Cecilia Miller is a lesbian love warrior and educator fighting for queer justice and ensuring every shade of the rainbow shines bright & bold!
While many of us are now familiar with the famous rainbow flag, there are also other LGBQT+ flags that each represent the different sex, sexuality, attraction, and gender diversities within our fabulous community.
Even if most queer people identify with the rainbow flag itself, many also desire to fly their own particular flag alongside it. Because, y’all, representation is crucial!
One such flag is the – a flag you might already have seen flown at any number of pride festivals around the world, from Houston to Wellington…and everywhere in between!
In India, the hijra is a formalized third gender status. As worshippers of the Mother Goddess Bahuchara Mata, their divine abilities are dependent on their asexuality.
These identities do not have a perfect counterpart in the gender and sexual orientation taxonomy, and they provide a challenge to Western notions of sex and gender. In India, some Hijras describe themselves not by their sexual orientation but by their complete lack of sexuality and tell how sacred powers are created by transforming sexual energy.
A person with the username HijrAnon produced the first known hijra flag in 2016. The symbolism of the flag was described by HijrAnon as follows:
- The pinkish background is meant to be ambiguous, looking like a pink or dark red depending on how you look at it
- The head shape with one-half white and one-half greenish is meant to represent Ardhanarishvara (the white half is Lord Shiva, the green half is Parvati, the light green middle is Ardhanarishvara themselves).
- The yellow ring near their neck is meant to be a necklace. In India, necklaces are usually worn for protection and good luck – so in a way, they wanted this to represent protection for hijras.
