Shades of Gay is Brig Arts pride month celebration of queer culture, with two articles each week focusing on queer poetry, writing, reviews and artists.
In 2011, genderqueer musician and campaigner Marilyn Roxie designed and finalised the genderqueer flag. It’s not the newest ‘pride’ flag, and it’s not the oldest either. It was designed because Roxie, like many of us, needed a symbol – needing to see yourself represented is a very basic human drive and something that comes up frequently in discussions of media and community.
Roxie clarifies this on their website, GenderQueerID.com: “When I created the flag, I was in a very dark time in my life. I really wanted to die because I thought it was impossible to be happy with my body, the way other people saw me, and how I saw myself. I created this flag in part after more clearly realizing my identity and needing to have something in my life that could serve as a symbol of pride for myself, and for others who might identify like me. There are so many myths about genderqueerness and a general lack of knowledge that I thought that making a symbol of awareness would be beneficial for anyone who wanted to use it, as a signpost that would say: ‘yes! I am not alone.’”
As a genderqueer person myself, I relate strongly to this sentiment. I spent a long time thinking of myself as ‘bent’ (I was a teenager in the 2000s, our vocab wasn’t great back then) and carrying around a lot of self-hate and disgust about my body. This went into overdrive when I started to gain weight (I had previously been skinny, with no curves to speak of) and my body became way less androgynous.
At some point, I latched onto the word ‘queer’ which I still like now, but it nevertheless felt inadequate in some way. I’m not going to lie and say the day I found the word genderqueer changed my life or even that I have a very clear memory of it, but I know it was thrilling. To realise that there are other people who feel like you – enough that there’s a word and even a flag! It was a relief, even if it meant I had to explain the definition of my gender a lot.
Speaking of which. Genderqueer. One thing I like about this term is that most people who know anything about queerness can kind of suss out what it means, at least for the most part. It is a pretty broad term, encapsulating anyone who has a non-normative gender (though some might prefer to identify differently, e.g. non-binary people may identify more strongly with that as a label), including people who move between genders (genderfluid), do not have a gender (agender), or those who consider themselves to be a third/other gender in a less fluid way (this is me – neither man or woman, but also not really nonbinary). This is just an overview and it’s a word that means a lot of things to a lot of people.
The Genderqueer Flag
So how do you make a flag that represents a relatively diverse group of people? Roxie chose the colours carefully.
- Floral Lavender – this is a colour long associated with queerness and is a mixture of blue and pink (traditionally associated with men and women respectively). So, in the genderqueer flag, lavender represents androgyny and queerness.
- White – meant to represent neutrality and agender-ness in the same way as the white line on the trans flag.
- Dark Chartreuse Green – this is the inversion of lavender and represents those outside the delineation of man/woman.
The flag was carefully and specifically designed to have these colours for these reasons. Colours are symbolic – these are totems for us to hold onto. However, colours don’t have inherent meaning – the meaning is imbued by the people. Red means danger in the west, luck in China, and bridal purity in India. So nobody can own the colours, or even the combination of colours, but different groups take different meanings from them.
Being American, Marilyn Roxie had never heard of Britain’s Women’s Social and Political Union – the suffragettes – beyond cursory knowledge of women getting the vote. Why would they? They didn’t know that the WSPU had chosen purple, green, and white for loyalty, purity, and hope as their flag colours in the early 1900s. And they definitely didn’t know that in the 2020s, the UK would face an unprecedented surge of transphobia, a tidal wave of hate waving the colours of suffrage at their helm.
In 2019, I could have a genderqueer flag sticker on my phone and exchange knowing looks with others who sported the colours. I could fly the colours at pride marches and feel safe and welcome. I could have a purple, white, and green heart in my Twitter bio and some people would know what it meant.
The state of Genderqueer life in the UK
Now, in 2024, the trans-exclusionary, gender-critical campaigners are louder, angrier, and greater in number than they ever have been. I deleted the hearts from my Twitter bio when I started seeing them crop up in other bios, bios of people who think I am mentally ill, or pose some kind of threat to women (or don’t think much about me because let’s face it, it’s trans women that bare the brunt of their bigotry). I took the sticker off my phone. I put my identity in a drawer and locked it up tight.
But I can’t just disinvest from a flag that made me feel seen for the first time in my life. I can’t turn off the switch in my brain that lights up when I see those colours together, and I can’t ameliorate the crushing disappointment when I see any one of the transphobic dog whistles that have made me feel unsafe in my own skin recently.
Britain is, it turns out, a very small country. The siege on the genderqueer flag hasn’t made it as an export. This is a double-edged sword – I am glad that others can continue to use this flag in safety, feeling the same representation that I have done in the past. TERFs can take away my sense of belonging, but not everyone’s. However, it makes me feel even further disconnected from any kind of community – there is no impetus elsewhere to consider changing the flag.
And let me be clear: I don’t want to change the flag. The colours were carefully considered, they carry meaning for myself and others. I don’t think genderqueer people should be bullied and silenced and have our flag taken from us. But if I flew these colours at a pride march in 2024, I know without a doubt that it would create more fear than solidarity.
It isn’t the most crucial reason we have to squash bigotry in the UK (the rapid degradation of our rights might outrank it) but it is part of a tapestry of things that make it…uncomfortable…to be queer in my homeland. Everyone deserves representation and belonging, and to feel it briefly and then have it wrenched away is gutting.
This definitely feels like a piece that should have an uplifting finish or a righteous call to action here, but it’s hard to see a lot of hope. There is a general election happening here on July 4, please register to vote and look closely at your local candidates and their track record on LGBTQIA+ issues. I can’t just tell you to vote for a certain party, because it feels like nobody has our backs at the moment. Change has to start on a micro-level, and electing MPs who spare a thought for the queers is part of that. Don’t let anyone else lose their flag.
Featured image credit: Canva Pro