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You are here: Home / LGBTQ+ / Beyond the Rainbow: Your Ultimate Guide to Pride Flags
Beyond the Rainbow: Your Ultimate Guide to Pride Flags

Beyond the Rainbow: Your Ultimate Guide to Pride Flags

January 27, 2023 By Cade Hildreth

Did you know that the number of people who identify as LGBTQ is rising? Today, over 11.5 million adults in the U.S identify as LGBTQ and one in ten youth identifies this way. These numbers are surging because society is becoming more accepting of people for who they are.

Despite this progress, change still needs to happen. It is challenging to be proud of who you are when there are still people and laws that that discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals.

Nonetheless, showing off your pride can be incredibly rewarding. There’s so much history behind the different kinds of pride flags that exist today.

Your Ultimate Guide to Pride Flags

Keep reading to learn about the diverse range of the pride flags that have been designed over the years. The variety that exists may surprise you!

The Pride Flag That Started It All

The history of the original pride flag should be in textbooks and taught in school. It was created by Gilbert Baker in 1977. Tasked by Harvey Milk, a historic figure in the fight for LGBTQ rights, to create a flag for the queer community, Baker created a rainbow flag with eight different colors.

Inspired by the classic song “Over the Rainbow” from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, Baker created a rainbow flag to represent LGBTQ folks. Each color in the flag also had a specific meaning.

  • Hot pink symbolizes sex
  • Red equals life
  • Orange symbolizes healing
  • Yellow stands for sunlight
  • Green represents nature
  • Turquoise equals magic and art
  • Indigo stands for serenity
  • Violet represents the spirit of LGBTQ people

Original Pride Flag

The 6-Color Pride Flag 

One of the most well known and used of the LGBT flags throughout history has been the 1979, six-color flag. This flag includes the colors red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, and violet on it.

Hot pink wasn’t included in the fabrication of these flags, because the fabric was hard to find as the demand for the flag started to rise. The turquoise color was also taken off the flag to keep an even number of colors.

Gay Pride Flag

The Philadelphia Pride Flag

The Philadelphia Pride Flag came about in response to the demand for more inclusivity across the LGBTQ+ community. The flag launched in 2017 as part of the “More Color More Pride” Campaign in Philadelphia.

The addition of black and brown stripes to the traditional pride flag symbolized people of color who are often not represented in the queer community.

Lena Waithe’s choice to wear the Philadelphia Pride Flag as a cape at the 2018 Met Gala is the perfect example of this type of inclusion. She is a powerful advocate for black people within the entertainment industry and this flag spiked in popularity after she elevated its visibility.

Pride Flag Inclusive of POC

The Transgender Flag

There are more than 1.4 million trans adults living in the U.S. Violence against the queer community affects trans people of color the most.

This is why the trans flag is so important. The trans community needs representation and resources to be visible without fear.

The flag was first created in 1999 by Monica Helms, a transgender woman. Pink and blue represent girls and boys respectively. The white stands for those in transition or those who don’t feel identified with any gender.

Trans flag

The Nonbinary Pride Flag

In 2014, Kye Rowan created the nonbinary pride flag. 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 cisgender binary of male or female. White, a color that consists of all colors mixed together, stands for multi-gendered people. Purple, similar to 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 or who feel they do not have a gender.

Nonbinary Flag

The Nonbinary Trans Flag

Up to this point in history, people who identified as both nonbinary and trans either had to use both flags or use neither. Now, nonbinary trans folks have their own unique flag to fly with pride.

Naturally, most transgender people would like to be inclusive of nonbinary people and visa versa. Thus, this new flag embraces both of these identities in a single six-striped flag.

This nonbinary trans flag is a combination of the colors of the trans pride flag and the nonbinary pride flag, merged into one.

Nonbinary Trans Flag

The Intersex Flag 

This flag went through a variety of iterations before the current intersex flag emerged. Previous versions embraced the rainbow that is often associated with queer pride, while others used colors like blue and pink, which are found on the transgender flag.

