When you think of Pride Month, images of parades and celebrations probably pop into your head. You might also picture the original Gilbert Baker Pride Flag—the rainbow tapestry that has become ubiquitous throughout Pride celebrations. Although it may be one of the most visible LGBTQ+ symbols, the rainbow flag is far from the only pride flag members of LGBTQ+ communities fly. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), there are at least 25 different pride flags.
“It’s a coalition of different identities across axes of identity, orientation, expression, sexual desire, and romantic desire,” says Hannah Simpson, a LGBTQ+ writer, speaker, and activist.
The Stonewall Riots in 1969 predated the pride flag by nearly a decade. “It was a huge act of resistance,” says Jennifer DeClue, PhD, associate professor of the study of women and gender at Smith College. That history is woven into the pride flag and its many iterations. “I think the flags sort of represent struggle,” she says. Speaking to the flags and the current iterations of Pride parades, DeClue says, “It’s a celebration, and it’s also a remembrance of the people who fought for the freedoms that we have today.”
Pride flags can easily bring you in with their bright colors and patterns, but their roles and meanings run much deeper. “If you see a [pride] flag, it is sort of a signal there’s a queer person who lives in that house or owns that business, and there’s a sense of community and belonging,” says DeClue.
When pride flags are seen as safe spaces for LGBTQ+ communities, it becomes that much more important to ensure everyone in those communities feels represented. There are flags with symbols for gender identity/sexual orientation, for people who identify as transgender, bisexual, asexual, and so many more.
To help familiarize yourself, we’ve compiled a list of all the LGBTQ+ flags and what they mean. Whether you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community or an ally, we promise this will be a learning course actually worth taking.
The Gilbert Baker Pride Flag
The meaning: According to Robert Deam Tobin, PhD, who teaches courses in gay and lesbian studies and queer theory at Clark University, the gay pride flag “was and is a cheerful, upbeat, optimistic, and instantly identifiable symbol of the LGBTQ+ community—and has caught on throughout the world, in big cities and little ones.” The rainbow was seen as a symbol of hope, dating back to the Bible, per artist Gilbert Baker’s 2019 memoir Rainbow Warrior.
The history: Baker’s flag was born in 1978 out of a response to activists calling for a new symbol for the gay movement. (Prior to the rainbow flag, the movement used a pink triangle in an attempt to reclaim it from how Hitler used it to place a stigma on LGBTQ+ communities during WWII.) “That was a big year for LGBTQ+ community, because Harvey Milk had been elected to office as really the first openly gay person in California to be elected there,” explains Greg Miraglia, professor of LGBT studies and criminal justice at Napa Valley College, Santa Rosa Junior College and City College of San Francisco.
Baker attempted complete inclusivity with the original eight colors in the flag—pink, red, orange, yellow, green turquoise, dark blue, and violet—with each color representing a different aspect of the human experience, like sex, life, and healing. “Baker said sexuality and gender identity are things everybody has, and so he wanted to have a symbol that was inclusive of everyone,” says Miraglia. It was pared down to six colors, dropping pink and turquoise, due to the difficulty of producing pink fabric.
The Polyamory Pride Flag
The meaning: “Polyamory is a form of consensual non monogamy that emphasizes emotional connection among multiple partners,” Elisabeth Sheff, PhD, author of The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families, previously told Cosmopolitan.
The history: Jim Evans created the blue, red, and black flag in 1995, according to HRC. Blue represents openness, while red is for passion, and black is for solidarity with people who have to hide their polyamory. The original flag includes a gold pi symbol for the “infinite options of partners available to polyamorous people,” per HRC. A modified version was created in 2017 by the University of Northern Colorado poly community, according to their website, and it replaces the pi symbol with a heart and infinity sign to similarly represent the ability to love multiple partners at the same time.
The Transgender Pride Flag
The meaning: The transgender pride flag purposely plays with the traditional colors for baby boys (light blue) and girls (light pink). The flag represents the diversity of the community in the white stripe, inclusive of those who are intersex, transitioning, or gender neutral.
