Clearing things up about the gay man flag

[Image: A flag with 7 stripes. The first three go from dark blue-green to light blue-green. The center is white. The bottom three stripes go from light to dark blue. It was designed to mirror the lesbian flag]

Mod Hermy of the Pride-Flags Deviantart here: I just found out during my hiatus from this blog that there’s been a lot of discourse surrounding this flag that I helped make.

[Original post about it here] [Deviantart original posting with updated description here] [ @archivalflags​ more detailed post about it here]

APPARENTLY some truscum/transmed took this flag and reuploaded it (that got 8.2k notes vs the 9 notes my original post has), wording it in a way that made people think it was made by them (and also “official”). Also, it seems like it’s been co-opted by truscum and transphobes to exclude trans and nonbinary gay men.

I am beyond pissed off at this, especially since I don’t remember anyone telling me it was stolen.

To be very clear:

I never want any of my flags being used to exclude part of the LGBTQAI+/MOGAI community. I am fully supportive of all aspec identities, “MOGAI” genders (including xenogenders, kingenders, neurogenders and neurorientations) pronoun noncomforming gays and lesbians (or anyone, really), GNC trans people, people who use the SAM, low/non-dysphoric trans people, and anyone else who may get excluded.

Basically, any identity (that’s not centered around harming people or animals) is amazing and valid.

Also this was never meant to be a finalized design (especially since I’m nonbinary and bi), it was simply a suggestion since the anon that asked me about a gay man flag suggested one that was too similar to the butch lesbian flag. They never followed up on it so I posted it on Deviantart for opinions but didn’t get much interaction there. I saw it around a few times but didn’t realize it took off like that and was being credited to a truscum, no less.

I’m not quite sure what to do regarding damage control around the exclusionists that are using my flag, but I started by working with several gay men in a pride, and my personal server to come up with meanings for each stripe (based on @gayflagblog​‘s flag) that explicitly include GNC, nonbinary, trans, ace/arospec, split-attraction, and pronoun nonconforming gay men (also made it prettier).

[Image: The same flag as above but with meanings superimposed over each stripe: [Community] [Inclusion] [She/her and pronoun noncomforming gays] [GNC, nonbinary, and trans men] [Ace/arospec and split-attraction gays] [Love and attraction] [Diversity]]

Here’s a better version made by @gayflagblog​ to deal with the problems with my proposal/suggestion:

File:Mlm (seven-stripe version).svg

7 Stripes and 5 StripesFile:Mlm (five-stripe version).svg[Images: Two flags made to look similar to the first flag but with bolder colors. The blue stripes are slightly more purple and the green stripes are slightly more green. The first flag has seven stripes and the second is a simplified 5-stripe version]

And [Here] are some more gay man/MLM flags (including PNC and SAM gays) made by other people that I’ve been collecting (gallery is incomplete though).