Flagging

What is flagging?

Flagging means wearing your role or preference where it can be seen, without saying a word about it. A colored handkerchief in your back pocket, keys on a belt loop, a particular side of your hip, or these days an icon on your profile. The color or the object names the act, the side names the role: left is giving or dominant, right is receiving.

How flagging works in practice

Flagging works in a single glance. You see something, and you know enough to start a conversation or to walk on.

The classic form was captured on film. In 1977 in San Francisco, Hal Fischer made the series Gay Semiotics, a photographic study of the signs gay men used to read each other. According to the feature in Aperture, Fischer broke down “the significance of colored bandanas worn in jeans pockets, as well as how the placement of keys and earrings might telegraph passive or active roles.” A bunch of keys on the left or the right, a handkerchief in one back pocket or the other: that was the language.

Fischer named the weak spot right away, and it still holds. Janitors and tradesmen carry keys too, with nothing sexual meant by it. A signal only works when both people know the same code.

Where flagging comes from

Flagging comes from a time when asking out loud was not an option. In the American gay and leather scene of the seventies, being visible was dangerous, and a quiet code solved that. You showed what you were after to anyone who knew the code, and everyone else saw nothing unusual.

The best-known branch is the hanky code. According to the encyclopedia entry on the handkerchief code, the system is also called flagging, and a joke in the Village Voice around 1970 got it started. Instead of only wearing a bunch of keys on the left or the right, you could use different colored handkerchiefs to signal your preference more precisely. So keys came before the handkerchiefs. The handkerchief only made it more fine-grained.

Why people flagged, and still do

The appeal is ease without losing face. You don’t have to be the first to say something that can be turned down. You show it, the other person reads it, and only when there’s a click does the conversation start.

What it gave back depends on the person. For anyone doing the looking, flagging saved dozens of awkward opening lines. One glance and you knew whether it was worth it. For anyone being approached, it gave control, because you chose what you showed and what you kept back. And for a whole scene, it kept alive a language that was safer than talking out loud in a time when that wasn’t possible.

Today the logic lives on online. The Dutch fashion-heritage platform Modemuze writes that the hanky code is no longer really in use and has been replaced by dating apps like Grindr. The little flags, icons and preference lists on a profile do exactly what the handkerchief did: show what you’re after before you say anything.

A signal opens a door, nothing more. Anyone who sees an icon and thinks consent has already been given skips the most important part. The conversation after it is not a formality.

What flagging is not

“Flagging and the hanky code are the same thing.” Not quite. The hanky code is the best-known form of flagging, but flagging is broader: keys, a belt loop, a particular side of your body and now a profile icon all fall under it too.

“If you flag, you’re saying yes.” No. A signal shows what someone is after, not that they want you. The side, left or right, says something about the role, dominant or receiving, and everything else is still open to discussion.

“Everyone reads it the same way.” The code differs by place and by era, and outside the scene a yellow handkerchief just means a yellow handkerchief. Flagging only works between people who speak the same language.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. I almost never come across pure hanky-code handkerchiefs in the Netherlands anymore, but the need underneath them comes back in almost every first conversation: letting someone know what you’re after without having to say it out loud.

These days women fill in a list, or tick a box next to a preference. That’s flagging in a new coat. What I see is that filling it in comes easier than saying it, and that’s exactly what the code was invented for. The danger has stayed the same: a ticked box feels like an agreement, when it’s a beginning.

What you can do yourself

• Read a signal as an invitation to a conversation, not as a green light. Ask what someone means by it before you assume anything.
• Know the code before you wear it. A color or a side worn wrong sends a signal you didn’t mean.
• Use a profile list to open the conversation, and still treat what you filled in as open to discussion afterward.
• Assume the other person knows a different code than you. Outside a fixed scene, the meaning drifts apart fast.

More about flagging

On this site the best-known form is worked out on the hanky code page, and the same handkerchief under its fuller name on the handkerchief code page.

Off this site, Hal Fischer’s series Gay Semiotics gives the best picture of what the signs looked like in 1977, and the encyclopedia entry on the handkerchief code describes the colors and their history.

Where this fits on this site

If you find it easier to fill in a list than to say something out loud, that’s exactly how it works for a first date. The BDSM date page shows how such an evening is prepared and how we go through beforehand what you do and don’t want, so that what you filled in actually gets talked through.

Sources

• Gay Semiotics Revisited. Julia Bryan-Wilson, Aperture, 2021. Provides the description of Hal Fischer’s 1977 photographic study Gay Semiotics, which broke down the meaning of colored handkerchiefs in trouser pockets and showed how the placement of keys and earrings could signal a passive or active role.
• Handkerchief code. Wikipedia. Provides the point that the system is also called flagging, that a handkerchief on the left signals a top and on the right a bottom, and the origin around 1970 in New York where the bunch of keys came before the first colored handkerchiefs.
• Een geheime taal: de Hanky Code. Pieter Eckhardt, Modemuze, 2021. Provides the point that the hanky code is no longer really in use today and has been replaced by digital communication through dating apps like Grindr.

Related terms

• Hanky code. The best-known form of flagging, with the colors and what they mean.
• Handkerchief code. The fuller name for that same colored handkerchief.
• Scene. The wider community where a signal only works if you know the code.
• Dominant. The role the left side signals, opposite the receiving right side.