The history: Monica Helms, a transgender woman, created the trans pride flag in 1998, according to OutRight International. “This flag is becoming quite well recognized, in part because the trans community has had to fight many battles: ensuring medical access, fighting discrimination in the military and elsewhere, providing resources for trans youth, taking on hostile state laws, and fighting discriminatory ballot measures,” Tobin says.
The Bisexual Pride Flag
The meaning: Like most pride flags, the colors in the bisexual pride flag—pink, purple, and blue—tell the story. According to Tobin, “the pink represents same-sex attraction, the blue represents heterosexual attraction, and the two colors fade imperceptibly into each other to create purple.”
The history: It was designed by Michael Page in 1998, and Tobin notes it was a time of change after 20 years of the traditional pride flag. “At the end of the 1990s, you see the addition of the lesbian, trans, and bisexual flags,” he says, “It’s as though the 1990s was a moment of understanding the need for communities to break out and create their own identities.”
The Pansexual Pride Flag
The meaning: Aesthetically similar to the bisexual pride flag, this pansexual flag brings together its pink and blue colors with yellow rather than purple. “Yellow represents non-binary people,” according to Tobin.
The history: “The pansexual pride flag has been around since the 2010s,” says Tobin. While there isn’t much intel out there on who created it, most sources agree it was created on the internet.
The Asexual Pride Flag
The meaning: Despite its name, this flag is not strictly for asexual people. “Its colors are designed to include graysexuals, who operate in the ‘gray space’ between sexuality and asexuality, as well as demisexuals, who only feel sexual attraction under certain circumstances,” explains Tobin. For members of the LGBTQ+ communities and allies alike, it can seem like there are a lot of flags (and many meanings within those flags), but they simply represent different experiences. “We are a gloriously diverse group of people with a wide range of experiences, backgrounds, and identities,” says Elise Schuster, MPH, a sexuality educator and trainer on LGBTQ+ issues and co-founder of OkaySo, a free app for young people connecting them to experts they can trust.
The history: According to The Asexual Agenda, the flag debuted in July 2010, following a contest put on by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). After three stages of polls, they announced the current iteration of the asexual flag.
The Demisexual Pride Flag
The meaning: Demisexual is used to describe people who “need to feel a strong emotional connection with someone in order to feel any sexual attraction to them.” Per HRC, this flag is for people who only form sexual attraction through deep and emotional connections with potential love interests.
Again, the colors (white, purple, gray, and black) basically spell out the meaning. “Anytime you see purples, greens, and yellows in flags, these are colors that are not linked to gendered norms, so you know the flag is highlighting people who reject these binaries,” says Simpson. With no genders represented, black, gray, and white stand for asexuality, demisexuality, and sexuality, respectively, while the purple stands for community, according to HRC.
The history: According to the Gender & Sexuality Resource Center at University of Northern Colorado, “it is unknown how or when the flag came to be, but it is very similar to the asexual flag in its use of colors.”
The Genderqueer Pride Flag
The meaning: The colors of this flag—lavender, white, and chartreuse—represent “androgyny, agender, and non-binary identities,” per Tobin. The purple represents androgyny as it combines blue and pink, which are typically associated with men and women; the white is a home for those who are agender or gender neutral, and chartreuse is representative of third gender identities and nonbinary.
The history: Genderqueer advocate Marilyn Roxie created the flag in 2011, per OutRight.
The Genderfluid Pride Flag
The meaning: Five stripes adorn this flag, which “goes from pink, representing femininity, to blue, representing masculinity, and tries to cover everything in between,” according to Tobin. Black represents genderfluid individuals who don’t associate with any genders, and white includes all genders.
The history: According to OutRight International, JJ Poole added this flag to the array of pride symbols in 2012.
The Polysexual Pride Flag
The meaning: The polysexual pride flag represents people who are attracted to multiple genders, but not all genders. Blue and pink represent attraction to men and women, respectively, and the green stripe is for attraction to people who are outside of the gender binary.
