Most people know about the original rainbow pride flag and the updated Progress Pride flag, but fewer know about the long, contentious history of the lesbian pride flag.
It’s a flag that has evolved dramatically over the years, whose most mainstream version today is one that bears little resemblance the Labrys Pride Flag first introduced in 1999. And while there still isn’t one “official” lesbian Pride flag, the queer community is constantly creating new flags to represent us, like the non-binary lesbian flags and the celestial lesbian flags.
If you want to know how we ended up with the beautiful seven-striped flag we have today, along with a few important variations of it, we’ve got you covered. Read on to learn about the history of the lesbian pride flag, why the nonbinary-inclusive version of the colorful banner came about, and what a few recent iterations of it look like.
What is the history of the lesbian pride flag?
The first well-documented design for a lesbian pride flag was the Labrys Pride Flag, designed by a gay graphic designer named Sean Campbell in 1999. The Labrys Flag features a white double-headed axe, called a labrys, superimposed on top of an inverted black triangle with a purple background. Campbell chose these images for their symbolism and connection to the lesbian community.
Purple is a color that has been associated with lesbians and sapphics ever since the ancient Greek poet Sappho wrote of girls who wore crowns woven from violets. The inverted black triangle calls back to the identification system used by the Nazis in concentration camps to demarcate “asocial” prisoners, a catch-all term for people whose existence went against Nazi rule, including lesbians. The labrys itself is a weapon that is linked to a variety of ancient matriarchal societies, and is associated with the Amazons, a tribe of giant warrior women in Greek mythology. The labrys was also used by the lesbian radical feminist movement of the 1970s as a symbol of empowerment.
While the Labrys Pride Flag was perhaps the best-known lesbian pride flag in the 2000s, it has since fallen out of favor among many sapphics for a variety of reasons. Some lesbians don’t want to use a pride flag that was designed by a man. The use of Holocaust imagery in pride materials is contentious. More recently, the labrys has been co-opted by trans-exclusionary radical feminists and lesbians.
Around 2010, a new lesbian and sapphic pride flag began to hit the mainstream, known as the “Pink Lesbian Pride Flag,” or the “Lipstick Lesbian Pride Flag.” Created by blogger Natalie McCray in 2010, this flag features seven stripes in various shades of red and pink with a lipstick mark placed in the top left corner. The pink flag, which includes the same seven stripes but lacks the lipstick mark, eventually became more popular. Many people took issue with the lipstick version of this flag because it focused on “lipstick lesbians,” to the exclusion of butches, dykes, and all sorts of lesbians who don’t feel represented by a flag based around lesbian femininity.
The term “lipstick lesbian” has a complicated history itself; it can be traced back to the porn industry of the 1980s, where it was used to sell pornography of women having sex with women to heterosexual men. The pink flag variation has also left many people uncomfortable after the discovery of bigoted comments made by McCray on her since-deleted blog. A lesbian pride flag that doesn’t represent all lesbians doesn’t serve its purpose!
This brings us to the Sunset Lesbian Pride Flag, created by a nonbinary lesbian named Emily Gwen in 2018. This flag features seven stripes in a gradient of orange to pink with their own meanings:
- Dark orange: gender non-conformity
- Coral orange: independence
- Pale orange: community
- White stripe: unique relationships to womanhood
- Pinkish purple: serenity and peace
- Darker purple-pink: love and sex
- Deep magenta: femininity.
This version might be one of the most widely-used versions of the lesbian flag today, whether in its seven-stripe or simplified five-stripe form.
Queer culture is incredibly decentralized, and if you poke around, you’ll find many lesbian flag varieties that were created in between these better-known ones. Pride flags are in a state of constant evolution, so if none of the lesbian flags you see today speak to you, feel free to make your own. And always remember, the Progress Rainbow Pride Flag is for all of us.
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Is there a nonbinary lesbian flag?
There are a few! Most versions of the nonbinary lesbian pride flag feature the same seven-stripe pride flag format, but with a variety of different colors and meanings. At least two have come to prominence in the last few years. The most popular features seven stripes; dark orange for gender-nonconformity, orange for rejection of the binary, light orange for healing, white for wholeness, pink for self-acceptance, dark pink for love for women, and black for complex relationships with gender and sexuality. Both were created by Twitter users to fill a representational void they saw in the existing slate of lesbian pride flags, underscoring just how dynamic the evolution of pride flags can be.
Is there a sapphic lesbian flag?
Yes! The most common sapphic flag features two pink bands and a depiction of a violet in the center. The word “sapphic” is derived from Sappho, and the violet again references her work. The violet is also a symbol of love between women, as women-loving-women would give each other flowers to show romantic intent. For those unaware, sapphic is an umbrella term for any queer person that loves women and resonates with the word. This includes lesbians, but also bisexual and pansexual people of many genders. Nonbinary people, transfemmes, transmascs, and cis women can all identify as sapphic if they want.
What are the Sun and Moon Lesbian Flags?
The sun and moon lesbian flags are two variations of the sunset lesbian flag with colors changed to match the aesthetics of the sun and moon, respectively. The Sun Lesbian Flag is a red and orange gradient, while the Moon lesbian flag is a dark purple to dark pink gradient. Neither one seems to have specific meanings for the colors beyond the aesthetic, so it's up to the user to decide. Some people say that the Moon Lesbian Flag is for closeted lesbians to use, or for feminine lesbians, but there’s no conclusive evidence for any particular explanation.
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Mostly these flags are emblematic of how the internet combined with the decentralization of queer culture, history, and experience leads to people feeling comfortable to make a flag for any identity they have, or even just because they had a good idea. It’s total pride flag anarchy out here. Just look at one of the flag lists on one of the many different LGBTQ+ wikis out there: anyone can make a pride flag, even you.
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