When did pink triangles become a gay symbol
Why We Need the Pink Triangle in the Era of “Don’t Say Gay”
Before the rainbow flag became synonymous with the Gay community, the emblem of queer activism was the pink triangle, a symbol that originated as a Nazi concentration camp badge. How did this repressive symbol become a liberating emblem of queer identity? The history of this transformation offers both a warning and inspiration in the face of Republicans’ attack on LGBTQ+ rights today.
The proponents of the anti-LGBTQ+ bills in Republican-led states couch their endeavors in the rhetoric of protecting children from learning that Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law says is not “age-appropriate.” This rhetoric is nothing modern. Mainstream society has always predicated its acceptance of LGBTQ+ people on whether or not we execute in a “respectable” or “appropriate” manner. We’re only acceptable if we dress right, get a constant job, spend money, conclude down, and get married. The “politics of respectability” has been used by many LGBTQ+ advocacy efforts.
I’m thankful to have personally benefited from these actions. But, the rights that LGBTQ+ folks win by conforming aren’t based on our fundamental humanity but instead hin
Pink Triangles: Adopted Memories of Gay Persecution in Nazi Europe
For a long occasion, the persecution of gay men and women during the Second World War went unrecognised. Meanwhile, the pink triangle became a universal symbol of the havoc caused by homophobia. At Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, an exhibition highlights the precarious situation of gays and lesbians in Nazi Germany and the occupied countries of France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Since 2007, in Verviers, Belgium, a plaque has commemorated the homosexual and lesbian victims of the Nazi regime. More than 10,000 of them were deported; 6,000 men and women never returned. Twenty years prior, the Homomonument was erected in Amsterdam, commemorating those same victims. The pink triangle – a symbol used by the Nazis in some concentration camps to identify homosexuals – figures prominently in both memorials. No Belgian or Dutch, however, was pinned a pink triangle during the Nazi era.
Between optimism and oppression
The exhibition Homosexuals and Lesbians in Nazi Europe, on view until December 2023 at Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, demonstrates that those wanting to comprehend pink triangles must look back to the 1920s. The shock
Reclaiming the Pink Triangle: LGBT+ people and the Holocaust
When we consider of symbols the Nazi regime forced people to wear, we think of the yellow star of David enforced on Jews. But another symbol, forced on gay men persecuted by the Nazis, has since been reclaimed by the very community the Nazis sought to oppress: the pink triangle.
Symbolism and imagery have always been at the forefront of human expression: from cave paintings to heraldry to modern logos. They acquire been used to convey and influence emotions not just in their creators but those around the creators: nostalgia, pride, cherish and identity (as successfully as to sell things).
As well as using symbols to inspire belonging (the swastika) and fear (the death’s head skull or Totenkopf worn by the SS), the Nazi regime effectively used imagery to evoke feelings of ‘otherness’ in the populations under their control. This applied both to those they deemed ‘other’ otherwise recognizable as ‘useless mouths’ and in those they deemed acceptable. The most legendary of these symbols and imagery is the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear.
Before the Nazis
There was legislation against (male) homosexual acts in Germany prior to the
The Men With the Pink Triangle
I happened to glance out of the window and saw the Gestapo man a few doors farther along, standing in front of a shop. It seemed he still had his eye on our door, rather than on the items on display.
Presumably his job was to block any attempt by me to escape. He was undoubtedly going to go after me to the hotel. This was extremely unpleasant to contemplate, and I could already feel the threatening danger.
My mother must have felt the identical, for when I said goodbye to her she embraced me very warmly and repeated: “Be precise, child, be careful!”
Neither of us thought, however, that we would not convene again for six years, myself a human wreck, she a broken lady, tormented as to the fate of her son, and having had to face the contempt of neighbors and fellow citizens ever since it was known her son was homosexual and had been sent to a concentration camp.
I never saw my father again. It was only after my liberation in 1945 that I learned from my mother how he had tried time and again to secure my release, applying to the interior ministry, the Vienna Gauleitung, and the Central Security Department in Berlin. Despite his many connections as a
This LGBTQ+ History Month, we will be doing a entire deep dive into the Pink Triangle, a now reclaimed symbol initially used to brand men perceived as queer in concentration camps.
What was pre-Nazi Germany like for Queer people?
Before the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, queer communities and networks flourished in Germany, especially in great cities like Berlin. There were nightclubs and cabarets for gay people, male lover theatre and films and gay publications sold at most shops - a medium that was used widely for the community to stay in handle and up to date.
There were more than 100 homosexual and lesbian bars and cafes, songs and films, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, which contained thousands of books and journals on sexuality and gender.
There was a pretty enormous subculture of sex workers in Berlin in particular tracking generations of soldier prostitutes which contributes to the sex-positive attitude widely seen from many people in the capital city. This was all true despite the fact that sexual relations between men were criminalized in Germany.
Photography: The Advocate.
"A new novel tells the accurate stories behin