The history: This pink, green, and blue flag was created online in 2012, according to HRC.
The Intersex Pride Flag
The meaning: “The intersex pride flag works with colors that have not been traditionally gendered, like yellow,” says Tobin, who says the flag has helped unify the intersex community. It’s a chance for people to bond together to fight “medical and political battles,” such as preventing premature corrective surgery before people born intersex can give their consent.
The history: Created in 2013 in Australia by Morgan Carpenter, color is key in this flag. According to Carpenter’s website, the colors in this flag “seek to completely avoid use of symbols that have anything to do with gender at all.” And the purple circle design “represents wholeness.”
The Agender Pride Flag
The meaning: Agender is a gender identity used to describe people who don’t identify as having a specific gender. According to Tobin, “This flag chooses colors that have not been traditionally gendered.” OutRight International notes “the black and white stripes represent an absence of gender, the gray represents semi-genderlessness, and the central green stripe represents non-binary genders.”
The history: Salem X created this seven-stripe flag, which debuted in 2014, per OutRight. As more flags join the original pride flag, it really illustrates how many different people make up the LGBTQ+ communities, which Schuster appreciates: “I love how it shows just how many ways there are to be in the world!”
The Non-Binary Pride Flag
The meaning: According to Tobin, this particular flag is meant to “represent people outside the traditional gender binary, people with multiple genders, people with mixed genders, and people with no genders.”
With so many flags representing different groups, it can be hard to understand where you belong as a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Schuster says that’s totally fine. “Lots of people are in between or are more than one thing, or may never have a label or a flag that they feel like fits them,” they explain. “And that’s absolutely great—you don’t have to have a flag you identify with to be an important part of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The history: Tobin says the non-binary flag we see today was first created by Kye Rowan in 2014.
The Drag Pride Flag
The meaning: The drag pride flag’s purple stripe represents a shared passion for drag, the blue represents expression and loyalty, and the white in the middle is a drag performer’s blank slate to create their character. Atop the stripes is a five-pointed crown with stars, the crown a nod to leaders in the community, and the stars representing the many types of drag.
The history: Veranda L’Ni created the current drag pride flag for an Austin International Drag Foundation contest in 2016, according to Drag Pride. Prior to 2016, a 1999 flag featured a phoenix overlaid on a red and black and white checked pattern. Sean Campbell created the feather pride flag, and it symbolized rebirth and fires of passion.
The Two-Spirit Pride Flag
The meaning: Representing the third gender in traditional Indigenous North American communities, two-spirit individuals don’t fall within the gender binary, per SexualDiversity.org. The flag takes inspiration from the Baker pride flag, placing the image of two feathers connected by a circle atop the rainbow flag, per HRC. It symbolizes masculinity and femininity while also bringing together masculine and feminine identities into one gender.
The history: According to Queer in the World, the flag was created in 2016 based on a Tumblr request.
The Philadelphia Pride Flag
The meaning: Two new colors were added to Baker’s pride flag in 2017 and unveiled during Philadelphia’s 2017 Pride event, according to the HRC. The addition of a black and a brown stripe was to acknowledge communities of color and their contributions to the LGBTQ+ rights movement. It was a response to “new developments in the LGBTQ+ community, particularly to be inclusive in terms of race and trans issues,” per Tobin.
The history: The original six-color pride flag was the main symbol for LGBTQ+ communities for decades, and while it was meant to be inclusive, the Philadelphia City Council commissioned a new flag for what they saw as overlooked communities in the movement.
The Lesbian Pride Flag
The meaning: The five-stripe flag with different shades of red, pink, and orange is the newest version of the lesbian pride flag that’s been used since 2018, and Tobin explains it is “trying to signal toward diversity with the orange line suggesting gender nonconformity.”
The history: It’s been a journey to get the current flag meant to symbolize different types of femininity, per HRC. “There are actually a variety of lesbian flags,” says Tobin. “In addition to the one shown here, there is also a purple one created in 1999—ironically, or problematically, by a man.”
