Have you ever noticed that the fashion industry and honestly everyone else is suddenly embracing styles that were once exclusively and deeply tied to lesbian culture?
It’s almost as if straight people are taking style notes from the lesbian community without even realizing it.
I first started to notice this a while back, when one of my straight friends introduced me to her boyfriend. He was wearing the usual skater attire, which consists of a pair of worn down baggy jeans, an oversized shirt with some underground band depicted on it, painted nails with chipped off nail polish and dirty sneakers with the sole already slowly pealing off. But then I saw it. The carabiner dangling from the loop of his jeans. The same one that was hanging from my pants. I looked at it for a while.
His held many keys, including his car key and a lego figure. Mine had lots of trinkets and keychains and only one key. I could tell his was mostly there for convenience reasons. His was practical. While mine was there as an accessory, an addiction to my outfit and most importantly a way of telling other lesbians I’m one of them. It was symbolic.
This phenomenon is called queer flagging. It’s a way of showing other queer people that you’re one of them, not a threat and potentially even of romantic interest to them. The history of flagging goes way back to when homosexuality was illegal and being openly queer was considered shameful and even dangerous. But denying and criminalizing the existence of queer people doesn’t make them go away. So queer people invented ways to recognize each other without revealing their identity out loud. In such a subtle ways straight people wouldn’t notice. They created secret codes in clothing and language, such as carabiners for lesbians, handkerchiefs for gays and the phrase „are you a friend of Dorothy?“ as a way to ask if someone was queer, safe to trust and one of them. Even how something was worn carried meaning. Lesbians wore carabiners on the right to signal top and left to signal bottom, but some sources claim it was the other way around. There is still debate which side indicates what. And no one ever figured out what switches were supposed to do.
All this debate and confusion about different meanings still doesn’t change the original purpose of flagging, which was and still is a subtle way to show other queer people you’re one of them.
So what changed? Why are straight people suddenly walking around with lesbian flagging symbols on their pants without even acknowledging the meaning and on top of that being completely oblivious of its history?
It’s because they don’t know.
Flagging was never meant for straight people. They were never meant to know what those subtle symbols meant to the community, since them knowing meant danger. The carabiner for example is also used in rock climbing, a sport commonly associated with lesbians. But which also recently gained popularity with the „performative males“, who pride themselves in being feminists, not stuck in toxic masculinity and allies to women and their struggles. They walk around with wired headphones playing indie music, a tote bag with a feminist quote on it, matcha in one hand and a piece of feminist literature in the other. But it’s often a performance, an act to appear less threatening to women. Borrowed queerness. Worn like a costume. Too often, it’s the straight men who still hold homophobic beliefs, stay silent when it matters and who only do things when it benefits them or their chances of getting with women.
They wear the aesthetic. Not the reality.
I’m not telling anyone what to wear. I‘m writing about how it feels to watch carefully selected parts of your identity become trendy while other parts of your reality get ignored.
Lesbians have a long history of being criminalized, oppressed and shamed by the very same people who now copy us. The culture we build is worn without acknowledging the hardships we had and still have to face.
The thing that hurts is the fact that we wear the same thing so differently. When we wear it, we do it with knowledge, history, community and pride in mind. While straight people wear it as a fashion trend without giving it much thought.
It’s not the fact that they wear it that makes me feel emotional about this. It’s more the fact that straight people walk around the world with such privilege that they don’t even have to think about their identity in that way. They get to live and love freely and carefree. While we as queer people still face discrimination, hate and oppression. We had to live in fear and love in secret. Some of us still do.
I think society has progressed in terms of acceptance and tolerance, but it still isn’t enough. If queer people out there are still being oppressed because of their sexuality and identity that means we’re not done. No one is truly free until everyone is. We need to keep fighting for our rights by voting, speaking up, being educated and learning about our history. Im wearing my carabiner with pride and our history in mind.
So is it really that deep? Yes, it is. It always is.
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