#as a butch i wanted 2 make a flag that represents the whole community and isnt just representative of femininity!!

[hyp3rfixation-h3ll]

All Inclusive Transbian Flag! (+ stripe meanings & higher contrast version) I don't normally post flags, but I'm proud of this one PARTICULARLY so :3 here you all go! This is the all-inclusive transbian flag, for when you're trans in ANY way, shape or form and are a lesbian! Anyone can use this except if you fall under my DNI or you're not a transbian (unless you're making a character who IS one) ( this flag has also been dubbed the sunset flag & the hyacinth flag (courtesy of my friend Angel @fawningdolls ! )

[redtail-lol]

I made a lesbian flag

I wanted to make my own lesbian flag for fun, and because I have complicated feelings on Emily Gwen. I don't intend to replace their flag but I felt like making one so here it is!

[Image ID: A 7 stripe flag. The stripe colors, in descending order, are: purple; violet-magenta; pink white; reddish salmon; pale orange; pale golden yellow. The second image is the same flag with the assigned stripe meanings, in descending order: gender nonconformity; queer love of women; femininity; unity; lesbian history and diversity; masculinity and those tied to it; nonbinary lesbians and NBLW/WLNB love. End ID.]

Since Emily's is already called the sunset lesbian flag, perhaps this could be the sunrise lesbian flag or dawn lesbian flag. Yeah I like that. Dawn lesbian flag.

Stripe meaning explanations:

1. Gender nonconformity: lesbian history is rich in gender nonconformity. This obviously includes butches and futches, as well as pronoun nonconforming lesbians, trans lesbians, and nonbinary or genderqueer lesbians, but it also includes all lesbians who simply see loving women as nonconformity to traditional roles, something it was seen as historically before it was more normalized

2. Queer love of women: no matter what lesbian definition you use, a lesbian's love of women is queer. Purple is a color often seen in QLW terms, and as such I chose it to represent our love of women

3. Femininity: whether you're a femme or a trans man lesbian who feels a connection to femininity and through his AGAB, the femininity stripe represents all lesbians who feel a whole or partial connection to femininity, or simply have a deep love for femininity and feminine people

4. Unity: despite the fact that the lesbian label has so many different ways to be experienced, we're all united by the fact that we're lesbians. We are a community, united together.

5. Lesbian history and diversity: the lesbian label has a lot of diversity in it. Some lesbians are women who exclusively love women, and some lesbians are bigender boygirls who have split attractions between loving all genders and loving feminine genders. This diversity is backed by the history of the lesbian community and label. But on top of that, this stripe also pays homage to the significance of lesbians in queer history, especially how lesbians played an important role during the AIDS crisis.

6. Masculinity and those tied to it: This stripe is for the butches, the he/him lesbians, the transmasc and trans man lesbians, the lesboys, and all the other lesbians who feel connected to masculinity.

7. Nonbinary Lesbians and NBLW/WLNB love: Nonbinary lesbians have always existed and continue to exist to this day. They are a beautiful part of the lesbian label, and both nonbinary lesbians and lesbians who love nonbinary people are highlighted with this stripe.

I tried to make a 5 stripe variation but it didn't look as nice. This flag is inclusive of anyone who considers themselves a lesbian. All lesbians belong under this flag, and all lesbians may use it, even if I don't personally align with all your beliefs.

Tagging @queer-love-4-women for visibility, if they choose to reblog it.

[lesbianflaghistory]

Seeing a lot of misinformation flying around regarding lesbian flags this year, particularly the pink one, so here’s my attempt to set the record straight!

FAQ/Common Misconceptions and Sources are listed below the cut - if anything in this post contradicts what you’ve heard, I’d encourage you to read through them before responding.

Please DO NOT promote flag redesigns on this post :)

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UPDATE 2 (2021):

First of all, a long-overdue note that @moral-autism​ kindly transcribed the bulk of this infographic here, for anyone looking for a text-only version!

Secondly, I have been contacted by @kiloueka, who created/uploaded the high resolution “Pink Flag” to the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account in 2015. They clarified that they did not independently leave out the lipstick mark to create a general lesbian flag, but had previously seen a kiss-less version in a tumblr post (likely one of the ones linked in the update below).

