By Cindy Koy © 2007
There was once a time when a rainbow meant leprechauns danced around a pot of gold in a land that lay just beyond the horizon. Today, the rainbow has taken on a more personal meaning. It might say more than you would have ever thought about a person. Displaying a rainbow on your car, your backpack, or your jacket or in your window might determine how another person views you without their ever having spoken to you.
A few years ago, I was having dinner with some friends I made at university. We were talking about what we look for when deciding what people we were going to start conversations with and the first impressions we had of each other.
I said that when I am nervous about starting a conversation with people in my class, I tend to look for signs that tell me a person is an accepting individual. Generally, if I see a person with rainbow buttons or ribbons, I know it means she or he is supportive of LGBT issues and is probably progressive in other ways that interest me, such as being supportive of women’s rights and being against discrimination (based on class, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion). Since I am a Cambodian-Chinese American girl whose family doesn't have very much money, I want to meet and talk to people who won’t exclude me or look down on me because of my ethnicity or my economic status or because I am a girl (who acts a bit like a boy).
My college friends recalled seeing me for the first time and looking at the different buttons displayed on my backpack.
Friend A: You had that rainbow flag on your backpack and I remember wondering if you had it because you were gay or if you were just an ally.
Friend B: Yeah, I remember thinking it was weird that you had it because I knew you liked guys.
Me: Really? I don’t think it’s that noticeable.
Friend A: Oh definitely. It was the first thing I noticed when you walked into class.
It’s small, maybe only two inches long, this rainbow ribbon everyone seemed to be talking about and wondering at the time how it could have related to my identity as a person. It had been on my backpack for five years at that point. I had nearly forgotten its existence, and here people were, deciding who I was based on what they saw of me and a ribbon the size of my thumb that I had pinned onto my backpack.
The original rainbow ribbon on my aged backpack from high school
It made me think about why I put it there in the first place, what it meant to me, what I wanted it to say about me.
When I was in high school, a boy came out by coming to school one day in drag. From then on, Jon was only ever seen in what others would call “girl’s clothes,” makeup, and (many times) a wig. He was gay, and he just happened to like wearing women’s clothes. He was instantly the talk of the school.
Later, he became a very good friend of mine.
He started being vocal about strengthening the Gay/Straight Alliance group at school. Although he never really complained about being harassed, my friends and I knew that he must have been dealing with a lot because we always overheard people talking about him, or caught them looking at him strangely.
My friends and I felt very strongly about showing everyone where we stood on this issue. We were in the honors classes and had some influence not only with the teachers, but with our peers and the underclassmen that looked up to us. So we chose to stand by our friend and proudly pinned rainbow ribbons to our backpacks. We talked back to teachers who questioned his right to be in the girls’ bathroom. We defended him to people who said nasty things about him, people who didn’t even know him, just because he was a boy who dressed like a girl (and who also happened to like other boys).
My high school friend, Jonathan Mullan, and I on a beautiful autumn day. He no longer “dresses up” on a daily basis, but is still proudly gay. I am still proudly his friend.
I made a sign that I pinned alongside my rainbow ribbon. It read: GAY PRIDE, STRAIGHT PRIDE: Can’t we all just get along?
Looking back, I wish I had made an even stronger statement. “Getting along” is fine: it involves not fighting and not being mean to each other’s faces, but it doesn’t mean accepting people for who they are. It doesn’t mean trying to get to know someone you do not understand. When your parents tell you to “get along with your little sister” or that “you and your brother should just get along,” you know that “being nice” and “not being mean” are not the same thing. So when I think back on the sign I made, I wish I had thought of something that said more than just “get along.” Still, at the time, I wasn’t sure what else I could do.
To me, the rainbow ribbon meant that I was telling the world that I stood beside my friend and was ready to defend him. It meant that I wouldn’t make a negative judgment about a person because of whom they liked or what kind of clothes they wore.
Curious as to where its true origins lay, I decided I wanted to learn about how the rainbow became an important LGBT symbol of today.
The rainbow flag was first created in 1978 by a man named Gilbert Baker in support of the gay rights movement. He had hand-sewn an eight-striped multicolored flag chosen for what it meant:
“We picked something from nature to represent us. The rainbow is the most beautiful thing in nature, it represents the covenant between God and every living creature. It’s incredible because it is the magic that only comes from nature, and that’s what we are, Magic from nature.” (Gilbert Baker quoted by Ken Ludden in San Francisco Spectrum 3, no. 2 [2000])
Every color had a meaning: hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for serenity with nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. However, when it came time to mass-produce the flag, it was discovered that hot pink was not an available color. The flag was then reduced to seven stripes.
When the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade came nearer that same year, it was decided that the rainbow colors should be split for the marchthree colors on each side of the streetso turquoise was cut. This was to become the six-striped rainbow symbol that we see today.
The rainbow means many different things to different people. For some, it is about pride in surviving in an unkind world being who they are. It represents hope for equality and LGBT rights. It embraces diversity in people from all types of backgrounds: cultural, religious, linguistic. It is a symbol of LGBT liberation, freedom, and human rights. It is a celebration of peace and harmony for all people.
When you see a rainbow flag or a rainbow ribbon, what do you think of? What does the rainbow mean to you?
For me, it means not forgetting that the struggle to be accepted as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, polysexual, omnisexual, pansexual, intersex, or even feminist is not over. People struggle everyday to be accepted for who they are for more reasons than I can list. When I look at rainbow stickers, I remember that I can’t stop trying to make people feel welcome. I can’t stop keeping my mind and my heart open. There is a lot of hate in this world, and I do not want to be part of what makes living painful for others. Instead, I want to make life ten times more fun for everyone!
Special Thanks: Ken Ludden for a very helpful article about the flag and Gilbert Baker.
365gay for a condensed history of creation and what the flag symbolizes.
Jean Tretter and the Tretter Collection located in the University of Minnesota’s Library of Special Collections and Rare Books.
Cindy Koy is currently a student at the University of Minnesota double-majoring in English and Gender, Women and Sexualities Studies with a minor in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. As of Fall 2007, she is in her fourth year and plans to spend at least an extra year as an undergrad in preparation for graduate school (yes, she likes school, even when it makes her want to cry). She loves writing, singing, acting, drawing, sewing, wrestling, and reading novels, comic books, or theory. She enjoys just about anything that involves a creative process (and no, she doesn’t promise that she is good at any of these). Her goal is to become a high school English teacher and help others become as passionate as she is about life.
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