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.