In 2013, Morgan Carpenter chose the colors yellow and purple for the intersex flag. Morgan moved away from the rainbow symbolism and 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 or choose to be.

Intersex Flag

The Flag for the Asexual Community

The asexual flag was created in 2010 by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network. This flag represents the asexual community. Because this is a less common identity and asexuality can mean different things to different people, it is best to ask each individual what it means to them.

For some people, it may mean that they rely on other types of attraction instead of or in place of sexual attraction.

Once again, each color in this flag also represents something unique.

  • Black stands for asexuality
  • Gray represents demisexuality, sexual attraction after an emotional bond
  • White stands for the allies of the community
  • Purple represents the entire community of asexual folks

Asexual flag

The Bisexual Pride Flag

The bi 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.

The colors of the flag also represent attraction to different genders. The pink symbolizes attraction to the same gender, while the blue represents attraction to a different gender. The purple represents attraction to two or more genders, the definition of bisexuality.

Bisexual Pride Flag

The Pansexual Flag

The flag that symbolizes the pansexual community was created in 2010. Pansexuality represents those people who feel attracted to a person without thinking about gender. This means that they can feel attraction to those who identify as women, men, both or neither.

The pink on the flag represents attraction to women, blue represents attraction to men, and yellow stands for attraction to those who don’t identify with either gender.

Pansexual Flag

The Flag for the Lesbian Community

The lesbian flag is one of the flags fewer people know about. This flag features different shades of pink and sometimes comes with a red kiss on it to represent lipstick lesbians.

This flag was created by Natalie McCray in 2010. Some lesbians oppose this flag because of its exclusion of butch lesbians but no other flag has as much popularity as this one.

Lesbian Pride Flag

The Gay Men Pride Flag

The gay men’s pride flag is another lesser known pride flag. It features different shades of green, blue and purple.

This modern gay men’s pride flag is a revamp of an earlier gay men’s pride flag that featured a range of blue tones. That version was problematic because it used colors that were stereotypical of the gender binary.

This updated flag is inclusive of a much wide ranger of gay men, including but not limited to transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming men.

Gay men flag

The Progress Pride Flag

Given the evolving nature of the LGBTQ+ community and society at large, the Progress Flag integrates many of these flags into one. Thankfully, it has been redesigned to be more substantially more inclusive.

This flag includes stripes to represent the experiences of people of color, as well as stripes to represent people who identify as transgender, gender nonconforming (GNC) and/or undefined.

In recent years, this Progress Flag has become one of the most widely used pride flags.

It was designed in 2018 by non-binary American artist and designer, Daniel Quasar. The term “Progress” was specifically chosen for its name, in order to distinguish it from the “New Pride Flag” created by Julia Feliz, which was also designed in 2018.

Modern Pride Flag

New Pride Flag

As mentioned above, the “New Pride Flag” was created by Julia Feliz in 2018. Julia Feliz created this new pride flag to “unapologetically center and give credit” where it’s due, to trans and queer people of color.

This New Pride Flag is designed to ignite the LGBTQIA+ community to center our most marginalized community members.

When you view the flag, you will notice that the five stripes representing trans and queer people of color are positioned in a prominent and balanced manner relative to the six stripes that were featured in the original 6-Color Pride Flag designed in 1979 (described above).

The flag’s designer, Julia Feliz is a gender expansive Black and Indigenous Native Puerto Rican. You can read more about Julia’s identity and this pride flag’s mission here.

New Pride Flag

Intersex Inclusive Pride Flag

As the name of this flag suggests, this pride flag is inclusive of intersex people, as well as trans, nonbinary, and queer people of color.

Some people believe this is the most inclusive pride flag yet, but of course, not everyone agrees given with this analysis. The reason for this is that the different stripes and sections of this flag vary in size and prominence relative to one another.

