The rainbow flag has become the easily-recognized colors of pride for the gay community. The multicultural symbolism of the rainbow is nothing new — Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition also embraces the rainbow as a symbol of that political movement. The rainbow also plays a part in many myths and stories related to gender and sexuality issues in Greek, Native American, African, and other cultures.
Use of the rainbow flag by the gay community began in 1978 when it first appeared in the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade. Borrowing symbolism from the hippie movement and black civil rights groups, San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow flag in response to a need for a symbol that could be used year after year. Baker and thirty volunteers hand-stitched and hand-dyed two huge prototype flags for the parade. The flags had eight stripes, each color representing a component of the community: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit.
The rainbow flag has inspired a wide variety of related symbols, such as freedom rings and other accessories. There are plenty of variations of the flag, including versions with a blue field of stars reminiscent of the American Stars and Stripes and versions with superimposed lambdas, pink triangles, or other symbols.
According to the “Butterflies” chapter in Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul, whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you.
The Blue Butterfly is an ode to life, at its most beautiful and terrifying, fragile andpowerful, fleeting and eternal, magic and realistic.
The street term for homosexual in Mexico is "Mariposa", meaning butterfly in Spanish. The stereotyped image of a homosexual is that of an effeminate male who tends to keep up his appearance and leads an active social life composed of many appearances at bars and parties. Homosexuals may be called "Mariposas" because of their associations with butterflies symbolizing femininity, the lepidopteral symbol of "social butterfly", and butterfly's habit of "flitting" from flower to flower. In America, the term "Flit" has been commonly used as a synonym for homosexual. I wonder if there is an association with "flamer," another American synonym for homosexuality and the lepidopteral symbolism for flame.
2006-12-15 18:44:26
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answer #2
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answered by Orditz 3
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