UPDATE: New Information

@deadicateddeath brought my attention to the existence of this pride flag compilation post on Tumblr, published 8 December 2013. This is now, to my knowledge, the earliest record of the pink stripes featured without the kiss mark. The same blog made another post (10 January 2014) which featured the pink flag and claimed that it was seeing use at the time.

I am extremely interested to know if there is any evidence of pre-2015 use of the pink flag outside of this blog, as I was unable to find any during my research.

Additionally, some people feel I have downplayed the extent of the labrys’s usage. As above, I included a note to acknowledge the prevalence of the symbols used in the labrys flag (separately and in combination), but this post is specifically focussed on flag designs, and I can’t find any indication of a labrys flag itself (whether Sean Campbell’s design, or a separate design) seeing much use pre-2015.

I would be extremely interested to see any evidence of this flag being used pre-2012, something which I did hunt for but could not find.

If you have any sources regarding either of these issues, please send them my way! I am 100% open to correction and clarification, provided it can be factually backed up.

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FAQ/Common Misconceptions & Source Requests

So... what flag should we use?

My primary motivation in making this was to clear up misinformation, not to tell anyone what flag to use. Use your own judgement, even make your own if you want, just don’t get stressed out if your flag isn’t “the” flag and remember that flag colours are not the only avenue through which to show pride!

The lipstick lesbian flag is an edited version of the pink flag, which is the original.

There is no evidence to support this. The lipstick lesbian flag had been documented online for years prior to the pink flag, as explained above.

The lipstick mark was removed to make the flag more inclusive.

There’s no proof of this - as explained above, the first instance of the mark being “removed” (i.e. not included) was due to it being too complex to easily convert into a high resolution image.

The pink flag is, and has always been, “the” lesbian flag.

The pink flag has only been in semi-common usage since 2016, and its use is still mostly confined to younger online communities.

The rainbow flag is the gay (man) flag.

The rainbow flag [32] was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978 to represent the LGBT community as a whole (I used his original 8-stripe design in the final panel). It does not belong exclusively to gay men, and it does represent lesbians. Please stop framing it like this:

when it’s actually like this:

This doesn’t mean we can’t have a specific flag for the lesbian community, but it’s not the case that we need to scramble the fill the gap left by a “missing” flag. Stop reading malice into my words... lmao.

The creator of the the lipstick lesbian flag/the labrys flag is a TERF.

I can’t find any information on Sean Campbell that would suggest this, and while a cursory browse through Natalie McCray’s social media did turn up some casual cissexism, nothing indicates she was a TERF. If you have sources that show otherwise, please send them my way!

What is a “Lipstick Lesbian”?

A feminine lesbian, and by many definitions, one who only dates other feminine lesbians. Natalie McCray’s edits to the Lipstick Lesbian Wikipedia page under the name “Nmdesigns” [7] show that she subscribed to the femme4femme definition.

Why don’t you want people to promote flag redesigns on this post?

This post was created to dispell misinformation and explore the online trails of lesbian flags prior to 2017. I don’t want to tell other people what flag to use, nor do I want others to use this post as a platform to tell other people what flag to use, because that’s not the purpose of this post.

I’m not a lesbian, can I reblog this?

I don’t mind who shares this, but if you want to add commentary as someone ouside the lesbian community, please think carefully on whether or not it is relevant or appropriate.

Can I repost this on Twitter/Facebook/etc?

I don’t mind, but I’d strongly recommend including a link back to this post in order to preserve the sources.

Actually, there is an official/agreed upon flag! It’s ______.

