I really don’t like the design of the progress pride flag, and I couldn’t really put my finger on it until I saw this: https://nava.org/good-flag-bad-flag

For reference, here is the flag I’m referencing as “bad flag”:

And here is the original:

So, the original has too many colors, but it’s the colors of the rainbow. In order. It’s recognizable from really far away, and it’s dead simple to draw.

With the Intersex flag, that’s 14 colors. There are three shades of “purple”. The circle won’t be visible from far away. The chevrons are too thin to be very recognizable from far away.

It’s not like there aren’t good pride flags. Like there are AMAZING ones:

Edit:

In case you don’t know what these are: https://flagsforgood.com/collections/pride-flags

  • @daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    49 minutes ago

    Rainbow flag is cool. 🏳️‍🌈

    Due the spectral (is that said correctly?) nature of gender identity and sexual preferences individualized representation of every part of an infinite spectrum is, by definition, impossible. Thus a catch them all flag is the best in representing our diversity.

  • @agent_nycto@lemmy.world
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    124 minutes ago

    Why does everyone complain about the progress flag when the poly flag is right there and is terrible? Absolute garbage. Terrible color choices. Barely holds up to heraldic color rules. and Pi? Seriously? Get out of here you fucking nerd. 2/10, workshop it and come back. I hate it.

    I’m cool with poly people, this is just the flag equivalent of biting your tongue when eating a burrito.

  • @hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    146 hours ago

    Its purpose isn’t to be aesthetically pleasing. Trans people and POC are constantly discriminated against by other queers, and intersex people rarely are even acknowledged to exist at all, let alone treated as anything else than disgusting or sex object.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮
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    6011 hours ago

    I think it’s basically just “feature creep.” Too many ideas trying to be crammed into one symbol. And what’s annoying, to me, is that the rainbow by itself was already supposed to represent everyone. That’s why it is a rainbow.

    • @mienshao@lemm.ee
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      27 hours ago

      Why is this upvoted so much? Do you know anything about the Pride flag? Each color represented a particular concept (e.g., sex, sunlight, nature). The colors mean something and weren’t just a catch-all concept to “represent everyone.” Like you’re just saying shit lol. The fact that I see this dumbass discourse EVERY YEAR tells me that maybe it’s not just aesthetics that folks are complaining about, I think some people are bitches and don’t wanna make room. The Progress Pride flag is great and makes clear that it really is for everyone, not just gay men. Get over yourself fr.

      • @Acamon@lemmy.world
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        113 hours ago

        The original Pride flag was designed with eight colours, but quickly moved to six and seven stripes because of issues with sourcing dyes and mass production. As others have said, each colour did have a specific meaning like Sex, Life, Harmony, Art, Sunlight. These were aspects of the queer community, but they did not mean specific or narrow identities, and did not only describe ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ people.

        In the words of Gilbert Baker (who designed the initial flag) “We needed something beautiful – something from us, and the rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in the sense of our race, our gender, all of those things.” Since then people have added specific colours and extra features to draw attention to identities that they felt were undervalued or overlooked, which is laudable goal, but not because the original did not include everyone.

        You’re throwing around a lot of strong negative claims about the discussion here, if you really want to make a case that the meaning of original flag did not include queer people who were black or whatever, please bring some sources. And just to note, personally I actually like the chevrons of the Progress flag, but that doesn’t invalidate people claiming that the original flag included everyone.

      • @tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        6 hours ago

        Hot pink - Sex
        Red - Life
        Orange - Healing
        Yellow - Sunlight
        Green - Nature
        Turquoise - Magic/Art
        Indigo - Serenity
        Violet - Spirit

        I’m seeing on Wikipedia that the original colors represented stuff like sunlight and life. Who was excluded by these categories?

  • @Yermaw@lemm.ee
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    17 hours ago

    Thats way too busy. Should definitely just keep the rainbow flag. Not every little niche needs specific representation, just have the rainbow as a catchall for any kind of deviation from heterosex

    Edit to add : if they want to use them to identify and specify within rallies or amongst themselves somehow then whatever, go for it, as long as we can accept the layman isnt gonna have a clue and cant really be expected to.

    • @Railison@aussie.zone
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      6517 hours ago

      I thought the rainbow was supposed to mean it encompassed everyone.

      The colours on the flag apparently weren’t sufficiently inclusive so perhaps this should be the next flag:

      • @mienshao@lemm.ee
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        37 hours ago

        God this website is just like reddit. Dumbasses just saying shit. No, the original Pride flag had 8 colors, and each color had a specific meaning. It wasn’t just “to encompass everyone.” Like what the hell, lemmy? Why are we doing bogus discourse on here too? Every year I gotta deal with a bunch of fucking straights dumping on the Progress Pride flag—seriously go fuck yourselves.

        • @mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          116 minutes ago

          Each color had a specific meaning, but none of those meanings were a specific gender or sexuality. The meanings were intentionally tied to concepts, rather than to distinct groups of people. This was so it could encompass everyone. But then dumbasses started trying to claim specific colors as their own, which excluded people. And so then every group suddenly started making their own flags, since they were being excluded by the people claiming one of the colors on the rainbow.

      • Cyrus Draegur
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        3015 hours ago

        this fails to capture the grades of saturation.

