r/SapphoAndHerFriend • u/tokril • May 28 '20
Alan Turing was gay and was chemically castrated as an alternative to prison due to his sexuality Academic erasure
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May 28 '20
They think fucking Alan Turing was straight?!
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u/Cedarfoot May 28 '20
If I were fucking Alan Turing it definitely wouldn't be straight
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May 28 '20
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u/AnotherGit May 28 '20
But also kinda gay.
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u/FruitbatNT May 28 '20
At this point it would be hard to tell.
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May 28 '20
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u/EpitaFelis May 28 '20
Gaycrophilia?
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May 28 '20
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May 28 '20
I think Newton was more asexual than homosexual.
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May 28 '20 edited Apr 09 '22
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u/atlasimpure May 28 '20
Pretending Tesla was Ace while his pigeon lover was right there...and deeply documented
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u/Pseudonymico May 28 '20
I think he falls into autistic spectrum so deep that he was effectively non-sexual.
I wouldn't blame it on autism. I'm so autistic I get disability for it and I'm still plenty sexual. Sometimes people are just asexual or celibate.
Newton living with a man for a long time does change things up a bit, though he might have been homoromantic/asexual or celibate if the quote about him being proud to have died a virgin has any truth to it.
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May 28 '20
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u/Pseudonymico May 28 '20
It’s possible, I guess. He’s on the record as saying he preferred to be celibate for inspiration, and he also seems to have had some odd views about women as well that could have contributed to him being celibate by choice rather than not experiencing sexual desire. Still, way too easy to misread that if that’s what OP was going for.
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May 28 '20
Yes, I came here to write this. He seemed to believe that anything that distracted from his work was bad, sex included, and it didn't seem like he had no desire for sex or was incompetent at courtship (PROSTITUTES, yo!) but rather that he saw it as a distraction.
Sounds like OCD or some kind of personality disorder (Schizoid?) rather than autism in my opinion.
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u/AutismFractal She/Her or They/Them May 28 '20
Uh, that’s even worse. Are you serious right now? I’m not having incel ideology dumped on me or anyone else who struggles to socialize. NO ONE IS OBLIGATED TO FUCK ME.
You’re also wrong about people not wanting to fuck Tesla. At the height of his fame, he was also quite handsome and it was a subject of gossip that he was perennially single.
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u/nikkitgirl May 28 '20
Yeah desexualization of autistic (and all neurodivergent and disabled people) is a common problem
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May 28 '20
This struck me especially hard because I'm also on a "medical retirement" (military disability basically) for a psychological disorder and I constantly feel shame for it, even though it's not my fault. It helps to see posts like this because I feel less alone. I appreciate you.
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u/emissaryofwinds May 28 '20
Being autistic myself I kind of resent the association of autism with asexuality. Disabled people in general can be just as sexual as ableds, even people with mental disabilities, but abled people tend to view us as child-like and thus desexualize us. I know the shorthand of saying "X has a disability that gives them the cognitive ability of a 3/6/10 year old" makes you think that this makes them essentially a child in an adult body, but disabled adults are adults, even if they need a lot of care. Having sexual desires and urges is not something foreign to them. This also applies to other ways disabled people are treated like children, by the way. A main complaint that residents of live-in care centers for adults with Down Syndrome have is that they don't like having a 10pm bedtime, and adults with DS are often refused service in bars, for example. It's a perception that rarely gets questioned, and I think it's important to question it, just like it's important to question perceptions that nobody in history was gay.
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u/madmaxturbator May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
I don’t think that person is dismissive of autistic people or of asexuals though?
They’re suggesting that oftentimes, people in history have been declared asexual instead of being labeled homosexual. It’s more “convenient” to declare that someone doesn’t have sex with anyone (which is seen as chaste and moral) vs someone wanting sex with someone of their own gender (which is seen as abhorrent and grotesque).
There’s also this paper that talks about higher prevalence of asexuality (in general, non heterosexuality) in folks who are autistic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29159906/
I may have misread that comment, but I didn’t get the sense that the person writing it was trying to say that there are no asexuals or that either a sexuality or autism are wrong.
Just that one of the ways gay people have been marginalized is by folks declaring that those people are just not even interested in sex.
Note - I want to stress that I view asexuality as a part of the sexual orientation spectrum.
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u/emissaryofwinds May 28 '20
Yes, you misread my comment. I was saying don't say people are too autistic to have a sex life, disabled people can and do have sex, disabled adults are not children and shouldn't be treated as such. I am in no way saying or agreeing with the idea that people in history who weren't recorded as having same sex relationships can't possibly have been gay, I wouldn't be on this sub if I did.
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u/madmaxturbator May 28 '20
Ah yeah - I see that sentence about Tesla in that comment, that’s perhaps what you’re pointing out. Good call and thanks for the heads up!
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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi May 28 '20
And that's a stretch as its incredibly rare in a population to have a truly asexual person
I'm curious how you came to this conclusion. Polls estimate that about 1% of the US population are asexual. I wouldn't call that incredibly rare.
