Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017)

Overview

To create a more inclusive lesbian flag by combining the femme-coded pink palette with the butch-coded orange palette, symbolically reuniting two traditions that had been visually separated, in response to growing dissatisfaction with the lipstick lesbian flag.

By 2017, dissatisfaction with the existing lesbian flags had reached the point where multiple redesigns were being proposed. The dominant lesbian flag, a pink-and-white design created in 2010 by Natalie McCray for her lipstick lesbian blog, was under sustained criticism for two reasons. First, 'lipstick lesbian' centered a femme aesthetic that excluded butch, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming lesbians by design. Second, McCray herself had posted racist, biphobic, and transphobic content on her personal blog, which community members surfaced and documented in a widely circulated Twitter thread by writer @lesbianflag in March 2019 (though the concerns had been circulating on Tumblr since at least 2016). Against this backdrop, multiple Tumblr users began independently experimenting with flag redesigns that would merge the pink palette with the warm orange tones of the 2017 butchspace butch flag, combining femme and butch palette traditions.

On July 3, 2017, shapeshifter-of-constellation posted one such design: a seven-stripe flag combining pink stripes (top) and orange stripes (bottom) with a white center, explicitly described as a merger of the lipstick lesbian flag and the butchspace butch flag. ^[1][2][3]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

lesbian

Creators

The Creator

shapeshifter-of-constellation

Designer

shapeshifter-of-constellation (born 1997, United States), also referred to as Olivia in some community discussions, is the Tumblr user who posted a seven-stripe orange-pink lesbian flag on July 3, 2017. The post explicitly described the design as a combination of the lipstick lesbian pink flag and the butchspace orange butch flag, with the addition of More Color More Pride stripes. A mod from butchspace ('Mod T') suggested that the white center stripe should symbolize lesbians who identify as neither femme nor butch, reinforcing the design's intent as a unifying general-community flag. The original Tumblr post has been archived at the beyond-mogai-pride-flags blog and cited in Wikipedia's coverage of lesbian pride flag history. ^[1][2]

Motivations

• To create a more inclusive lesbian flag by combining pink-family and butch-family elements

Origin

Country

United States

Digital Origin

Tumblr

Digital-origin flag. Creator or earliest documentation associated with the United States, but no specific physical site of creation has been verified. Without a confirmed location, Indigenous land context cannot be responsibly attributed.

Documented in the 2017 Tumblr lesbian redesign discourse. ^[1]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2017

Exact date

July 3, 2017

First public use

July 3, 2017

Period in Use

2017

The design did not achieve widespread adoption in 2017, partly because Tumblr's algorithmic feed meant that many posts, even significant ones, circulated unevenly. Its historical importance is primarily as documented evidence that the orange-pink concept predated Emily Gwen's 2018 version.

In 2018, Emily Gwen posted an otherwise near-identical flag with the stripe order reversed (orange on top, pink on bottom) and accompanied it with a detailed set of stripe meanings that helped it gain traction during the official-lesbian-flag Tumblr poll. Whether Emily Gwen saw shapeshifter's earlier post, arrived at the same concept independently, or adapted it consciously remains unresolved. ^[1][2]

The authorship dispute around this flag is the most significant provenance question in the modern lesbian flag lineage. The core issue is not whether shapeshifter posted first (available evidence confirms a July 2017 date) but whether Emily Gwen's 2018 version constitutes independent reinvention or unacknowledged adaptation. The beyond-mogai-pride-flags Tumblr blog archived both posts side by side, documenting the visual near-identity and date difference. Community opinion remains divided: some treat the overlap as likely coincidence given the convergent design logic (merging the two dominant lesbian palettes was an adjacent design move), while others view the inverted-but-identical color sequence as too precise to be coincidental. Emily Gwen addressed the accusations in a 2025 tweet, stating: 'these accusations of me "stealing" the lesbian flag design were discussed and sorted out in 2018 … the reason we had similar ideas independently is because we combined existing flags. Mine was just the one that got inexplicably popular.' Wikipedia describes the situation as possibly 'convergent evolution' or plagiarism, without resolving the question. Both entries are recorded without resolving the dispute. ^[1][2][4]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

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

Indirect influences

Labrys Lesbian Flag

Related flags

Butch Lesbian Flag (Dorian Rutherford, 2016), Sunset Lesbian Flag, Lipstick Lesbian Flag, Non-Girl Lesbian Flag, Sapphic Flag

Sibling flags

Sunset Lesbian Flag

Documented precursor between the Pink Lesbian Flag, the 2017 Butchspace flag, and the Emily Gwen 2018 design. ^[1] The connection to Emily Gwen is classified as a disputed and unresolved authorship relation, not confirmed plagiarism. ^[1] Whether the Emily Gwen flag represents direct adaptation, independent reinvention, or a disputed near-duplicate remains unresolved. ^[1] 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: 4 records across 3 generations.

Ancestors -2

Lipstick Lesbian Flag

Ancestor

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

This record

Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017)

Colors & Symbolism

An earlier orange-pink combination flag predating the Emily Gwen design. The seven-stripe layout combined visual elements from the pink lipstick lesbian flag (top three stripes) and the butchspace orange butch flag (bottom three stripes), with a white central stripe joining the two palettes. The design framed butch and femme lesbian traditions as parts of a single shared flag rather than as separate symbols. ^[1][2]

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

No creator-issued stripe meanings have been documented. The flag's design logic combines the pink stripes from the femme/lipstick lesbian tradition (top) with orange stripes from the emerging butchspace orange butch flag tradition (bottom), joined by a central white stripe, creating a butch-femme combination flag. This combination approach, placing pink on top and orange below, was later inverted by Emily Gwen in 2018.

Provisional reconstruction. The original Tumblr image has not been directly verified. Colors are estimated from the description of an inverted near-match to the Emily Gwen 2018 design. ^[1]

Design

Aspect Ratio

8:5

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

7

Layout

horizontal_stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Dark Pink, Medium Pink, Light Pink, White, Light Orange, Medium Orange, Dark Orange

Seven horizontal stripes combining pink-family and orange-family bands with a central white stripe, in the opposite order from the later Emily Gwen version. ^[1]

Usage & Adoption

Geographic Usage

Tumblr-era internet circulation

Current Status

historical

Historically important as precursor evidence, but not the socially dominant current lesbian flag. ^[1]

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 ^[1][2]
• 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 ^[2]
• 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 ^[2]

Common misidentifications

• Sometimes visually confused with the Emily Gwen flag due to the same color family, but with inverted stripe order (pink-top/orange-bottom versus orange-top/pink-bottom)

Common confusions

• The inverted stripe order is the key visual difference: shapeshifter's design places pink on top and orange on bottom, while Emily Gwen's places orange on top and pink on bottom

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. ^[2]
• 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. ^[3]

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

2017 inverted precursor

• The 2017 orange-pink lesbian precursor posted by Tumblr user shapeshifter-of-constellation on July 3, 2017. Seven horizontal stripes combining pink-family stripes on top and orange-family stripes on the bottom with a white center, the inverse arrangement of the later Emily Gwen design. The flag explicitly combined elements from the pink lipstick lesbian flag and the butchspace orange butch flag. · Provisional reconstruction