WHICH DIVERSITY (LGBT+) PRIDE FLAGS ARE YOUR FLAGS?

And yes flags in plural because, you certainly can claim more than one flag. First, you have the umbrella flag (the rainbow), second your sexual preference, and then third, your gender identity. In my Morgan Freeman’s voice: “There is a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities, which you can combine… and even change depending on your mood or phase! “

So which flags can you claim? What are the meanings of all the pride flags? You’ll find out below. Note that at time of writing there are over 50 identities with their own flags. We will talk about the most common and broad ones, but keep in mind that there are even more subset categories or slight variations of these.

1A. The Universal Umbrella Diversity Pride Flag

This is the universal umbrella flag for all LGBT+ or more accurately speaking Diversity people. The one that connects us all in all of the diversity and variety. You can claim this flag plus your own specific identity(ies), which we’ll explain below.

It is made of the sacred colors of the rainbow. It is a simplified version of the original flag (below).

Then, there are many variations of it, with the various identities adding their accent to it, some daring to lowkey attempt to present them as “replacements” altogether. But no matter who is trying to replace it with their own version, don’t be fooled, it’s just not happening! This one is our flag and it can’t be replaced! (ndlr looking at you “regressive flag”, sippin‘)

Think of this flag as the EU or the USA Flag which remains the same no matter which state joins; while the flags below as the different “states or subsets of it.

1B. The Original Pride Flag

This is the original Pride flag, which can also be used interchangeably with the simplified one.

It was created in 1978, when the artist Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. Baker later revealed that he was urged by Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. Baker decided to make that symbol a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’” Baker saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colors for the stripes, each color with its own meaning (hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).

The first version of the rainbow flag were flown on June 25, 1978, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. Baker and a team of volunteers had made them by hand, and now he wanted to mass-produce the flag for consumption by all. However, because of production issues, the pink and turquoise stripes were removed and indigo was replaced by basic blue, which resulted in the contemporary simplified six-striped flag (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet). Today this is the most common variant of the rainbow flag, with the red stripe on top, as in a natural rainbow. The various colors came to reflect both the immense diversity and the unity of the LGBTQ community.

2. The Pansexual Flag

TYPE: Sexual orientation.

You are attracted to people regardless of their gender? Pansexual people are also open to relationships with people who do not identify as strictly men or women. Pansexuality therefore rejects the gender binary, it is either considered a more inclusive term than bisexual.

Pansexual people may refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are not determining factors in their romantic or sexual attraction to others. This means that they can feel attraction to those who identify as women, men, both or neither. If that is the case for you, you can claim the pansexual flag.

Pansexuality has been getting lots of popularity because of the perceived limitation of bisexuality to include other existing genders. In that case perhaps Omnisexuality is more of what you are? Check more below.

3. The Bisexual Flag

TYPE: Sexual orientation.

Bi means two. Bisexuality is to have romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior towards both males and females.

Some want to play with words and would like to make the “two” of “bi” be defined as an attraction for either of the genders (1) or all genders (2), but if that’s the case you’re not bisexual, you’re either Pansexual (attracted to people without focus on gender) or Omnisexual (love all the various genders options on the menu). While the term bisexual has been the more popular and known accross centuries, with the arrival of the internet, people usually find out that they are just more than that.

The Bisexual Pride Flag was created in 1998 by Michael Page. His idea for the flag represents pink and blue blending to make purple. The way that bisexual people can blend into the straight community and the gay community.

4. The Omnisexual or Multisexual Pride Flag

TYPE: Sexual orientation.

Omnisexuality is about to eat Bisexuality’s lunch as it is the proper term to define somone who loves all genders (and appreciating genders).

A person who is omnisexual can form attraction to all genders. As opposed to Pansexuality, in this case, gender plays a role in the person’s attraction.

Omnisexuality can be described as being between pansexual and bisexual. It has characteristics from both. However, there are clear differences. Omnisexuality is attraction to all genders, but gender will play a role in that attraction.

5. The Gay Men Flag

TYPE: Sexual orientation + Gender identity.

The Gay Men’s Pride Flag is the flag for men who love the male gender. It features different shades of blue, green and purple for all shades of men.

