“When you wake up, and you’re still sort of groggy and everything but you’re starting to think, and your mind is starting to fill with images - that’s when it came to me,” she said – every much a case of “divine intervention.” She said that the idea for the transgender flag came to her early one morning. Monica Helms, a transgender woman, and navy veteran, created the transgender flag in 1999. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be at birth.