Hark! What is that sweet symphony? No, it isn’t the intro to Lily Allen’s Pussy Palace; it’s a charming tinkling, a crisp little clatter. Keys rattling against each other as they swing and hit a jeaned thigh. Catching the sunlight like a glittering sign: A dyke is approaching! But alas, this is no lesbian, perhaps it’s a straight girl? Oh, never mind it’s her cis, straight boyfriend. This sound used to be a war horn for self-determined gender liberation and soon became an enticing little house bell so lesbians knew where their community was. A jingle that said: I’m here, I’m queer, and I’ll have that shelf up in no time, darlin’. 

The nostalgic urge to accessorise with shiny, dangly things has taken the fashion world by storm. It’s yanked the carabiner away from its history onto the belt loops of people who don’t even know what the term flagging means. For decades the carabiner has been used by queer women and gender-nonconforming people to flag their sexuality and sexual preferences without uttering a word. You’d hear it clattering from a mile away, spot it sparkling on a belt loop and feel elation wash over you, thinking: “Ah-ha! you’re one of us,” But now, in the gruelling chaos of the fashion-cycle, every man and his Carhartt jeans has one. Along with the girls experiencing “first-time cool” syndrome and those who say that they or their boyfriends are “spiritually a lesbian”. These days, flirting in Dalston Superstore is like figuring out the L Word dating chart. You see a carabiner, you make your move. Her response? A blank stare and a pre-programmed, “I’ve got a boyfriend” that leaves you feeling humiliated as you have to jangle away in shame. 

The carabiner hasn’t always been an indicator of queerness. It began its life as a practical climbing and industrial tool, built for labour rather than signalling desire. However, during World War Two, women took over the factories, clipping their keys and tools to their belt loops, and literally held the infrastructure of daily life together. This blue-collar convenience would later be associated with butch and masc lesbian aesthetics, transforming utility into a quiet form of flagging. Now, if you’ve recently clipped a carabiner to your belt loop and felt a mysterious change in the atmosphere, welcome. Let’s talk about flagging. Flagging is a way of communicating desire, identity, and sexual preference without saying anything at all. Long before the commodification of queer culture that squished us into categories and tried to make queerness legible only on straight terms, queer people relied on clothes, accessories, and haircuts (see: undercuts) to find each other in public. A system of signals that only worked if you were paying attention to the right things. By the 1970s, as women fought against their shove back into domesticity and for their right to work, the carabiner became a symbol of self-reliance and feminist graft. Keeping your keys clipped to your hip was more than convenience, it was refusal: a rejection of handbags, co-dependence, and pretending cis, straight men are a universal requirement. As more lesbians polished off their tiny metal clips, the carabiner became a small act of feminist resistance. Now don’t panic, what I’m about to say isn’t queer gospel but some people do abide by this rule: left means you’re a top, right means you’re a bottom, which side you wear your carabiner on can be a quiet exchange of information that collapses awkward conversations into a quick glance. The problem is that this only works when the code stays coded. The carabiner has gone mainstream and without its legacy our quiet tool for connection has become a minefield of crossed wires and misplaced confidence. Suddenly, the carabiner is an autumn essential, an extra ‘accessory’ going hand in hand with Birkenstocks and thumb rings. Which is FINE! Nobody owns the concept of clipping your keys onto your trousers. But it’s hard not to feel a tiny sting when something that used to be a low-stakes lesbian signal starts doing the rounds as the latest micro-trend. Hellooo?? We did it first, what’s a girl (gender neutch) got to do to get some recognition around here? Flagging doesn’t work when everyone is waving shit around willy-nilly. When the context disappears and lesbian history continues to be erased, the whole thing gets confusing like that one homoerotic friendship you have. They’re still my friend. We just kiss sometimes. And I’m in love with them. Jeez. Still the carabiner is stubborn. It survives trend cycles because it wasn’t born from one. It came from busy, working hands, independence and queer survival; the need to find each other in a world that wasn’t built for us. 

So if you’re wearing a carabiner, great. Wear it loudly. Wear it mindfully. Wear it with the knowledge that it’s more than just a cool trinket. And if your “spiritually lesbian” boyfriend dons the humble carabiner, let me ask you this: is he at least a feminist, or just wearing the look and missing the point? The carabiner isn’t just holding your keys, sweetheart. It’s holding a legacy. Because the smallest objects carry the biggest stories and this one deserves to be worn with a little more respect.