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Sources

Scupham-Bilton, Tony. "Putting Out Sean Campbell’s Flags”. The Queerstory Files, 21 June 2012. [archive]

Bayley, Clare. “A Field Guide to Pride Flags”. Clare Bayley, 27 June 2013. [2014 archive] [2015 update archive]

@lovemystarfire. “LGBT Community Terminology and Flags”. DeviantArt, 18 April 2014. [archive]

Volcano, Del Lagrace. And the March Stops. 1988. Photograph. Lesbian Herstory Archives. London [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “Lipstick Lesbian Pride!!!”. This Lesbian Life, 28 July 2010. [archive]

File:Lipstick Lesbian Pride Flag.jpg @ Wikimedia Commons [archive]

Lipstick lesbian: Revision history @ Wikipedia [archive]

LGBT symbols: Revision history @ Wikipedia [archive]

@darciam. “Pride United - Button Set”. DeviantArt, 27 August 2012. [archive]

@LeiAndLove. “Ultimate LGBTQ Flag Guide”. DeviantArt, 17 July 2011. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “The Official Lipstick Lesbian Flag”. This Lesbian Life, 4 August 2014. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. The Official Lipstick Lesbian Pride Flag, retrieved 1 June 2016. [archive]

@Pride-Flags @ DeviantArt [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Pride-Flags’s DeviantArt Gallery (page 138)”. DeviantArt, retrieved 5 June 2019. [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Lesbian”. DeviantArt, 7 October 2015. [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Lesbian Labrys”. DeviantArt, 7 October 2015. [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Lipstick Lesbian”. DeviantArt, 25 December 2016. [archive]

@emtmercy. “the lesbian flag is so cute...”. Tumblr, 11 March 2016. [archive]

@sappharah. “the lesbian flag is so cute...”. Tumblr, 27 March 2016. [archive]

@sappharah. “the lesbian flag is so pretty...”. Tumblr, 8 June 2016. [archive]

@allukazaoldyeck. “sorry this should be my last...”. Tumblr, 30 June 3017. [archive]

@allukazaoldyeck. “Lesbian Flag Poll Data Results”. Tumblr, 7 June 2018. [archive]

@which-lesbian-flag. “The Lesbian Flag Survey”. Tumblr, 21 July 2018. [archive]

@taqwomen. “Lesbian Flag Colors”. Tumblr, 26 July 2018. [archive]

@official-lesbian-flag. “Official Lesbian Flag Poll”. Tumblr, 30 June 2018. [archive]

@creatoroflesflagisracist. “Commercial Lesbian Flag Poll (please only lesbians vote)”. Tumblr, 14 December 2018. [archive]

Lydia. “A Lesbian Flag for Everyone”. Medium, 27 June 2018. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “My Worst Date Ever”. This Lesbian Life, 18 July 2010. [original archive] [2018 updated archive]

@thislesbianlife. “The second season of the real l word has too many butches”. Twitter, 16 May 2011. [archive]

@thislesbianlife. “Why don’t butches shave their armpits!!! IT’S DISGUSTING! Even men trim it!”. Twitter, 8 January 2011. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “The 10 Worst Things About Being A Lipstick Lesbian”. This Lesbian Life, 18 July 2010. [archive]

Baker, Gilbert. Rainbow Flag. 1978. Nylon. Museum of Modern Art. New York. [link]

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Credit

Font: Pixellari by Zacchary Dempsey-Plante [x]

Pile of Flags:

(NOTE: This is by no means an exhaustive list of recent redesigns, nor am I interested in curating such a list. I am having difficulty tracking down the original posts for 17 and 31, if you recognise them please get in touch!)

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* Indicates that the original post has been deleted, and a reblogged version of it has been archived instead.

[seraphic-sapphic-safehaven]

why wont you make boards with the pink and orange lesbian flag? the creators since changed their views and is now an inclus

I honestly don't care that she says she's an inclusionist. I, my wife (who's a lesbian), and many other people have a lot of negative feelings about her because of all the repugnant, aphobic things she said and reblogged in the past. And as a trans person, her talking over trans people who were telling her not to use 'cishet' to refer to aspecs because that's a term trans people created to differentiate between straight trans people and straight cis people really pissed me off. And I'm sorry, but her apology just didn't feel sincere to me and a lot of other people. Like, I didn't feel any better about the situation after reading it.

We also aren't fond of her because she's a still biphobe, panphobe, etc.!! She's against use of the split attraction model outside of the aspec community. She's against mspec lesbians. She doesn't think non-lesbian sapphics can use butch and femme, even though those terms have always belonged to ALL sapphics (as well as trans/nonbinary & GNC people of color), not just lesbians. And she doesn't think all sapphics can reclaim dyke either. She's also a queerphobe.

