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It’s that time of year when fashion brands, street advertisements, and logos shed their monochrome palettes to embrace a joyful and vibrant rainbow: June, the month of Pride. During this period, we celebrate Queer diversity and aim to clarify doubts about acronyms, pronouns, and significant figures in the global Pride movement.
Through the alphabet, we will provide brief historical insights, explain the significance of the colors of the Rainbow Flag, and introduce influential figures who have left their mark on world history. Answering questions like:
Here are all the answers: welcome to Urban Jungle’s Pride Alphabet. Let’s begin!
Agender: A person who does not identify with any gender. They do not feel male, female, or a mix of both. Essentially, it’s like saying: “I don’t see myself in any of the traditional gender categories.”
Ballroom: This term refers to a subculture that emerged among LGBTQ+ African American and Latin American communities, especially in New York. It’s a world of dance and fashion competitions, where people perform in various categories like voguing, fashion shows, or acting performances. The goal? To win coveted trophies and gain the respect of the audience. Historically, Ballrooms were the only places where the queer community could meet without hiding and find a welcoming and friendly environment.
Cisgender: This means that one’s gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. For example, if you were born with a male body and feel like a boy, or you were born with a female body and feel like a girl, then you are cisgender. In other words, gender and body align with traditional expectations.
Dresscrossing: This practice, still used today, involves wearing clothes traditionally associated with the opposite gender. Dresscrossing was the cause of continuous and repeated police raids against the queer communities in the ‘60s and ’70s, which triggered the infamous Stonewall riots on the night of June 28, 1969. The police subjected patrons of the Greenwich Village pub to humiliating searches to ensure that gay, lesbian, travestites, and transgender individuals were wearing at least three garments corresponding to their sex as required by law, as dresscrossing was illegal. This gave rise to the New York gay community’s revolts and the birth of the Pride Movement!
Equality:Pride is not just about celebration; it’s primarily an opportunity to demand civil rights and equality. Some of the main laws sought during these events include marriage equality, protection against discrimination, adoption and parenting rights, and recognition of gender identity, allowing transgender people to change their name and gender on official documents without surgical or medical requirements.
Fuori!: An acronym for Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano, it was the first real organized movement for the rights of homosexual people in Italy. Founded in the ’70s, a time when being openly gay was still a great taboo, Fuori! laid the foundations for all the rights and progress we experience today, although there is still a long way to go.
Gilbert Baker: On June 25, 1978, in San Francisco, the San Francisco Gay Freedom Pride Parade took place: a very loud and colorful parade through the city streets to claim the right to exist and freely express one’s sexual orientation. During the event, activist and artist Gilbert Baker created the so-called Rainbow Flag by sewing together strips of colored fabric and waving the flag during the march. From that moment, homosexual, transgender, and queer people began to see themselves as a political community, making the Rainbow Flag their iconic emblem.
Harvey Milk: A pioneering and U.S. civil rights activist, best known for being the first openly gay politician elected to major public office in the States. Elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, during his tenure he worked tirelessly to promote the rights of LGBTQ+ people and represent less privileged and marginalized communities.
Gender Identity: Refers to how a person feels and identifies concerning their gender, which may differ from the sex assigned at birth. It’s how you feel inside, whether you feel more like a man, woman, both, neither, or something completely different.
LGBTQIA+: The acronym LGBT includes Lesbian (L), Gay (G), Bisexual (B), and Transgender (T). This term first appeared in the United States around the 1980s. Subsequently, with its spread in the ’90s, additional categories were included, such as Q for Queer, a term used to encompass all the different facets of sexuality, I for Intersex, indicating people with physical characteristics different from those traditionally associated with males and females, and A for Asexual, indicating those who do not experience sexual attraction to any gender. The plus is used to denote the inclusiveness of all other gender identities, sexual orientations, and various expressions of identity not necessarily explicitly listed in the main letters of the acronym.
Judy Garland: Considered an undisputed gay icon, especially for her personality and her relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. Her most famous film, The Wizard of Oz, has become a cultural staple for many LGBTQ+ people, as many identify Dorothy’s journey of self-discovery as a metaphor for discovering oneself and one’s sexual identity. Garland also showed strong support for the gay community during a period when homosexuality was widely stigmatized.
