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. In fact, one scholar says these gay prisoners were the ‘lowest of the low’ in the hierarchy of the concentration camps. In Nazi Germany in the mid-1940s, gay prisoners in concentration camps were forced into wearing pink triangles as a badge of shame. Note: If someone has one of these tattoos, it does not mean they automatically identify with the explanations below 1. Here are the most common LGBTI-inspired tattoos and what it means to the people who got them. There are also examples of lesbians in the 1940s and 50s literally wearing their sexuality on their sleeve by getting a particular tattoo (but more on that later). He said: ‘I was overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of so many of these figures… as the impulse of many homosexuals to be considered more masculine – by the addition of a tattoo – grew stronger.’ Steward believes tattoos became a symbol of masculinity for gay men, closely tied with the gay leather community. He continued: ‘Following the national release of the movie The Wild One with Marlon Brando the original motorcycle film, it seemed to crystallize or release, the obscure and long-hidden feelings of many homosexuals.’
Steward said: ‘One change, however, came about in the homosexual attitude towards tattoos around 1954.’