25 LGBTQ+ Pride Flags and Their Meanings
25 LGBTQ+ Pride Flags and Their Meanings
Over the last 40-plus years, the rainbow pride flag has become a symbol synonymous with the LGBTQ+ community and its fight for equal rights and acceptance across the globe. It's also a celebration of the beauty and diversity of the experience, flown at pride events all throughout the month of June.
Since Gilbert Baker first created the original rainbow pride flag back in 1978, designers and activists of all genders, identities, and sexual orientations have made different iterations to reflect unique communities. Some, like the two-spirit pride flag and the updated pride flag, incorporate Baker's original design while adding more colors and elements to acknowledge both Native Americans and the broader POC community, respectively.
There has been a meaningful uptick in new pride flags since 2010, with variants for intersex, non-binary, and agender people produced. Marilyn Roxie, the designer of the genderqueer pride flag, told Majestic Mess that the rise in social media platforms and other internet hubs for queer people has been hugely important in leading to the creation of new flags.
"Online communities have been tremendously influential, giving people a virtual space to do research on possibilities and especially to find others who feel similarly," they said. "Though I started reading about gender and sexuality right away in my college library the first semester I started there, the online component allowed me to browse through forums and articles and to chat with people who seemed to identify like I did when I was in the process of figuring it all out."
Obviously, this list is not exhaustive, and there are regularly more pride flags being created to reflect different groups, but hopefully this information can prove useful as you learn about and champion the LGBTQ+ people in your life.
Original Pride Flag
The late artist Gilbert Baker is credited with creating the first pride flag, which he designed in 1978 for Gay Pride Day in San Francisco, per CNN.
Baker's iteration of the flag gives a unique meaning to each color, "hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for harmony and violet for spirit," he explained.
"We needed something to express our joy, our beauty, our power. And the rainbow did that,” Baker told CNN in 2015. “We’re an ancient, wonderful tribe of people. We picked something from nature. We picked something beautiful."
Rainbow Pride Flag
This iteration of the flag, which omits the pink stripe, has been popular since 1979. Per Old Dominion University (ODU) pride flags were in high demand following the assassination of San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, and Baker opted to omit the pink stripe because the fabric color was difficult to find.
For a time, the Paramount Flag Company sold a seven-stripe flag, that included one in turquoise.
Updated Pride Flag
In recent years, the updated pride flag, which includes both black and brown stripes to acknowledge queer people of color, as well as pink, white, and blue (the colors of the transgender pride flag), has become more popular.
"This flag recognizes intersections within the LGBTQ+ community honoring LGBTQ+ people of color—whose activism inspired the very first Pride—as well as different gender identities," London mayor Sadiq Khan told Forbes.
Transgender Pride Flag
Monica Helms, a transgender activist and former member of the U.S. Navy, created the transgender pride flag in 1999. The light pink and light blue are common colors that denote girls and boys, respectively, while the white stripe in the middle is for people who "are intersex, transitioning, or see themselves as having a neutral or undefined gender," per the University of Northern Colorado's Gender & Sexuality Research Center (UNCO).
Helms also founded TAVA, the Transgender American Veterans Association.
Bisexual Pride Flag
According to Tennessee's TriPride organization, Michael Page first designed the bisexual pride flag in 1998. Per UNCO, the pink stands for "attraction to those of the same gender identity," the purple for "attraction to two genders," and the blue signifies "attraction to those who identify as a different gender."
Philadelphia People of Color-Inclusive Pride Flag
In 2017, Philadelphia added two additional stripes to its pride flag—one black and one brown—intended to symbolize queer people of color. The flag also kept the colors from Gilbert Baker's original.
Lesbian Pride Flag
There have previously been other iterations of the lesbian flag, but this one, created by Emily Gwen, is intended to represent the full range of lesbian identities. Per the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, the colors stand for gender non-conformity (dark orange), independence (orange), community (light orange), unique connections to womanhood (white), serenity and peace (pink), dusty pink (love and sex), and dark rose (femininity).
Pansexual Pride Flag
A person who identifies as pansexual does not see their attraction as something limited by a specific gender or genders. Its flag dates back roughly to 2010, and is meant to be distinct from the bisexual flag.
Per UNCO, the pink represents "attraction to those who identify as female," the blue "attraction to those who identify as male," and the yellow symbolizes "attraction to those who identify as genderqueer, non-binary, agender, androgynous, or anyone who doesn’t identify on the male-female binary."
Intersex Pride Flag
Morgan Carpenter, who ran Intersex International Australia, created this flag in 2013, per UNCO. Purple and yellow are used because they are often viewed as gender neutral.
"The flag is comprised of a golden yellow field, with a purple circle emblem. The colors and circle don’t just avoid referencing gender stereotypes, like the colors pink and blue, they seek to completely avoid use of symbols that have anything to do with gender at all. Instead, the circle is unbroken and un-ornamented, symbolizing wholeness and completeness, and our potentialities. We are still fighting for bodily autonomy and genital integrity, and this symbolizes the right to be who and how we want to be," Carpenter wrote.
Asexual Pride Flag
According to Advocate.com, the asexual flag was first made in 2010 and was inspired by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) logo.
