This is the next best place (After an actual Pride Parade) to show off my Disability Pride flag

[capri0mni]

Edit: I've been informed that Flickr (the site I first used to archive this flag) won't let nonmembers download the image. So I've re-registered it with a URL attached to this Dreamwidth account. Also, today, I made a version better suited for Online Use, with slightly muted/lower contrast colors:


[Image description: A black flag diagonally crossed from the top of the hoist to the bottom of the fly by a five parallel “Lightning bolt” stripes of light blue, gold, white, red, and Green, with narrow borders of black between them. Description ends]






To the extent possible under law,

Ann Magill
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Disability Pride Flag.


(clicking that linkable version of my name will take you to the sticky post on my journal, where I've also posted the high contrast version, as well as the instructions for constructing the flag, yourself)


(And yes, it's the same as my icon).

I actually came up with it a couple of years ago, but I spent yesterday and today taking it apart and putting it together again, so I could be precise about its proportions, instead of just winging it, and saying to myself: "Yeah, that looks about right."

(I'm still figuring out the how-to instructions, so they'll be short and easy to follow)

I also went onto the Creative Commons Website, and officially registered this into the public domain. So I'm actually hoping people will "steal" it and use it on stuff in their Etsy shops, or whatever... (hint, hint).

Here's what the symbols mean:

The Black Field: Mourning for all those who’ve suffered abuse and violence, because of ableism, also the connection to the pirates’ Jolly Roger flag, and general rebellion.

The five colors: the wide variety of types of disability: Mental illness, Intellectual disability, Invisible and/or undiagnosed disability, Physical Disability, and Sensory Disability.

The zigzag shape: how disabled people have to always navigate barriers in the normate world & and the creative problem solving we do every day.

The parallel nature of the stripes represent Disability Solidarity, even though our individual needs and experiences are different.

You like?

(A longer post is likely coming about why I felt the need for a disability pride flag, and why I think Disability is inherently Queer)

...And I'll be x-posting this to my own journal...

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Ooh, I like!

(Just to be clear: is this CC0 or CC BY or what?)

[redsixwing]

I like! (May have told you this before, but it's worth repeating.)

Also v interested in your longer post.

[capri0mni]

CC0 -- the freest of the options

[alexseanchai]

*thumbs up*

(people say "public domain" to mean a lot of things that aren't, when talking about copyright, what it means, so i wanted to check)

[capri0mni]

Thank you!

The TL;Dr version, before the whole thing is written:

If you want evidence of how Disability = Queer, look no further than how mainstream pop culture treats disabled characters, say, for example: Bucky and Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, or Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, or that horrible one from last year, was it? Me before you... or, or, or...

[capri0mni]

*Nod*

With some things, I'm more picky about what rights I share, because I'm trying to make a specific message, and if something is taken out of context or distorted, that message could be lost, so I want/need any subsequent changes to be traceable... or, it's because I'm using a font I don't have a commercial license for (even though the words are all my own), or something like that.

But a Pride Flag (Such as this one) can only fulfill its purpose if it's widely spread, recognized, and remixed into different contexts.

[mlravenwrites]

Feelings! Might make icons out of this; if I do, I'll post them in the comm/link them here. Thank you for making this :)

[readera]

<3

[soc_puppet]

I was wondering if your icon had any particular significance! I gotta say, I love what you've come up with :) I'll have to see if I can incorporate it into some of my Accessibility Deptartment stuff at all.

[capri0mni]

Thank you for wanting to "Wave" my flag! <3

(Also, I'll probably post my step-by-step how-to today (I hope), either as a separate post, or a reply to this one.

Short version:

1) The slope of the "lightning bolts" is 1/2 of the total length of the flag by 1/3 the height.

2) The width of each stripe is 1/10 the total length of the flag, minus the width of the black bands between them.

3) The width of the black bands are 1/5 of that

So the example I posted here is ~15 cm high by ~25 cm. long. I made each stripe 2.5 cm. wide. And then I pasted the .5 cm dividing lines over the joins between them (Which just happened to be double MS Paint's fattest preset line width).

I wanted to come up with a design with undefined overall dimensions, so anyone wanting to use it in a protest or parade could use whatever size cloth or recycled cardboard they have to hand, and also that it would be easy to work out the shape of the lightning bolt more or less by eye (and also make the stripes in colors common to duct tape, these days).

[capri0mni]

:-)

Thanks! (for the compliment, and the desire to use it in places)

[capri0mni]

\0/

[fred_mouse]

Nice!

It looks like it could be really interesting to make out of patchwork, so hopefully I'll remember that I want to do that, when you get to publishing the proportions.

[capri0mni]

Ooh, yeah.

And using different patterns in the colors of the stripes, too? As in gingham check, pinstripe, polka dot, etc.?

If anything resembles a crazy quilt, it's the disability and queer communities, eh?

[redsixwing]

...*stares at the pile of evidence* Oh my gosh, should've spotted that one coming.

Yes indeed.

[capri0mni]

Or, at the very least, Disability queers Queerness (where the transitive verb "to queer something" means to spoil, shift, or twist. For those who think Queer=Bad, to "queer" something means to ruin it. Bus since we don't think that.. Well...)

If I were not disabled, I might simply identify as Ace, for example. But since the fact of my disability altered my peers' and wider society's expectations of my sexuality (namely, that, as a disabled person, I had no sexual agency at all), that complicated, threw-a-wrench-into, and otherwise skewed my own understanding of my sexual orientation.

I might identify as queer without being disabled, but the fact that I am disabled magnifies my queerness...

[casualbird]

I like this very much, thank you!

[capri0mni]

Thank you!

[alexseanchai]

ooooooh *intrigued*

[alexseanchai]

truth

[capri0mni]

There's a reason I really like QUILTBAG for our acronym (Besides the fact that it's an actually-pronounceable word):

QU: Queer/Questioning
I: Intersex
L: Lesbian
T: Trans
B: Bi
A: Ace/Aro
G: Gay

Exclusionists and TERFS probably hate it (I'm not inclined to ask their opinion) because it puts "Queer" first and the Lesbians have to sit next to the trans people. >:P

[alexseanchai]

lol accurate