In 1978 Gilbert Baker created the now famous pride flag for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day celebration – a symbol of hope and freedom for sexual diversity around the world. The original flag had eight colored stripes representing sexuality, life, healing, the sun, nature, art, harmony and spirit.
Today there are a multitude of flags representing Aromanticism, Asexuality, Bear Culture, Bisexuality, Intersex, Lesbian, Non-binary, Pansexuality, Transgenderism, just to name a few of the prominent groups.
Now, a working group of a subcommittee of the International Consortium of Sexual, Romantic, Gender, and Species Identity (ICSRGSI) has published a new flag that represents 192 groups in what they hope will be a ‘banner for all minority identities’, and a ‘hope for a new age of inclusiveness’. The flag has been designed to represent the ‘gradient of diversity’ we see across the ‘four corners of the world’.
The new flag has not been received well by some minority groups despite the best efforts of the ICSRGSI flag subcommittee working group to be all embracing of all identities.
In one online debate both Pangender and white cis communities complained that the central color of the flag should be white – the Pangender, with some support from the Polygender, community claiming it would represent a mixing of all the colors and the white community claiming it would represent, well, the white community. A spokes androgynes bird from the working group said there was ‘no way’ they would allow the ‘violent and terribly upsetting color of white’ to be anywhere on the flag, and that the Pangender community would have to adopt another color or simply squint when looking at the flag and embrace all the colors.
While the Gender Apathetic community didn’t bother to enter into any debate despite being underrepresented on the flag, the Gender Questioning community barraged the working group with an overwhelming number of questions about the color and design choices of the flag. The Gender Variant community offered a number of variations to the design while the Maverique community dismissed the entire project claiming there was no blank space on the color spectrum to which they could be identified as not conforming to any of the identities.
The working committee is now re-designing the flag as a continuous spectrum of colors after a large donation from a number of pharmaceutical companies who would also like to be represented as a ‘transparent central feature’ of the flag, indicating the ‘purity, transparency and physical salvation pharmaceuticals afford the people of the world’. A spokesperson for Pfizer reminding the working group that ‘without the completely safe and effective vaccines’ they are producing there would ‘be no pride to be proud of as we would have all died of COVID-19’.
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In other news, a family in San Francisco were arrested for inciting violence last Tuesday by raising an American flag in their front yard. The national flag raising was caught on a passers by iPhone and posted on social media. An Antifa group in Oregon saw the distressing video and reported the family to the San Francisco police. The family have been charged with being pro-American, white, with ‘serious nationalist leanings’ according to a court summary of their hearing. The family have since issued an apology and are forced to display the BLM and pride flags for the next 1,265 days and admit they are personally responsible for the transatlantic slave trade.
