#multialterous spectrum

[flower-petal-pansexual]

Pan people make my heart sing and the clouds refrain from the sky and the sun open up its vast blinding beauty simply as existing in and of themselves. May the moon memorize your awaking paths and the dust of the Earth keep you in their arms 🌱

[nonbinarycomet]

New m-spec/multi flag

(This is a mirror from my Pillowfort post here, that can also be boosted on the Fediverse here.)

[Image description: A flag divided in four quadrants of the same size. The upper left quadrant is pink, the upper right quadrant is white, the bottom left quadrant is yellow and the bottom right quadrant is purple. End of image description.]

M-spec is short for "multi spectrum". The spectrum thing is just for emphasis, since both multi and m-spec are umbrella terms for people who are attracted to more than one gender/multiple genders.

The labels multi and m-spec have existed for a while. Their purpose is to decenter bi or bi+ as umbrella terms, because even if bi ranges from "weak attraction to one gender and strong attraction to another gender" to "attraction to all genders", a lot of pan, ply (polysexual/polyromantic/etc.), toren, trixen, penulti, omni and other people don't feel represented by bi. Even so, there are experiences and struggles common to all multiply-attracted people, so having an umbrella term is useful.

This term and flag includes m-spec people who are a-spec, who don't want to use labels, who use labels that don't specify which/how many genders one's attracted to, who use -flexible labels or who otherwise feel more attraction towards certain genders than others, whose attraction is fluid, who use many labels, who only use bi or pan as labels, who use labels that are typically seen as not m-spec and so on, as long as they are able to be attracted to more than one gender.

This flag is for all multi/m-spec people, not just multisexual/multiromantic. Multiqueerplatonic, multialterous, etc. are included.

There are already other flags for this, but most of them are not widely recognized or liked, and the most popular one is the combination of bi, ply and pan flags, which helps people recognize it for what it is, but doesn't help people who feel alienated by those labels.

The design of this flag is meant to be different from most pride flags so it's easier to recognize for colorblind people among other common pride flags, while still being easy to reproduce with fabric or while drawing, since there are no complicated symbols or shapes.

Color meanings:

Pink: Represents attraction in general, as well as passion. It's about m-spec people being united because of their attraction to more than one gender. Can also represent people who feel like they are just "attracted by (some) people" or who don't specify how their attraction works.

Pink is, after all, a color widely used for sexuality and love.

White: Represents the possibility of being able to be attracted to all genders. Also the possibility of having an attraction to multiple genders that isn't fluid; for instance, just because someone dates a nonbinary person and later a woman doesn't mean that their attraction changed.

White is the combination of all colors of light (so, all genders), and is also achromatic; you can't change the hue of pure white.

Light orange: Represents the diversity of m-spec people. For instance: a lot of trans people, especially nonbinary people, are m-spec; a lot of a-spec people are m-spec; a lot of non-monogamous people are m-spec; there are lots of different possibilities of labels when you are m-spec; but you don't need to be those things or use other labels to be m-spec.

Yellow and certain shades of orange remind me of the Sun. The Sun is strong and basically impossible to ignore; diversity makes a community strong, and the diversity of the m-spec community is hard to ignore.

Purple: Represents the possibility of not being able to be attracted to all genders (while still being attracted to more than one), and the possibility of having fluid attraction.

Purple is the color of change. It's also used in flags such as toren and trixen (both m-spec orientations that don't include attraction to all genders), and its meaning in other flags is sometimes both binary genders/a combination of them (so: more than one gender, but just a few) or nonbinary people (so: a large group of genders, but not all).

I know that maybe not all nuances of m-spec identity are represented here, and they don't all have their own color, but I wanted to have something broader and more meaningful than "attraction to X, to Y and to Z", while still easy to memorize/draw/produce.

This flag was made by me (Aster), with input from other m-spec people at a Discord server.

A full version of this flag is here, and a more saturated version of it (for physical flags/merchandise, for instance) can be found here.

Feel free to spread it around!

[flower-petal-pansexual]

Dear omni people: may your nights be filled with unbridled warmth and dancing flower petals and your days be filled with the consuming sensations of long forgotten forest paths and sweet milk flowing through your veins 💖🖤💙

[flower-petal-pansexual]

Dear abro people: may your warm beverages always be made at the perfect sipping temperature and may every book you read always be a rich and beautiful experience 💚🤍❤️

[flower-petal-pansexual]

Dear mspec alterous people: may your days be filled with the whispers of the sun’s love towards you and may your nights be filled with the melodies of the moon’s hopes for your well-being. May the sky open up its infinite cosmos and pull the pain you feel into its black holes and your joy be multiplied by the stars 💜🤍💙💖

[flower-petal-pansexual]

wait, hang on, you identify as multisexual? /pos as in, like, no specific mspec label? could it also mean identifying a bit with each mspec label a bit? or identifying mostly with one but relating to others a bit too? and could it be used for alterous attraction too? because if so, then i may be thinking of changing my bi alterous label to something similar but else. /gen 💜💛💚🖤

Yes!! I go by panromantic and multisexual! You are right on a little bit of all of it. I used to identify as just bi but then I realized how much I related to so many different mspec labels. I relate to labels like bi, pan, omni, ply, homoflexible, heteroflexible, queer and those are just off the top of my head. I used to identify as bi because it is understood by a lot of the community as an umbrella term. However, it isn’t the best umbrella term because of its vast history and how people relate to it as with every word. The Trevor Project started using multisexual as the umbrella term for attraction to more than one gender so I think it is a great hope for the future for it to be well known within the community within due time. A good reference for my understanding of multisexual would be the comic of the youth with a lot of labels (pictured as flags) that continuously pile up and are harder to hold, but then the flags *poof* into the umbrella word queer and the person is happy. I relate to pan specifically a lot, but I enjoy the other labels and my most relatable is subject to change. I feel like I feel all of it or a lot of it on different levels and at different times. I would naturally think since multisexual can mean just sexual attraction or an umbrella for all possible variations of attraction related to more than one gender that you could use it as a term for yourself , if this is what you are referring to. And you could also use multialterous with no problem considering that is the specific word for alterous attraction to more than one gender. 😊 Thank you for asking! I’m happy to hopefully help you. You label yourself by what feels right💜💖🧡💛💚💙