>
>Wikipedia:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansy
>
>"The word "pansy" has indicated an effeminate male since Elizabethan times
>and its usage as a disparaging term for a man or boy who is effeminate (as
>well as for an avowedly homosexual man) is still used."
oh. i think the misunderstanding lies in the fact that the conversation had turned specifically to usage of pansy to indicate gay man, which orginated in the 1920s/30s. I dropped the link but didn't quote. Here it is again:
http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/dont-let-the-pa.html
George Chauncey offers this etymology (of sorts) of the term pansy in his extraordinary book, Gay New York (1994), p. 15. Pansy was one of the "vernacular terms uses by 'normal' observers" (including "she-man," "nance," "sissy," and "fairy") to describe homosexual men. Chauncey writes: "In the 1920s and 1930s, especially, such men were also often called pansies, and the names of other flowers such as daisy and buttercup were applied so commonly to gay men that they were sometimes simply called 'horticultural lads.'"
my initial post was going to reflect on "built like a brick shithouse" which used to be applied to bodybuilding men, but is now applied to women. originally, applied to women it was an insult. but wiseguys turned it into an ironic complement. further, i learned that, at one time, bodybuilding men were considered kinda eeeuuu because "real" men didn't concern themselves with their physique. excessive focus on the body was seen as obsessive and dangerous, not quite right, and shunned
(can't find the article on the changing image of bodybuilders and class at the moment though.)