History of the Rainbow Flag by Stephen W. Anderson

Colour has long played an important role in our community's expression of pride. In Victorian England, for example, the colour green was associated with homosexuality. The colour purple (or, more accurately, lavender) became popularized as a symbol of pride in the late 1960's; a frequent post-Stonewall catchword for the gay community was "Purple Power." But the most colourful of our symbols is the Rainbow Flag, and its rainbow of colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple - represents the diversity of our community.

The first Rainbow Flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, who created the flag in response to a local activist's call for the need of a community symbol. Using the five-striped "Flag of the Race" as his inspiration, Baker designed a flag with eight stripes: Pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. According to Baker, those colours represented, respectively: Sexuality, life, healing, sun, nature, art, harmony, and spirit. Baker dyed and sewed the material for the first flag himself - in the true spirit of Betsy Ross.

Baker soon approached San Francisco's Paramount Flag Company about mass producing and selling his "gay flag." Unfortunately, Baker had hand-dyed all the colours, and since the colour "hot pink" was not commercially available, mass production of his eight-striped version became impossible. The flag was reduced to seven stripes.

In Noveber 1978, San Francisco's gay community was stunned when the city's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, was assassinated. Wishing to demonstrate the gay community's strength and solidarity in the aftermath of this tragedy, the 1979 Pride Parade Committee decided to use Baker's flag. The community eliminated the indigo stripe so they could divide the colours evenly along the parade route - three colours on one side of the street and three on the other. Soon the six colours were incorporated into a six-striped version that became popularized and that, today, is recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers.

Although the Rainbow Flag was initially used as a symbol of pride only in San Francisco, it has received increased visibility in recent years. Today, it is a frequent sight in a number of cities as well - New York, West Hollywood, and Amsterdam, among them (as well as in Winnipeg, Vancouver, Toronto, & so on). Indeed, the Rainbow Flag reminds us that ours is a diverse community - composed of people with a variety of individual tastes of which we should all be proud.

History of the Bi Pride Flag by Michael Page

The first Bi Pride flag was unveiled on December 5th, 1998. The intent and purpose of the flag was to maximize bisexual pride and visibility.

As a result of volunteer work I was doing for BiNet USA, it occurred to me that if bi people were going to be visible at home, pride events and political rallies, we needed a BiPride Flag! At that time, there were, in my opinion, no suitable bisexual icons that were colourful or prominent enough to gain instant and long-lasting recognition as a flag. At the time, there were bi angles - an inverted double triangle, the bi symbol - a three looped symbol and various shaped symbols created to represent local groups of bi people.

There is no question that bi people have helped foster the gay and lesbian movement we have witnessed since the Stonewall riots of 1969. One problem for bisexuals remains their invisibility. This was also a problem for gays and lesbians prior to 1969 as very few were willing to "come out."

In 1978, Gilbert Baker of San francisco, who I personally met in Italy at World Pride 2000, created the Rainbow Flag. Each colour held its own meaning and was intended to represent diversity of the gay and lesbian community. The effective mass visibility of the icon is indisputable.

Based on my own personal experience, the vast majority of bi people have spoken with, feel no connection to the Rainbow Flag, the Pink Triangle, the Black Triangle, the Lambda symbol, or the double-edged hatchet. These symbols are viewed as gay and lesbian icons, which was their initial intent. Search the history of the Rainbow Flag on the Internet and you will see what I mean.

It is my belief that bi people need their own flags and symbols to rally around. I believe we (G.L.B.T.T. - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Two-spirited, Transgendered) are at times extremely united, but in our communities usually separate.

In designing the Bi Pride Flag, I selected the colours and overlap pattern of the bi angles symbol. I selected, which is to me, the most attractive combination of pink, purple, and blue. In flag-maker parlance this is magenta, lavender, and royal blue. I decided to make the top of the flag pink and would give it 40% of the vertical dimension. Purple, which is the resultant colour when you overlap pink and blue, would be the middle stripe and would be 20% of the dimension. The lower 40% would be blue.

SYMBOLISM: The pink colour represents same-sex attraction (gay and lesbian), the blue represents attraction to the opposite sex (straight), and the resultant overlap colour purple represents sexual attraction to both (bi). The key to understanding the symbolism of the Bi Pride Flag is to know that the purple pixels of colour blend unnoticeably into both the pink and the blue, just as in the "real world" where bi people blend unnoticeably into both gay/lesbian and straight communities.

International Bear Brotherhood Flag (1996)

Leather Pride Flag (1989)

Transgender Flag (1999)

The colours on the flag are from top to bottom: Pink, light purple, medium purple, dark purple, and blue. The pink and blue represent male and female. The three purple stripes represent the diversity of the TG community as well as genders other than male and female.

