Ahead of Pride Month, Twitch has finally changed the lesbian flag emote on its platform, which has been highly requested in the LGBTQIA+ community following troubling allegations against the creator of the original lesbian flag.
For those not in the know, the lesbian pride flag has different versions, two of which are considered the main ones: the original pink lesbian flag and the new orange or sunset lesbian flag that has gained traction in more recent years and has been adopted by more inclusive members of the LGBTQIA+ community. This happened after rumors and accusations of the pink lesbian flag's creator being transphobic, biphobic, and racist appeared online, such as one instance in a now-deleted blog post saying that Asian women are "not [her] type at all." Though the creator has refuted these claims, the lesbian community has moved on from using this flag to the new sunset one, leading to many Twitch community requests to change the correlating chat emote.
As some Twitch users have revealed, the livestreaming platform has officially changed the heart emote from the pink lesbian flag to the sunset one, and supporters are ecstatic. The emote change has been especially requested since Lesbian Visibility Day last month on April 26. Though some users are skeptical that Twitch wanted to wait to implement this for Pride Month, the LGBTQIA+ is largely happy to see this change made at all, proving Twitch is making efforts to move in the right direction on inclusivity.
This news comes following Twitch's recent announcement of over 350 new tags coming to the platform, including the highly demanded trans tag. Initially, Twitch had implemented the LGBTQIA+ tag to positive feedback from the community. However, more specific tags help users find content creators that represent themselves or interest them, leading to demand for more specific tags. Additionally, there has been recent controversy over cisgender straight allies of the gay community using the LGBTQIA+ tag "wrongfully," resulting in a diluted tag.
Likewise, using the new lesbian pride emote with orange colors will promote inclusivity of gender-fluid and transgender streamers while not excluding content creators of any racial backgrounds, such as Valkyrae, a proud Filipina.
The orange lesbian pride flag also supports non-gender-conforming lesbians as the creator of the pink flag was said to be prejudiced against women with more masculine features. However, the creator has since denounced this in another deleted blog post, accusing women on the internet of "destroying" her reputation.
Source: Medium (via Web Archive)