Whether macho, fem, bears, transgender, intersex and all different types of males who are attracted to the male gender or male energy can claim this flag.

6. The Lesbian Flags

TYPE: Sexual orientation + Gender identity.

A lesbian is a woman who is physically and romantically attracted to other women. Lesbianism is a form of homosexuality.

Just like male homosexuality, lesbianism exists since the beginning of time, its first mention in history is in the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian code of laws from around 1700 B.C. that allowed women to marry each other. 

The word “lesbian” comes from the name of the Greek island Lesbos, where Sappho was born. She was an ancient Greek woman who wrote poems that included homosexual themes. The term “sapphic,” named for this poet, also refers to female homosexuality.

There are non other than at least 6 lesbian flags and, and as you can expect from women, lots and lots of drama behind them (click the link for more on wikipedia).

7. The Intersex Flag

TYPE: Gender identity.

Intersex people are people born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights “do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies”.

Intersex people can appear as either male, female or androgyne.

In 2013, Morgan Carpenter chose the colors yellow and purple for the intersex flag. He selected these colors because neither is associated with the social constructs of the gender binary.

The circle, perfect and unbroken, represents the wholeness of intersex people. It is a reminder that intersex people are perfect the way they are born or choose to be.

Learn more about Intersex people here.

8. The Bear Pride Flag

TYPE: Identity and/or Sexual preference

The International Bear Brotherhood Flag, also known as the bear flag, is a pride flag designed to represent the bear gay subculture.

The bear culture celebrates secondary sex characteristics such as growth of body hair and facial hair, traits associated with bears and macho men.

The colors of the flag—dark brown, orange/rust, golden yellow, tan, white, gray, and black—are meant to include the colors of the furs of animal bears throughout the world.

9. The Twink Pride Flag

TYPE: Identity and/or Sexual preference

A twink is a pretty, boyish-looking, skinny to slim young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18-25, slender with no facial hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 9:00am. A twink is the gay answer to the blonde bimbo cheerleader. A twink is funny and can be spotted in porn movies such as those of Belami.

While biologically male, they often present themselves in a feminine manner part of the time, or at all time.

They speak with the “gay voice” and use vocabulary such as “guurl!” and “bitch!”. Despite being feminine, twinks do not necessarily wear clothing designed for females.

If you fit that description, here is your flag. Three stripes on the twink pride flag are pink at the top, white in the middle and yellow at the bottom with a pair of Mars symbols on the middle reminding you that you are still male and that you love dick. Past 25 years old you might consider letting your hair grow and join the bear pride community above.

10. The Leather or Fetish Pride Flag

TYPE: Identity and/or Sexual preference

Leather subculture denotes practices and styles of apparel organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as harnesses, jockstraps, leather jackets, vests, boots, or other items. Wearing fetish garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures.

The leather pride flag is a symbol used by the leather subculture since the 1990s. It was designed by Tony DeBlase and was quickly embraced by the gay leather community.

11. The Non-Binary, Androgyne or Genderqueer Pride Flag

TYPE: Gender identity.

Non-binary or Genderqueer, simply put are Androgyne people. Androgyne being what’s on the outside (the body / physical appearance) and non-binary what’s on the inside (the spirit / how they feeling).

They are people who look and/or feel both (and sometimes neither) male and female at once.

They can identify with more than one gender, no gender (agender), or have a fluctuating gender identity (genderfluid).

They may identify as an intermediate or separate third gender. Their gender identity does not fit within the all male or all female binary narrative.

Gender identity is separate from sexual or romantic orientation, non-binary people have various sexual orientations.

In 2014, Kye Rowan created the Nonbinary Pride Flag but the Androgyne Flag could also be used. The colors of the nonbinary flag are yellow, white, purple, and black. The colors each symbolize a different subgroup of people who identify as nonbinary.

Yellow signifies something on its own or people who identify outside of the binary of male or female. White, a color that consists of all colors mixed, stands for multi-gendered people. Purple, like the lavender color in the genderqueer flag, represents people who identify as a blending of male and female genders. Finally, black (the absence of color) signifies those who are agender, who feel they do not have a gender.

Read more about non-binary people here.

12. The Transgender Pride Flag

TYPE: Gender identity.

The term transgender, often shortened as trans, does not have a universally accepted definition.

