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Skip to Content SFW CLARE BAYLEY Posted on June 27, 2013 33 comments A field guide to Pride flags It’s almost time for SF Pride, and that means the city is sprouting rainbow flags like flowers in the desert after a rainstorm. By now most people know what the rainbow signifies, but what about those other striped flags you see waving at Pride events? I thought I knew most of their meanings, but I recently came across the most Pride items I’ve ever seen in one place, and they had keychains with flags that I’d never seen before (and my office is a castle that flies Pride flags from the turrets). Here’s a quick overview of all the ones I could find online, plus a more detailed history and analysis for each further down. My sources are cited in-line or listed at the end. The top 3 are the ones most commonly seen at Pride events. Edited on 6/27/15: Updated/added some flags based on reader feedback. Rearranged flag order to loosely group by category. The Gay Pride Rainbow Ah, the rainbow flag. Such a beautiful and bold statement, hard to ignore or mistake for anything else. (also easy to adapt to every kind of merchandise you can imagine) Wikipedia has an extensive article on it, but here are the more interesting bits: The original Gay Pride Flag was first flown in the 1978 San Francisco Pride Parade, and unlike its modern day 6- color version it was a full rainbow – it included hot pink, turquoise, and indigo instead of dark blue. Each of the stripes had a particular meaning associated with it, but mostly I think they just wanted a purty rainbow. The pink stripe was removed relatively quickly due to fabric unavailability. The turquoise was taken out a year later when the 7-striped flag was hung vertically from lamp posts on SF’s Market Street, but the middle stripe was obscured by the post so they yanked turquoise to make it an even number of stripes. This was also when blue replaced indigo, which I assume was done to balance out the removal of the turquoise. It’s been the same since 1979 and is recognized internationally. Awesome. Leather Pride Also known as “black and blue with love,” the leather pride flag is not associated with any particular sexual gender preference (though it’s used most commonly by gay men) but instead indicates a preference for kink. The “leather subculture” is somewhat hard to define as it encompasses a wide variety of activities. In general they all involve two things: leather and sex, although in modern times it’s also used for BDSM (which doesn’t necessarily include leather) or people who really really like wearing leather clothing (but not necessarily for a sexual purpose). In fact, the leather flag has grown to represent so many other sub cultures that it’s spawned a huge variety of sub- flags. Here are some examples, taken from The Queerstory Files (I’ve swapped out the dog/puppy flag they used in the original article for the more common variant) and their meanings. Head over to that article for definitions of each. The original leather pride flag was debuted at the International Mr. Leather event in 1989 (exactly 47 days after I was born). The colors and symbol have no official meaning. (source) Fun fact: The image under the ‘History’ section of the leather pride flag’s wikipedia article is of the flag flying from Kink’s turret. :) Bear Pride In general, a “bear” is a large, hairy, overtly masculine gay man – however, the community champions inclusion and self-identification is the only required characteristic. Sometimes slim but hairy men are called “otters,” and bears who are younger or sexually submissive are called “cubs,” which I find completely adorable. (source) The Bear Pride flag was designed by Craig Byrnes, who did his undergraduate senior project on the bear community as well as being a part of it himself. His research gave him inspiration to design a flag for the growing community and in 1995 he sketched out four different designs in crayon. These were voted on during a meeting of the Chesapeake Bay Bears club, and the winning design was circulated amongst bear communities throughout the United States. (source) It is now used by bear communities around the world. The colors represent the fur colors of all the different types of actual bears around the world. (source) Bisexual Pride The bisexual pride flag was introduced in 1998 by Michael Page as an effort to give bisexual people their own rallying symbol similar to the gay rainbow flag. (source) The colors are an evolution of the “Biangle” symbol, itself a play on the original pink triangle used to represent homosexuality. (source) Pansexual Pride Pansexuality is an interesting new categorization of sexual attraction. It’s defined as being attracted to people regardless of their gender or sex, which, unlike the strict definition of “bi”-sexual, includes those who fall outside the traditional gender binary. The pink represents being attracted to women, the blue being attracted to men, and the yellow for being attracted to everyone else. (source) There are some very cute sentiments online associated with pansexuality: (source) I couldn’t find any references for the history of the flag, but I’m guessing it’s rather new seeing as most of the uses for it are on tumblr. Asexual Pride Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction or a low interest in sexual activity. The asexual community is relatively new and not widely known, quite possibly because a lack of sexual interest causes much less public outcry than an “inappropriate” sexual interest. The flag was created in 2010 through a process spear-headed by the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). The creation and selection was extremely democratic and took place entirely online. First they asked for submissions, then posted all the designs in a poll. The community went through several rounds of voting, and finally narrowed it down to the winner that you see above. Lesbian Pride This flag features a “labrys,” a double-headed axe associated with early matriarchal Minoan societies and favored by tribes of Amazon warriors who roamed the area that is now Kazakhstan. The labrys became popular with lesbian culture in the 1970s, but has fallen out of common use since. (source) The black triangle is a throwback to nazi Germany, similar to the pink triangle used by the general gay movement. The black triangle denoted “anti-social” behavior, which included lesbianism. Although the flag was created fairly recently (1999 by Sean Campbell) it’s not as popular now as it once was, possibly because of the relative unknown of the symbols. (source) Lipstick Lesbian Pride A “lipstick” lesbian means a woman who is gay and has a very feminine gender expression. Often this includes makeup (thus, lipstick), skirts, heels, etc. This flag appears all over the internet, but it was very hard to find information about its origin. I finally traced it back to this post on a blog called This Lesbian Life. Reading through the author’s other posts, many of which are very good btw, it’s clear she was frustrated by other people not believing she was gay because she’s so femme. These are a couple lines from a blog post of hers called “The 10 Worst Things About Being a Lipstick Lesbian.” 2. Nobody ever believes that you’re gay, and thinks that you’re just going through a phase because of a bad boyfriend experience. 6. When you walk into a lesbian bar, everyone looks at you up and down and then whispers to each other, “Well she went to the wrong place.” 9. When you come out to someone they always have a crazy look on their face and then say…”Well I had no idea! You don’t seem gay!!!” So, she created a flag of her own to represent a marginalized subgroup! Pretty cool. Also, I think it’s seriously fucked up that this woman created this gorgeous flag, which is all over the internet, but nobody credits her. She wasn’t that hard to find, she’s on the 2nd page of a Google Search for “lipstick lesbian pride flag.” Polyamorous Pride Polyamory is often described as “consensual, ethical, and responsible non-monogamy.” It’s basically the practice of being in a relationship(s) with multiple people at the same time, and everyone involved knowing about it and being ok. Sadly for math nerds everywhere, the “pi” in this flag merely symbolizes the letter “p” for the first letter of “polyamory.” The flag was created by Jim Evans, but I couldn’t find info on when or where. (source) Update 6/27/15: The flag’s creator added this info in the comments: “The flag was indeed designed by me, Jim Evans, in the summer of 1995 or so. The ‘pi’ symbol has taken some heat over the years because of its obscurity, but yes, it was chosen to represent the first letter of “polyamory.” Part of the idea was to claim an arbitrary symbol that would be innocuous to people who didn’t know better, allowing closeted polyfolk to remain discrete if their circumstances required it. As an additional benefit, it was also a readily available typographic symbol on computing platforms at the time, and could be easily replicated by nearly anyone, which was seen as a distinct advantage, given the limitations of the designer’s visual artistic ability.