That particular flag was problematic because it featured “a double-edged axe, known as a labrys, set in an inverted triangle” that looked a lot like “the black triangle used to identify some lesbians in Nazi concentration camps,” per Tobin. A 2010 update featured shades of pink and a lipstick stain as an ode to “lipstick lesbians,” he says, but this new one is here to symbolize diversity.
The Progress Pride Flag
The meaning: The Progress Pride flag keeps the six colors of the original pride flag (and the black and brown from the Philadelphia flag), and it adds three more stripes: white, pink, and blue, to represent the trans community
The history: To recognize even more groups in the LGBTQ+ communities, Daniel Quasar created the Progress pride flag in 2018.. “Quasar’s version moved the black and the brown to the side as part of a triangle that also included the colors of the trans flag intersecting with the now-traditional rainbow flag,” according to Tobin.
According to the HRC, the black stripe in this flag is both a nod to communities of color and to the thousands of individuals who died in the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Trans-Inclusive Gay Men’s Pride Flag
The meaning: A seven-striped flag, this is the second version of the gay men’s pride flag, according to HRC. With more shades of green and blue, it expands on the original’s three colors — green, blue and white. A wider array of colors is meant to include non-cisgender gay men.
The history: It’s not clear when the new version debuted.
The Queer People of Color Pride Flag
The meaning: According to HRC, the 2019 Queer People of Color flag represents the intersecting struggles of the fights for racial and queer equality. It overlays a fist with a gradient of colors from brown to black on the rainbow flag. The symbol became very popular during 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, and the flag is meant to give distinction to those who have fought for both queer and racial equity.
The history: Following in the Baker flag footsteps, this symbol also made its debut in San Francisco, more than 40 years later.
The Pride of Africa Flag
The meaning: According to Campaigns of the World, the flag represents the 54 African countries, and it’s “a rainbow flag that says you are accepted, you are welcome, and you are safe as it celebrates both communities and individuals without borders.”
The history: The first pan-African LGBTQ+ flag, this symbol debuted thanks to the Pride of Africa Foundation in 2019 at Johannesburg Pride in South Africa, per HRC.
The Demigender Pride Flag
The meaning: According to HRC, this flag represents people who have a partial connection to gender identity or the concept of gender altogether. It has seven stripes with gray, dark gray, yellow, and white. The grays symbolize “fragmentary connections” with gender, per Queer in the World. Yellow represents non-binary individuals, and the white is inclusive of agender identification.
The history: It’s not clear when, exactly, the flag was created.
The Bigender Pride Flag
The meaning: Representing people who have two genders, this flag has seven stripes, ranging from shades of pink to shades of blue, with white in the middle. For some, bigender can mean identifying as both male and female, but it can also be inclusive of non-binary identities, per HRC. According to SexualDiversity.org, the colors in the flag are meant to represent individuals who go between the male and female genders, or who combine them.
The history: It’s not clear when the flag was created.
The Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag
The meaning: According to the Consortium of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Voluntary and Community Organisations, Valentino Vecchietti debuted this flag as part of Intersex Equality Rights UK’s Intersex Visibility and Inclusion campaign, and it combines the 2013 intersex flag with the 2018 progress pride flag.
The history: Vecchietti created this flag in 2021, and it includes the intersex community in the progress pride flag. As of May 2023, it’s the most updated pride flag, but if past iterations of the flag are any indication, it may not be the last. “We’re all a part of this larger community, but the individual ways we identify are also important to us,” Schuster explains. “Being able to have a visual symbol of that can feel very empowering.”
Candice is a dating expert and the author Just Send The Text, out Feb. 2, 2021, which she likes to think of as a 70,000-word-long reminder to be yourself. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @candicejalili.
Freelance Writer
Collette is a freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Elite Daily, StyleCaster, and Insider. You can follow her on Instagram @collette.reitz and Twitter @collette_reitz.
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