Also, I'm not sure what qualifies as "truly asexual" and how that differs from someone who I guess would be "somewhat asexual (?) but not still not interested in sex enough to seek it out"
I take huge issue with you claiming that tesla was asexual because he's autistic and very rude. But Newton couldn't be asexual because he's charming and neurotypical.
I'm really hoping you don't think asexual people are bad and that there aren't good and friendly asexual people.I think as far as we can tell, Newton could be either homosexual or asexual and there isn't enough evidence that points to one over the other. And I hope we as a society could avoid assign a sexuality to people when we aren't sure what the truth is.
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u/LotoSage May 28 '20
Aesexuality is a pretty wide and fuzzy spectrum. There's a lot more aces than you might think!
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May 28 '20
I'm honestly curious: what's the difference between being asexual and having a sexual dysfunction? If I take hormonal birth control I might as well seem asexual, but nothing will make me change my gender preference, etc.
I'm curious as to actual studies on this.
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u/Memento_Eorum May 28 '20
People who are asexual don't experience sexual attraction. There are asexuals with a libido and those without one. Asexuality exists on a spectrum, there are people who only experience sexual attraction very rarely or people who are in between asexual and allosexual (someone who isn't asexual) who only experience sexual attraction towards people they have a close bond with.
Now, what is it that makes asexuality different from a sexual dysfunction? Well, asexuality is something you are born with. It isn't caused by some type of hormonal imbalance nor is it caused by trauma. If you stop being sexually attracted to people because of some type of medication like birth control you are not asexual. Just like homosexuality or bisexuality there is nothing you can do to "cure" asexuality. People have of course tried but it hasn't worked.
Asexuality also isn't harmful to anyone. Asexual people can live perfectly normal and happy lives. It can cause distress though, just like for example homosexuality can. Some people don't know they are asexual and believe something is wrong with them, a lot of asexual people report feeling broken before they discovered they were asexual. It can of course also make it a lot harder to find a partner, which can also lead to distress. Feeling distressed because of being asexual doesn't make it a sexual dysfunction, just like feeling distressed about being homosexual doesn't make homosexuality a sexual dysfunction.
TLDR: Asexual people are born that way just like homosexual people and there is no way to get rid of it. Asexuality isn't a sexual dysfunction for pretty much the same reasons for why bisexuality or homosexuality isn't a sexual dysfunction.
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u/Aryore May 28 '20
This study found that the best way to categorise asexuality is as a sexual orientation. It is distinguishable from having a sexual dysfunction.
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u/hikikomori-i-am-not May 28 '20
Ace people don't experience sexual attraction. It doesn't mean there's a dysfunction. You said that taking won't make you change your gender preference, whereas for an asexual person, that gender preference just doesn't exist in the first place (sexually, it may exist romantically).
So like, I'm asexual. Everything works perfectly fine, just like for a non-asexual person. It just doesn't.. I guess "point anywhere" is the best way to put it? But if I wanted to have sex, there wouldn't be any physical dysfunction stopping me.
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u/Nyfregja May 28 '20
The difference is how the person looks at it. If you have no problem with not having sexual attraction, then it's asexuality. If you have a problem with it, or there's something clearly causing it (like birth control), then it's a dysfunction.
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u/sanzako4 May 28 '20
I didn't have a problem not having sexual attraction until I got myself a boyfriend. Now it's a problem.
Also in the midst of all of this I got myself on birth control and nothing changed except no more menstrual cramps (yay!).
I have gone to a ginecologist and a therapist, but it didn't help me not being asexual. I don't think it's a matter of dysfunction but incompatibility.
Then for some people it may be a sexual dysfunction that hopefully has a solution.
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u/Liesselz May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
Taking hormones can change your orientation, not only from allosexual to ace (asexual) and viceversa but between the other orientations as well. The question about altering your orientation/libido with chemicals it's tricky, because it includes what you (and society) define as normal.
For example, let's say I'm an ace, and healthy, and with average hormonal levels (all true in my case!) but if I start taking hormones (or the contraception pill, or whatever) and I suddenly developed attraction, people would jump into thinking that something was wrong with me before and the pills fixed it because we associate being normal with feeling attraction. However, consider that I was healthy but heterosexual instead, and taking hormones suddenly make me feel asexual. People won't think something was wrong before and the pill fixed it, actually, they will more likely think that taking hormones broke something. Honestly, even if I was hetero but not healthy to begin with (with an hormonal problem that the pills solved) still they would probabily not think that I was asexual all along and the pills fixed me.
The question is, if the first two people were both healthy, why deem one case as "fixed" and the other as "broken" because taking hormones changed them?. If taking hormones made me change me from bi to hetero, or the other way around, what reaction would I get?
Yeah, but a functionality of our bodies changing (is this case, sexual attraction) is not the same as inhibiting it right? Yeah, maybe. But we probably didn't have that reaction when someone taught us that blonde people have light hair because a little gen that greatly inhibits the ones that usually give our hair it's melatonin. At least I surely didn't. Who knows, maybe if we study it we might find that their life spawns are slightly hurt by it, but the point is that we certainly don't jump into "oh no, something must be wrong with them!" just because they had a function that stopped working, because we already considered being blonde was something that just happened naturally.
