Rubber Pride Flag

Overview

To give the rubber and latex fetish community a recognizable visual symbol. Tertiary guides describe its role as comparable to the Leather Pride Flag's for the leather community. ^[1][2]

GayFetishGoth describes the flag as made "as a means to identifying like-minded rubberists," attributing its imagery to "the sensory, sensual, and mental passion for rubber"; Leatherpedia carries a first-person variant addressed to "like-minded men." ^[3][4] No publication, date or occasion for a statement by the designers has been located. The flag appeared a few years after the Leather Pride Flag of 1989, and the two are commonly described together, though no direct connection between the designs is documented.

A rubber community was organised around it by then. Rubber Rebel, the magazine Tolos published, ran from 1993 to 1996, which places the flag’s 1994 or 1995 date inside its run. ^[5] Alexander Cheves dates the New World Rubber Men, a club for gay rubber fetishists, to 1979, and credits it with a small-circulation publication that connected rubber and latex fetishists through the 1980s; that founding date rests on Cheves alone. ^[6] Cheves also credits the same club with founding International Mr. Rubber in 1996, which the contest’s own timeline contradicts: it credits the Chicago bar Cell Block with creating Mr. International Rubber in November 1997, after the Boston Knights’ Mr. Vulcan Rubber contest of 1992 and 1993 was revived once at Cell Block in 1996. This entry follows the contest’s own account. ^[7] Organised rubber title contests in the United States lapsed in 1994 and 1995, the two years the flag is dated to. The earliest located image of the flag was uploaded to Wikipedia in September 2009, sourced to gayfetishgoth.com. ^[8]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

Rubber and latex fetish community

Subcommunity

Rubber/latex enthusiasts within the broader BDSM and kink community

The flag originated in gay male rubber culture, and the "like-minded" wording that circulates under its designers' names appears as "rubberists" on GayFetishGoth and as "men" on Leatherpedia. ^[3][4] The community it now represents is not limited by gender or orientation, and sources describe the flag as representing the rubber community as a whole rather than any sexuality or gender identity. ^[9]

Creators

The Creators

Peter Tolos

Co-designer

Co-designer of the rubber pride flag with Scott Moats. The Leather Journal records him as Peter "Rubber Bear" Tolos, founding publisher of Rubber Rebel, described there as America's first national magazine for gay rubberists, and instrumental in starting Vulcan America; it reports that he died of a heart attack on 1 February 1999, aged 59. ^[5] Tim Brough's Skin Tight: A Guide to Rubbermen, Macho Fetish, and Fantasy carries "Peter Tolos' epic fiction piece," in a book Brough describes as drawn largely from Rubber Rebel and Vulcan America. ^[10] The color symbolism and the "like-minded" sentence that circulate under the designers' names are carried by tertiary pages, GayFetishGoth in the "rubberists" wording and Leatherpedia in a first-person "men" variant, with no located original publication by Tolos or Moats. ^[3][4] Two later guides credit the flag to Tolos alone. ^[2][9]

Motivations

• To create a visible symbol for identifying and connecting members of the rubber and latex fetish community

Origin

Place of design not documented.

The place of design has not been documented. The earliest located image was uploaded to Wikipedia in September 2009 and sourced to gayfetishgoth.com, which documents the image's circulation but not the design's origin. ^[8]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

1994

Period in Use

1994–present

The flag is flown at pride and kink events internationally and is sold by multiple flag retailers. Photographs gathered by Tomislav Todorović document it at Cologne Christopher Street Day 2017, Chicago Pride 2017, Twin Cities Pride 2019, and the Manchester Pride parades of 2018 and 2019. ^[11] It carries Wikidata items Q1417676 and Q96187650 and is used on Wikipedia in eight languages. ^[12]

The earliest located sources date the flag to 1994; several later guides give 1995. ^{[8][13][4][3]} No revision or competing rubber community flag has been documented; INTO describes this one as "the only of its kind." ^[9] Flags of the World added its entry in June 2020 after Scott Beach alerted an editor to the flag's commercial circulation. ^[11]

Lineage

Related flags

BDSM Rights Flag (2005, Tanos), International Bear Brotherhood Flag, Leather Girl Pride Flag, Leather Pride Flag, Otter Pride Flag, Otter Pride Flag (2021, Bearback), Puppy Pride Flag

