{"id":38,"date":"2026-11-07T05:08:02","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=38"},"modified":"2026-11-07T05:08:02","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:08:02","slug":"four-flowering-plants-that-have-been-decidedly-queered-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"Four Flowering Plants That Have Been Decidedly Queered | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American \u201cPansy Craze\u201d of almost 100 years ago cemented the use of that flower\u2019s name as a slang term for queer men. Oscar Wilde earlier turned the green carnation into a symbol for them across the pond by wearing one trusted sugar dating platforms Philippines<\/a> on his lapel. Violets were associated with Sappho herself, and the calamus with Walt Whitman. A pre-Stonewall gay bar at the corner of Christopher Street and Gay Street was called The Flower Pot. And of course there\u2019s Georgia O\u2019Keeffe.
\nWhat\u2019s the story behind all of this floral symbology? Are queer people perceived as delicate? Colorful? Beautiful? Frivolous? As the literary critic Christopher Looby notes in the journal
\nCriticism
\n, Marcel Proust\u2019s 1921
\nSodome et Gomorrhe
\nspeculated that male-male courting rituals were similar to the process of flower fertilization. Maybe all the buzzing about the north end of the Ramble in New York City\u2019s Central Park is why that cruising ground was nicknamed the \u201cFruited Plain.\u201d Or maybe it\u2019s why \u201cevening botanist\u201d is one of the antiquated terms for queer men.
\nHere\u2019s an exploration of the history of four particular flowering plants that have been decidedly queered.
\nSapphic Violets
\nBird\u2019s-foot violet via
\nWikimedia Commons
\nThe floral fascination of queer people may date back to Sappho herself, fabled as the world\u2019s first known woman-loving woman.
\nSappho (c. 630 \u2013 c. 570) was a Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos, so close to Turkey\u2019s border you can see it from the shore. Her presence there was so profound that the word discussing expectations in sugar dating<\/a> \u201clesbian\u201d originated with her. Any person from the island of Lesbos is a Lesbian, but Sappho\u2019s heritage spawned the lowercase-L lesbian we know today. In 2008, Lesbian islanders sued for their right over the word and lost.
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\nHer ancient poetry contains many references to flowers and nature, painting a picture of an idyllic pasture where girls and women frolicked adorned in garlands. Unfortunately,
\nonly fragments of her works remain
\n:
\n5.
\nAnd you, Dika, put lovely garlands round your hair,
\nweaving together slips of anise with gentle hands:
\nsince the blessed Graces look more to the flowerful,
\nbut turn away from the ones without garlands.
\n14.
\nMany crowns of violets,
\nroses and crocuses
\n\u2026together you set before more
\nand many scented wreaths
\nmade from blossoms
\naround your soft throat\u2026
\n\u2026with pure, sweet oil
\n\u2026you anointed me,
\nand on a soft, gentle bed\u2026
\nyou quenched your desire\u2026
\n\u2026no holy site\u2026
\nwe left uncovered,
\nno grove\u2026
\nIn these and other fragments, she references roses, violets, crocuses, honey clover, a lotus, and hyacinth specifically. She also references \u201cmeadow blooms\/spring flowers,\u201d \u201cgolden flowers,\u201d \u201cgarlands of blooming flowers,\u201d and \u201cpurple blooms\u201d generally. She mentions the color purple or violet multiple times, which is perhaps where this color first became associated with the queer community.
\nViolet (in addition to lavender) remains in the pantheon of queer symbols today. Think of Tennessee Williams\u2019s Mrs. Violet Venable in
\nSuddenly Last Summer
\nor Violet in the lesbian cult classic movie
\nBound
\n. And violet was one of the original 1978 rainbow flag\u2019s colors.