Black Triangle (1970's)

Like the Pink Triangle, the Black Triangle is rooted in Nazi Germany. Although lesbians were not included in the Paragraph 175 prohibition of homosexuality, there is evidence to indicate that the Black Triangle was used to designate prisoners with anti-social behaviour. Considering that the Nazi idea of womanhood focused on children, kitchen, and church, the Black Triangle prisoners may have included lesbians, prostitutes, women who refused to bear children, and women with other "anti-social" traits. As the Pink Triangle is historically a male symbol, the Black Triangle has similarly been reclaimed by lesbians and feminists as a symbol of pride and solidarity.

Pink Triangle (1970's)

The Pink Triangle is easily one of the more popular and widely-recognized symbols for the gay community. The pink triangle is rooted in World War II times and reminds us of the tragedies of that era. Although homosexuals were only one of the many groups targeted for extermination by the Nazi regime, it is unfortunately the group that history often excludes. The Pink Triangle challenges that notion and defies anyone to deny history.

The history of the Pink Triangle begins before WWII, during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Paragraph 175, a clause in German law prohibiting homosexual relations, was revised by Hitler in 1935 to include kissing, embracing, and gay fantasies as well as sexual acts. Convicted offenders - an estimated 25,000 just from 1937 - 1939 were sent to prison and then later to concentration camps. Their sentence was to be sterilized, and this was most often accompished by castration. In 1942, Hitler's punishment for homosexuality was extended to death!

Each prisoner in the concentration camps wore a coloured inverted triangle to designate their reason for incarceration, and hence the designation also served to form a sort of social hierarchy among prisoners. A green triangle marked its wearer as a regular criminal; a red triangle denoted a political prisoner. Two yellow triangles overlapping to form a Star of David designated a Jewish prisoner. The Pink Triangle was for homosexuals. A yellow Star of David under a superimposed Pink Triangle marked the lowest of all prisoners - a gay Jew.

Stories of the camps depict homosexual prisoners being given the worst tasks and labours. Pink Triangle prisoners were also a proportionally large focus of attacks from the guards and even other inmates. Although the total number of homosexual prisoners is not known, official Nazi estimates were an underwhelming 10,000.

Although homosexual prisoners reportedly were not shipped en masse to death camps at Auschwitz, a great number of gay men were among the non-Jews who were killed there. Estimates of the number of gay men killed during the Nazi regime range from 50,000 to twice that figure. When the war was finally over, countless many homosexuals remained prisoners in the camps, because Paragraph 175 remained law in West germany until its repeal in 1969.

In the 1970's, gay liberation groups resurrected the Pink Triangle as a popular symbol for the gay rights movement. Not only is the symbol easily recognized, but it draws attention to oppression and persecution - then and now. In the 1980's, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) began using the Pink Triangle for their cause. They inverted the symbol, making it point up, to signify an active fight back rather than a passive resignation to fate. Today, for many the Pink Triangle represents pride, solidarity, and a promise to never allow another Holocaust to happen again.

Labrys

A lesbian and a feminist symbol of strength and self-sufficiency.

Lambda

The lowercase Greek letter "lambda" carries several meanings. First of all, it represents scales, and thus balance. The Greeks considered balance to be the constant adjustment necessary to keep opposing forces from overcoming each other. The hook at the bottom of the right leg of the lambda represents the action required to reach and maintain a balance. To the Spartans, the lambda meant unity. They felt that society should never infringe on anyone's individuality and freedom. The Romans adopted the letter to represent "the light of knowledge shed into the

darkness of ignorance." Finally, in physics the symbol designates an energy change. Thus the lambda, with all its meanings, is an especially apt symbol for the gay liberation movement, which energetically seeks a balance and which strives through enlightenment to secure equal rights for homosexual peoples.

Other flags:

Activism

TRU Pride has participated in two activist campaigns thus far:

Sexual Diversity Awareness Campaign

Firstly, a rainbow sticker campaign in conjunction with the Nursing Department wherein two nursing students distributed rainbow stickers for faculty at UCC to display in their offices (2001). Human Services, Nursing, & Social Work department faculties participated in raising awareness, understanding, & diversity of faculty & students alike by proudly displayng rainbow stickers in their offices.

Anti-homophobia Poster Campaign

Secondly, 3 posters courtesy of Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Students' Association of Vancouver Community College were reproduced locally & displayed on campus (2002) & in various health care settings (2001) for awareness.

Definitions:

Sex & Gender

Lesbian

A female homosexual.

Gay

A term that was once associated with either

homosexual malesor females, but which is becoming

more and more specifically associated with male

homosexuals.

Bisexual

Someone who is attracted physically and emotionally

to people regardless of gender.