Some would present “Transgender” as people having “a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth”. But part of the problem with this definition is why do humans keep assigning a gender to babies without knowing the spirit inside in the first place? Making a definition based of a problem perpetuates it.

Others prefers to present Transgender as people who embrace the opposite gender presented by the binary genitalia at birth, with or without body modification, to transition from one sex to another, making the word Transgender, an umbrella term that include transexuals and cross-dressers.

Certain people wish to make “transgender” an umbrella term also for non-binary people (based of the definition mentioned in the beginning of this section), but a great majority of genderqueers do not want to be associated with it and consider themselves a completely separate identity, and rightfully so, as trans stands for transition. Non-binary people are either “all genders”, “another gender” or “no gender”, and neither transitioning nor an “all one opposite gender” which falls into the binary code of all male or all female, which the point for them is to avoid, hence NON-binary.

The most known transgender pride flag has five horizontal stripes of three colors—light blue, pink and white. It was designed by American trans woman Monica Helms in 1999 to represent the transgender community.

There are several other flags used and endorsed by varying transgender individuals which you can see here.

13. Genderfluid Pride Flag

TYPE: Gender identity.

Gender-fluidity describes the experience of changing gender identity in a matter of days, weeks, months or over time.

These people can fluctuate between any gender, such as feeling more feminine or masculine, bigender or agender, maverique or neutrois, and demigender or polygender at various degrees.

For example, one could dress male one day and female the next while completely owning each gender fully. Rupaul, for example, could be described as genderfluid.

The Genderfluid Pride Flag was created in 2012 by JJ Poole. It has five horizontal stripes and five color: Pink for femininity, Blue for masculinity, Purple for femininity and masculinity, Black for lack of gender and White for all genders.

14. The Abrosexual Pride Flag

TYPE: Sexual preference

The Abrosexual Pride Flag has existed since 2015. The flag was created by Mod Chad.

Where Genderfluid refers to a gender identity, Abrosexual is its counterpart of a sexual preference. It refers to an individual whose sexuality is changing or fluid. For example, someone could be gay one day, then be straight the next, then be into aliens.

While it is possible – and even common – for a person’s sexual identity to shift or change in some way throughout their life, an abrosexual person’s sexuality may change more frequently, over the course of days, months, or years. Because of their inconsistent attraction, some abrosexual people may not feel compelled to seek out a relationship or may prefer a wavership.

The timing of the fluctuations is different for every person; for some the fluctuations may be erratic and for others they may be regular. The sexualities that a person fluctuates between also varies. Some abrosexual people may be fluid between all sexualities, while others may only be fluid between a few.

15. The Polyamory Pride Flag

TYPE: Identity and relationship preference

Polyamory is the practice of, or desire for, romantic relationships with more than one partner at the same time, with the informed consent of all partners involved. Each and everyone having sex with one another. It’s like a group of friends with romance and sex.

People who identify as polyamorous may believe in open relationships with a conscious management of jealousy and reject the view that sexual and relational exclusivity are prerequisite for deep, committed, long-term, loving relationships. Others prefer to restrict their sexual activity to only members of the group, a closed polyamorous relationship that is usually referred to as polyfidelity.

Polyamory has come to be an umbrella term for various forms of non-monogamous, multi-partner relationships, or non-exclusive sexual or romantic relationships.

There are currently several flags for polyamory but the one above is the most used.

16. The Drag Pride Flags

TYPE: Identity.

Drag is art. The term “drag” suggests a performance of extravagant femininity or masculinity as drag queens or drag kings.

There are two drag pride flags; one which was created by Sean Campbell in 1999 and is called the Feather Pride Flag. It has a phoenix in its center which symbolizes rebirth and fires of passion. The second was introduced at the Austin International Drag Festival (AIDF) in 2016. It has a crown and stars along with three vertical stripes. The colors mean:

• Purple means a passion for drag.
• White for how one’s body and face become a blank slate to change and create characters on.
• Blue for self-expression and loyalty.
• The crown for leadership, as well as Queen and King (hence Drag Queen and Drag King)
• The stars for the many forms of drag.

Your flag is not up there and you think we should talk about it ? (We told you, there are over 50 of them). Post about it in the comments.