Pride Month 2024

For those who missed the display or couldn't visit the Pride flag trail points in person, below is the information from the trail in an accessible format.

Trail Point 1: 

Pride Progress Flag

The original Pride flag was created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, an artist and gay activist, at the request of activist Harvey Milk. Baker created the Pride flag to be a symbol of gay pride and community, inspired by the universality of the rainbow, which he called a "natural flag in the sky". The flag has eight coloured stripes that each represent a different part of the LGBTQIA+ community: pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, indigo for serenity and violet for spirit. Baker also included a black stripe in the original flag for those with HIV and AIDS which he intended to remove when the epidemic ended. While this has not happened, the stripe was later removed.

Over the years, Baker’s Pride flag has had several adaptions, initially to make it easier to be reproduced and to make it more inclusive of groups within the LGBTQIA+ community.

In 2018 the Pride flag was redesigned by activist Daniel Quasar to create the Pride Progress flag. Quasar added chevrons to the traditional flag, adding light blue, pink and white stripes to represent transgender and non-binary individuals, as well as including brown and black stripes from a previous version of the flag for black 

and ethnic minority communities. The black stripe also represents those living with or lost to AIDS. The flag’s chevrons form the shape of an arrow, pointing to the right to show forward movement.

In 2021, Valentino Vecchietti, an intersex inclusion activist, adapted the Pride Progress flag to incorporate a yellow triangle and purple circle, to represent the intersex community.

Trail Point 2: 

Pansexual Pride Flag

While there is some overlap between the bisexual and pansexual communities, they each have different definitions. Pansexuality is an attraction to all gender identities, which is indicated by the prefix pan-, which means “all”.

The pansexual Pride flag was created in 2010 by an online pansexual community and has been widely adopted since. The pink, yellow and blue colours on the flag are used to indicate that pansexual people are sexually attracted to and have relationships with people of all gender identities and sexualities.

Bisexual Pride Flag

A bisexual person is someone who can be attracted to more than one gender. The bisexual Pride flag was created by activist Michael Page in 1998 to increase the visibility of bisexuals in society generally and within the LGBTQIA+ community.

The flag has three stripes of pink, purple and blue. The pink stripe represents attraction to the same gender, while the blue stripe represents attraction to a different gender. The overlapping lavender stripe symbolizes attraction to both and/or multiple genders.

Trail Point 3: 

Gay Men’s Pride Flag

The original version of the gay men’s Pride flag featured shades of blue to represent the community. It received some criticism for only using stereotypically male-gendered colours which may not represent the diversity of the gay community.

A second version of the flag was created with an updated design featuring seven stripes of different shades of green, blue, and white. This flag is meant to be inclusive of a wider range of gay men including, but not limited to, transgender, intersex, and men who don’t conform to typical gender norms.

Lesbian Pride Flag

The first design of the modern lesbian flag was created in 2010 and featured stripes of red, white, and pink as well as a lipstick mark in the top-left corner. Many in the lesbian community felt that this flag design only represented those with feminine gender expression.

In 2018, the Lesbian Pride flag displayed here was adopted. This is the most widely used flag to represent the lesbian community today, with the varying shades of orange, pink and red symbolising the different types of femininity within the community.

Trail Point 4: 

Transgender Pride Flag

A transgender person (often shortened to trans person) is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The transgender Pride flag was created by Monica Helms, a trans activist, in 1999 as a symbol of trans diversity and rights. After flying the flag at many Pride events, Helms’ design and its popularity began to spread.

The flag was designed with five stripes with three colours: pink and blue stripes to represent colours that have traditionally been associated with girls and boys, and white for people who are intersex, transitioning, or who don’t have a defined gender.

Non-Binary Pride Flag

In 2014 the non-binary Pride flag was created by designer Kye Rowan to represent those who do not identify with either binary gender (male or female) or within the binary at all. A non-binary person may see themselves as being both male and female, somewhere in between or falling completely outside of these categories.

The flag has four stripes with yellow, white, purple, and black. The yellow stripe represents a gender outside of the binary. The white stripe stands for those who have multiple or all genders. The purple stripe symbolises those who fall between the male/female binary. The black stripe represents those with no gender.

Trail Point 5: 

Intersex Pride Flag

Intersex is a term used to describe people born with variations in their sex characteristics. This means a person’s body, either visibly or not, is not totally male or totally female, or is a combination of the two. The variations may involve a person’s genes, hormones, and/or reproductive organs.

The intersex Pride flag was designed in 2013 by Morgan Carpenter, president of Intersex International Australia, to create a "constructive and meaningful alternative way to represent intersex people". Yellow and purple were chosen for the flag as they are not colours stereotypically associated with a gender. The circle in the centre of the flag is unbroken and unornamented, symbolising wholeness and completeness.

Trail Point 6: 

Asexual Pride Flag

People who identify as asexual experience little or no sexual attraction to others. Asexual people (sometimes shortened to ace) often identify somewhere on a spectrum that includes their emotional, spiritual, and romantic attraction to other people.

The asexual Pride flag was designed in 2010 after online discussions in the asexual community about creating a flag to represent them. The design was one of many submitted and voted on in a community-wide election.

The chosen flag has four stripes: black for asexuality, white for sexuality and purple for community. The grey stripe represents the spectrum between sexual and asexual, which includes people who identify as demisexual, who only feel sexual attraction under certain circumstances.