Like, I'm sorry?? But I don't wanna be associated with her in any way. I refuse to make content with her flag because it makes me personally uncomfortable, and that should be enough of a reason tbh. I also don't want to make my followers (or my wife) uncomfortable, and I don't want to promote her flag if I can avoid it.

Edit: I forgot to mention that several people have spoken out about how they hate the orange and pink lesbian flag because it's just half the old pink lesbian flag, which is a femme/lipstick lesbian flag, and the butch lesbian flag. Which... 1) doesn't represent all lesbians well because not all of them are butch or femme, and 2) is kinda counterproductive because it's literally half of the old flag, which is super problematic and is the whole reason people started making new lesbian flags! Plus, a lot of people feel the flag was never meant to include aspec lesbians because she was an exclusionist when she made it. So many aspec lesbians do not feel comfortable using it. I would rather respect those people's feelings (and my own and my wife's) than use it in my content.

[cosm0skid]

So that’s kind of the whole point: you don’t need to ask permission to use a flag or a label or reclaim a slur.

Because nobody is qualified to judge that. Everybody has their own experiences and history and life, and you don’t get a shiny gold badge that says “identity police” after 2 days of discovering you’re bi at an orgy or 50 years of gender contemplation.

Your presentation, your sexuality and gender identity and your relation to those aspects of yourself, are 100% yours. If you feel like a word or some horizontal lines of color best represent you, or you feel a connection? That’s all it is!

Irl LGBT spaces are just communities of people who have, all by themselves, decided who they were and sought out others like them. And that can be as broad as “Im queer” and as specific as “I’m a nonbinary trans femme pansexual demiromantic” but the important part is it’s up to you, you alone can see inside your own mind and heart and experiences and judge from those how you want to identify, what information you want to share with people. You can spend days thinking about what you feel fits you best, or just pick the first term you see. You can even do both! So many people have a more technical label that they could use, but revert to the umbrella terms because that is what they are for!! For safety and community and ease of communication.

I don’t see any problem with labeling yourself more specifically, if you want to. I completely understand wanting to have a specific community, and fit in, and THIS is who I really am and here are 300 others just exactly like me. However I urge you, if you’re a young person struggling with labels and microcommunities and worrying about being in the correct box: come hang out under the umbrella. You will find that actually, there are 3000000000 just like you, who want to fight next to you, who have been here the whole time. Spend some time that you would be worrying about which label best fits and read some queer history, talk to older members of the community, learn what those labels really meant and mean and why someone might rather identify as a butch, or a queen, or a bear, or a d*ke, or a queer. And (to everyone reblogging but tagging this “q slur”) why these terms are important and why someone might want to take away someone else’s label.

Without queer, people start to build those boxes, and their identity becomes “NOT that thing” instead of “this thing.” And then when someone who is this thing and also that thing tries to make themself comfortable in the community, those people panic because suddenly the focal point of their identity doesn’t have a solid ground. This post explains that concept a lot better, and it’s from a lesbian pov which I cannot claim to speak for.

We should be a family, a community, and that means that our flags are tools that you should be able to use as you need. The original pride flag makes me feel like I’m wearing armor. The ocean flag makes me feel like I’m in a gorgeous ballgown and handlebar mustache. The word queer makes me feel like a fae. The trans flag makes me feel proud and protective. The bi flag makes me feel like I’ve got a cool sword. And the word fag makes me feel like I just yanked the baseball bat out of my attackers hands.

We don’t begrudge baby gays for changing their labels or names or not even having a label, so why would we do it to anyone else? You never stop growing, getting new experience and learning about yourself. You can even use multiple labels! Or none! Change it when you get a new partner or don’t. At the end of the day, everyone’s identity and labels are their business, and there is no way to know anyone else’s business unless they choose to tell you. If someone is trying to gatekeep you from an identity or flag or word, chances are they’re either extremely insecure or so bored they have nothing better to do than try to make someone else feel not-at-home. Either way, fuck em, think and research for yourself, label or don’t label yourself for your own comfort, not because “according to google you technically fit best in blah blah blah” we’re not hagworts houses!!! Use the prettier flag, reclaim the slur, go to the support group! Just remember you’re doing it through the lense of your own experiences, and that our umbrella is more than infighting, it is a symbol of pride and protection. We all fit under Gilbert Bakers flag, that doesn’t mean we can’t use others.