This pride flag features six horizontal stripes, five angled stripes in the shape of sideways “V”, and a triangular section featuring the yellow and purple intersex symbol.

The angle of the five forward facing stripes are meant to indicate that the community is always seeking progress forward.

Intersex Inclusive Pride Flag

Everything You Need to Know About Pride Flags

There are so many pride flags that represent the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community. Given this, it’s important to know the meaning behind the flags that represent different members within our community.

Which flag do you identify with and prefer to fly? Let me know in the comments below.

Interested to learn more? Join two million other readers or connect with Cade on Instagram.

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Filed Under: LGBTQ+

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Qwerti says

    February 25, 2021 at 1:53 pm

    Hi! I’m gender fluid and was wondering if next time you make one of these. If you could add our flag? I know it’s not very well known, but if you can!

  2. Darian says

    December 12, 2020 at 11:29 am

    Hello, I am not entirely sure about which pride flag would represent me the best. I am asexual with no interest of ever having sex with anyone else but I am sometimes attracted slightly to other people. Not enough to be interested in relationship romantic nor sexual but gender of the person that sparkles my interest doesn’t truly matter to me. I do like watching adult entertainment with all human beings equally, no matter their gender identity or orientation and have ‘fun’ on my own. So I guess I am Panromantic Aromantic? If that is even a thing. Is there a pride flag for this and what would be the correct term? Thanks.

    • Alex says

      December 16, 2020 at 5:30 am

      Hi, I did some research and This is what I have come to.

      Panromantic and aromantic contradict meaning they are complete opposites.

      So what I think is that You may be a Panomantic gray-ace. I’ll explain further but first let me tell you the definitions.
      Panromantic- Romantic attraction towards people of every gender.
      Graysexual/Gray~ace – Having limited sexual and/or romantic attraction. Though they may feel sexual and/or romantic attraction very rarely or with low intensity.

      Since you don’t really have sexual and romantic attractions that would mean you would/may be graysexual and sine you like people of all genders you would/may be panromantic.

      There are many people out there who are panromantic graysexuals so you are never alone and there is a flag for this.

      I hope you do understand that I am not forcing this on you I am simply helping you through your path into finding yourself.

      I hope you find your way, From a fellow LGBTQIA+-er.

      A

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“As an LGBTQ+ entrepreneur, real estate investor, former USA Rugby Player, and fitness fanatic, I’ll teach you what your parents and teachers should’ve taught you, but didn’t know themselves.” -Cade Hildreth

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Because it’s the New Year, let’s talk about ch Because it’s the New Year, let’s talk about change...

For a long time, I’ve thought about top surgery. I remember when I was 6 or 7 years old when I wanted to run around outside on a hot, sunny day with my shirt off…and I first saw my parents… hesitate. Ughh. 

It wasn’t their fault but I still remember that heart wrenching feeling. To their credit, they ultimately said, “Ok, go do it!” While I did “do it”, I remember the feeling of shame that crept in.

Over the years, being in affirming sporting/rugby circles helped suppress the urge to get top surgery, but it never quite “stayed down.”

So last summer I got keyhole #topsurgery. I’ll talk about recovery in another post because it was definitely weird to not strength train for months.

But in THIS post, I want to share two things:

1. I am SO grateful to my wife Erin for being the supportive and growth oriented partner that she is. 🥰🙏❤️ 

She is now following her call to get a divinity degree and she’s already working in ministry as a Pastor in Training at an incredible, inclusive Presbyterian church here in Virginia. I am grateful to her for supporting me as I become more and more of who I am—and I’m enjoying watching her do the same! Love you, babe!

2. Second, I’m grateful to get to share who I am with my family. This summer we took a trip to Madden’s resort in MN to celebrate my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. (It was actually their 52nd, because we had to postpone it twice due to Covid.)

I was nervous to be in the pools and lakes around them, but I could feel it was my only choice because I knew I wanted them to “know me”. And, how could that happen if I “hid me”?

