On these pages, we will bring you fun facts, interesting information, and seasonal somethings to brighten your day, spark your curiosity, and keep you entertained all year round!
Informational Specials
Spring 2024
- Sappho was a Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos during the years c. 630 - c. 570. While most of her work has been lost, she is best known for her love poems, particularly addressing women, in which she explored themes of desire, passion, and beauty. In her poems, she often used flowers, including violets, as a symbol of love and desire.
- In the 1926 play The Captive, a female character sends bunches of violets to another female character, possibly as a reference to Sappho. The queer themes of the play led to calls for a boycott and for censorship. A year after opening, the NYC district attorney’s office gave in to these calls and shut the production down. Sales of the flower plummeted in the US after violets were associated with lesbianism, however, at showings of The Captive in Paris, some women wore the flower on their lapels as a show of support.
- In France in the early 1990s, poet Renée Vivien, romanticized the flower in A Crown of Violets. Her usage of violets were not only inspired by Sappho but also by her lover Violet Shillito.
- Sappho was a Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos during the years c. 630 - c. 570. While most of her work has been lost, she is best known for her love poems, particularly addressing women, in which she explored themes of desire, passion, and beauty. In her poems, she often used flowers, including violets, as a symbol of love and desire.
- At the turn of the 20th century, “pansy” was one of many code words for gay men, along with “daisy,” “buttercup,” and the vague, yet elegant-sounding “horticultural lad.”
- In the 1920s, drag performers, occasionally called “pansy performers” due to their brightly colored clothing, helped popularize gay-friendly bars, clubs, and masquerade balls in major cities (a trend that, in 1994, historian George Chauncey called “the Pansy Craze”). Eventually, the police shut them down, including a ball in Harlem that had been an annual event for 70 years.
- On the opening night of his comedy Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1892, Oscar Wilde asked the actors and some of his friends to wear green carnations on their lapels. This solidified the secret symbology of wearing a green carnation on your lapel to indicate that you were a man who loved other men.
- The Green Carnation, written in 1984 by Robert Hichens, was a fictionalized retelling of Oscar Wilde and his real-life relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.
- In order to create its green hue, carnations were originally watered with arsenic.
- In 1960, Peter Finch played Oscar Wilde in the British film The Trials of Oscar Wilde, based on the libel and criminal cases involving Wilde. Due to confusion caused by an American movie that was produced at about the same time called Oscar Wilde, the film was released as The Green Carnation. It was well received and, among other awards, won the Best English-Language Foreign Film category of the Golden Globe Awards, and Finch won Best British Actor at the British Academy Film Awards.
- Towards the end of the 19th century, lavender tended to be linked to effeminacy. At the time, it was a fashionable color in Europe and lavender became synonymous with an appreciation for art and beauty which, according to some, was seen as unmanly.
- An interesting use of lavender as a term came in 1926 from the historian Carl Sandburg, who wrote of Abraham Lincoln: “A streak of lavender ran through him; he had spots soft as May violets.” Many have interpreted this to mean that Lincoln had a queer side, using Lincoln’s intimate relationship with Joshua Fry Speed as proof. While some historians disagree with this characterization of Lincoln and what Sandburg meant by the phrase there are many other examples from the 1920s of "a streak of lavender" as a slang term to mean male-male love.
- In 1950, the federal government launched an investigation for homosexual federal employees. This was dubbed “The Lavender Scare”, a nomenclature spin on the Red Scare (hunt for communists) in America that was happening at about the same time.
- In 1969, American feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan, leader of the National Organization for Women, criticized lesbian members of the NOW and called this imagined threat “the lavender menace.” Friedan directed the NOW to distance itself from lesbians, not wanting to “tarnish” her organization’s reputation. On May 1, 1970, Rita Mae Brown and other lesbian feminist activists disrupted a prominent women’s event by wearing T-shirts that bore “Lavender Menace” on them, and encouraged others present to join them. This earned the crowd’s support, and the disruption is remembered as a turning point in the feminist movement. At the next national conference for the NOW in 1971, the organization reversed its direction and adopted a resolution that lesbian rights were a “legitimate concern of feminism.”
- Lavender marriages, best known among celebrities during the mid-20th century, were unions in which one (or both) partners of the couple were gay. These marriages were often encouraged by Hollywood studio executives in order to fulfill “morality clauses” in the contracts of Hollywood actors. A few notable lavender marriages are:
- Janet Gaynor, Hollywood actress, married costume designer Adrian in 1939 and had a son together. It was assumed that their relationship had been mandated by the studios, as Gaynor was rumored to be bisexual and Adrian was openly gay within the Hollywood community. After Adrian’s death in 1959, Gaynor married producer Paul Gregory. They were close friends with Mary Martin and her husband Richard Halliday. Martin was a Broadway actress and rumored to be bisexual, and Halliday was a drama critic who was a closeted gay man. For several years, the four of them lived together on Martin's ranch in Brazil.
- In 1955, Rock Hudson married Phyllis Gates. The rumor is that Hudson was in the office of his agent, Henry Willson, and both were concerned about rumors that Confidential magazine was going to out Hudson as a gay man. Willson opened the office door, pointed to Gates, who was Willson's secretary, and ordered Hudson to marry her.