Why does everything have to be an argument. Using the MLM or “toothpaste” flag does not fucking mean you hate history or you don’t respect the community. It means that the original rainbow flag, does not symbolize being a gay man anymore.

It symbolizes and is an umbrella for the community as a whole, which is incredibly important for us to have!!

But if you’re bisexual and you want to flag that, you can wave the bi flag.

If you’re a lesbian you can wave the sunset flag.

But guess what?? If I as a gay trans man wear the rainbow flag, it doesn’t tell people that I’m a gay man, it tells people that I’m under the lgbt umbrella, which 90% of the time leads people to assume I’m a bi girl. I use the MLM flag to tie my gender to my sexuality, for my own comfort.

Is the MLM flag as well known as the others? Maybe not!

Does the rainbow flag still represent my family, my fight and my identity? Of course!

I agree that a disturbing amount of queer kids aren’t getting any history, and I’m sure there are some on twitter that are being little douchebags and trouncing on Gilbert Bakers name and that does make me want to cry

But denouncing flags and identities isn’t the way to make them come around. You can fly more than one flag. Your presentation and the information you show people is up to you. And trying to tell kids that they’re bad for wanting a flag that they feel represents them best really isn’t gonna make them listen.

[precise-desolation]

Pride Month 4 - Flags (Part 2)

[[Aaaand we’re back.  With more flags.  Still focusing mainly on sexual orientations this time.  I’ll get to gender next weekend.  (With the exception of the transgender flag, as that flag is common enough that it warranted a place in the first flag post.)  Again, this will be long, so it’s under a read-more.  

I’ve also added the color meanings to the section on the ace flag in Part 1.  Additionally, there are some things in this post I don’t know very much about and Google was less than helpful.  So please, if I got something wrong or if you know some of the things I don’t, let me know.  I’d love to make this more complete.

This is a lesbian pride flag, one of several.  It was created in 1999 by Sean Campbell.  The flag features three prominent elements: the purple background, the black triangle, and the labrys.

The purple background is representative of spirit, as with the rainbow pride flag.  The black triangle is representative of the black triangles that marked “asocial” female prisoners in Holocaust concentration camps.  Same-sex attraction was one of the things that could get a woman branded as asocial.  I will include more about the black triangle this coming weekend in a post on symbols.  The final piece of this flag is the labrys.  This is a double headed battle axe associated with Minoan society, was was thought to be matriarchal, and with the legendary Amazons, an all female society.

This is the lipstick lesbian flag.  The flag was created by unnamed blogger in 2010.  It’s intention was to give the lesbian community a flag of their own.  (Granted, this was about 11 years after the first lesbian flag.)

Lipstick lesbians is a term that dates back to the 1980s in - you guessed it - San Francisco, seeming the the origin of most things queer.  This categorization was part of a larger cultural structure.  This is something we have seen break down with the recent trend of normalization of same-sex couples and the acknowledgement of a gender spectrum along with third wave feminism and the push for gender equality.  That influence has created a breakdown in some of the strict heteronormative gender roles that used to impact the LGBTQ community.

Until the last decade or so, there was an unspoken rule that somebody in the relationship had to “wear the pants,” so to speak.  Even in same-sex couples, there was an expectation that one partner would take on a more traditionally feminine role while the other would take on a more traditionally masculine role.  In Steve and Bucky’s day, this was expressed in the gay/bisexual male community with the term ��punk’, among others.  A punk would have been the effeminate, passive partner.  (I’ll do a post on New York queer slang from Bucky and Steve’s youth.)