The black stands for asexuality, the gray for grey-asexuality and demisexuality, the white for non-asexual partners, and the purple for community.
"Prior to its adoption, people would use things like the AVEN triangle or a half-filled heart, but those had problems which prevented their wider adoption," Asexuality Archive wrote about the need for a distinct asexual flag. "The AVEN triangle is, well, the AVEN triangle. It’s the logo of a single website that not every asexual person is affiliated with."
Non-Binary Pride Flag
Those who identify as non-binary do not fall within the male-female gender binary, and their flag, which was made in 2014 by Kyle Rowan, represents that experience. According to the University of Northern Colorado, the colors stand for people completely outside of the gender binary (yellow), people with multiple genders (white), people whose identity incorporates aspects of male and female (purple), and those who do not identify with any specific gender (black).
Agender Pride Flag
The agender pride flag was originally made by Salem X in 2014.
The activist organization OutRight Action International notes that the black and white in the flag stand for the "absence of gender," gray is for "semi-genderlessness," while the green stripe in the middle represents "nonbinary genders."
Gender-Fluid Pride Flag
The flag for those who identify as gender-fluid was made in 2013 by J.J. Poole. According to UNCO, the five colors that are used are meant to symbolize the varying forms of gender-fluidity.
The pink is for the feminine, the blue is for masculine, white is a "lack of gender," purple combines the masculine and feminine, while black represents genders that do not share traits with the feminine or masculine.
Polysexual Pride Flag
Polysexuality is the idea that a person can be attracted to multiple different genders, but not every single one. The pink stands for being attracted to women, the blue to men, and the green to those who identify as non-binary, per Old Dominion University
Polyamory Pride Flag
Polyamory refers to being in multiple romantic relationships where all the parties involved are consenting. According to UNCO, the flag was made by Jim Evans in 1995, where the blue stands for "openness and honesty of all parties," the red "represents love and passion," the black is a show of support for people who cannot come out as polyamorous, and the yellow represents emotional connection.
Other versions of the flag replace the pi symbol with a heart interlocking with an infinity sign to symbolize how one can love multiple people at once.
Genderqueer Pride Flag
According to the University of Northern Colorado, Marilyn Roxie created the genderqueer pride flag in 2011. Initially, it was "intended to represent all non-binary and genderqueer people," but in 2014, Kye Rowan made the dedicated non-binary flag to reflect the identity of that community.
The use of lavender is meant as a combination of pink and blue, symbolizing a mixture of male and female. Conversely, the dark green is meant to stand for people who identify beyond the gender binary, and stand as the opposite of lavender. The white signifies agenderism.
Demisexual Pride Flag
The demisexual flag is meant to be a symbol for those who say they need to feel a strong emotional connection to someone before they are sexually attracted to them. According to ODU, the colors mean asexuality (black), demisexuality (gray), sexuality (white), and community (purple).
Aromantic Pride Flag
An aromantic person doesn't experience romantic attraction, as opposed to an asexual person who doesn't feel sexual attraction, per Women's Health.
According to UNCO, green is used in the aromantic pride flag because it is seen as the opposite of red on the color spectrum, with red often connoting romance or passion.
Lesbian Labrys Pride Flag
Per Old Dominion, designer Sean Campbell created the labrys flag in 1999, placing the now-famous image of a two-sided axe atop a purple background. Reportedly, one of the reasons the black triangle is used is because Nazis used them to mark women who did not fit their narrow definition of proper femininity.
Bear Pride Flag
Montclair State University defines a bear in queer culture as "a gay or bisexual man who has facial/body hair and a cuddly body." The flag was created by Craig Byrnes in 1995, and each of the colors stands for a different skin tone or hair color of human beings, in order to emphasize inclusivity.
Twink Pride Flag
According to The New York Times, "Twinks are young, attractive, hairless, slim men," and in some ways represent the aesthetic opposite of a bear. The exact origins and meaning of the color choices in the twink pride flag are not as well known as some of its counterparts.
Two-Spirit Pride Flag
The Indian Health Service defines two-spirit as Native Americans who could be men, women or intersex people and could be assigned responsibilities designated for either male or female tribe members. "In most tribes, they were considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status."
On the flag, the feathers stand for masculine and feminine traits, while the circle represents how elements of each can be combined to form another gender identity entirely.
Rubber Pride Flag
According to Pride.com, the rubber pride flag has been around since 1995, when it was created by Peter Tolos and Scott Moats so that those in the rubber fetish community could identify one another.
One does not necessarily need to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community to have a predilection for a particular fetish.
Leather Pride Flag
Another fetish flag, this one was created by Tony DeBlase, a prominent member of the leather and BDSM communities.
"For the 20th anniversary of Stonewall I felt that the time was right for the Leather men and women who have been participating in these same parades and events more and more visibly in recent years, to have a similar simple, elegant banner that would serve as a symbol of their own identity and interests," DeBlase said of his decision to make the flag.
Straight Ally Pride Flag
Created in the late 2000s, per UNCO, this flag is meant to acknowledge allies who support those in the LGBTQ+ community and their fight for equality and representation.
Now it's Pride Month 2022, here are 25 different pride flags and their significance, including the transgender flag, polyamory flag, and two-spirit flag.