The Leather Pride Flag (1989) predates the rubber pride flag, and the two are frequently flown together and described together, though no direct design relationship has been documented; the zigzag band on a plain field shares no elements with the leather flag's stripes and heart. GayFetishGoth documents a composite, the "Puppy Rubber Flag, Unified" by the pups Pongo and Thor, which places the Leather Pride Flag on one side and the Rubber Pride Flag on the other; no database record exists for it yet. ^[3]

Colors & Symbolism

The flag represents the rubber and latex fetish community. The color meanings in circulation are attributed to the designers, and the zigzag is described as a visual pun: the design is a literal kink. ^[4][13] No source located gives a date, publication or occasion for the creators' statement, and FOTW reported in 2020 that it could find "no discussion of the symbolism behind the design." ^[11]

Wikimedia Commons SVG, color values set by Crisolympic16, 10 May 2015 ^[12]; CMYK from SexualDiversity.org ^[13]

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

Zigzag/chevron geometry

A visual pun on kink: the bands are kinked rather than straight. GayFetishGoth and Leatherpedia gloss the chevron as representing kink. ^[3][4][13]

The color meanings circulate under the designers' names on GayFetishGoth, the page named as the source of the 2009 Wikipedia upload, and in a first-person form on Leatherpedia; neither cites an original publication. ^[3][4] Later guides paraphrase the same meanings in the third person. ^[2][9] "Rubbermen" is the term gay men with a rubber fetish use for themselves; rubber fetishists more generally are "rubberists." ^[11]

No color specification by Tolos or Moats has been located, and the values in general circulation are not those of the earliest surviving image. The 2009 raster uploaded to Wikipedia and sourced to gayfetishgoth.com uses three flat colors: black, yellow #FFFF00 and red #CC0033. ^[8] When RayneVanDunem drew the SVG in 2012 and Crisolympic16 revised it on 10 May 2015 with the note "fixed colors (Black, Red 485C, Yellow 116C)," the yellow became #FCC800 and the red #D32011. ^[12] Those darker values are what reproductions and this table follow.

Tomislav Todorović argued in 2020, from photographs of the flag at Cologne, Chicago, the Twin Cities and Manchester, that the Commons file "employs too dark shades of yellow and red, which should be Y and R." ^[11] Todorović's note does not cite the 2009 raster, whose yellow is pure Y. SexualDiversity.org publishes the darker hex values with CMYK equivalents. ^[13]

Design

Aspect Ratio

5:3

Orientation

horizontal

Layout

zigzag bands on a plain field

Randy Young's description for FOTW: "a black field with a wide, gold zig-zag stripe, outlined in red, about one-third of the way from the top of the flag, with another thin red stripe following a parallel path roughly one-quarter the width further below." ^[11] The bands run from hoist to fly, dropping to a point below center before rising again toward the fly. The design has no horizontal stripes, although several sources describe its colors "in order from top to bottom" as though it did. ^[9]

A black field bearing a wide gold zigzag band with red borders, and a separate thinner red band following a parallel zigzag path below it. The angle and position of the kink vary between reproductions; the structure does not. No construction sheet or specification by the designers has been located. ^[12] Manufactured examples are sold at 90 x 150 cm, printed on 100% polyester, about 112 g, with two metal eyelets on the short side for a flagpole. The printing is digital, which leaves the colors slightly faded on the reverse. ^[14][15]

Black field. A broad gold band outlined above and below in red runs from the hoist, angling down to a point below the center and rising again to the fly. Beneath it, a single thin red band follows the same kinked path. The ratio is 5:3. ^[11][12][8]

Usage & Adoption

First Users

Documented use begins well after the design: the earliest dated photograph located is from Christopher Street Day Cologne, 9 July 2017. ^[16] Who first flew the flag is not documented.

