#polyamory flags

sit down and shut up because I'm about to learn you a thing

This:

is the ORIGINAL polyamory pride flag. Jim Evans created it in 1995 in fucking MS Paint. Not using hearts was an intentional choice to: avoid stepping on the leather pride flag's toes, allow people to use it without immediately outing themselves to those not in the know, and be easily input into MS Paint. The infinity heart symbol did not exist at the time and certainly wasn't available in MS motherfucking Paint. The color symbolism is blue for honesty, red for love, black⚫ in solidarity for those that cannot be out to the world at large, and gold for the high value of each relationship. sources (x, x)

There are valid complaints that people want a pride flag that does advertise what they are, and that this design is hard on the eyes. However. Many polyamorous people still use this flag to represent themselves, most of them 35+ years old. As a personal favor to me, please do not say you hate this flag. Say the colors are too bright till you're blue in the face, sure. But to openly hate this flag is to disparage your predecessors and denounce your history.

The earliest polyamory pride flag to incorporate the infinity heart symbol that I could find actually made its debut on tumblr in 2016. The infinity heart was established as a polyamory pride symbol by this time. ratlab-art intentionally kept the original color symbolism, while using hues generally considered a little more pleasant to look at.

This one, obviously, set the precedent for numerous other iterations of the same idea -- tweaking the colors, swapping the pi for the infinity heart. I will not be posting all of them, because I doubt I could track them all down anyway. The icon I currently use on this blog is one such iteration. But this one uniquely puts the black stripe in the middle, which does make for a nice contrast with the gold.

and of course

This is the "new poly flag" designed by Red Howell for the polyamproud online vote, which took place in 2022. They call it the "tricolor polyamory pride flag" (presumably, not to distinguish it from the other established flags, but to distinguish it only from the others that were in their run-off) Its symbolism is as follows: the triangle ▶️points forward for progress and is off-center to represent the non-traditional nature of polyamory, white⚪ represents possibility, blue for honestly, magenta for love, purple for unity in the community, gold for perseverance, and obviously the heart for love.

It has garnered controversy, because they kind of... openly disparaged every previous polyamory flag and claim theirs is the one true poly flag. They do still say you can use any flag you like, but the whole vote was predicated on the assumption that no one wanted the existing designs, and no pre-existing designs were included in the vote. And that it was bad to have variants of the same flag, even though you see that with many pride flags, including the rainbow flag. Many old school polyams still don't know this design, let alone that there was a single vote years ago, which they missed. However. This flag has quickly become a popular design, especially among the younger generation. So if you would be so kind, please do not say you hate this flag. Say you're frustrated with how the process of choosing it happened, by all means. But to openly hate this flag is to disparage the next generation and sever yourself from new directions in the community.

finally,

A couple of honorable mentions made by Em Essex in 2019 and Molly Colleen Bennett Wilvich in 2020, respectively. They don't get full write-ups, but they're an additional couple of the more unique (without being downright obscure) flag designs.