The rainbow flag or pride flag is a symbol of LGBT pride and LGBT social movements. The colors reflect the diversity of the LGBT community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender. Using a rainbow flag as a symbol of LGBT pride began in San Francisco, California, but eventually became common at LGBT rights events worldwide.

Originally devised by the artists Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom, James McNamara and other activists, the design underwent several revisions after its debut in 1978, and continues to inspire variations. Although Baker’s original rainbow flag had eight colors, from 1979 to the present day the most common variant consists of six stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The flag is typically displayed horizontally, with the red stripe on top, as it would be in a natural rainbow.

LGBT people and allies currently use rainbow flags and many rainbow-themed items and color schemes as an outward symbol of their identity or support. There are derivations of the rainbow flag that are used to focus attention on specific causes or groups within the community (e.g. transgender people, fighting the AIDS epidemic, inclusion of LGBT people of color). In addition to the rainbow, many other flags and symbols are used to communicate specific identities within the LGBT community.

Variations:

Original Gilbert Baker Design

Inspired by the lyrics of Judy Garland’s Over the Rainbow, and the designs used by other social movements such as black civil rights groups from the 1960s, the Rainbow Flag was created. Baker hand-dyed and hand sewed this flag which flew at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day in June 1978.

Seven-color version due to unavailability of pink fabric

Following the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978, many people and organisations adopted the Pride flag that he helped to introduce to the community. The demand was so great for a rainbow striped flag, it was impossible for the 8-stripe design to be made in large quantities. Both Paramount and Baker struggled to obtain the hot pink fabric and so began manufacturing a 7-stripe version.

Traditional Gay Pride Flag

In 1979 the design was amended again. The community finalised this six-colour version and this is now the most familiar and recognisable design for the LGBT flag. Numerous complications over the odd number of stripes, including the desire to split the flag to decorate Pride parades, meant that one colour had to be dropped.

The turquoise and indigo stripes were combined to create a royal blue stripe and it was agreed that the flag should typically be flown horizontally, with red at the top, as it would be in a natural rainbow. This design continued to increase in popularity around the world, being a focal point of landmark decisions such as John Stout fighting for his right to fly the flag from his apartment balcony in 1989.

Progress Pride Flag

In June 2018, designer and activist Daniel Quasar released an updated version of the Pride flag. Combining the new elements of the Philadelphia design and the Transgender flag to bring focus on further inclusion and progress. This new flag added a chevron to the hoist of the traditional 6-colour flag which represents marginalised LGBTQ+ communities of colour, those living with HIV/AIDS and those who’ve been lost, and trans and non-binary persons.

This design went viral and was quickly adopted by people and pride parades across the world. The arrow of the chevron points to the right to show forward movement, while being on the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made for full equality, especially for the communities the chevron represents.

Intersex Inclusive Progress Pride Flag

In 2021, Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK adapted the Pride Progress flag design to incorporate the intersex flag, creating the Intersex-Inclusive Pride flag 2021.

The intersex community uses the colours purple and yellow as an intentional counterpoint to blue and pink, which have traditionally been seen as binary, gendered colours. The symbol of the circle represents the concept of being unbroken and being whole, symbolising the right of Intersex people to make decisions about their own bodies.

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

reminders:

  • 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
  • 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
  • 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
  • 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

Financial Support to the Bearsite

    • tombruzzo [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      Mint is a good overall distro to start with. Bazzite is good for gaming. Then there are distros for really old hardware.

      It depends on what you’re looking to do with your computer. You won’t notice too much between them unless you’re really getting deep into configuring your computer.

      The distro is mostly what comes pre-installed, look and feel will be determined by your Desktop Environment. That’s how the interface of your computer will look.

      Anything missing in a distro can be installed later, so it’s no super big deal which one you go with. Some things might work out of the box or better on others, distros are not as different as people claim they are.

    • hello_hello [hy/hym]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      There are a few important things that make a good distribution:

      • close to the source -> preferably not a derivative but definitely not a derivative of a derivative + Consistently updated software.
      • large teams/community -> not one persons hobby project or personal distribution but also good leadership and actively roots out chuds and wreckers.
      • future goals and innovation -> not staying stagnant or just providing a good enough effort.
      • digital sovereignty: it is not entirely hosted on Microsoft GitHub or have its main communication through Discord (eww)

      If you can sniff these things out (or not sniff them at all) then that should motivate your decision. The chuds thing is easily sniffed out by asking them their opinion on either systemd or trans people (half joking unfortunately).

      Then you have a split between DIY and Editions: DIY are like Guix, Gentoo and Arch while Editions are like Debian,Mint and Fedora. Editions are split between long term releases that can last for years and point releases that go around 6 months or so.

      Theres also a new category called Cloud Native which is a corny word for image based systems like Bazzite which are not a fedora derivative in a semantic sense, they just exist on-top of it.

      After that are desktop environments of which there are mainly KDE and GNOME which are like Windows and MacOS respectively if they weren’t rent seeking leaches reinventing the wheel every few years. They still have a learning curve so don’t be afraid to try out both and see which one fits your personality.

      For example, I always want to be on the latest release of GNOME and have consistent releases but not DIY, so I’d go with Fedora with a large community and active development pace.

      If you need a quick answer: Linux Mint if you have never used a non-windows/macos operating system before and Fedora/Debian if you have and based on whether you desire new releases every so often or one base every other year.

      We have a libre comm on hexbear if you have any questions. It even has a button to download Linux mint.

      • Grebgreb [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Thanks. I was looking at Debian and Fedora Jam but encountered a bug where I couldn’t log in on Fedora on a fresh install in a vm so I’m leaning more towards Debian atm.

        We have a libre comm on hexbear if you have any questions. It even has a button to download Linux mint.

        I most certainly will after I get it installed. I was looking at it earlier this year but put it off before succumbing to choice paralysis, so I kind of just want to at least get it installed and put a few things like Freetube on it.