Article

Two-Spirit

An First nations term used to describe persons who embody both the male and female spirit. Two-spirit people were highly valued in traditional First nations culture because they brought harmony and balance and could sit in both the male and female camps. Many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered First Nations persons are reclaiming this term.

Transgendered

An umbrella term that includes transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag queens and drag kings, gender outlaws, and all those whose gender roles are ambiguous. This identification challenges tradition notions of sexuality and gender. Transgendered persons may be heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual.

Transsexual

Those who recognize that their sexual identity conflicts in a fundamental way with the biological sex into which they were born. A person who has taken measures (e.g. surgery or hormone therapy), or intends to change their physical sex.

Trysexual

I'll try anything once (more if I find I like it)

'I know strictly heterosexual people. There are strict lesbians with their “gold stars” (never slept with a man), and solely homosexual males. I know women who only date men yet make out with girls when they are drunk (who I think are probably really gay). There are girls who have sex with girls only to please their boyfriends. And gay football players who would never consider entering into a relationship with another man. There are bisexuals. There are even “trysexuals.” There are “hasbians,” (a former lesbian who is now married to a man). And I even know some former heterosexual women who are now Birkenstock-wearing, vegetarian, cat-owning, toaster-oven-collecting, PFLAG card-carrying, full-out lesbians. And there are many more in-betweens. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find a person who hasn’t at least thought about it once in a while.'

http://fallacyfindings.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

Pomoexual

Mommy, what's a PoMosexual?, taken from the Larry Lyons Experience

Alright kiddies, you already know that I'm a language fanatic. So, indulge me and let me know what you think about pomosexuality. All text is pirated, er... "borrowed" from TheWordSpy.com.

pomosexual (poh.moh.SEK.shoo.ul) n. A person who shuns labels such as heterosexual and homosexual that define individuals by their sexual preferences. Also: PoMoSexual. adj. pomosexuality n.

"In a pomosexual world, sexual categories are no longer rigid. People can move beyond labels -- gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual -- while acknowledging the importance those labels played in the past."

--Mitchel Raphael, "Where gay goes after the mainstream," The Toronto Star, May 17, 1998

Notes: This word combines pomo, shorthand for postmodern, with the suffix -sexual. Although she didn't invent the word, pomosexual was made famous by editor Carol Queen who used it in the title of a 1997 anthology of essays, PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (Cleis Press). On the back cover of the book, PoMoSexual is described as the "erotic reality beyond the boundaries of gender, separatism, and essentialist notions of sexual orientation."

Earliest Citation:

This is why Garber is writing a book on bisexuality, and why she wrote a book on transvestism: She believes that these "in-between" experiences prove that human qualities like gender and sexuality are far more fluid and mercurial than we tend to think. "'Bisexuality,'" she concludes after pondering Rock Hudson's marriage to Phyllis Gates, "is not a fixed point on a scale but an aspect of lived experience, seen in the context of particular relations... Like postmodernism itself, it resists a stable referentiality. It performs." Call it pomosexuality.--Larissa MacFarquhar, "Vice Versa," The Nation, July 17, 1995

First Use:

The queer erotic reality beyond the boundaries of gender, separatism, and essentialist notions of sexual orientation.--Carol Queen, "PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality," Cleis Press, September, 1997

So, do you think the term "pomosexual" has its place in the progessive lexicon, or is it another unintelligible neologism created to further bemire our already muddy discussions about gender and sexuality? Would you date a pomosexual?

Straight

A common term for a heterosexual person.

Cross-dressing/Drag

Dressing in clothes commonly worn by the other gender for identity, self-pleasure, entertainment or to make a political statement against the rigid gender roles demanded by our society.

Crossresser or CD, from My Husband Betty  by Helen Boyd:

"1. This is the more general; term used to describe anyone who dresses as the opposite sex for any reason. Joan of Arc was crossdressed, as were Marlene Dietrich in Morocco and Jack Lemmon & Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. The members of Monty Python, Flip Wilson, & a score of other comedians crossdressed for the sake of comedy. (The only exception, of course, is our own beloved "executive transvestite," Eddie Izzard, who is a comedian & actor who just happens to be a transvestite. Crossdressing is a very general term, to be used to describe anyone who for any reason wears the clothes of the opposite sex: theatrically, for practical reasons (like the way women did in order to oliver  lives of greater freeedom): for comedy; or for sex or even just for masquerade (like on Halloween). That is, a man who dresses as a woman for Halloween crossdresses, but he is not necessarily a transvestite.

