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Love Knows No Labels: The Whole Story on Pride Flags

Lifestyle

Love Knows No Labels: The Whole Story on Pride Flags

The LGBTQ pride flag has emerged as a powerful symbol of identity, togetherness, and visibility. It is only one of many different pride flags, each celebrating a distinct intersectionality of identities and how people perceive themselves.

The Historic Designs

rainbow flag
source: amazon.com

From the iconic rainbow flag to the myriad additional flags representing various identities, each flag offers its tale of struggle, pride, and acceptance. We’ve gathered some key information about each pride flag to assist you in comprehending the many LGBTQ flag meanings.

Traditional Pride Flag

Dare to be different and shop for a durable flag in a rainbow pattern. Perhaps this is the best-known design It has six horizontal stripes in six distinct colours. These colours are listed from top to bottom: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. As a result, it has been dubbed the Rainbow Flag and is a globally renowned symbol of optimism and pride for the LGBTQ+ communities.

Gilbert Baker invented the rainbow flag in 1977 after being commissioned to design a banner that would reflect America’s gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities. This was initially seen at the Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco. One year later, in 1978, an openly gay politician named Harvey Milk was slain in San Francisco. This resulted in a significant demand for the new rainbow LGBT+ flag, which represents solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.

Since its inception over 30 years ago, the flag with a rainbow pattern has been amended several times. For example, in 2017, Baker put a new lavender stripe on the top of the flag to symbolise diversity. In 2017, the state of Philadelphia, in the United States, added the colours black and brown to reflect people of colour in the community. The Progress Pride Flag, based on the classic rainbow flags, was established in 2018 to raise awareness of the challenges confronting transgender persons in the community.

Progress Pride Flag

This logo, which shows sympathy and solidarity with oppressed groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, was adopted following a popular Kickstarter campaign. Quasar intended to highlight the additional hardships of queer people of colour, those living with HIV/AIDS, and members of the trans community by incorporating the chevron into the standard six-colour pattern.

Transgender Pride Flag

This is the most common design utilised by the transgender community. The Transgender Pride flag symbolises the trans community’s pride and diversity, as well as the fight for transgender rights. The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, which is the traditional colour for infant boys. The stripes adjacent to them are pink, which is the typical colour for infant girls. The white stripe in the middle represents persons who are transitioning or identify as neutral or ambiguous gender.

Bisexual Pride Flag

Designed to increase acknowledgement of the bisexual population in society as a whole and within the LGBTQ+ community. Pink signifies sexual attraction to the same sex, blue represents sexual interest to the opposing sex, and the overlap that results in purple represents sexual attraction to two or more genders. The purple also illustrates how pink and blue can merge indistinguishably and to varied degrees. Bisexuality, like the colour purple, is viewed as a spectrum rather than a specific proportion.

Intersex Pride Flag

The flag originated in Australia, where it was meant to serve as a symbol of pride for persons born with sex differences such as chromosomes, hormones, or genitals. Campaigners and activists spoke about the ongoing struggle for bodily autonomy and genital integrity, and they sought a symbol to accompany their efforts. The yellow background represents gender neutrality, while the purple circle is shown as unbroken and unadorned, representing wholeness and completeness.

Lesbian Pride Flag

Throughout history, dozens of flags have been used to represent the Lesbian community, including the Gilbert Baker design and Lipstick Lesbian Flag. However, as the need for an alternate and more inclusive flag grew, several other designs emerged. The most popular is a five-stripe flag in traditionally feminine colours of pink, white, and orange, which represents gender nonconformity and independence from men.

Non-Binary Pride Flag

The non-binary flag was established to fly alongside the genderqueer flag in the hopes that more people would feel included. It was created as a symbol of pride and respect for those whose gender identities do not conform to the standard male/female dichotomy. The yellow stripe represents individuals who are outside of the binary and have no reference to it. White is for those who identify with many or all genders, whereas black is for those who believe they are genderless. The purple stripe shows those who identify as a mix of or somewhere between the male and female spectrum.

Asexual Pride Flag

The design, which used the colours of the AVEN emblem, was chosen as the winner of a contest endorsed by numerous notable asexual charities and organisations. To serve as a symbol and identify those who do not have a sexual attraction to all genders, the flag also includes the colour purple to signify the larger LGBTQ+ community and the place Asexual persons hold. The black and grey represent asexuality and demisexuality, respectively, while the white represents non-sexual partners and allies in the community.

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