Flag Day: Why I set forth to design these flags

Partway through June 2022, I played around with the idea of making a small, low-effort painting to promote BIPOC Fur Hangout and its aggressively pro-LGBT and queer moderation and stance.

Standing for the Flag: A quick history on gay men’s pride flags

There is unsurprisingly a lot of ultimately pointless bickering online about whether or not gay men deserve their own flag and which design to use if so. I am sick of it and realize that even though designing another will not solve this, I hope to curb it somewhat.

The most popular, well-known gay men’s flags are variations on these two designs – slight differences and different creators, but they’re similar enough that most do not recognize a difference.

According to some, at least one of these flags predates Emily Gwen’s “sunset” lesbian flag, but although it’s difficult to confirm or deny this, a noticeable amount of people, both queer and not, genuinely believe that these designs are just “blue means boy” recolors of the sunset lesbian flag. Some even go as far to call it lesbophobic. As I am not a lesbian and therefore cannot decide what is and is not lesbophobic, I won’t touch on that part. I don’t really know and will fiercely defer to lesbians on how they want to define themselves. It’s not my hill to die on, and frankly, it’s none of my goddamn business.

What I can decide on is that we gay men have our own shared set of problems that deserve recognition, too: even if some “Western” countries do not have them, there are still many places in the world that have explicit laws criminalizing acts of sodomy. Whether cis- or transgender, our bodies are policed for no reason other than societal fear and hatred of who we are. We are still living in the fallout of the AIDS epidemic, and men who sleep with men cannot donate blood in many places. There are people who live in places other than wherever you are from. In discussions that should include or outright center our voices, we are shamed into silence, even in spaces that are supposed to be “safe” for queer people. Queer liberation is a global issue, and places that already have pro-queer rights should be pressuring those that don’t to change them for the better. We deserve a banner to unite under, too.

Tigers of a Different Stripe: The Jade in Question

The flag I included in that piece is the white stripe variant, but the version I ultimately decided on as the “main” one was this design:

This flag uses seven colors to represent and celebrate our shared experiences.

1. First is spring green (Pantone 374) for understanding, from the green carnations symbolizing our love. We have historically been asked to hide ourselves, to use symbols in passing to signal ourselves to one another. Despite this, we survived, persisting so that we could and because we were able to understand each other.
2. Next, jade green (Pantone 334) for strength and self-worth: we are priceless gems who deserve to take pride in who we are.
3. Then, dark seagreen (Pantone 330) for community, the shared verdant lands we inhabit.
4. In the middle, black or dark forest green (Pantone 419) for remembrance, to call back to flags that added black stripes in remembrance of those who died from AIDS. The alternative white also symbolizes remembrance: white blood cells, the color of death in some Asian cultures. We cannot forget whose who we lost along the way. (Black also has the bonus of being the yin in solidarity with the lesbian flag’s white-striped yang. We need to understand that it’s okay for a boy to be feminine and that wouldn’t make him less of a boy, and the same goes for all other expressions of gender.)
5. Turquoise (Pantone 638) for maleness, masculinity, and our relationship to gender, finding and embracing non-toxic masculinity.
6. Cerulean (Pantone 2935) for spirituality, love, and sexuality: “through love, we can get a glimpse of Heaven,” and we are included in that statement.
7. Finally, plum (Pantone 2735) for diversity, as with the Baker pride flag’s lavender.

As gay men of color are already included in this flag, the chevron stripes (Pantones 4705 and 4695) are optional but included to underscore the same values included in the Progressive pride flag.

Makeup Removal and Cougar Repellant

This design isn’t a smooth five-to-seven-step gradient. There’s no reasonable way it could be called a “lesbian flag palette swap” – even when the lipstick flag stole from and sunset flag was subsiquently inspired by the cougar pride flag from 2008. My eyes suck and I have a hard time telling the difference between dark blues and greens. This design aims to provide an alternative fix for all of the above. I’m tired of people using progressive language to harass gay men back into the closet. This flag aims to clearly show identity and solidarity in that it’s similar to but distinct from the lesbian flag, just as being a gay man is similar to but distinct from being a lesbian.

This flag is for gay men, whatever that means to you: “gay” as in whatever you consider “queer attraction;” “men” as in whatever “man,” “male,” “masculine,” “male-adjacent,” and “masc-aligned” mean to you. I’m not here to define those terms for you. I’m asking that you stop sending rape/impregnation torture threats to gay men.

Licensing, Usage, and Downloads

The “Banded Jade” Gay Men’s Pride Flags by Marc Siaw are licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Generally, I’m not strict with derivative works. I’m happy to waive the attribution requirements for social media icons, banners, and profile decorations, especially for sites with strict message length restrictions.

A .zip file with all flag variants in PNG and SVG form is available here.