Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017)

Overview

Given in the post: "i think this combo would be a great flag for the general lesbian community. i always see the lipstick femme flag used as the default for the lesbian community on tumblr. which is an act that treats femininity as the default, and makes butches feel left out and ignored." ^[1]

Posted on 3 July 2017, six days after the butchspace butch flag it splices. ^[1][2] The post opens by addressing that flag's blog directly, sets out what was combined and why, and carries four designs rather than one.

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

lesbian

Creators

The Creator

shapeshifter-of-constellation

Designer

shapeshifter-of-constellation is the Tumblr user who posted four spliced lesbian flag designs on 3 July 2017, in a post addressed to the butchspace blog. ^[1][2] The post states the sources of the splice, credits Mod T of butchspace for the white stripe's meaning, and gives the reason for making it. Nothing else about the person behind the handle is established by any source read for this entry; the original post is preserved in a 2022 reblog by beyond-mogai-pride-flags and in a Wayback capture of 29 September 2018 cited by Wikipedia. ^[3][2]

@butchspace I loooooove your orange butch flag. and i thought it'd be cool to splice together the lipstick lesbian & orange butch flag. as well as add the More Color More Pride stripes.

and mod T from butchspace suggested a great idea of having the white stripe symbolize those who dont ID as femme or butch.

i think this combo would be a great flag for the general lesbian community. i always see the lipstick femme flag used as the default for the lesbian community on tumblr. which is an act that treats femininity as the default, and makes butches feel left out and ignored.

Motivations

• To give the general lesbian community a flag that was not femme-coded by default: "i always see the lipstick femme flag used as the default for the lesbian community on tumblr. which is an act that treats femininity as the default, and makes butches feel left out and ignored". ^[1]

Broader influences

• Stated in the post: the lipstick lesbian flag, the butchspace orange butch flag of 27 June 2017, and the More Color More Pride stripes.^[1]

Attribution notes

Mod T of the butchspace blog contributed the white stripe's meaning and is named for it in the post: "and mod T from butchspace suggested a great idea of having the white stripe symbolize those who dont ID as femme or butch." ^[1] The designer is otherwise known only by the Tumblr handle: no source read for this entry gives a legal name, an age or a country.

Origin

Digital Origin

Tumblr

Digital-origin flag. No country of origin is documented: the designer is known only by a Tumblr handle, and no source read for this entry places them anywhere. Without a confirmed location, Indigenous land context cannot be responsibly attributed.

Documented in the 2017 Tumblr lesbian redesign discourse. ^[4]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2017

Exact date

July 3, 2017

First public use

July 3, 2017

Period in Use

2017

The design did not circulate widely under its author's name. The orange-pink lesbian flag that did circulate was attributed to the Tumblr user Emily Gwen from June 2018 and was popularised by a Tumblr poll seeking an official lesbian flag; Wikipedia records this flag as "an otherwise identical, inverted flag ... created by Tumblr blogger 'shapeshifter-of-constellation' in 2017". ^[2] The 2017 post was reblogged in June 2022 by beyond-mogai-pride-flags, which is where its full text and all four images can still be read. ^[3]

This post is dated 3 July 2017; the orange-pink flag attributed to Emily Gwen followed in June 2018 and carries the same seven colours in the reverse order. ^[1][2] Whether the later flag was adapted from this one or arrived at the same place independently has never been settled, and Wikipedia raises convergent evolution and plagiarism without choosing between them. ^[2] Emily Gwen rejected the accusation on X in 2025: "these accusations of me "stealing" the lesbian flag design were discussed and sorted out in 2018. can you guys fucking catch up. the reason we had similar ideas independently is because we combined existing flags. mine was just the one that got inexplicably popular." ^[5] Merging the two dominant lesbian palettes was an available design move, and both designers describe having made it. What the measurements show is that the two palettes are close but not identical: they differ by one to three units in every band, and the centre is off-white here against pure white there. ^[1]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Butch Lesbian Flag (Butchspace, 2017), Lipstick Lesbian Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Pink Lesbian Flag

Related flags

Butch Lesbian Pride Flag (2016, dorian--rutherford), Sapphic Flag, Five-Stripe Sunset Lesbian Flag

Sibling flags

Sunset Lesbian Flag, Progress Pride Flag

Three parents, all three named by the designer: the lipstick lesbian flag, the butchspace butch flag of 27 June 2017, and the Philadelphia flag of 2017, whose black and brown bands the post calls "the More Color More Pride stripes" and which appear in three of the four designs. ^[1] The lineage runs on from here to the orange-pink flag attributed to Emily Gwen in 2018. ^[2] The splice is measurable: the three oranges are exactly the butchspace values, and the off-white centre and one of the pinks are exactly the lipstick values. Whether the 2018 flag represents direct adaptation, independent reinvention, or a disputed near-duplicate is unresolved, and the measurement does not settle it: the two palettes differ by one to three units in every band and by a materially different centre. Wikipedia calls this flag "an otherwise identical, inverted flag" and records the 2018 attribution separately. ^[2] Emily Gwen's own post of 3 June 2018, cited there, describes wanting "the pink one and the orange one flowing into each other". ^[2] For the full lineage synthesis (lipstick to pink to butch to shapeshifter to Emily Gwen to taqwomen), see emily-gwen-2018-orange-pink-lesbian-flag.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 8 records across 5 generations.

