The Pride Flag Has a Representation Problem
Since its first flight at 1978’s Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, the rainbow flag has evolved multiple times. That earliest iteration included pink and turquoise stripes, symbolizing sex and art, respectively—parts of queer life that the designers thought were worth fighting for. Later that year, though, the flag lost its pink stripe because of fabric unavailability at the local manufacturer, and turquoise fell off the year after for the same reason. The now-familiar six-stripe flag is actually a redesign.
When I was young and newly out of the closet, around 2013, I saw LGBTQ flags for every community imaginable online, including , such as the green, black, white, and grey , and a for slim, hairless 20-something . In 2017, Philadelphia’s Office to the Pride flag to recognize queer and trans people of color. One year later, the Oregon-based graphic designer Daniel Quasar added the trans flag’s stripes as a horizontal chevron to make the . And this year from Intersex Equality Rights UK, featuring a yellow triangle and purple circle to represent the intersex community, or people born with a reproductive anatomy that doesn’t fit typical male or female definitions.