In lesbian culture, there were bulldykes** or butches and fems, or lipstick lesbians.  Butches were the more masculine lesbian/bi women, as the name suggests.  A woman who was a fem or lipstick lesbian took on a more traditionally feminine roll.  They did - and still do, as there are many women in the queer community who consider themselves lipstick lesbians and fems - most of the things that society would have deemed properly feminine.  They wore dresses and makeup, styled their hair, and were generally unidentifiable as lesbians/bi.  (This was in contrast to butches, who dressed in a more masculine manner and generally performed social roles associated with men.)  In today’s queer community, the terms fem or lipstick lesbian refer to a woman who is very feminine in their gender expression.

And to round out sexual orientations, this is the aromantic flag.  My google-fu did not get me a date of origin or a creator, so I’m not entirely sure where/when this originated.  People who are aromantic, or aro, do not experience romantic attraction.  This does not mean that they cannot form emotional bonds, it simply means that they are not attracted to people in a romantic sense.  It also does not mean that they are asexual, although a large number of aromantic people do fall on the asexual spectrum.

The colors of this flag represent different part of the aromantic spectrum just as the colors of the asexual flag represent the asexual spectrum.  Green was chosen because it is opposite red on the color wheel, red being the color traditionally used to represent romance.  Yellow was chosen to symbolize friendship, as in the language of flowers this is the meaning of a yellow rose.  Orange falls between yellow and red and represents grey-romantics and demiromantics - respectively, people who only occasionally experience romantic attraction and people who only experience romantic attraction when they already have a strong emotional bond with the person.  Black represents total lack of romantic attraction.

This is also the aromantic flag.  Again, I do not know who created it or when, only that it is newer than the previous flag.  From what I have found, it was changed from the previous flag because the original looked too much like a Rastafarian flag.

In this new version, green is still used for aromantics, as green is the opposite of red.  From what I’ve found, the yellow is for lithoromantics, which the internet defined as someone who can experience romantic attraction and may enjoy the idea of a romantic relationship, but does not actually wish to be part of one.  The grey stripe is for grey-romantics.  And the black stripe is for demiromantics.

And this is, yet again, the aromantic flag.  Like the two previous flags, I don’t know who created this or when, only that this is the most recent.  The yellow stripe was changed to white to accommodate autistic members of the community who are sensitive to yellow.  There is a large overlap between the aromantic spectrum community and the autistic spectrum community.  This is not to say that all aro people are autistic, as there are aro people who are neurotypical or at least not on the autistic spectrum.  This is also not to say that all people on the autistic spectrum are aro.

The colors in this flag are very much like the last.  Green is for aromantics, white for lithoromantics, grey for grey-romantics, and black for demiromantics.

From here we move on to flags that are a bit more fringe, as these groups are sometimes not identified (by themselves or by others) as part of the LGBTQ community.

This is the intersex flag.  It was created in 2013 by an Australian international intersex organization.  Their aim was to create a flag that did not use pink and blue symbolism.  The organization declared that yellow and purple were the intersex colors.  The circle represents strength.  From the organization’s description:

“The colour yellow has long been regarded as the hermaphrodite[**] colour, neither blue nor pink. Purple, too, has been used for the same purpose – including on this site. The circle is unbroken and unornamented, symbolising wholeness and completeness, and our potentialities. We are still fighting for bodily autonomy and genital integrity, and this symbolises the right to be who and how we want to be.”

This goes back to something mentioned in the section on the trans* flag, which was that many intersex infants are assigned a binary gender at birth and begin treatment to make them appear “normal” well before they are old enough to make an informed decision about their own bodies.  Sometimes this is even done without the parents’ knowledge, and some intersex people do not find out that they are intersex until puberty or into adulthood and may have great difficulty obtaining accurate medical records.  There are a number of intersex advocacy groups fighting to abolish this practice.

This is another intersex flag.  This one was created by Natalie Phox in 2009.  Like the other, newer flag, it seeks to give intersex people a symbol of their own.  This one combines the traditional baby colors, pink and blue, to represent people who are both or neither.

The reason intersex people are questionably a part of the LGBTQ community is due to their own definitions of who they are.  Some members of the intersex community do not wish to be associated with the LGBTQ community, as they do not feel that their identity falls within the bounds of this group.  Others do categorize themselves as part of the LGBTQ community.