Ancestors -4

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -3

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Rainbow Pride Flag, Lipstick Lesbian Flag

Ancestor

Pink Lesbian Flag, Butch Lesbian Flag (Butchspace, 2017), Philadelphia Pride Flag

This record

Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017)

Colors & Symbolism

The pinks come from the lipstick lesbian flag and the oranges from the butchspace butch flag, so the design reads as femme and butch given equal room on one field, which is what the post argues for. ^[1]

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

Only one band is given a meaning in the post, and it is not the designer's own: Mod T of butchspace proposed that the white stripe stand for lesbians who identify as neither femme nor butch. ^[1] The remaining bands carry whatever meanings belong to the flags they were taken from; the post does not restate them. The black and brown bands are identified in the post as the More Color More Pride stripes. ^[1]

Measured from the designer's own four files, taking the modal colour of each band's interior; all four agree exactly on every shared value. ^[1] The splice the post describes is visible in the numbers. The three oranges, #FF9B57, #F07528 and #D62C00, are the same three values as in the butchspace butch flag of 27 June 2017. The off-white #EDEDEB and the dusty pink #B75592 are the same values recorded here for the lipstick lesbian flag, and the other two pinks differ from it by one and two units per channel. Against the palette recorded here for the Emily Gwen flag (#D52D00, #EF7627, #FF9A56, #FFFFFF, #D362A4, #B55690, #A30262) these values differ by one to three units in every band, and the centre differs materially: off-white here, pure white there. Earlier versions of this entry carried a reconstruction estimated from a description rather than measured, in which one band was missing, one value appeared twice, and a stripe named Light Pink held an orange.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Ratio Notes

The designer published no proportion, and the standard shown here is the archive's production default. The seven-band file measures 575 by 345 pixels, which reduces to exactly 5:3 and so agrees with that default; the three variants do not, at 575 by 441, 574 by 391 and 571 by 389. ^[1]

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

7

Layout

horizontal_stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Dark Rose, Dusty Pink, Pink, Off-white, Light Orange, Orange, Dark Orange

Bands of equal depth in all four posted files. The seven-band design is 575 by 345 pixels; the nine-band version 575 by 441; the two eight-band versions 574 by 391 and 571 by 389. No stated proportion. ^[1]

Seven horizontal bands: the lipstick lesbian flag's three pinks and its off-white centre above the butchspace butch flag's three oranges, running light to dark downward, which is the top-to-bottom mirror of the later orange-pink flag. ^[1]

The post carried four designs. First, seven bands: dark rose, dusty pink and pink above an off-white centre, then light orange, orange and dark orange. Second, the same seven with black and brown added above the pinks, nine bands in all. Third, eight bands, with black and brown taking the place of the off-white centre. Fourth, eight bands with both runs reversed, so the flag opens on the palest pink, darkens to the black and brown at the centre, and lightens again through the oranges to the foot. ^[1] The entry treats the first as the design of record because it is the splice the post describes; the post itself does not rank them.

Usage & Adoption

Geographic Usage

Tumblr-era internet circulation

Current Status

historical

Historically important as precursor evidence, but not the socially dominant current lesbian flag. ^[4]

Discourse & Debates

• Whether the Emily Gwen design constitutes independent reinvention, unconscious influence, or unacknowledged adaptation of shapeshifter's earlier work, the central authorship dispute in the orange-pink lesbian flag lineage ^[4][3]
• Whether it matters who designed the flag first if the community has already adopted the Emily Gwen version as its standard, a pragmatic argument that prioritizes social function over attribution accuracy ^[3]
• The broader question of how Tumblr-era flag provenance should be handled when original posts are deleted, blogs are deactivated, and the only evidence exists in screenshots and reblogs ^[3]

Common misidentifications

• Described as a single flag. The post carried four designs, three of them incorporating the More Color More Pride black and brown stripes. ^[1]
• Reproduced with a pure white centre band. The designer's files use the lipstick lesbian flag's off-white, #EDEDEB. ^[1]

Criticisms

• Some community members argue that documenting this precursor undermines the legitimacy of the now-dominant lesbian flag by casting doubt on its originality. Others counter that suppressing documented evidence to protect a flag's reputation is itself a form of erasure, particularly when the person whose work may have been uncredited is a less-prominent community member. ^[3]
• The broader lesbian flag discourse has been described as exhausting and divisive, with multiple factions advancing different flags and attacking each other's choices. Some lesbians have expressed frustration that the community has spent more energy debating flag provenance than addressing material issues like housing discrimination, healthcare access, and anti-lesbian violence. ^[6]

The term 'precursor' is used here to indicate documented chronological priority without asserting a causal or plagiarism relationship. The question of whether the later design was derived from or independent of this one remains unresolved.

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

First of the four designs posted 3 July 2017