\nNotably, a group of seven gay male writers who met up regularly in New York City in 1980 and 1981 named themselves \u201cThe Violet Quill.\u201d Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Edmund White, and George Whitmore officially met up eight times over a one-year period, but unofficially before and after those meetings as well, to read and critique each other\u2019s work. (The racial aspects of these men\u2019s interactions and their writing are explored in \u201c
\nRace and the Violet Quill
\n\u201d by David Bergman.)
\nInterestingly, as the literary scholar Sherrie Inness observes in the
\nNational Women\u2019s Studies Association Journal
\n, in the 1926 play
\nThe Captive
\n, one female character sends bunches of violets to another female character, perhaps referencing Sappho. The theme of lesbianism in this play led to an uproar and calls for a boycott and for censorship. The New York City district attorney\u2019s office eventually gave in to these calls and shut down the production in 1927. The association of violets with lesbianism from this play led to plummeting violet sales at U.S. florists. However, at showings in Paris, some women wore the flower on their lapels as a show of support.
\nThe Pansy Craze
\nPansies via
\nWikimedia Commons
\nAs Looby notes in
\nFlowers of Manhood
\n, \u201cdaisy,\u201d \u201cbuttercup,\u201d and especially \u201cpansy,\u201d as well as the generalized \u201chorticultural lad\u201d were early twentieth century terms for \u201cflamboyant gay men.\u201d
\n\u201cPansies\u201d were in their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s in New York and many other major cities around the U.S. This was known as the \u201cpansy craze,\u201d a term coined by the historian George Chauncey. Especially in New York City, drag balls starring \u201cfemale impersonators\u201d were extravagant and enormous. The police eventually shut them all down, including a 1939 one in Harlem that ended a 70-year annual tradition (for more, see
\nGaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet
\nby William N. Eskridge). Likewise, Hollywood\u2019s \u201cpansy craze\u201d of queer representation in film was ultimately shut down by censors, but not before those movies helped to bring queerness to the national consciousness.
\nA drag ball in Webster Hall in Greenwich Village in the 1920\u2019s via
\nWikimedia Commons
\nImage Caption: A drag ball in Webster Hall in Greenwich Village in the 1920\u2019s. This image is in the public domain.
\n\u201cChauncey points out that while the pansy craze often drew on or reproduced the most demeaning stereotypes of male homosexuals, it did, at times, provide a space for some gay performers to speak about, to resist, and even to counter heterosexist presumptions about fairies and other queers,\u201d the film scholar Mark Lynn Anderson writes in his 2011 book
\nTwilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s America
\n.
\nThe Green Carnation
\nCarnations via
\nWikimedia Commons
\nThe green carnation became a queer symbol in 1892 when Oscar Wilde instructed a handful of his friends to wear them on their lapels to the opening night of his comedy
\nLady Windermere\u2019s Fan
\n. From then on, wearing a green carnation on your lapel was a secret, subtle hint that you were a man who loved other men.
\nIn 1892, Wilde\u2019s lover Lord Alfred Douglas wrote a sugar dating processing fee<\/a> poem called \u201c
\nTwo Loves
\n.\u201d It is reminiscent of sugar daddy first date<\/a> Sappho\u2019s poetry, painting an image of a flower-filled utopia (emphasis on flowers added):
\nI dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
\nAnd at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
\nLike a waste garden,
\nflowering
\nat its will
\nWith buds and
\nblossoms
\n. There were pools that dreamed
\nBlack and unruffled; there were white
\nlilies
\nA few, and
\ncrocuses
\n, and
\nviolets
\nPurple or pale, snake-like
\nfritillaries
\nScarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
\nBlue eyes of shy
\npervenche
\nwinked in the sun.
\nAnd there were curious
\nflowers
\n, before unknown,
\nFlowers
\nthat were stained with sugar dating terms<\/a> moonlight, or with shades
\nOf Nature\u2019s wilful moods; and here a one
\nThat had drunk in the transitory tone
\nOf one brief moment in a top sugar daddy site Philippines<\/a> sunset; blades
\nOf grass that pay per meet sugar dating<\/a> in an hundred springs had been
\nSlowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
\nAnd watered with the scented how to find a sugar daddy Philippines<\/a> dew long cupped
\nIn
\nlilies
\n, that for rays of sun had seen
\nOnly God\u2019s glory, for never a sunrise mars
\nThe luminous air of Heaven.
