First of all, apologies to all of you die-hard Fenians who are expecting this article to wax poetic about the green hills of Ireland or the nobility of the Irish spirit. Alas, it won't. This piece is about an entirely different species of Irish "pride."
Recently, I visited Ireland, both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and I came away very impressed by the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the landscape, and the prosperity and dynamism Ireland has achieved, despite a long history of poverty and relative isolation. I also found notable how omnipresent reminders are there of Ireland's struggle for independence. References to the 1798 and 1916 rebellions, for instance, are everywhere, as are memorials to the Irish who died in the struggle for self-rule.
When I got to Dublin, however, Ireland's capital and largest city, I was somewhat taken aback. Completely overshadowing displays of the Irish tricolor flag were displays of the pride flag – that is, the gay pride flag, as it used to be known. Given that June is pride month, that is not entirely surprising, especially when we consider that the White House was recently emblazoned with rainbow flags itself, but it was jarring when I compared my experience of Dublin with my travels in the rest of Ireland, where (with the notable exception of Unionist parts of Northern Ireland) the Irish and EU flags always got top billing. I chalk this up to Dublin's urban sophistication (some would call it dissipation), which, in big cities everywhere, seems to breed broader acceptance of, and even bellicose advocacy for, "alternative lifestyles." So be it.
It took a trip to Ireland, however, to teach me something new about "pride" and the artful new permutations the movement for gay and trans rights is taking. Flying over Dublin's Trinity College, Ireland's oldest and most prestigious institution of higher education, was a rainbow flag that I had never seen before.
Readers will be familiar with the adapted, transgender-friendly, pride flag that incorporates a chevron on the left composed of black, brown, light blue and pink stripes and a small white field. This was only invented in 2018, and it is known as the "progress pride flag." It has become fairly ubiquitous worldwide, as it demonstrates both solidarity with the gay community as well as support for the rights of trans people.
Naturally, I saw plenty of examples of this flag throughout Dublin. What I saw above Trinity, though, was a new version of this flag that added a white stripe, changed the field inside the chevron to yellow, and placed within it a purple circle. "What's this?" I wondered to myself, and why is it defining the identity of Trinity College (bearing in mind that Trinity was a bastion of Protestantism for most of its history)?
While I am not in a position to answer the latter question, the former is easy enough to dispose of. For some LGBT advocates, the progress pride flag is simply not progressive enough. The yellow field and the purple circle have thus been added to expand the parameters of "pride" to include (I kid you not!) the "intersex" community.
Who are the intersex? While definitions vary somewhat, they are essentially persons born with genetic or physical abnormalities that distinguish them from the vast majority of human beings, who, at birth, fall (neatly or problematically, depending on who you ask) into one of two sexes (or genders, again depending on who you ask): male and female. Put another way, the intersex are those who have at least some of the genetic or physical characteristics of both biological sexes. In ancient times – meaning, several months or years ago – we called such people "hermaphrodites." They now no longer like to be called that, although they sometimes use the terminology among themselves. Keep in mind, moreover, that instances of intersexuality or hermaphroditism that are pronounced enough to occasion medical notice, let alone treatment, are incredibly rare. By this definition, intersex births represent considerably less than one-tenth of 1% of the total.
Wow! So where does this leave us?
First, as the intersex/hermaphrodite progress pride flag diffuses steadily across the globe, and as more LGBT-friendly people adopt it, one thing is for sure: the aesthetic coherence and symbolic clarity of the original rainbow pride flag is being eroded. This phenomenon, though, is an accurate reflection of the audacious expansion of the gender/sex equality movement itself, as well as its burgeoning complexity and pervasiveness – which to some appear almost totalitarian in scope.
These changes, occurring as they are at a breakneck pace (the flag I witnessed at Trinity only came into existence in 2021), have rendered some of the earliest advocates of "gay rights" uncomfortable as, for example, some lesbians balk at celebrating the womanhood of people with penises or, as the case may be, with vestigial or proto-penises. The momentum of the movement, however, is such that anyone who denies entry and validation to any group, no matter how small or obscure, faces castigation, ostracism, censorship, deplatforming, or much worse, as women like Martina Navratilova and J.K. Rowling can attest. Many activists demand total commitment to, and compliance with, the LGBTQIA+ agenda and ideology, not to mention iconography, which, since it is constantly being adapted to be more progressive and "inclusive," is often, one assumes, quite exhausting and frustrating to implement! A flag that literally only months ago seemed avant garde, like the progress pride flag, must now, to some, feel quaint, at best, or it might even appear retrograde or intentionally exclusionary or hateful. How are the woke to keep up?
Lastly, I would also point out that, while these fast-breaking developments may seem trivial or simply abhorrent to some, they are remarkably powerful and broad-based, and a strong cultural tide is flowing in their direction.
Just recently, the vast majority of Americans opposed gay marriage. Two of them, in fact, were President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Today, by contrast, gay marriage is a non-issue, and in a recent poll, 89% of Americans 18-29 years of old support it. Likewise, it was not so long ago that Ireland was a deeply Catholic country in which homosexuality was illegal (such laws were only repealed in 1993). Now, the country's most venerable university flies the flag of intersexuality, while there's not an Irish flag to be seen (and certainly not a Christian one). How quickly things change!
Scoff if you wish, therefore, but Trinity College may be a glimpse of our collective future. Someday soon, you may find yourself walking down the street and, if your T-shirt doesn't feature a yellow field and a purple circle somewhere on its design, people will look at you as if you just clubbed a baby seal to a bloody pulp.
My advice? At a minimum, be kind to hermaphrodites, because they might just hold your future in their (ambiguously gendered?) hands.
As to the next major revision that the pride flag will undergo, I daren't even speculate!
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