Kusama Yayoi: In 1968 in New York, the renowned Japanese artist celebrated the first gay marriage in history. The “Priestess of Polka Dots” officiated the marriage in her “Church of Self-Obliteration”: in a rented apartment in Lower Manhattan, New York. She explained the reasons behind the performance, saying:
“The purpose of this marriage is to bring to light what has been hidden. Love can now be free, but to make it completely free, it must be freed from all the sexual frustrations imposed by society. Homosexuality is a normal physical and psychological reaction, which should neither be exalted nor glorified. It is the abnormal reaction of many people to homosexuality that makes homosexuality abnormal.”
Love is Love: Besides the Rainbow Flag, the Pride movement has adopted the claim “Love is Love,” often used to express the belief that love is a universal human experience and that all forms of love are valid and equal. This iconic claim appears on (un)official Pride merchandise, ubiquitous on flags, tote bags, and t-shirts.
Stonewall Riots: In 1969 in New York’s Greenwich Village, the gay community that regularly frequented the Stonewall Inn decided to say enough. After continuous and repeated police raids, which routinely targeted gay-frequented places with violent searches and repression, the people present in the bar decided to make their voices heard for the first time. That famous night, people began to protest, throw things at the police, and block the streets, showing the world that they were not willing to be treated as second-class citizens just because of who they loved or how they dressed (see also letter D: Dresscrossing). That moment was the beginning of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. After the Stonewall Riots, demonstrations and organizations emerged pushing for real changes, such as the right to be who you are without hiding and without fear of being persecuted for it.
Pangender: A person who identifies with all genders. They do not limit themselves to a single gender like male or female but feel in tune with multiple gender identities simultaneously or at different times. Pangender individuals can fall in love with men, women, trans, agender, genderfluid individuals; their connection is with the soul, not the body.
Queer: A word that was once used as a homophobic slur but has been reclaimed over the years by the LGBTQ+ community as a positive and inclusive term of self-identification. Today, it’s an umbrella term that includes a wide range of sexual and gender identities that do not conform to traditional norms: being queer means not adhering to the rigid norms of heterosexuality and cisgender.
Rainbow Flag: The Rainbow Flag is one of the most recognizable and iconic symbols of the LGBTQ+ community. Each color has a specific meaning:
Sylvia Rivera: Sylvia Rivera was a Latin transgender woman who fought for LGBTQ+ rights in the ’60s and ’70s in New York. She was one of the founders of STAR, a group that supported homeless youth and trans people. Rivera is remembered for her commitment to the fight for equality and significantly contributed to the Queer liberation movement.
Transgender: A person who does not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. For example, being born with a body that everyone says is male, but inside feeling like a woman. Or vice versa. It’s a way of being authentic with yourself, even if it means breaking societal expectations of how you“should” be based on your body.
Vogueing and Vogue: Vogueing is a creative and bold type of dance that mixes fashion poses with theatrical movements. It originated in the Ballroom scene of Harlem in the ’80s and has become a way to express glamour, grit, and pride for many in the LGBTQ+ and African American community. Madonna adopted vogueing as the main theme of her 1990 song, Vogue, celebrating New York City’s ballroom culture and bringing this underground art form to international prominence. In the song and music video for “Vogue,” Madonna highlights the elegant and stylized poses and movements of vogueing, making it famous worldwide and introducing the public to this form of expression typical of the LGBTQ+ and African American community.
World Pride: In 2000, coinciding with the Catholic Jubilee declared by Pope John Paul II, Rome hosted World Pride, the global Pride event. The choice to coincide with the Jubilee was, of course, not accidental: the idea was precisely to maximize visibility and convey the important message “I exist and have the same right as you to believe in what I want.”
Ze / Zir: Some people use “ze/zir” pronouns because of their more consistent pronunciation and spelling. Although “ze” is often considered gender-neutral, a person using “ze” might actually identify as male, female, both, neither, or something else entirely.
Did you enjoy our Pride Alphabet? Did you know all the terms? Let us know by commenting on our IG post @urbanjunglestore_com