Designed to include the full spectrum of lesbian identities: butch, femme, trans, and non-binary lesbians.
Labrys Lesbian Flag (Sean Campbell, 1999)
Violet background, inverted black triangle, white labrys. The labrys was adopted by lesbian feminists in the 1970s as a symbol of female power. The black triangle reclaimed a Nazi persecution symbol.
Lipstick Lesbian Flag (Natalie McCray, c. 2010), retired
Seven stripes running from dark magenta through white to red, with a red kiss mark in the upper hoist corner, intended for femme lesbians. It fell out of use for two separate reasons. The first is the design: lesbians objected that a flag built around lipstick did not include butch lesbians, and by extension did not include non-binary lesbians either. The second is its designer. Lesbians have said that McCray wrote biphobic, racist and transphobic posts on her blog, and that is the reason many people give for not flying the flag at all. The blog has since been taken down, so this rests on the accounts of people who read it rather than on anything we can link you to now.
A version with the kiss mark removed, usually called the pink lesbian flag, stayed in general use for several years afterwards and is still seen.
Sunset / Orange-Pink Lesbian Flag (Emily Gwen, 2018), current
Designed to include the full spectrum: butch, femme, trans, and non-binary lesbians. Gwen combined three magenta-pink stripes from the pink flag with three red-orange stripes from the butch lesbian flag. This is the flag shown above and the most widely used lesbian flag.
A five-stripe version of the same design, made by the Tumblr user taqwomen by dropping the second and sixth stripes, is now at least as common as the seven-stripe original. It is a simplification rather than a replacement, and the two are used interchangeably.
