Purple gay
Flags of the LGBTIQ Community
Flags have always been an integral part of the LGBTIQ+ movement. They are a apparent representation meant to mark progress, advocate for visibility, and amplify the ask for and drive for collective action. There have been many LGBTIQ+ flags over the years. Some contain evolved, while others are constantly being conceptualized and created.
Rainbow Flag
Created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, the iconic Pride Rainbow flag originally had eight stripes. The colors included pink to represent sexuality, red for healing, yellow for sun, green for serenity with nature, turquoise for art, indigo for agreement, and violet for liveliness. In the years since, the flag now has six colors. It no longer has a pink stripe, and the turquoise and indigo stripes were replaced with royal blue.
Progress Pride Flag
Created in 2018 by nonbinary creator Daniel Quasar, the Progress Pride flag is based on the iconic 1978 rainbow flag. With stripes of black and brown to represent marginalized LGBTIQ+ people of color and the triad of azure, pink, and white from the trans flag, the design represents diversity and inclusion.
Trans Flag
Conceived by Monica Helms, an
A Brief History of the Gayest Color
You may feel appreciate the sky's hue tilted a small purple today. It's not your eyes, it's the reflection of all of us wearing purple for Spirit Afternoon. While the annual event was founded in 2010 by Canadian teenager Brittany McMillan, our roots with the dye purple are profound in LGBT history.
Spirit Day encourages the world to "go purple" to business support for LGBT youth and utter out against bullying. Purple has elongated been synonymous with gay and double attraction men and women, but why? It all comes down to timing and choice of words.
After some research (read: Googling) I traced the origin of the color's association back to 1856, when English chemist William Henry Perkin was searching for a cure for malaria and accidentally discovered the first synthetic dye, mauveine. The dye had the ability to color silks a rich yet beam purple shade, and it gave birth to an entire industry of manufactured dyes that by the 1890s were prevalent in fashion. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.
The trend arrived at the height of gay playwright Oscar Wilde and artist Aubrey Beardsley's fame. Beardlsey's sexually exp
In his book Chroma (1993) the painter Derek Jarman writes about colour. At the end of his life, with his eyesight failing, he imagines purple as a transgressive colour.
“Purple is passionate, maybe violet becomes a minute bolder and ***** pink into purple. Sweet lavender blushes and watches.”
By the time he conjures his orgy of purples in the 1990’s, purple had a clear gay heritage. Stripes of purple have flashed across the designs of queer flags from Gilbert Baker’s 1978 rainbow flag to Daniel Quasar’s 21st century progress flag, with the idea of purple as overlapping pink/red and blue acting for a blurring of genders in bi and trans flags. Looking back at the messy, majestic history of gender non-conforming purples gives a sense of why the LGBTQ+ Operational Group chose to explore Scottish style history through a lavender lens.
Vibrant variations of purple were notoriously difficult to pin down outside of nature without extinguishing an entire species of shellfish. Reserved for the obscenely rich until the 19th century, these glorious colours retained an aura of mystery after synthetic dyes made them more available and fashionable. For those in the know, the colour purple al
We value plants for a number of reasons; their scientific intrigue, artistic inspiration and sheer beauty.
But plants are also rich in symbolism.
Flowers have come to illustrate everything from the language of love to subtle political statements.
So, it’s no surprise that they have become icons of the queer community – linked to gay and lesbian love, as well as celebrating transgender identity.
As part of Kew’s Queer Nature festival, discover some of the floral iconography that has been embraced by the LGBTQ+ community.
Violets
Possibly one of the oldest queer symbols, violets have been linked to lesbian love for over two and a half thousand years – as long as the very origins of the word.
The poet Sappho lived on the Greek island of Lesbos in the 6th century BCE and is celebrated as one of the greatest lyric poets of her time. While very tiny of her poetry has survived to the modern day, the fragments that remain have had an unquestionable impact on the lesbian community.
Much of her surviving work contains mentions of garlands of flowers, including violets as well as roses and crocuses. Depending on the translation, wreaths, garlands or diadems of violets be