Organizations

Chicago Rubber Club, formerly the Chicago Rubbermen, one of the oldest and largest rubber groups in the United States ^[17][6]

Geographic Usage

International circulation

Online Usage

Rubber and latex community forums, LGBTQ+ pride flag reference sites

Event Usage

Chicago Pride (documented 25 June 2017, fifteen flags counted by the Chicago Rubber Club) ^[17], Christopher Street Day, Cologne (documented 9 July 2017) ^[16], ColognePride CSD parade (documented 7 July 2019) ^[18], Manchester Pride Parade (documented 25 August 2018, 24 August 2019 and 27 August 2022) ^[19][20][21], Pride parades and pride weeks, Manchester Pride (2018, 2019) ^[11], Twin Cities Pride (2019) ^[11], Chicago Pride (2017) ^[11], Rubber-specific events and gatherings, including Mr. International Rubber ^[7]

Current Status

active

Recognised as the rubber and latex community's pride flag, and sold by multiple flag retailers. Documented at Pride and kink events internationally. ^[2][13]

Image Archive

Provenance

Rubber culture

The flag in use

The flag

Discourse & Debates

• The rubber and leather communities share events and social spaces and their flags are often flown together, but no direct design relationship between the two has been documented: the leather flag is striped with a heart, this one is a kinked band on a plain field. Photographs from Cologne in 2017 show the two flying side by side. ^[11]
• No color specification issued by Tolos or Moats has been located; the values in the current Commons SVG were entered in 2015. Tomislav Todorović argued in 2020 that the Wikimedia values are too dark and that the flag as actually made uses the same red as the Leather Pride Flag and the same yellow as the rainbow flag. ^[11][12]
• Whether the design is a pride flag at all is contested. A Wikimedia Commons proposal of February 2024, still unresolved two years later, would rename its category to "Rubber fetish flags" on the reasoning that "Pride flag means a flag that represents something inherently LGBTQIA and rubber fetishes are not." The corresponding Wikidata item already uses the fetish-flag label. ^[22]

Common misidentifications

• Retail listings have introduced symbolism that appears nowhere in the attributed account. House of Riegillio's product page glosses black as the BDSM community, red as blood "significant in BDSM practices," and yellow as "urine and bodily fluids," and describes the flag as four horizontal stripes, which it does not have. ^[15]
• The flag is frequently described as having horizontal stripes, with its colors listed "in order from top to bottom." ^[9] Its bands are kinked and run hoist to fly. ^[11]

Common confusions

• Occasionally grouped with the leather pride flag, which INTO and others call the BDSM flag, because the two communities overlap and the flags are flown together. No direct design relationship between them has been documented. ^[9][11]

"Rubbermen" is what gay male rubber fetishists call themselves; "rubberists" is the broader term. ^[11][4] Sources are consistent that the flag represents the rubber community rather than a sexuality or gender identity. ^[9]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

Standard zigzag version

• The earliest located image of the flag, uploaded to English Wikipedia on 12 September 2009 by the user ISD and sourced on its file page to gayfetishgoth.com. 500 x 300 pixels, 6,025 bytes. Its three colors are black, #FFFF00 and #CC0033, lighter than the values that later circulated. · Credit: Design credited on the file page to Peter Tolos and Scott Moats; file tagged PD-textlogo · Wikimedia Commons
• The Wikimedia SVG, drawn by RayneVanDunem on 20 December 2012 as a "personal rendition" and revised three times since. Crisolympic16 set these colors on 10 May 2015, recording them as Pantone Red 485C and Yellow 116C; Keymap9 optimised the file on 8 April 2018. This is the version most reproductions follow. · Credit: RayneVanDunem and later editors, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Rubber and latex gear at Folsom Street East, New York, 22 June 2008. A New York Leather sign is visible behind the group. The image is filed on Commons under Latex and PVC fetishism; one of its categories places it in Washington state, which the visible signage and the file's own geotag contradict. · Credit: istolethetv, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• The rubber pride flag at the Manchester Pride Parade, 27 August 2022, carried among transgender, non-binary and rainbow flags. Whether the design belongs among identity flags is the question behind a pending Wikimedia proposal to reclassify it as a fetish rather than a pride flag. · Credit: Rachel D, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• The rubber pride flag, at left, carried beside the leather pride flag at the ColognePride CSD parade, 7 July 2019. Tomislav Todorović cited photographs of the two flags together in arguing that they share the same red. · Credit: © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons) · Wikimedia Commons
• The flag as a physical cloth flag. Cropped at the lower edge; photographer, date and place unrecorded. · Unrecorded