FreetheLGBT Pride Month Fiesta

Day 11: Fly your flags

You may have seen the rainbow flag flown during Pride Month and generally as a symbolic banner for the LGBTQ+ community. We all know this flag, but did you know there are loads more pride flags for all sexualities, gender identities, and types of romantic attraction?

Read on and become an LGBTQ+ pride flag know-it-all! There's also an interactive question at the end to get you all thinking.

If you didn't catch the first two installments of Fly Your Flag during the Pride Month Fiesta, go check them out!

Let's see how many of these you already know.

The agender pride flag. 'Agender' literally means without gender, so this pride flag is for those who don't experience gender or who identify as genderless. Those who have physically transitioned to becoming genderless may also identify as 'neutrois' which is a term closely related to the word 'neutral'. It also encompasses those who are transitioning or intend to transition towards losing their gender-identifying characteristics. This flag uses white at the top to symbolize neutrality, while black represents the state of being genderless. Green is used as the opposite of purple/lavender, (purple/lavender is a mix of pink/feminine and blue/masculine) and represents genders that are not part of the gender binary.

The polyamory pride flag. 'Polyamory' relates to open, consensual, multi-partner relationships -- it's different to 'polysexual' which means being attracted to multiple (but not all) genders. The blue in the polyamory pride flag represents openness and honesty between all partners. Red represents love and passion, while black represents solidarity amongst those who must hide their relationships due to societal pressures. The Greek lowercase character 'pi' in the middle symbolizes the value that polyamorous people place on having an emotional attachment to their partners. 

The genderqueer pride flag. 'Genderqueer' is often used as a blanket term for people whose outward gender representation blurs the lines. It can also encompass those who don't like to put a label on their gender. The purple, being a mix of blue and pink represents the blending of masculinity and femininity. White symbolizes those who identify as a gender outside of the gender binary, and green, being opposite lavender on the color wheel, represents those who don't identify with a gender.

The demi-sexual pride flag. The demi-sexual pride flag does things a little differently in terms of the significance of its stripes. The white stripe at the top symbolises sexuality, while the grey stripe represents grey-sexuality (the all-encompassing spectrum between sexuality and asexuality). The black triangle 'meets' both the grey and white, and the purple stripe in the middle represents community, like with the asexual pride flag. What distinguishes this flag are the shapes that make it up, with the emphasis being on the 'joining' between the various states of experiencing sexuality.

The demi-romantic pride flag. Similar to the demi-sexual pride flag, except this time the stripe is green. The green represents the opposite of red, which usually symbolises romance and passion. Again, the 'joining' of the white, grey and black symbolises the various states one can experience romanticism and sexuality.

That's it for this Fly Your Flag installment! But we don't want you to go just yet.

Shapes are really important when it comes to designing a pride flag. Shapes can hide a lot of meaning, from simple stripes (meaning the flag symbolizes things equally) to the 'joining' of stripes to represent fluidity or a spectrum, to the lowercase 'pi' symbol being at the heart of the polyamory pride flag. With that said, here's a question for you...

What shapes would you put on a pride flag that represented you? What would be the meaning behind the way you've arranged those shapes?

Tell us in the in-line comments what shapes you'd use on your pride flag and what they mean to you. (For the last time, pizza isn't a shape!)