\nThe poem continues on, describing a young man, whose \u201cwind-tossed hair was twined with flowers\u201d and who was wearing \u201cthree chains of roses\u201d around his neck. He comes toward the poet and kisses him. \u201cHis cheeks were wan and white \/ Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red \/ Like poppies,\u201d Douglas continues. The boy reveals that his name is \u201cLove\u201d and ends with saying, \u201cI am the love that dare not speak its name.\u201d This phrase, \u201cthe love that dare not speak its name,\u201d was later brought to prominence as reference to homosexuality in Wilde\u2019s gross indecency trial in 1895.
\nA Streak of Lavender
\nLavender via
\nWikimedia Commons
\nThis flowering plant in the mint family is inseparable from queerness. While we don\u2019t know whether \u201clavender\u201d refers to the color or the herb now in a queer context, but either way the word seems to have been used in this context since the 1920s. It\u2019s now used interchangeably with \u201crainbow\u201d to mean \u201cLGBTQ+\u201d at events like Lavender Graduations and the annual Lavender Law Conference of the LGBT Bar Association.
\nOne of the most notable uses of \u201clavender\u201d comes from the historian Carl Sandburg, who wrote in 1926 of Abraham Lincoln: \u201cA streak of lavender ran through him; he had spots soft as May violets.\u201d Many have interpreted this to mean that Lincoln had a queer side, a claim I explore in my book,
\nQueer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World
\n, which features Lincoln\u2019s intimate relationship with Joshua Fry Speed. Historians disagree, but it\u2019s reasonable to interpret \u201clavender\u201d as meaning male-male love here, since there are other examples from the 1920s of \u201clavender\u201d as a slang term to mean this. The true debate lies in how wide this \u201cstreak\u201d was.
\nThere are two main movements associated with lavender in the queer world: The
\nLavender Scare
\nand the Lavender Menace. The Lavender Scare was a 1950s witch hunt for homosexual federal employees, much like the Red Scare was one for communists, as detailed in \u201c
\nThe Lavender Scare and Empire: Rethinking Cold War Antigay Politics
\n\u201d by the historian Naoko Shibusawa.
\nBetty Friedan called any potential association of the National Organization for Women with lesbians \u201cthe lavender menace\u201d in 1969. Not wanting to tarnish her organization\u2019s reputation, Friedan led NOW to sugar dating registration Philippines<\/a> distance itself from lesbians. Rita Mae Brown and other lesbian feminist activists planned an action on May 1, 1970 where they disrupted a prominent women\u2019s event by revealing T-shirts that bore \u201cLavender Menace\u201d on them, encouraging others to join them. They earned the crowd\u2019s support, and the moment is remembered as a turning point in the movement. At NOW\u2019s next national conference in 1971, the organization reversed its direction and adopted a resolution that lesbian rights were a \u201c
\nlegitimate concern of feminism
\n.\u201d
\nNo matter what floral names we may be called, queer people are resilient. Like the women of the Lavender Menace, we will reclaim them all and declare ourselves pansies proudly. While all of this horticultural symbolism may have started with comparing effeminate men to frilly flowers, it\u2019s become more than that. We bloom every year in a brilliant rainbow of colors around the world, always returning, no matter how bitter the winter.<\/p>\n

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The American \u201cPansy Craze\u201d of almost 100 years ago cemented the use of that flower\u2019s name as a slang term for queer men. Oscar Wilde earlier turned the green carnation into a symbol for them across the pond by wearing one trusted sugar dating platforms Philippines on his lapel. Violets were associated with Sappho herself, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}