femme flagging

On femme flagging / nail flagging.

homosnacktualmafiaqilf:

So there are only a few colors I’ve seen so far that have concrete meanings.

Black - S/M

Red - Fisting

Dark blue - anal sex

Light blue - oral sex

Yellow - watersports

Green - prostitution

Purple - piercing

Gray - bondage

I would suggest the following:

Silver glitter = femme for other femmes

Dark red = bloodplay

Gold glitter on brown or black = poc for other poc

Any other suggestions / thoughts?

personally i really like silver glitter for femme for other femmes (partly because that’s what i happen to be rocking today) and a few others have bandied about dark red for menstruating.

check out the posts tagged “red” to see what other people have shared.

and these are the other posts about poc flagging for other poc.

Femme Flagging: Finger Meanings

ceepolk:

I have said before that I think that nail polish is such a great way to flag because many codes can intersect on the hands. Not just colours, but also handedness, the fingers that are flagged, symbols or figures on the nail, or glitter - it goes on and on.

But when I started thinking about the significance of which finger is used in flagging, I kept remembering palmistry.

A little background: when I was a child I was very intrigued with magic and the occult. I loved fairy tales and stories with magic in them, and I grew up in a house cluttered with many things: One of them was about twenty different issues of an old magazine called Man, Myth, and Magic. There were cartomancy decks, and a book about how to tell fortunes with playing cards, and books on graphology and palmistry. I read them voraciously.

Everyone knows about the lines on the hand and all that, but the fingers are also interpreted in palmistry. I might bounce all over the place but i’ll do my best to stay on track. i know that one of the main problems of finger meanings is that it assumes the presence of all fingers. I don’t think that I should be setting down any ideas for anyone who doesn’t have the expected number of fingers, so there is more than one problem with this system.

In palmistry the fingers are said to be ruled by planets in the astrological sense, and here’s a quick list:

little finger: Ruled by Mercury, the Messenger. rules communication. think of the characteristics of Gemini and Virgo, the third and sixth houses in astrology. Characterized as quick, sharp, intellectual, flexible. In palmistry the little finger is about the querent’s communication, about the stories they tell, about their themes. 

I can see the little finger being flagged to represent “looking to talk.” I can also see it flagging a particular fantasy or situation that gets you going. In general, a flag on the little finger could generally mean “It’s complicated” and give a sign that there needs to be communication and negotiation around what you’re flagging on your little Mercury finger.

Ring finger: ruled by the Sun, often called Apollo in older palmistry books. Rules identity and expression. think of the characteristics of Leo. A lot of folks will see this finger as an indicator for relationships because rings are often worn on this finger to show a married status. That’s not an invalid interpretation. I know some people don’t like it, and so I offer the Apollo finger as the signifier for identity. This finger generally means “I am” and so i can see this finger being a very standard finger for flagging. in fact, when I decided I needed to see what fingers people were flagging already, the third finger is the most popular finger for flagging by a mile.

Middle finger: ruled by Saturn, rules focus, discipline, and lifestyle. Think of the characteristics of Capricorn. This finger carries a message about authority, responsibility, and role, also boundaries and power. I think that makes the middle finger a good identifier for your lifestyle. The keyphrase for the Saturn finger could be “I practice” and that could be all sorts of things, from dietary style to relationship arrangements to physical discipline to power exchange.

Index finger: ruled by Jupiter, the planet of ambition, leadership, goals, pursuit, status, ideals. Jupiter rules Sagittarius (and before the adoption of Neptune by more modern astrologers, Pisces.) a good keyphrase for index finger flagging is “I want” and so index finger flagging could be about what you’re looking for right at that moment.

Thumb: doesn’t have a traditional planetary attachment. It’s also not really represented in the pictures people have posted of their nails. but in palmistry the thumb is based by the fleshy mount of Venus over the third phalange, supported by the field of mars on the thenar space between thumb and forefinger, and so i could make an argument for a flag on the thumb to be a message about sex drive, sexual expression, pleasure and passion. That any of the fingers can be flagged to communicate something about sex - or not, depending on the colour, pattern, or glittery top coat, flagging on the thumbs is specifically about sex.

That’s my starting point for talking about finger meanings. I think you can choose to mirror your flags exactly, so if you’re flagging on your pinky finger and your middle finger, you mirror that on both hands, so both hands have the same fingers painted the same way. If we want to get into handedness, I’m not fond of the left/right code being top/bottom and I’d rather see something more fluid. So what does it mean when you have a pinky finger on your dominant hand flagged and the middle finger on your non-dominant hand flagged? Well it might mean that you want to practice a specific thing, but you haven’t yet, and your pinky finger on your dominant hand could mean that you’re specifically looking for someone to talk to about it. So your dominant hand could flag things that you’re actively doing, and your non-dominant hand could show your potential without indicating experience. But that’s just one example and it is adapted from palmistry and even palm readers have different guidelines on what the left hand and the right hand mean. The combinations could get quite sophisticated, depending on what people who are actually femme flagging wind up deciding and adopting.

So there’s my initial thoughts about interpreting flags by finger meaning. Adopt, discuss, question, reflect.

rgr-pop:

What is the femme flag for “cis lady who paints her nails, mostly fucks and dates cis men, but would like to participate in queer culture publicly”?

Personally, I’m working on “will fight for bottom.”

Maybe, “I would rather be looking at my nails than having sex with you.”

I keep looking down at my left hand and smiling at my flagging manicure and I love that to the uninformed observer I look like some swoony straight girl cooing over an engagement ring when I’m really an undercover queerdo reveling in their subtle femme daddy signifying and how great this hunter green looks with my skintone

calumniae:

At its heart, femme flagging takes a technique used to decorate the body for public consumption and subverts it. So, yes, we need a way to flag “consent always” and that stands for “ask my consent always and I will always ask yours”. Because flagging itself is sometimes assumed to be consent just like the length of my skirt and the fact that I accidentally caught someone’s glance across a crowded dance floor are assumed to be consent. Because the femme body is simultaneously eroticized and made invisible in queer communities. It is a radical, brave act to name my desires on my hands and simultaneously signal that these desires are not open invitations.

Borrowing/adapting from Opinicus Rampant’s gender/body neutral hanky code: http://flaggingopinicusrampant.wordpress.com/about/

“Flagging is not consent.” Flagging means being comfortable with “being propositioned, being rejected, and having the capacity to reject.”

YES!