“It Was Like a Rainbow”

ep1_qec.mp3

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What does queer mean?

Hello and welcome to episode one round three of Queer Enough Club.

I'm Gretta, or G, and I'm the creator and host.

This show is born for my own experiences of not feeling queer enough.

I didn't come out until my late 20s and to this day,

th,: 2025

but I know who I am and every day I remind myself that I belong and some days I believe myself and sometimes I don't.

But that's that's kind of where we're at is I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Now of course anyone is welcome to tune into the show,

but it may feel entry level for some people.

The goal is really for this to be a queer primer, queer 101,

the basics, some day I'm sure I'll run out of topics and we'll get to be a little more creative,

but honestly, there's so much to know and even in writing the first couple of episodes,

we're not going to run out of content any time soon.

So for now, this will be a weekly podcast and it's got three segments.

We're going to start every episode with a queer definition from the Queen's English,

which is a book that I found at Barnes and Noble randomly one day,

and it's actually what kick started the podcast.

Then we're going to dive into like a main topic, right?

That's going to be a deep dive and then I'm going to end every episode with something called last call.

That's going to be kind of a short fun tidbit.

And lastly, before we start into this episode, I really do want to say,

if you listen before and you came back despite my starts and steps, I really do thank you.

This is kind of shifted from being a passion project that I wanted to do is I had time to something

that I would really like to pursue and really make this a community that we can all be a part of.

And so I'm taking it very seriously this time around and I just want to say thank you for giving it another try.

Queer definitions are randomly pulled from the Queen's English,

the LGBTQIA+ dictionary of Lingo and colloquial phrases by Chloe O. Davis.

The word we randomly flip to today is fruit, which is a noun.

This word is used to refer to a gay man,

but it can be used to identify a lesbian, bisexual, transgender and/or other queer individuals.

The terms fruit cake and fruit basket can also be used related, fruity, adjective.

The use case example, Sebastian says,

"Fruits come in all different shapes and sizes."

Anna says, "Yeah, no two are exactly alike."

And then there was a usage note that says,

"The term fruit originated as a derogatory slur for a homosexual man, but has been reclaimed by some of the LGBTQIA+ community."

It may still have negative connotations for some people, so just be mindful of how you're using it.

Today we're going to talk about the rainbow.

How did it become the universal indicator of queers around the globe?

While looking into this history, I found myself getting really emotional.

I still haven't pinpointed why that is exactly, but I did find myself tearing up multiple times throughout the research.

I don't know if it's really that realizing that it wasn't that long ago in history that the rainbow flag came about,

or knowing that I could have met Gilbert Breaker at some point in time.

It's just a lot to think about.

And as somebody who, I don't think you can see it in the video, but I do keep a pride flag up behind me.

Like many of us, it's just kind of become a sign that somebody might feel safer to be around the others.

lag was Gilbert Baker back in: 1978

He was a Vietnam War veteran and openly gay man, Annie Dragquin.

According to Patanaka, Baker was urged to create a symbol of pride for the gay community by

writer Cleve Jones, filmmaker, arti-brecen, and rising activist Harvey Melk.

This timing was really serendipitous because Baker was actually in the process of thinking

how to replace the upside down triangle, which was a Nazi relic from World War II.

Baker was a "vexilographer," which is a flag maker, and his career spanned nearly four decades and

includes distinctions for creating not one but two flags that attained world records for their length.

Okay, so I have a little anecdote about "vexilology." If you haven't heard of the podcast 99%

and visible, or Roman Mars, I highly recommend it.

But back in: 2015

and how important it is for pride people hold for their cities.

And it taught me a lot about flag design. I do have a background as a graphic designer,

and I started paying attention to flags everywhere I went.

And in Minnesota, we actually recently just redesigned our flag,

and there's a lot of opinions about it, but every time I hear someone criticize it,

I reference this TED talk because it does follow a lot of the rules of "vexilology."

So I thought it was really neat that Baker was actually a "vexilologist," and that he wasn't,

you know, necessary. Like he was an expert in this, right?

ign, he was born in Kansas in: 1951

and he did suffer while growing up in a conservative state.

He was drawn to art and fashion design as a child, which alienated him from his peers.

He did draft into the army, and he thought that would be his escape,

but he did encounter severe homophobia during his time in basic training.

When he opted to be a medic, Gilbert was stationed in San Francisco,

which is where he found his home as an openly gay man,

thriving in the counterculture movement of the post- donal era.

Okay, so how did we get to a rainbow flag?

In Gilbert's memoir, Rainbow Warrior, he includes some memories of deciding to make the rainbow flag,

and I'm gonna quote it directly. The crowd was as much a part of the show as the band.

Everyone was there. North Beach, Beatnix, and Barrio Zootes,

the board bikers, and Black leather, teenagers, and the back row kissing.

There were long-haired, lith girls and belly-dance get-ups,

pink-haired punks, safety pins together, hippie suburbanites, movie stars,

so beautiful they left you dumpstruck, muscle gay boys with perfect moustaches,

butch dikes and blue jeans, and fairies of all genders and thrift store dresses.

We were all in a swirl of color and light. It was like a rainbow.

A rainbow. That's the moment when I knew exactly what kind of flag I would make.

