PRIDE Month 2020

6/26/2020

A Brief History: Pride Project 2020

Happy Pride!!

Every year as June rolls around, we take time to reflect on our LGBTQIA community: to consider how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, and to pay our respects to the folx who lead our community now and those who came before us who made it possible for us to celebrate Pride Month.

From the Mattachine Society and the Society for Human Rights, the Daughters of Bilitis and the homophile movement, to the Stonewall Riots and the Christopher Street Liberation Day March. The Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activist Alliance, ACTUP, GLAAD, the LGBTQ+ Freedom Fund, the Black AIDS Institute, the Transgender Law Center, and Trevor Project… we could write rich volumes about each of these organizations… and so many more like them. (FYI, those last two sentences would make a great jumping off point for internet searches to learn more about the LGBTQIA community.) LGBTQIA organizations and the leaders who marched, threw bricks, fought, wrote, sang, chanted, and gave their lives for us are the reason we are able to be open and proud of who we are. We have a long way to go… but we have most definitely come a long way.

This year for Pride, we decided to focus on one of the most prominent symbols of the LGBTQIA community: The Pride Flag. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all of the flags representing all aspects of our community. Instead we started from the end (we’ll get to that in a minute) and worked our way backward to show you how we got to the final Pride flag that inspired us to create the project at the end of this post.

The original Pride flag created in 1978 was designed by fashion and textile artist Gilbert Baker at the request of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. Gilbert was known for his activism through fashion which, by itself, is a fascinating read… definitely a rabbit hole worth going down.

The Gilbert Baker flag, consisting of eight stripes, was first flown in the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco for the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade.

Since that first flag, there have been several revisions, including one where the top stripe was removed due to the lack of available hot pink fabric… ain’t that always the way?

The Pride flag most familiar to those of us of *ahem* a certain age… would be the flag with six stripes. Personally, this version of the Pride flag has adorned our clothes as patches, pins, painting, and sequins. We have worn it as face paint, body paint (those were the days!), temporary tattoos, hats, socks, um… other things one would wear on one’s body (those were the nights…)

Monica Helms, a trans woman, activist, author, and Navy veteran, designed the Transgender Pride flag in August 1999. The flag flew for the first time the following year at a Phoenix, AZ pride celebration. In her own words: “The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The strip in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning, or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives.”

The Inclusive Pride flag was created in 2017 in response to the LGBTQIA community of Philadelphia coming to terms with racism in the LGBTQIA community as a whole. At that time, Amber Hikes, then the ED of the City of Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs, created a design that added the black and brown stripes to the top of the flag as both a way to represent the voice of non-white members of the LGBTQIA community and to raise awareness and start a conversation about the issue of racism within our community.

While there are many other flags that represent the diverse communities that falls under the umbrella of the LGBTQIA community, these are the ones that lead us up to the topic of today’s post.

The Progress Pride flag was created by graphic artist Daniel Quasar as a result of their desire to create a flag that included wider representation within the LGBTQIA community. As a result, we have the flag that inspired our project!

In the designer’s own words on their site:

“When the Pride flag was recreated in 2017 and 2018 to include both black/brown stripes, as well as the trans stripes, I wanted to see if there could be more emphasis in the design of the flag to elevate its meaning.

The 6 stripe LGBTQ flag should be separated from the newer stripes because of their difference in meaning, as well as to shift focus and emphasis to what is important in our current community climate. The main section of the flag includes the traditional 6 stripe LGBTQ flag as seen in its most widely used form so as not to take away from its original meaning

The trans flag stripes and marginalized community stripes were shifted to the Hoist of the flag and given a new arrow shape. The arrow points to the right to show forward movement, while being along the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made.”

And that brings us to our Pride 2020 project! Obviously, the design is taken from the Progress Pride Flag… and, yes, we contacted the designer to let them know about our project and this post. We are not selling this design. It is, instead, a way for us to pay homage to all of those who have come before us and all those who are with us now. This is the new standard under which we will rally to march, celebrate, and live as our truest selves.

We were raised as newbies in the community under the six stripe Pride flag. As a result, that flag will always represent the banner we rallied under as we marched, laughed, cried, danced, mourned, fought, loved, and declared our rights to exist as LGBTQIA humans. We will always feel a sense of Pride and empowerment when we see that flag flying.

But times change and flags change. The LGBTQIA community must continue to expand and open ourselves to uplift the voices of and give representation to ALL of the folx within our community. As we grow and learn how to uplift the voices of ALL of our community, the creative folx within our ranks will come up with new physical incarnations of that resulting PRIDE.

If one more person can look up at this Pride flag feel the same elation we have felt when we saw our first Pride flags, if one more person feels moved to march, dance, fight, laugh, or cry beneath this banner of Pride, then WE. ARE. HERE. FOR. IT!

Who knows what yet unheard voice out there might create and lift up as the next evolution of the representation of the diversity and unity of our FAB LGBTQIA community? Indeed… who knows?

Here's a little video documenting the making of our Pride 2020 Project (and, of course, Shannon's new nail color).

Happy Pride to all of the amazing, fantastic, gorgeous, FAB members of the LGBTQIA community. We love you all and stand proudly next to you as we move forward into our futures.

STITCH ON!!
S&J

Big shout out to some of the folx who made this project possible:

Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics for donating all of their FAB fabric - check out Karla's work here:
Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics

Daniel Quasar for their permission to use their Progress Pride Flag design - check out their work here:
Progress Initiative