It seems like every year, there are more striped flags than ever before to represent every single group celebrating Pride. Like the multicolored flags used in the hanky code, it can sometimes be hard to remember which flag stands for which subculture, from giant cloth flags that stretch for multiple city blocks to tiny Pride flag emoji symbols on Twitter.
And what’s more, Pride flags are in a state of constant evolution. In recent years, the traditional horizontal rainbow-striped flag has been supplanted by the “Progress Pride Flag,” which adds more inclusive colors to acknowledge groups that have been historically left out of Pride events.
So where did all those Pride flags come from, why do we need them, and what do they mean? The answers to the first two questions are simple: They emerged from a need to assert the presence of LGBTQ+ people and their community at a time when they tended to be overlooked by mainstream culture. By displaying a flag, activists of decades past were able to draw attention to their existence, find each other, an push for more inclusion.
But analyzing the meaning of each flag is a bit more complex. Let’s break it all down.
Before the rainbow-striped Pride flag was created, the LGBTQ+ community tended to use the pink triangle as a symbol, adapted from the badge that gay prisoners were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps. During World War II, Nazis forced gay men in camps to wear a downward-pointing triangle, with around 100,000 estimated to have been held prisoner and 65,000 thought to have been killed. The pink triangle was most famously adopted by the HIV advocacy group ACT UP.
There was also some use of the Greek symbol lambda, green carnations, blue feathers, ace playing cards, and a purple hand print. Lambda represents energy and balance, and was primarily used by the Gay Activists Alliance in the 1970s. Green carnations first appeared when Oscar Wilde adopted them for his entourage in the late 1800s.
The purple hand can be traced back to a protest in 1969: After the San Francisco Examiner printed a homophobic report on gay bars, locals protested outside the paper’s offices. Employees dumped ink onto the protestors, who then used the ink to slap hand-prints along the building to show that they had been there.
None of those symbols was particularly widespread in modern times, however.
The history of the Pride flag can be traced back to Harvey Milk, the famous San Francisco city Supervisor, and his friend Gilbert Baker in the 1970s. Baker had served in the Army, and moved to San Francisco following his honorable discharge. There, he befriended Milk, who challenged him to create a symbol for what was then more commonly called the gay community. Baker and a friend named Lynn Segerblom, also known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow, developed a rainbow version that had eight colors, with a hot pink stripe later removed because it was difficult to dye.
Though it was often called the “Gay Pride Flag” at first, it’s now come to represent a much broader community than just gay men. Today, Pride is much more inclusive of lesbians, bisexual people, and people who are trans or poly or asexual or queer. “Gay” as a catch-all term for anything gender-nonconforming is a fast-vanishing vestige of patriarchy.
Over the years, the rainbow-striped Pride flag came to be thought of as the sole icon of Pride. But over the years, groups within the queer community felt the need to assert their presence as well. Lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and even leather groups created symbols for their communities, and over time came into more widespread use.
There’s easily dozens of different Pride flags, each slightly different. Because the flags represent different queer communities, rather than official organizations, they’re dynamic and flexible, and new ones can pop up as older ones fall out of use.
If you go to a Pride event, there are probably four main flags you’re likely to see. We’ll talk about their meaning in a moment, but the ones that are most commonly in use are the Gilbert Baker version with eight rainbow stripes; the “Progress Pride Flag” designed by Daniel Quasar that adds stripes for trans people and people or color; the pansexual Pride flag with pink, yellow, and blue stripes; and the trans Pride flag with blue and pink and white stripes.
There are certainly many more variations that you’ll run into — but those four are the ones that, at least for now, seem to get the most use.
The original rainbow flag used eight colors to represent different spiritual and emotional aspects of the psyche. Hot pink, before it was removed, stood for sex; red means life; orange means healing; yellow means sunlight; green means nature; turquoise means magic and art; indigo (later changed to royal blue) means serenity; and violet means spirit.
But of course, there are many more Pride flags than just the rainbow version created in the 1970s. Today, you’re likely to see a version designed by Daniel Quasar that adds a triangular chevron to one side, with colors honoring the trans community as well as people of color. That one is commonly known as the “Progress Pride Flag.” You may also see a version pioneered in Philadelphia that puts black and brown stripes at the top.
The Bisexual Pride flag has also seen common use for many years. It has a pink block at the top, a thinner purple stripe, and then a blue block at the bottom. As designed, the pink represents same-sex attraction, the blue represents other-sex attraction, and the thin purple stripe stands for the breadth of the gender spectrum.
The Pansexual Pride flag is comprised of pink (representing attraction to femmes), yellow (attraction to nonbinary people), and blue (attraction to masc people) stripes.
A less widely adopted Polyamory Pride flag has a blue (represention openness), red (passion), and black (solidarity) stripe with a gold (emotional attachment) Pi symbol in the middle. A variation on the Poly flag turns the black stripe into a triangle and replaces the Pi symbol with a yellow stripe.
The Asexual Pride flag, created in 2010, has four stripes: Black to represent asexuality, grey for demisexuality, white for allies, and purple for community.
Other variations of the Pride flag include Genderfluid, Genderflexible and Genderqueer Pride; flags for the Leather, Bear, and BDSM communities; a Polysexual Pride flag; Agender and Aromantic Pride flags; and even a rarely-seen Straight Ally Pride Flag with a large rainbow triangle amidst black and white stripes.
Because there’s no one authority that controls Pride flags, tons of variations can exist. And in the last few years, that’s meant that many protests and parades have seen an increase in Pride flags combined with Black Lives Matter flags.
One popular version places a fist in the center of the rainbow stripes, with black and brown stripes making up the fist. Another simply places the words “Black Lives Matter” atop the old-fashioned rainbow.
Combining the two movements makes a lot of sense, since both causes align with each other. The modern LGBTQ+ liberation movement was touched off by queer and trans people of color and their struggle continues to this day, with both communities seeking justice, equality, and freedom from oppression. And because many people belong to both communities, they’re not two distinct causes but instead overlap.
In other words, it’s great to honor the fight for civil rights by flying a flag; but even better to honor that fight by taking part and fighting for equality for all.
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