Cecilia Miller is a lesbian love warrior and educator fighting for queer justice and ensuring every shade of the rainbow shines bright & bold!
While most of us are aware of the iconic rainbow flag, there are many more LGBTQ pride flags that symbolize the diverse sex, sexuality, attraction, and gender identities within our beautiful queer community.
Even while most LGBT people continue to identify with the LGBT rainbow flag, many also want to fly their own flag alongside it.
You can imagine like the rainbow flag is like the national flag: everybody’s underneath that. But each group, like each state, has their own individual flag. Because, you know, representation is fundamental!
The Transgender Pride Flag is one such flag, which you may have seen flying at any number of pride celebrations throughout the world, from Torremolinos to Hong Kong to Orlando…or anywhere in between!
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be at birth.
Monica Helms, a transgender woman, and navy veteran, created the transgender flag in 1999. She said that the idea for the transgender flag came to her early one morning.
“When you wake up, and you’re still sort of groggy and everything but you’re starting to think, and your mind is starting to fill with images — that’s when it came to me,” she said – every much a case of “divine intervention.”
She brought the first transgender flag to the 2000 Phoenix Pride Parade. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington DC later acquired the flag in 2014.
When Monica brought the flag to the pride parade in Phoenix, many people were interested in her design. People saw it, liked it, and also thought that she had excellent reasons for the colors. After that, the flag took off.
The transgender flag has light blue, pink, and white stripes. According to Monica, here’s what the colors mean:
- Light blue represents boys.
- Pink represents girls.
- The middle white color is for those who are transitioning, intersex people, and those who feel they have no gender or have a neutral gender like non-binary, genderqueer or genderfluid individuals.
“The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives,” Monica said.
