During this year’s »Campus Pride Week« from 20 to 26 June 2022, a banner with the so-called »Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag« will be displayed on the central balcony of the Main Building.
»By hanging the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is sending a visible signal that queer students and staff are welcome at the university and that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity has no place here. We at the university are committed to dismantling the existing barriers, especially when it comes to trans/inter/non-binary students and staff« (Prof. Dr. Jutta Emes, Interim President of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
In the text below, you can learn more about the history and significance of the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag.
Overview of Several »LGBTIQ* Pride« Flags
A Short History of the »LGBTIQ* Pride« Flags
During the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade on 25 June 1978, a rainbow flag was used for the first time as a visual representation of the lesbian and gay emancipation movement. The idea for the rainbow symbolism came from Gilbert Baker. Baker’s friends, Artie Bressan, Jr. (a filmmaker) and Harvey Milk (the first openly gay politician in the USA to be elected to public office), requested that he create a positive symbol for the lesbian and gay communities. However, the production and final design of the first rainbow flag was not the result of Baker’s efforts alone — as is often erroneously claimed — but by a collective of artists and volunteers from the Gay Freedom Day Decorations Committee led by Baker along with Lynn Segerblom, a batik artist, and James McNamara, a tailor.
The first »rainbow flag« did not have six stripes — as is customary today — but eight, to each of which Baker subsequently assigned a meaning: pink stood for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for balance and purple for the spirit. Following the fatal assassination of Harvey Milk on 27 November 1978, the demand for rainbow flags increased significantly. In the course of mass reproduction, first the pink and later the turquoise stripe disappeared.
At Philadelphia’s Pride Parade in 2017, the so-called »Philadelphia Pride flag« was flown for the first time at the City Hall. On top of the familiar six stripes, it also featured a black and a brown stripe. The flag was created in response to incidents of racial discrimination in Philadelphia’s »Gayborhood« with the goal of drawing attention to multiple forms of discrimination and racism — also within queer communities.
One year later, non-binary graphic artist Daniel Quasar created the so-called »Progress Pride flag«. In addition to the six traditional rainbow stripes, the flag includes a wedge on the left with stripes in light blue, pink and white (inspired by the 1999 »Trans Pride flag« designed by Monica Helms) and stripes in brown and black (inspired by the »Philadelphia Pride flag«). The wedge, which points to the right, symbolises on the one hand the social and legal progress of the last decades, while on the other hand — through the specific visual highlighting of the trans* and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) communities — it reminds us that there is still much work to be done, especially with regard to combating racism and transphobia, also within queer communities.
As part of the »Intersex Visibility and Inclusion Campaign« of the British organisation Intersex Equality Rights UK, Valentino Vecchietti created an intersex-inclusive version of the »Progress Pride flag«. This integrated the Intersex flag devised in 2013 by Morgan Carpenter for the organisation Intersex International Australia (today: Intersex Human Rights Australia) into the progress wedge of the Progress flag, in order to also bring attention to the specific concerns and interests of intersex people.