Whether they display your name at work, identify your pronouns or show alignment to a political cause, wearing a badge is one of the most direct ways you can identify yourself.
In the rainbow community, wearing a badge is often one of the first baby steps people take in publicly marking their queerness. A tiny, but tangible way to display who you are to the world, even if you're still figuring that out. They tie you, or more accurately pin you, to an identity.
Badges of course, also have a long history and association with the wider protest movement, a landscape which encompasses the Pride movement itself. With their succinct and distinct messages conveying support for a cause, condemnation of abuses of all kinds and displays of intersectionality of all sorts, they are what Te Papa History curator Stephanie Gibson refers to as “tiny activism”. Her book Tiny Statements: A social history of Aotearoa New Zealand in badges, comes out in April.
Relatively affordable and easy to make, badges have been, and continue to be, deployed to show solidarity with activist causes big and small.
They're an important part of protest history. The Australian Museums Victoria has a Politics & Protest Badge Collection that houses over 1000 objects spanning the 20th century. Locally, Fiona Clark's Seen & Heard exhibit (on until February 23 at Studio One Toi Tū Gallery's K'Rd Pop Up) includes a large collection of badges, loaned from The Charlotte Museum, that document the past five decades of Pride. They read like a beautiful visual history of the rainbow cause of Aotearoa and the continually changing political landscape which Pride operates under.
“Come out, come out whoever you are,” implores one. “Abseil against Section 28,” reads another. There are badges commemorating events like Euro Pride '92, and also acting as public health campaigns: “Cum Clean Prevent Aids”.
Often balancing humour and the promotion of political progression – e.g “Closets are for clothes” – I often think of badges as akin to wearable bumper stickers. Just more useful to us queers because gays don't drive, d’uh! Their joyful tone and upbeat demeanour are representative of the Rainbow community’s continual ability to overcome adversity, find strength in community and humour in the horrible.
To pin a badge to your lapel is to nail one’s colours to the mast. Over time, as they accumulate, a collection of badges become a cohesive display of one’s political involvement, a charm bracelet for activists.
On Saturday, as thousands of people marched down Queen Street during the 2023 Auckland Pride March, which supported Intersex Aotearoa, badges were displayed proudly. Below, a selection of the colourful, political and comical badges we spotted. Amongst them displays of gender identity, decrees of dateability and support for the issues affecting our community in 2023.
