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Sexual orientation flags
Last modified: 2022-04-30 by randy young
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- Symbols of sexual orientation
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Being "♂" originally the symbol for Mars/Ares, and forming a logical pair with "♀," the symbol for Venus/Aphrodite, these two deities were taken for quitessential archetypes of human male and female, and their astrological/astronomical symbols used also in Geneology, Biology and even in everyday life.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 28 July 2004
The Mars symbol, in addition to the meanings already mentioned, can also represent Tuesday or even a biennial plant (given Mars' approx. 2-year cycle relative to Earth).
Richard Knipel, 19 July 2004
"The Rainbow Flag" by Steven W. Anderson appeared in GAZE Magazine (Minneapolis) #191, on 28 May 1993, p. 25 [ans93]:
Color has long played an important role in our community's expression of pride. In Victorian England, for example, the color green was associated with homosexuality. The color purple (or, more accurately, lavender) became popularized as a symbol for pride in the late 1960s — a frequent post-Stonewall catchword for the gay community was "Purple Power." And, of course, there's the pink triangle. Although it was first used in Nazi Germany to identify gay males in concentration camps, the pink triangle only received widespread use as a gay pop icon in the early 1980s. But the most colorful of our symbols is the Rainbow Flag, and its rainbow of colors — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple — represents the diversity of our community.
quoted by Christopher Pinette, 12 June 1996
Black is a color associated with lesbianism — a black triangle on pink is also sometimes used as a lesbian symbol.
Steve Kramer, 6 May 1996
The association boy-blue / girl-pink, though widespread, is not fully universal: in Russia, for instance, pink stands for lesbianism and not for femaledom in general, while blue (or rather light blue) is synonymous for male homossexuality and not for maleness in general.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 22 July 2002
The rainbow is a symbol of gay pride, as opposed to gay liberation, which used the pink triangle on various colored fields.
Jim Ferrigan, 14 February 2003
In addition to the Rainbow coloration, the GLBT community [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered] uses the Greek letter "λ" (lambda); a pink equilateral triangle, usually point down (used to represent homosexual males in the Nazi concentration camps, appropriated as a symbol of pride by gays); twinned Mars or Venus astrological symbols (representing gay males and lesbians respectively); and the labrys (a double-headed axe, representing lesbians). The BiCafe adds a relatively new symbol that resembles a trillium to represent bisexuals.
Steve Kramer, 16 March 1999
I've seen two Mars symbols (♂) or two Venus symbols (♀) juxtaposed on flags and posters to indicate homosexuality.
Albert Kirsch, 19 July 2004