am i having emotions about how one of Gilbert Baker’s last actions was to add a ninth stripe to his original pride flag to represent diversity and to protest conservatism? absolutely.
here is Gilbert Baker’s 2017 nine-striped diversity pride flag:
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the lavender represents diversity. the pink represents sex or sexuality (different sources say different things). the red represents life. the orange represents healing. the yellow represents sunlight. the green represents nature. the turquoise represents magic and art. the indigo represents serenity and harmony. the purple represents spirit.
actually, i’m going to have more emotions about how Gilbert Baker mentioned that he struggled to make rent but watched corporations make millions off rainbow products. and how three months after Gilbert Baker added a lavender diversity stripe to his original design (which was already a rainbow to represent the fact that the queer community should be all-encompassing without prioritizing one group over the others) the city of Philadelphia added black and brown to the six-stripe version to represent QPOC. and how people have been adding the trans stripes and the intersex circle. and QPOC and trans people and intersex people deserve way more than we’ve given them. but also there isn’t a consensus within the intersex community that being intersex is inherently queer. and i’m having emotions about how the original flag was meant to be correct no matter which stripe you put on top, because your orientation doesn’t make you any less valid no matter what it is.
anyway i love the sentiment behind the progress pride flags and it is tragic that the more colour, more pride flag was made because QPOC were being denied access to gay bars on the basis of dress code. at the same time, we cannot let ourselves forget Gilbert Baker’s lavender diversity stripe.
adding more in honour of pride month 2022. when pink and turquoise were removed, ¼ of the meaning was removed. while the six-stripe version is definitely more recognizable and easier to produce, online spaces don’t have to worry about finding sufficient fabric. there is no reason for the lavender stripe pride flag to be so obscure.
“Walking down Castro Street, I can’t pay my rent, but I see rainbow dildos in the shop windows and rainbow keychains, rainbow rings, rainbow candles and so on.” - Gilbert Baker, 2017
you might notice that i’ve reused that source. the truth is, i can’t find more information online about the lavender stripe diversity pride flag. i keep calling it by different names because there is no official or agreed-upon name for it.
there is no reason for us to ignore the 2017 nine-stripe pride flag. honour queer history. know about gilbert baker’s last action. i don’t care whether or not you use it. but please, please learn about it.
hello everyone who is reblogging this yet again! since 01.06.2022, my stance on all this has evolved and may now be found here: [CLICK ME]
hi! in case it’s not abundantly clear from the entire post, if you reblog this post with any variation of “tw q slur” i will be blocking you! we don’t have any words for ourselves that haven’t been used as slurs why are you so focused on making the most inclusive one taboo? queer has already been reclaimed. let us be proud of it!
I get your point, but honestly in my own opinion, the added focus on marginalised even among queer people identities, such as BIPOC, trans and intersex people was pretty much entirely necesarry.
And as an intersex trans person, the specific inclusion on the progress flag does actually make me feel more acknowledged and safe.
In the ideal world, the Gilbert Baker flag would have been fine(arguably it wouldn’t have had a need to exist in such a world but that’s an entirely different subject altogether)
But the world is very far from ideal, and cis perisex queers will often completely ignore trans and intersex people, hell even within just trans circles, people ignore intersex people. So I think the constant reminder, that hey. We’re here too, and we also matter. Is very important and meaningful.
And yes, it’s true that the move to remove sex from the flag is both tragic and infuriating. I think the progress flag(spefically the one including the intersex flag) is the better flag to use, even if it’s less pretty
This is def a matter of opinion bc as a queer trans poc I agree with op, especially after reading their updated stance
I never shut up about racism, ableism, and generally exclusionary attitudes in the white/abled queer community, but I don’t really think adding colors to the flag is the solution. The people who were ignoring us before they were added aren’t going to stop because they saw more lines on a flag. Even if that was how that worked, the diversity stripe and progress stripes were created to do the same thing, so neither of them necessarily does that better than the other. The only thing that’s going to help us get actual inclusion is speaking up about these things and trying to change these mindsets.
The thing that got me from op’s updated stance is that tacking us onto the side isn’t actually including us. The fact that we seem to be added as an afterthought, as “the normal gays and these guys too,” feels a little gross imo. The lavender stripe presents diversity as an integral part of our community, which it is. Sure, exclusionists will probably twist the definition of diversity so it only applies to abled white perisex people, but I still think it’s better than the alternative.
hi @official-megumin and @adamantine-system! this is, i think, a case of different groups needing different things.
official-megumin, thank you so much for your well-thought out input and for taking the time to respond to this with a few more details than “as a white person i like the black and brown stripes so you, a qpoc, should shut up and accomodate me.” taking your remarks alongside those i’ve heard from other intersex people on this website, i think there’s a fairly large consensus that valentino valchietti’s contributions are extremely welcome. i’m a perisex qpoc - it’s not my place to tell you to abandon what may be one of the first mainstream representations of intersex people as an integral part of the broader queer community. thank you for your comments - i will keep these in mind when criticizing the progress pride flags in the future. i made the mistake of assuming intersex struggles would mirror those of qpoc, which in hindsight you obviously do not and it was a stupid assumption to make.
i think that what needs to happen is more conversations about this. the needs of the trans community are distinct from the needs of the intersex community, which are distinct from the needs of all the various communities of queer people of colour, although all of these communities overlap in countless places. from what i’ve heard from the responses to this post, queer people of colour been added as afterthoughts by too many white people to sit back and smile about it anymore.
see, the difference between the brown/black stripes and the intersex flag additions are who added it. valentino valchietti is herself an intersex artist and activist. their contributions make sense for the message she wanted to include. amber hikes, on the other hand, merely commissioned a design company to make a one-off apology flag for the racism present in philadelphia’s gay bars. the origin of the changes should not be ignored.
i think that before making any more “diverse” pride flags, anyone designing it should spend quite a while consulting people of various intersectional identities to ask what we want. qpoc, overwhelmingly, don’t want to be represented by two dark stripes which are supposed to represent our skin colour. there is of course the problem that my dataset is limited to people who leave commentary on this post, and people who disagree are often more likely to simply scroll past or just say “no you’re wrong” than engage me in thoughtful conversation about why they think it’s necessary. there is something to be said for the blatancy of the inclusion of trans and intersex people, especially in a time when so much anti-trans and anti-intersex legislation is coming up in the united states.
but that brings us back to the original statement: that this is a case of different groups needing different things. although queer people and intersex people can sometimes be easily spotted even at birth (unlike perisex trans people, who are not visibly trans in the cradle), we’ve got different histories. unlike trans people, people of colour have our own histories completely distinct from queer history and it’s possible to be racist without being queerphobic. you can’t be transphobic without being queerphobic. and by ignoring criticism of the black/brown stripes in favour of addressing american politics, the issues are compounded. not every queer person is american. please correct me, official-megumin if i’m incorrect in assuming you’re not a person of colour, but your reblog only mentioned being intersex and trans, so i’ve come at this from the perspective of a perisex qpoc.
you’d be right that I’m white yes, which is why I didn’t speak of how POC would feel about this, I don’t want to speak over anyone
thank you very much for your thoughtful response, i’m glad we got this chance to exchange thoughts!