Ultimately, I have to tell you…it was freeing to be me, as I am, who I am. 

I had the BEST time splashing around and biking and goofing around with my wife, niece, nephew, & sister. 🌊🏖🐟

So, I suppose, this is a gratitude post to thank those who have supported me over the years as I become more and more of who I am. 

Top of that list is my wife, Erin, but there are countless others. ❤️

If you’re reading this, thank YOU for being one of those people in my life too. I am deeply grateful. 🥹
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#lgbtqfamily #nonbinary
How to set a boundary? 🤔 . . . . #lgbtqia #lgb How to set a boundary? 🤔 
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#lgbtqia #lgbtqcommunity #emotionalhealth
What do you do if you’re telling a past story ab What do you do if you’re telling a past story about someone who has transitioned? 🤔 Share a 💯 if you agree ➡️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈
7 things I got clarity on in 2022: 1. Good and b 7 things I got clarity on in 2022: 

1. Good and bad are labels. All things are experiences. 

2. Maturity is taking full responsibility for oneself. 

3. Having a loving, conscious relationship with myself is a core value. 

4. Emotions do not mean that anything has to be done. 

5. When I am in congruence with what I want, I have it. 

6. I have permission from myself to stop doing anything that doesn’t lead to my peace and empowerment. 

7. Stepping toward emotions and being able to feel them is a superpower. It determines the quality of my life. 

(Are there any above that you’d like me to further explain?)
 
Most importantly, which # above resonates with you? ⬆️

Happy New Year, y’all! 🎊🥳
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#lgbtqcommunity #lgbtqiaplus #lgbtsupport #nonbinary #trans #selfgrowth
Interview with Jenny Nguyen, Founder of the Sports Interview with Jenny Nguyen, Founder of the Sports Bra—The World's 1st Bar to Only Play Women's Sports - shorturl.at/doGHZ

I'm excited to introduce you to today's #podcast guest, Jenny Nguyen, who is a professional chef, elite athlete, and entrepreneur.

I invited Jenny onto the podcast because she has done something extraordinary that is long overdue: She has opened up a sports bar that exclusively plays women's sports!

Despite extensive research, Jenny hasn't found another sports bar worldwide that ONLY plays women’s sports.

Given that it's nearly 2023, this is mind-blowing. As a lifelong athlete, I find her vision compelling and inspiring.

Aptly called the "The Sports Bra", the venue is putting Jenny's culinary skills on display alongside women's sports worldwide.

The Sports Bar has taken its mission a even further by partnering with and elevating other local, women-owned businesses.

Specifically, it:

1. Sources its grass-fed beef from @CarmanRanch, an ranch run by Cory Carman, a third gen rancher out of Wallowa, Oregon).

2. Sources its alcohol from Freeland Spirits, an all-women owned and operated distillery out of NW Portland.

3. Has furniture built by @girlsbuild_org, a non-profit organization headed by @ktmhughes in Portland, OR, that teaches carpentry and construction skills to young girls as a path to empowerment.

Since opening the Sports Bra this April, people have come from ALL over the U.S. and the world to experience it—including many professional female athletes.

To learn more about Jenny as she makes history, features women's sports, and elevates women-run businesses, listen to the episode here:

shorturl.at/doGHZ

Or, you can check out the Sports Bra at:

@thesportsbrapdx
TheSportsBraPDX.com/

Have you heard of the Sports Bra or been out to experience it in person?

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Over this recent holiday stretch, we… - enjoye Over this recent holiday stretch, we… 

- enjoyed some quiet time at home
- got a sauna delivered (but not yet installed)
- decorated for the holidays
- baked a bunch
- visited our favorite farm
- did some sight seeing
- and perhaps, most importantly, survived the cold snap along with our feather friends (who lived in the garage for a few days so we could heat them with a space heater) 🥶🐔

How have the holidays treated you…and did you get hit by the winter storms? ❤️🎁☃️❄️
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