‘I got it after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida,’ Nick McGlynn told Gay Star News. Many LGBTI people now proudly show off their tattoo pink triangles. How LGBTI people reclaimed the pink triangle The symbol went from being a badge of shame, to a symbol of pride. Since then, activists have used the symbol in various campaigns since, including in protests last year over concentration camps in Chechnya. The organization used it in arguably its most famous campaign poster: Silence = Death. Instead of using the upside down triangle – as the Nazis did – activist Avram Finkelstein came up with using it the right way up. In the early 80s, organization ACT-UP used the pink triangle to try to raise awareness in the midst of the AIDS crisis. The earliest accounts in America date back to 1977, where LGBTI activists in Miami pinned pink triangles to their clothes to protest housing discrimination. When eye witness accounts and personal testimonies emerged several decades later, LGBTI activists began reclaiming the symbol. They also performed dangerous experiments on them to find cures for typhus fever and homosexuality.Īccording to estimations, between 5,000 and 15,000 gay people died in German concentration camps. Nazis tortured the gay prisoners by castrating some of them and sodomizing them with items like broomsticks. There are also examples of lesbians in the 1940s and 50s literally wearing their sexuality on their sleeve by getting a particular tattoo (but more on that later). He said: ‘I was overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of so many of these figures… as the impulse of many homosexuals to be considered more masculine – by the addition of a tattoo – grew stronger.’ Steward believes tattoos became a symbol of masculinity for gay men, closely tied with the gay leather community.
He continued: ‘Following the national release of the movie The Wild One with Marlon Brando the original motorcycle film, it seemed to crystallize or release, the obscure and long-hidden feelings of many homosexuals.’ Steward said: ‘One change, however, came about in the homosexual attitude towards tattoos around 1954.’ Steward published his thoughts on gay men getting tattoos in his 1990 book Bad Boys & Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-Corner Punks. He was also the official tattoo artist for the motorcycle club, the Hells Angels in Oakland, California. Steward was born in 1909 and led many varied roles in life, including a professor at a Roman Catholic university and an author of gay pulp fiction. These days, tattoos and LGBTI culture go hand in hand and it’s a trend that’s on the rise.īut where did it all begin and what do these hidden meanings signify? ‘Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos’Īccording to famous gay tattooist Samuel Steward (also known as Phil Sparrow), the gay community in particular really began embracing tattoos in the 1950s. In a time when it was illegal to be out and proud in Western culture, many LGBTI people got tattoos to convey secret messages or as an act of defiance to authority. The LGBTI community has a long and varied history with tattoos.