My small issue with the current Alterous Attraction Flag design...
So, I wanted to make myself a personal pride flag design - combining all of my own personal pride flags and orientations into one - and suddenly found myself hitting a bit of a wall when it came to the alterous attraction one.
Because, what's absolutely amazing about the romantic v.s. sexual orientation "binary" is that, when it comes to their flags, both flags are the same, except one has a heart on it.
Left: Pansexual. Right: Panromantic.
Therefore, you can combine both orientations into a single flag, by having the heart show your romantic orientation, and the "wallpaper" in the background showing your sexual orientation.
Ex: Bisexual Panromantic.
Or, when they are the same, doing "half and half, or adding the little Pansexual heart somewhere...
But there's no such symbol attached to alterous orientation!
And there's no guaranty that the person's alterous orientation is going to be the same as their romantic and/or sexual one, either!
And, as a demisexual, it is SPECIFICALLY alterous attraction that triggers my sexual desires for someone, not romance!
What typically happens, is that I'll develop alterous feelings for one of my friends, become deeply committed to that "friendship" and very much "in love" (with absolutely no romance nor desire for us to ever become an actual "couple", live together, etc.) with them.
And, because I feel so emotionally close and like I could trust them with anything, should they also be aesthetically attractive also, I'll (very instinctively, very strongly) desire to have sex with them.
It's that sense of emotional intimacy that runs soul deep, and where I could no longer imagine my life without them, that makes me want to sexually connect as well.
That being said, I can also desire certain people romantically and have powerful crushes.
It's just that I never sexually desire my crushes until we reach a level of emotional intimacy that can match my alterous friendships.
And, when I find myself desiring a romantic partner both romantically and sexually - should they also be are monoamorous - then I'll stop experiencing any sexual desires for my alterous friends. We usually remain physically intimate/at ease with each other (heartfelt hugs, hand holding, etc.), but those intense friendships lose their sexual appeal.
So basically, I was trying to combine my:
identities all into one flag...
And was getting heavily frustrated by the fact that, thus far, people were simply making different color schemes for each alterous orientations!
For example, here are two of the suggested bialterous and panalterous flags I found...
Beautiful flags! The person that designed them did a very nice job with the colors!
It's just that there's nothing on them that screams that we're talking about a form of emotional attraction that is different, yet just as important and significant as romance.
Romantic attraction has its very own love symbol. It makes no sense that alterous attraction shouldn't be a symbol driven orientation as well!
I'm also having a bit of a hard time connecting those designs with their romantic and sexual equivalents, and recognizing the "bi" or "pan" elements in both. And I don't know where to place them on my own flag design, either, so that people understand that I'm talking about a form of emotional attraction...
What I needed, was a symbol, similar to the heart of the romantic flag, but specific to alterous forms of love...
After obsessing a bit too much over this, I eventually came up with my own personal versions:
Possibility of replacing the white areas with other personal flags.
Example of a Panalterous Flag.
Example of a Homoalterous Aromantic Demisexual Man
Example of a Panalterous Panromantic Flag
Example of a Bialterous Greyromantic Queerplatonic Asexual Flag
My personal Pride Flags (Panromantic, Panalterous, Ambiamorous, Demisexual, Pansexual).
When combined into a single flag design.
So yeah, I did like the color scheme of the originally designed Alterous Flag, it's just the lack of potentially recognizable symbol for alterous attraction that bothered me.
And I thought that putting 3 hearts like that would have people ask "Wait. Why 3 hearts?", and give us the opportunity to explain that the one in red (or with the red border) means romantic attraction, the one in yellow (or with the yellow border) means platonic attraction.
The flag inside the yellow (if there is one) is about Queerplatonic relationships that are unconventional friendships where the two friends might share the same level of intimacy as romantic partners, but without the romance and/or sex.
So the yellow includes all types of friendships, from the less emotionally intimate to the most emotionally intimate ones.
And the one in the middle, with the pink border reminding us about how those relationships all share affection, is about alterous attraction, a form of love that feels neither romantic nor platonic, but somewhere in the middle and/our outside of it. It can be accompanied by the eventual desire to form a queerplatonic relationship (or not), a need for different forms of emotional and physical intimacy, including sexual in some cases, etc.
The "romantic" crowd sort of "stole everyone's heart" with the romantic flags.
Now, the people on the aromantic spectrum are left without anything to symbolize their own "love".
We need to put the love into the aromantic flag to remind people that love and romance aren't synonyms.
When you remove romance, all that's left isn't "casual sex" or "casual friendships".
I kinda want to see a visual counterpart to romance on flags out there!
Even if that's not my own design!
The reason why I put the "Alterous" heart bigger is not because I believe that "Alterous orientation" is more important than "Romantic orientation" nor "Queerplatonic orientation and relationships".
It's simply because the focus of the Alterous flag should be Alterous love.
It is connected to romantic relationships and queerplatonic ones, but romantic orientations already have their own well-known flags and tons of visibility.
As for the Queerplatonic flag(s), well, let's say that those are relationships we need to talk about about, and having them there on the flag opens the doors for curiosity and conversations, and lets people know that some friendships run as deep and are as powerful as romance.
So I've kept both the same size (romantic orientation + queerplatonic relationships).
And they're not spaces that HAVE to be filled. It's more an added option for convenience's sake to be able to describe what's included in the "red heart" (romantic attraction) and in the "yellow heart" (friendships, if left yellow, or queerplatonic relationships, if a flag is added).
It's a design that I personally could play and have a bit of fun with...
So, if some of you guys enjoy the idea, and want to start using them to express yourselves, until the day we eventually have a more official agreed upon flag, here are the .png files , enjoy!
If you have other ideas that could improve on those designs, too, I'd be very glad to hear them!
(If you want me help you make them, I might be open to do it if I have the time...)
