Everyone in the world is familiar with the Rainbow flag and what it represents. But within the queer community, we have so many different flags with different stories of how they came to be. Welcome to my history lesson on flags of the queer community….probably not something your crusty, white, 50-year-old male history teacher would have covered in grade 9.
The Rainbow Flag
This flag is a universally recognized symbol for the LGBT community. It is also known as the gay pride flag or LGBT pride flag. The colors are actually meant to reflect how diverse the LGBT community is and the rainbow flag was first used in San Francisco in the 1970’s. The flag was originally created by an Artist named Gilbert Baker, an American artist from Kansas. Whilst the flag did undergo a few revisions to get the rainbow flag we know and love today, it is now undisputedly the most recognizable flag when it comes to LGBT identity and pride.
The Lesbian Flag
Interestingly there is not an ‘official’ lesbian flag that has been accepted by the community. There have also been many iterations of the lesbian flag over the years.
The Labrys Lesbian flag was created in 1999 by Sean Campbell (a man….strange) In the 1970s this flag was used as a symbol of empowerment in the lesbian community. The labrys was a weapon associated with the Amazons in ancient mythology….which we all know gives off major sapphic vibes.
Lipstick Lesbian Flag
The Lipstick Lesbian Flag was created in the 2010s by Natalie McCray and was meant to represent the Lipstick Lesbians. Now if you don’t know what a lipstick lesbian is you can find out here but I am sure you probably do by now. The use of this flag has waned over the years due to issues around plagiarism and also accusations of racism, transphobia, and biphobia from the creator.
Lesbian Flag (most common)
This is probably the lesbian flag that you have seen the most and is the most commonly known flag of our people. Although it is basically the Lipstick Lesbian flag without the Lipstick mark, over the past decade this flag has become an increasingly common symbol of lesbianism.
Lesbian Flag circa 2018
With a slightly different color scheme to the one above, this flag is now probably the most commonly used lesbian flag. It was created by Emily Gwen in an effort to be more inclusive of butch and gender non-conforming lesbians as they had previously felt excluded from the two earlier iterations of the flag.
According to Twitter the meaning’s behind the color scheme are:
Lesbian Pride Variant
This flag is a lesbian version of the universally known rainbow flag. The double venus symbol obviously references lesbianism and personally, I think this is my favorite one of them all.
Trans Pride Flag
The Trans Pride Flag was created by Monica Helms in the 1990s. Pink and blue are representative of traditional colors for baby girls and baby boys, respectively, while white represents intersex, transitioning, or neutral or undefined gender.
Bisexual Pride Flag
The Bisexual Pride Flag was created in 1998 by Michael Page. The pink represents attraction to the same sex only, the blue to the opposite sex only, and the purple attraction to all genders / more than one.
Alternate Rainbow Flag
This new version of the rainbow flag was created with the additional brown and black strip to recognize people of color within the LGBTQIA+ community.
Pansexual Pride Flag
The pansexual pride flag has three horizontal stripes: pink, yellow, and blue. According to most definitions, pink represents people who are female-identified, blue represents people who are male-identified, and yellow represents nonbinary attraction.
Genderqueer Flag
The genderqueer pride flag is a Marilyn Roxie design with the final version being released in June 2011. For the creation of this flag, there was also input from readers of Genderqueer identities. The purple represents a mixture of Blue and Pink, symbolic of androgyny. The white represents agender identity. The green represents those whose identities are defined outside of and without reference to the binary.