        Here is every color in the RGB (#000000-#FFFFFF) color space arranged sequentially on a Hilbert curve (but scaled down to 512x512)

      • cecilkorik
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        2316 hours ago

        I would absolutely and unironically fly this flag, although to be even more inclusive it also needs an alpha layer. Perhaps it should be a cube? Actually even that might not be inclusive enough, we need more dimensions. BRB I need to figure out how to attach a tesseract to my flagpole, I guess I’ll need some kind of gordian knot?

        • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          But if you include alphas , you need to be inclusive of betas and sigmas, and other Greek letters still undefined

        • @DokPsy@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          I was thinking more adding from outside the visible spectrum. So a flag with the entire electromagnetic spectrum from ~10^-20 m to ~10^17 m

      • Zier
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        212 hours ago

        I call Lime Green as my personal inclusion color!!!

      • @Asetru@feddit.org
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        716 hours ago

        Black and white are pretty overrepresented there though. Turning this into a sphere might help?

    • @Kaboom@reddthat.com
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      713 hours ago

      Imo, the rainbow flag is perfectly inclusive. By focusing on one minority, you make it less diverse and less inclusive.

      Rainbow flag is best

    • @saltesc@lemmy.world
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      916 hours ago

      They all sprung up in that period where flags were trendy. Every little camp had to have one to feel like a singled-out tribe—and, no, this isn’t just kink flags. This meant many would be flag designers overnight.

      The result is there’s some really fugly designs out there in the wild now and the idiots can’t go back. But most people are over flag phase now, so you’re unlikely to ever see this and most others out in the wild.

      Nothing fails more at its job than a pride flag that people have no idea what is. It’s almost irony.

      And is this one ugly? Oh, yes. Enough to turn a person straight.

      • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        The solution is inheritance. If you want a more specific flag, inherit from the rainbow, but add an insignia. Now you have a unifying flag that is more meaningful. Also you can skip the complexity of trying to make everyone stand out because the rainbow is all inclusive.

        For example, I also like the pink triangle pirate flag. If you want a gay flag, take the rainbow and add that pirate insignia. Think like the US flag which is also a bunch of stripes but with some star insignia. Now you have one clear insignia on a field of inclusiveness

    • @november@lemmy.vg
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      1117 hours ago

      deviation from heterosex

      Totally normal words to say. BTW trans and intersex people can still be straight.

    • @hddsx@lemmy.caOP
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      617 hours ago

      Here’s the thing though, I know this is an ally flag, but it’s like they never considered symbols:

      Ignore the really bad black and white background for a second.

      Imagine the left side of the shape is an homage to the original pride flag and the right side is WHATEVER YOU WANT TO PUT IN IT. Uniform clean design with representation. Easy to draw for the layman (fill both sides in with rainbow if you want), and easy to add specific representation

  • FriendOfDeSoto
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    3816 hours ago

    You are judging work by somebody who doesn’t feel compelled to follow guidelines made by other people with those very same guidelines. Those other people looked much more closely at flags for geographical entities, not movements, to come up with their guidelines. No one is required to follow them or retroactively abide by them. They are a great style guide but not the law.

    Every flag serves a purpose. This flag’s purpose is to show representation by color and design for everyone in the community. It’s was the point to be busy.

    Why don’t they just stick with the rainbow flag? Because the idea of the rainbow encompassing everyone was made at a time when gay and lesbians came out with pride but many of the letters that abbreviate that community today were still marginalized more harshly, maybe even within homosexual circles. They weren’t all suddenly anthropists and free from discriminatory points of view. Development of ideas and communities takes time. And that’s why an artist took ideas from many different flags that were created over time and combined them into one. It is eye catchy and instantly recognizable, even at a medium distance still.

    I don’t find the result aesthetically pleasing either. But I recognize a) that wasn’t the point of it and b) I’m not a member of the LGBTQ+ community. If from within that community a movement rises to change the flag into something else, by all means. Other than that my design opinions - and I suspect many other ones in this thread - are largely academic and frankly irrelevant.

    Good flag bad flag is not the gospel. Take it as a starting point for new designs but don’t scrutinize all existing flags by it.

    • You really nailed how a lot of trans and poc queer people feel about the Rainbow flag; it mostly represents cis white well off gay men and lesbian women, and implies everybody else.

  • @november@lemmy.vg
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    3217 hours ago

    “Good Flag Bad Flag” is a bunch of people’s opinions. It’s not any kind of official flag rule book, because there is no such thing.

    I think the progress pride flag is fine.

  • FlashMobOfOne
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    1616 hours ago

    Americans love to subdivide themselves, and that’s especially true for activists. The flag reflects that.

    • @amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      24 hours ago

      garbage opinion, you’re the kinda person that’d take issue with Black Lives Matter because you assume that implies white lives are inferior.

      also, the progress flag is flown worldwide at Pride so you’re just spreading misinformation

  • @db2@lemmy.world
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    817 hours ago

    Flags are stupid in the first place though. All flags, it’s nothing to do with these specifically.

    • FlashMobOfOne
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      315 hours ago

      Agreed.

      Though I do think that if progressive-minded people were more apt to fly the American flag at protests, it would be harder to criticize them.