Another quote from an interview later on states,

"Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth,

as I say, to get out of the lie." A flag really fit that mission,

because that's a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying,

"This is who I am." Unfortunately, I cannot find the year that he said this,

but the quote was stated in several different articles.

From what I can find, Baker, along with 30 volunteers working in the attic of the gay community

center in San Francisco, died their own fabric and sold the first flag by hand.

,: 1978

The earliest version of Baker's rainbow pride flag from 1978 included eight colors.

Hot Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Indigo, and Violet.

According to the website for his estate,

Baker assigned a special meaning to each color of his pride flag.

Hot Pink, Mean Sex, Red, Mean's Life, Orange, Healing, Yellow, Sunlight, Green,

Nature, Turquoise, Magic/Art, Indigo, Serenity, Violet, Spirit.

In a quote, he said, "I like to think of those elements as an every person,

everyone shares that." Now, if you notice, the current flag does not have eight colors.

,: 1978

demand for the rainbow flag greatly increased. Unfortunately,

Hot Pink fabric became increasingly unavailable, and to meet the demand, the Paramount flag

company, which is actually where Baker worked, they began selling a version of the flag using

n stripes. Not long later, in: 1979

According to Baker's estate, that was because when it was hung vertically from Lampost and San

Francisco's Market Street, the center stripe, which was Turquoise, was obscured by the similarly

colored lamp behind itself, so Baker dropped another stripe, which resulted in the sixth stripe

version of the flag we use most often today. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet.

The Meanings behind these final flag colors are as follows. Red equals Life, Orange, Healing,

mony, Violet, Spirit. In June: 1994

world record when he created a mile-long rainbow flag to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the

Stonewall Riot: 1969

In 2003, to celebrate the rainbow flags 25th anniversary, Baker broke his own world record by

creating a gigantic flag for Key West Pride. The banner was one and one quarter mile long and stretched

from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. The flag was then cut into sections that were

,: 2017

of 65, just two years after the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the US.

Gilbert Baker.com is run by his family who took over his estate after he passed. Honestly,

there are so many more years of activism that this man has been a part of, and I would really like

to do a full episode on him at some point, but if you're interested in learning more right now,

I really recommend heading over to his bio. They've got a very long extensive list of what he has

accomplished. Okay, we have spent a while talking about Baker who was the brain behind the rainbow

and the flag itself, but it's not in common today to see that flag with a different design.

My understanding is that there are two very popular designs that have become the new standard

as of, you know, where in: 2025

Daniel Kussar, who identifies as queer and non-binary, began a campaign to reboot the pride flag to

make it more inclusive by adding a five-colored chevron to represent queer people of color

as well as the trans community. So the chevron stripe has stripes in the following order starting

from the outside and going in. So we've got black, brown, light blue, light pink, and white.

Then in: 2001

rendition of the rainbow pride flag. In Vichieti's rendition, a purple circle placed over a yellow triangle

has been added to the chevron further inside from where we left off with white. And this is an homage

to the popular: 2013

The Intersex community uses the colors of purple and yellow as an intentional counterpoint to blue

and pink, which are traditionally seen as binary or gendered colors. I don't know much right now

about Intersex, but a really quick search told me that it does one need to be its own episode.

And the important thing to note is that Intersex people continue to be subjected to non-consensual

surgeries both in the US and around the world. And this is really more of a human's rights issue

and an issue of underrepresentation both in the queer community and beyond. Today, flags have been

created for people who identify as bisexual, pansexual, asexual, polyamorous, transgender, gender

fluid, gender queer, polysexual, agender, aromantic, non-binary, and more.

So we've made it to last call, which as I kind of mentioned in the beginning, it's going to be a

short, sweet, random little tidbit. Maybe it's podcast episode, I recommend, or a cool app, or an

update on a topic we've discussed. So for today's last call, I am really here, written for the pair

normal romance readers. My friend recently recommended Burier bones and the Minit soil by V.E. Schwab.

And this came out fairly recently, and it's fantastic. What I'll tell you is that it involves

three lesbians and vampires, and I honestly, like, that should be enough for you to go read it.

I will be honest, I'm not even very happy with how it ended. I don't know if I think it was the right

decision to take the book, but I liked the book so much that I still highly recommend reading it,

and I will probably read it again someday. But if you do end up reading it, please tell me what

you think of the ending, because I'm not sure how I feel. All right, thank you for joining me today.

I've got my sources for the rainbow flag. We've got Britannica.com, bestlifeonline.com,

history.com, Gilbert Baker.com, very wellmine.com, the pink news.com, them.us, and Ted.com.

For Burier bones and the Minit soil, I am listing bookshop.org in the show notes, and that if you're

not familiar with bookshop.org, it's a website that allows you to pick a indie bookstore to get

part of their profit to, and it just helps get away from some of those Amazon Wal-Mart target

stores to really help out indie bookstores, because we love our indie bookstores.

To learn more about myself or the project, head to the website queerenufclub.com.

QEC is on Instagram, TikTok, Neptune, and Bluesky @queerenoughclub, and you can email me directly

at hello@queerenoughclub.com. Lastly, if you like what you heard, please leave a review wherever you

listen. And you know, welcome to the club.

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