men, and the yellow stripe represents attraction to people outside the gender binary.
Transgender Pride Flag
Transgender people are people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. Society typically assumes that people who are assigned female at birth identify as women and people assigned male at birth identify as men, but for many people this is not the case. Transgender people may identify as a binary gender identity, such as trans man or trans women, or a non-binary gender identity. Some transgender people may choose to undergo gender affirming surgery, hormone therapy, or change their name or appearance to align with their gender identity. Not all transgender people choose to undergo gender affirming medical care as a matter of personal preference or they may not have the option to for legal, financial or other reasons. The Transgender flag was created in 1999 by transgender activist Monica Helms. The blue and pink were chosen because they are the colors typically associated with boys and girls, and the white was chosen to represent people outside of the gender binary.
Pride month is the perfect opportunity to educate ourselves about the history of the LGBTQ+ community, the experiences of LGBTQ+ people now and throughout history, as well as reflect on our own identities. Whether you identify as LGBTQ+ or not, we all have aspects of our identities that are important to how we view ourselves and how we relate to the world around us. If you were to make a flag to represent yourself, what would be on it? For me, it would be cats and a big cup of tea. To quote comedian, transgender activist and all-around icon Suzy Eddie Izzard from her 1998 special Dress to Kill, “Do you have a flag?”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ruby Allen (they/them) is the Center Coordinator for The GALA Pride and Diversity Center in San Luis Obispo, California. They spend a lot of time hanging out in the yard with their cat Smokey, doing yoga, and reading queer horror novels.
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