This is the straight ally flag.  (I could not find a larger image, which should tell you something about this flag and how it’s viewed...)  This originated in the late 2000s, but there is not a known origin or creator for it.

This flag combines the umbrella LGBTQ flag, the six striped rainbow flag, with the straight pride flag, which I do not plan to give its own section.  The upward pointing V is supposed to look like an A, representing allies and activism.  The straight pride flag consists of black and white stripes.  Black and white are not part of the rainbow and also express a binary.  The straight pride flag originated with a number of anti-LGBTQ groups.  This ties into both the reason I do not plan to include a section on the straight pride flag and why the ally flag is sometimes seen as a mark of bad allies.  

The idea of straight pride is similar in nature to the idea of white pride.  Certainly people who are straight should be proud of their sexual orientation, as a part of a more sex-positive society.  This is just as white people should take pride in their ancestry, because it tells them about their origins.  However, just as there is a very good reason we do not have “white history month” to counter black history month, there is a reason we do not have a “straight pride month” to counter LGBTQ pride month.

Historically in Western society, the dominant group has been straight, white, cisgender, Christian men.  You may be familiar with the saying “history is written by the victor.”  Similarly, history is written by those with privilege.  As such, the histories of oppressed groups tend not to be taught or to be written out of history entirely.  This is why we have ‘history’ as a mandatory subject, but once one reaches higher education one may take ‘women’s history’ or ‘LGBTQ history’ or ‘black history’ as electives.  These are separate classes because the histories of these groups and their contributions to the world at large are not taught as part of mainstream history curriculums.  

Let me repeat that for the people in the back: The histories and contributions of oppressed groups are not part of our mandatory education on Western civilization.  As a person who is queer, female bodied, and part Latin@, I have had to go out on my own to try to find out about people like me.  Black history month exists to highlight the contributions of Black people.  Women’s history month exists to highlight the contributions of women.  LGBTQ pride month exists to allow LGBTQ visibility and teach about the contributions of LGBTQ people.  Many LGBTQ people grow up believing there is something wrong with them because they do not fit into the heteronormative, cissexist mold of mainstream Western society.  They may, in fact, be told exactly that and worse by parents, teachers, religious leaders, and their government.  (As an aside, shame on our current vice president for his contributions to that.)  That’s why visibility is so important.  It lets people know they aren’t alone.  That’s why LGBTQ pride is so important.  It lets people know there is nothing wrong with them and that people like them have made great contributions to the world.

So back to the idea of straight pride and a straight pride flag.  We do not need a white history month, because every month is white history month.  We do not need a men’s history month, because every month is men’s history month.  And we do not need a straight pride month, because every month is straight pride month.  The same need for visibility does not exist for these groups because they are the dominant groups.  They are the ones who control the narrative.  The only people who think we need a white pride month are racists who refuse to acknowledge their own privilege.  The only people who think we need men’s history month are sexists who refuse to acknowledge their own privilege.  The only people who think we need a straight pride month are straight, cisgender people who refuse to acknowledge their own privilege.  (I do realize that most straight allies do not feel there is a need for a straight pride month.)

The purpose of a pride flag is to emphasize unity, community, and bravery.  The courage to be oneself in spite of sometimes violent opposition.  Straight allies, by using this flag, attempt to insert themselves as a part of the LGBTQ community and attempt to send a message that they are brave for standing up for LGBTQ people.  And while some members of the queer community do count straight allies as a part of the community, just as many feel that they are not.  Likewise, many people within the LGBTQ community feel that it is not particularly brave or special to simply do the right thing.  An argument can be made for the difficulty of standing up for what is right when one knows there may be severe negative consequences for doing so, and historically this has been the case for straight allies, so this perhaps does earn them their flag.

In the end, it comes down to privilege.  Those who exclude allies from the LGBTQ community are not attempting to devalue the work of allies, because there have been significant contributions made to the fight for LGBTQ equality by people who are not themselves queer.  What they are saying is that straight allies do not - cannot - fully understand what it’s like to navigate the world as a queer person.  And this is a perfectly legitimate view.  

**It should be noted that these terms may now be considered offensive.