[lbo-talk] pansy power

[shag carpet bomb]

from reading around, I suspect that the use of flowers to symbolize an 
effeminate man may have simply been a way of associating something 
considered feminine (flowers in general) with an effeminate man, and 
probably having little to do with the pansy as symbol of thought, thinking. 
I still don't have much of a clue as to the claim about pansy meaning 
effeminate man during Elizabethan times, but it sure seems the case that, 
since the late 1800s, the use of the word pansy (and flowers more 
generally) to symbolize gay men by equating them with the feminine was the 
dominate meaning, and it had little to do with associating gayness and/or 
effeminancy with thought, thinking. Consider the following:

 From

Gay Histories and Cultures b

y George E. Haggerty

http://books.google.com/books?id=L9Mj7oHEwVoC&pg=PA332&lpg=PA332&dq=pansy+%22effeminate+man%22&source=bl&ots=cbpv047RZm&sig=mC2R6Nn7KU--6VflhwdtjU9GgCM&hl=en&ei=pY-qSYTuCpDQnQe6uaTnDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA332,M1

 From Gay New York (which has been on my to read list for years now. from 
skimming, I need to move it up to the top since he explores the prewar era 
in which gay and straight had not yet been turned into an absolute binary 
opposition as they are today. Better yet, he discusses differences between 
bourgeois and working class public sexual cultures that are illuminating.

This is something we've often brought up at LBO, to the shock and horror of 
folks here, but Chauncey gives concrete ethnographic and historical details 
to support Foucault's thesis. Just read his introduction for a basic 
synopsis of the argument and select illustrations)
Once you get to the URL below, search on pansy.
http://books.google.com/books?id=NNHGuVdPELYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Gay+New+York

Not really sure about the reliability of this one, but Herbst's discussion 
of the use of flowers to represent gender is interesting, though it does 
not illuminate much about the use of pansy or heartsease in Elizabethan times:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8rgUeEpWfbsC&pg=PA103&dq=Wimmin,+Wimps+%26+Wallflowers+pansy