2. A crossdresser is the new term for what most people think of as a transvestite, a man who wears women's clothes in order to feel like a woman. Because the word transvestite came fully loaded with sexual connotations & mental illness, America's crossdressers - sometime in the 1970's - started using the more neutral term crossdresser to define themselves. They emphasized that transvetisim wasn't about sex, that crossdressers were not homosexual but were in fact largely heterosexual, & that crossdressing is, for the Male to Female (MTF) crossdresser, more about expressing "an inner feminine." Eventually they stopped using the word "transvestite" altogether, & substituted "crossdresser." That said, the term transvestite is still used by the rest of the world....Most of the time he is heterosexual, & he may or may not experience sexual arousal as a result of his crossdressing."

Transvestite

Someone who enjoys dressing in clothing commonly worn by the other gender, for the purpose of emotional or sexual gratification.

Sexual orientation 

Innate direction of attraction for intimate emotional and sexual relationships with people of the same gender (homosexual, lesbian, gay), other gender (heterosexual), or two genders (bisexual). Sexual orientation may be the same as, or distinct from, sexual orientation identity and/or sexual behaviour.

Sexual identity

An individual’s physical sense of being male or female.

Sexual behaviour

Sexual orientation may not be as relevant as actual sexual behaviour. For example, a man who is married to a woman but who has sex with men may refer to himself as heterosexual; a self-identified lesbian may have sexual relations with men.

Natal sex

The biological sex at birth. Society assumes a bipolar outlook on sex, including male and female only, while evidence suggests there may be many others.

Gender identity

An individual’s sense of place in the socially constructed role of male or female.

Gender role expectations 

Gender based patterning: includes all of the characteristics and traits culturally attributed to male and female roles in a given society; often, gender is seen as a binary social construct in North America.

Kate Bornstein, circa 1998:

"It [binary gender system or rigid gender identification] probably robs us of our ability to see past ingrained gender expectations and get close to each other. It probably also keeps us from dreaming our own dreams, or at least makes us modify our dreams so they don't conflict with our locked-in genders. It probably freezes us into some identity that doesn't let us express ourselves as freely and completely as we could. It probably shoves us into a hatred of ourselves and our bodies for some internally perceived failure to live up to the most impossible either/or gender standards set by most every culture. Now . . . as to which of those nasty things is more primary a restraint than another, I'd have to say it's up to the individual."

Gender behaviour 

Actions which may or may not reflect the gender role expectations of a given society.

Ism's

Sexism

The social/cultural, institutional and individual beliefs and practices that privilege men, subordinate women, and denigrate women-identified values.

Heterosexism

The belief in the inherent superiority of heterosexuality over other patterns of loving and thereby its right to dominance. This privileges heterosexuals, oppresses homosexuals and denigrates alternate sexuality and genders.

Heterosexual assumption 

The assumption that everyone is heterosexual unless otherwise indicated. This assumption is an aspect of heterosexism and perpetuates its existence.

Homophobia

The fear of feelings of love for members of one’s own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others. (Lorde, Audre; Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches; 1984) Homophobia is the ultimate weapon in reinforcing rigid sex-role conformity; sex-role conformity oppresses all females and limits male options. The negative feelings, attitudes and actions that some people have towards sexual minorities is often exhibited by prejudice, discrimination, harassment and acts of violence.

Biphobia

Fear, hatred or intolerance of bisexual persons.

Transphobia

Fear, hatred or intolerance of transgendered persons.

AIDSphobia

Fear, hatred or intolerance of persons living with HIV/AIDS.

Heterophobia

Fear, hatred or intolerance of heterosexual persons.

Various

Heterosexual Privilege 

The benefits that heterosexual persons automatically have and that are denied lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals in a heterosexist culture. Also, the benefits that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals receive as a result of claiming heterosexual identity or denying homosexual or bisexual identity.

Coming Out 

A process of coming to terms with and defining one’s homosexual or bisexual orientation.

Outing

The public exposure of an individual’s homosexuality or bisexuality.

Lifestyle

A term used to describe the way individuals live their lives. For example, some people like living in the country, while others like the city life. The word lifestyle is sometimes used incorrectly to describe a person’s sexual orientation: “She is living a gay lifestyle.” This usage is misleading because gay people live many different lifestyles. Being homosexual or bisexual in and of itself does not define the style of one’s life any more than being heterosexual does.

Heterosexual Ally

A heterosexual person who supports and honours sexual diversity, acts accordingly to interrupt and challenge homophobic and heterosexist remarks and actions of others, and is willing to explore these forms of bias within him/herself.

Queer

Originally a derogatory label used to refer to lesbian and gay people or to intimidate or offend homosexuals. Recently, this term has been reclaimed by some lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people as an inclusive and positive way to identify all people targeted by heterosexism and homophobia. Some lesbians and gays have similarly reclaimed dyke and faggot for positive self-reference.