People in the LGBTQ+ community and their allies celebrate "Pride Month" across the world. If you've been to any Pride celebration, you will see people dressed in apparel that display a wide selection of LGBTQ+ pride symbols and color schemes. Even those who are not members of the LGBTQ+ community are likely to spot the well-known rainbow pride flag, which serves as a symbol of pride for the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. While the rainbow flag is intended to represent the entire spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities, many other symbols are used to highlight specific identities within the LGBTQ+ community.
Today, there are dozens of LGBTQ+ flags representing just as many gender identities, sexualities, and intersections of communities. Albeit the symbolic use of bright colors has long been linked to queer culture, these flags, fittingly, are a highly visible, widespread signal of queer identity compared to some of the slightly more covert LGBTQ+ symbols that preceded them. Flags are, after all, meant to be flown — loudly and proudly!
We’ll walk you through some LGBTQ+ flags, from the original pride flag to new pride flags flown today, so that you can understand which identity each flag celebrates.
Gilbert Baker Pride Flag
This is the mother — or, in less gendered terms, the parent — of all LGBTQ+ flags. The original pride flag came to be in 1978 after Gilbert Baker. An eight-striped rainbow crafted, unfurling the first flag at June’s San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. Each of the colors had a distinct meaning: Hot pink: Sex, Red: Life, Orange: Healing, Yellow: Sunlight, Green: Nature, Turquoise: Magic, Blue: Harmony, and Violet: Spirit.
"Progress" Pride Flag
It was set out to create a version of the flag that would help elevate marginalized queer identities even further, also honored those both living with and lost to HIV/AIDS. The inclusion of an arrow, to show forward movement and that progress still needs to be made.
Bisexual Flag
Inclusion of three colors each symbolizing a different kind of attraction. Pink is meant to represent attraction to your same gender and blue attraction to a different gender, while the overlapping lavender stripe symbolizes attraction to both and/or multiple genders. In keeping with our understanding of bisexuality today, the Bi Pride Flag — like bisexuality itself — shouldn’t be seen as enforcing a binary.
Pansexual Flag
The flag that’s since been widely adopted by the pansexual community got its start on Tumblr. Pansexual Pride Flag’s colors are commonly understood to mean pink represents attraction to femme-identifying people, blue represents attraction to those who are male-identified, and yellow represents attraction to non-binary and genderqueer folks.
Transgender Flag
The pattern seen in this flag is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying in finding correctness in our lives. The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender.
Lesbian Flag
In 2010, what’s now separately known as the “lipstick lesbian flag” was seen as representing only femme lesbians, excluding those who are butch. Thus, redesigning of the flag has since been widely adopted, with colors, from top to bottom, meant to represent the following: gender nonconformity, independence, community, unique relationships to womanhood, serenity and peace, love and sex, femininity.
Straight Ally Flag
This flag began to be used in the late 2000s by straight allies to the LGBTQIA+ community, though its origins remain unclear. Featuring an “A” for ally against a black and white background, it’s meant to give non-queer allies a way of visibly showing their support — without necessarily coopting the flags and symbols created by and for the queer community.
Ever since the first rainbow-hued LGBTQ flag was created in 1978, pride flags have been a colorful symbol of queer identity. Much like the communities they represent, these flags are in a constant state of evolution, expanding to encompass every queer identity better and more inclusively under the rainbow. And what a rainbow it is!
Whenever you’re walking outside and overheard a conversation of gays here in the Philippines would immediately make you squint, because you can’t understand what they are saying. They have secret language between them that only they could interpret. To dig deeper, it was mainly because it is protection, safety, and security to surround the gay community from the judgements of people. Speaking of language, in modern times the word queen that was self-imposed by every gay man from the history. Evolution of the terminology that made it to the newspapers, “Yaaas Queen!” that was adopted by the queer community and gained popularity.
So JPIAns, here’s to ease your confusion and to remind you always be polite to queer culture. Remember, RESPECT BEGETS RESPECT.
Kommentare