- The rose has been used around the world as a symbol of love, and that includes queer love. The rose was the flower of Eros, the Greco-Roman god of passion and erotic love.
- According to the book Homosexuality and Manliness in Postwar Japan, the link between gay men and roses in Japan dates back to the 1960s. The association was started by a collection of homoerotic photography called Bara Kei, loosely translated as Ordeal of the Roses.
- First printed in 1971, the first commercially produced gay magazine in Japan was called Barazoku, meaning “rose tribe.” Bara has since become a colloquialism for a genre of manga written for and by gay and bi men.
- Roses, traditionally associated with mourning, intersect with the disproportionate rates of violence against transgender individuals. In response, the phrase "give us our roses while we are still here" has been embraced by the trans community, reclaiming the symbolism of roses to celebrate life's beauty and affirm the value of transgender lives.
- Although tie-dye roses were originally associated with Woodstock and the peace and love movement of the 1960s, these flowers have become an iconic symbol for the queer community. Not only for their rainbow petals, but also because like people, the flowers are bright, beautiful, and no two are alike.
- Photographer Kristin Cofer created The Rose Project, “...a deeply personal portrait project dedicated to the beautiful trans, gay, queer and non-binary community.” It’s a stunning set of work and we encourage everyone to take a look: The Rose Project.
- In Japanese, the word “lily” translates to yuri, which is a popular genre of manga, and lilies are often used to show sapphic attraction.
- In Japan, the word yuri is often used instead of lesbian, to give a softer meaning with more emphasis on emotional connection rather than carnal desire. Originally coined in the 1970s by the magazine Barazoku (mentioned above in the discussion on roses), the word yuri is short for yurizoku, or “Lily Tribe,” which was a section where the magazine published letters from women readers.
- Did you know? Lily Gladstone, star of 2023’s Killer of the Flower Moon, uses she/they pronouns. “My pronoun use is partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself,” they said in an interview with People Magazine.
- In Greek mythology, Hyacinthus was a Spartan prince that had drawn the attention of the god Apollo. Apollo was so in love with Hyacinthus, he abandoned his sanctuary in Delphi to enjoy Hyacinthus' company by the river Eurotas. Apollo taught Hyacinthus to use the bow, to play the lyre, the art of prophecy, and exercises in the gymnasium. When Apollo was teaching Hyacinthus the game of quoits, they decided to have a friendly competition by taking turns to throw the discus. Apollo went first, and, being a god, threw the discus with such a great strength that it split the clouds in the sky. Hyacinthus ran behind the discus, eager to catch it. But, the discus bounced back when it hit the ground, hitting him in the head and fatally wounding him. Apollo tried to use all sorts of herbs and even ambrosia to heal Hyacinthus' wound, but because it was a wound inflicted by the Fates, it could not be healed, and Hyacinthus died. Apollo wept for his lover’s death and created a flower from Hyacinthus' spilled blood.
- Operation Hyacinth was Polish secret action carried out in 1985-1987 to create a national database of Polish queer people and those associated with them. Publicly, the propaganda stated the reason for this operation was to control homosexual criminal gangs, fight prostitution, and control the spread of HIV. However, it was mostly used to gather compromising evidence that would later be used to blackmail some of the 11,000 people that had been registered. There is also speculation that the registration was, in part, aimed at combating anti-communist organizers.
- While not as widely recognized or historically significant as some other symbols, hyacinths have been embraced for their beauty and symbolism of transformation and renewal, reflecting aspects of transgender and non-binary experiences within the community.
- In Greek mythology, Hyacinthus was a Spartan prince that had drawn the attention of the god Apollo. Apollo was so in love with Hyacinthus, he abandoned his sanctuary in Delphi to enjoy Hyacinthus' company by the river Eurotas. Apollo taught Hyacinthus to use the bow, to play the lyre, the art of prophecy, and exercises in the gymnasium. When Apollo was teaching Hyacinthus the game of quoits, they decided to have a friendly competition by taking turns to throw the discus. Apollo went first, and, being a god, threw the discus with such a great strength that it split the clouds in the sky. Hyacinthus ran behind the discus, eager to catch it. But, the discus bounced back when it hit the ground, hitting him in the head and fatally wounding him. Apollo tried to use all sorts of herbs and even ambrosia to heal Hyacinthus' wound, but because it was a wound inflicted by the Fates, it could not be healed, and Hyacinthus died. Apollo wept for his lover’s death and created a flower from Hyacinthus' spilled blood.
- Sources:
- www.daily.jstor.org/four-flowering-plants-decidedly-queered/
- www.cnn.com/2023/06/25/us/flowers-lgbtq-lavender-meaning-cec/index.html
- www.grunge.com/879277/the-symbolism-behind-flowers-in-lgbtq-history/
- www.unicornzine.com/issue-005/your-garden-is-a-lot-more-queer-than-you-think/
- www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trials_of_Oscar_Wilde
- www.flowerpowerdaily.com/six-flowers-that-define-lgbtq-movement-in-history/
- www.people.com/why-lily-gladstone-uses-both-she-and-they-pronouns-exclusive-8419312
- www.lithub.com/how-oscar-wilde-created-a-queer-mysterious-symbol-in-green-carnations/
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