LGBTQ+ symbols: what ⚧, the triangles and the lambda mean

Flags get most of the attention, but many LGBTQ+ symbols are older, smaller and easier to wear. In the 1970s they went on badges, T-shirts and jewellery, cheap to make and easy to spot if you knew what to look for. Some are still in everyday use. Others survive mainly in history books. Here is where each one comes from, as far as it can be traced. For the flags themselves, see the pride flags section.

The transgender symbol ⚧

A circle with three arms: the arrow of the male sign, the cross of the female sign, and a third arm combining the two. It is usually credited to Holly Boswell, a trans activist from North Carolina, who is said to have designed it in 1993.

Nancy Nangeroni, who helped spread it, described the chain in 1994: Holly Boswell drew it for Wendy Parker, who drew it for Nangeroni, who turned it into a pin, a blue symbol on a lavender triangle. Nangeroni's own page says the idea came from many sources and "is owned by none. Please use it."

It is very much still in use. The character ⚧ has been part of Unicode since version 4.1 in 2005, where it is formally aliased as transgender. It became an emoji, ⚧️, in Emoji 13.0 in 2020, the same release that added the transgender flag emoji 🏳️‍⚧️. More on that in pride flag emoji.

Is there a non-binary symbol?

Not one with a documented origin. Several signs are used: the neuter symbol ⚲, especially by neutrois people and people of a neutral gender; the alchemical sign 🜬; and a plain circle ○, especially for agender people. A circle topped by a line ending in a cross is also used, for example in the symbol on the toric flag, but we found no reliable record of who drew it or when, so we do not credit anyone.

If you are [[nonbinary|non-binary]], use whichever one you like, or none.

The pink triangle

In Nazi concentration camps, men imprisoned as gay, or accused of homosexuality, were marked with a pink triangle.

The reclaiming began in West Germany. In October 1973 the group Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin became the first in the world to adopt the pink triangle as a gay rights logo. Within ten months activists in New York, Miami and San Francisco were wearing it, and by the end of the decade it had become the most important symbol of the international gay rights movement.

In the AIDS crisis it changed direction, literally. A New York collective, the Silence=Death Project, put an upward-pointing pink triangle above the words Silence = Death on a poster (1986 or 1987, depending on the source), and the AIDS activist group ACT UP made it its own. In Amsterdam, the Homomonument, three pink granite triangles set into a square, opened in 1987; people have brought flowers to it every day since.

It is still used, and for many people it stands for pride, solidarity and remembrance.

The black triangle

In the camps, black triangles marked prisoners the Nazis classed as asocial, a catch-all that included Roma, vagrants and people seen as nonconformist.

You will often read that lesbians were made to wear it. The record is more complicated. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says the Nazis did not systematically persecute lesbians for their sexuality alone, and that women identified as lesbians wore badges matching the official reason for their arrest. Some lesbians were arrested as asocials, the category marked with the black triangle. How far lesbian women's sexuality was the real reason for their imprisonment is still debated among researchers.

Since then some lesbians and feminists have reclaimed the black triangle as a symbol of pride and solidarity among women. We found no reliable date for when that began. It appears on the labrys lesbian flag, whose history, including its later use by trans-exclusionary groups, is covered in why there are so many lesbian flags.

The lambda λ

The lowercase Greek letter lambda was chosen in 1970 by the graphic designer Tom Doerr as the symbol of the Gay Activists Alliance in New York.

Why lambda is less clear. In chemistry and physics it can stand for a catalyst or for action, and one account says it was meant to represent a commitment to achieve and defend the rights of gay citizens. Others say Doerr simply thought it looked good. In December 1974 the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh formally recognised it as the symbol of lesbian and gay activism.

Still used, above all in the names and logos of organisations, such as the US legal group Lambda Legal.

The labrys

A double-headed axe, a religious symbol in ancient Minoan Crete associated with goddesses. In the 1970s it became a symbol of women's empowerment, and of lesbians in particular, and it is still used as a lesbian and feminist symbol of strength and self-sufficiency.

It is also the centre of a lesbian flag designed in 1999. PinkNews notes that the labrys has since been taken up by gender-critical lesbians who exclude trans women, and that this has reduced the flag's use. The symbol itself is far older than that use, and context decides how it reads.

Double Venus ⚢ and double Mars ⚣

Two interlocked female signs for lesbians, two interlocked male signs for gay men. Wikipedia dates them to the 1970s. Both have been in Unicode since version 4.1 in 2005, with the formal aliases female homosexuality and male homosexuality; the interlocked female and male sign ⚤ is aliased as heterosexuality.

They are built only from the signs for female and male. The transgender symbol ⚧ adds a third arm.

The green carnation

This one belongs to Oscar Wilde. His play Lady Windermere's Fan opened at the St James's Theatre in London on 20 February 1892, and the story goes that Wilde had an actor wear a green carnation on stage and asked a group of young men in the audience to wear them too. According to a painter's memoirs, when asked what it meant, Wilde answered: "Nothing whatsoever. But that is just what nobody will guess."

How much of that is true is unclear: if a crowd did wear green carnations that night, the press did not mention it. What is documented is the novel The Green Carnation, published anonymously in 1894 by Robert Hichens, a satire with thinly disguised portraits of Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. It was later brought up at Wilde's trial.

Today it is remembered more than it is worn; we found little sign of it being used as a living symbol.

The purple hand

On 31 October 1969, gay liberation activists picketed the San Francisco Examiner over an article, published on 25 October, that described gay people in hateful terms. Someone on the roof, widely thought to be newspaper staff, dropped bags of purple printer's ink onto the protesters. They pressed their hands into it and left purple handprints on the building's walls. One protester later wrote: "One or two hands dipped into the ink and a new symbol was born."

The day, which ended in 15 arrests and several injuries, became known as the Friday of the Purple Hand. The Examiner itself published a piece on the 50th anniversary calling it a troubling event in its history. We found no evidence that the purple hand is still used as a symbol today.

The rainbow

The rainbow became an LGBTQ+ symbol through a flag: Gilbert Baker's, first raised on 25 June 1978 at United Nations Plaza in San Francisco, for the Gay Freedom Day Parade, with eight stripes. Its story is a flag's story, and it is told in the pride flags section.

Which ones are still in use

• Widely used: the transgender symbol ⚧, the rainbow, and the pink triangle.
• In names and logos: the lambda.
• In use, but read carefully: the labrys and the black triangle.
• Mostly historical: the green carnation and the purple hand.
• Still settling: symbols for non-binary people.

None of them is required. A symbol is only useful if the people you want to reach can read it.