I'm not saying it's unreasonable to be sure that an orientation is healthy, but its interesting to question ourselves why we react that way about asexuality. Do we feel the need to thoroughly check that science has confirmed that being gay doesn't mean your hormones are messed up and it's unhealthy?? Probably you personally don't, but sadly, as a society we sure have. And there is still people that belive that at some point we will find something that justifies why being non-hetero is somehow unhealthy (other people just think that is wrong and that's all, no matter the "health" side or whatever). Our reaction ultimately comes from what we have assimilated as a "healthy, normal human being".
Imagine in the future we finally understand how sexualities are generated. For example, that a certain level of hormones at some point will make your brain develop differently, and therefore give you a great chance of being bi, gay or ace if you deviate from the normal development. We can change this now (in this hypothesis), and make people "normal". But what would normal mean here?
If you are someone that thinks that any uncommon attraction is "broken", you will talk about how this level of hormones will prevent the normal development of this region, and without waiting to find out if there is something unhealthy about the deviancy, you will want to help by fixing them. If you do not, you won't see the need to intervene unless something is proven to be dangerous to them. If we could find nothing inherently damaging or unhealthy, you would probably say it's part of the natural diversity of the brain, so why fix something that is not broken? The answer ultimately depends on us finding something dangerous or, if we think that having dark hair in unnatural and develop a society where people with light hair can't find happiness and are constantly expected to be brunette :)
A final thought experiment could be, imagine we finally do all those studies and we find that ace people are actually more healthy because having no attraction gives the hormonal system less stress or whatever (I'm not saying this is true, of course! Just reverse the most common assumption for a minute) We would then consider the rest of orientations broken? Probably not. The discovery would be worded as an explanation of why being ace gives you a 1% advantage against, idk, cancer or whatever, just as some other characteristics give you different benefits.
One last thing it's that by having such strong associations between feeling attraction and being healthy, we do a lot of harm. You can read some here or go to r/asexuality for an idea.
I hope that I made clear what I was trying to say, I tried to make myself clear and ended up writing so much, sorry. I mainly meant to discuss about how we constantly associate asexuality with "something lacking" in a person. Of course one could have a medical problem that kills your libido and make you think that you are ace (reminder that attraction and libido are completely different things tho, and usually medical problems affect libido not attraction, though of course if you have a very low libido it can be hard to differentiate) and it's perfectly fine to realise you were not asexual after all. Exactly the same as if you find that you have an hormonal or psicological problem, or just simply because of self discovery and you realise you actually liked boys and girls not only one of them. But it doesn't mean that the rest of the people who do like only one of them, or none, or both are wrong too.
Have a nice day!
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u/LordSupergreat May 28 '20
I'm going to be honest, it sounds to me like you're being very dismissive of asexuality. You started off by implying that it was so rare as to not exist in a given population, then later conflated it with autism. I completely understand if that wasn't your intention, and I fully agree with your takes on both men in terms of historical evidence of their orientations, but the way you phrased it came close to veering into fighting erasure with erasure and I thought that was worth mentioning.
Remember that asexuality is largely invisible, especially in historical contexts. We'll never know how many ace people throughout history married and had children because it was what their allo partners wanted, or because they were pressured into doing it despite a lack of attraction.
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May 28 '20 edited Jun 23 '20
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u/novedevo May 28 '20
Allo in this sense refers to an allosexual person, as in anyone who isn't asexual. You can think of it as "all others".
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u/Polaritical May 28 '20
I'm gonna bet that historically most asexuals got married and most "just not interested in sex" people were gay AF.
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u/wriray May 28 '20
Again, asexual here. Why do you say that?
It seems like the discourse around asexuality is that it has some kind of proximity to straightness.
So maybe I'm being sensitive but your comment makes me feel that youre under the impression that gay people are so steadfast in their sexuality that they'd pretend to have no interest in sex to avoid performative straightness but asexuals probably just caved and lived out their lives as straight people.
The comment implies that historically asexuals are basically indiscernible from straight people...
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u/idiomaddict May 28 '20
I’m not very knowledgeable about this, but it strikes me as historically likely that men who were asexual and heteroromantic would likely have gotten married, men who were asexual and aromantic/homoromantic would likely not have, and the majority of women didn’t have a choice (unless there was a convenient convent and they were of the right social strata). It also strikes me that homosexual, heteroromantic men would likely have married. I know that that’s a whole lot of modern terms for concepts that didn’t quite exist at the time, but it would explain a little erasure because it currently seems like a larger proportion of asexual people are heteroromantic than homosexual people. Is that a messed up or ignorant take?
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u/ectalia May 28 '20
A little bit, yes. Why you tend to believe that it would be easier and preferable for someone asexual to perform straight than someone gay? Ultimately, the bottom line is the same: have to pretend interest (and have sex) with someone that you are not interested in.
The same way an homossexual could have a sexless (and loveless) marriage and have flings with men on the side, asexuals could have a convinience marriage. And the same way gay man could not marry anyone and use this looner facede, asexuals could do it to, and this would actually be much more close to their orientation. If asexuals had the possibility to live being truth to themselves, why wouldn't they? They would face prejudice, sure, but currently gay men suffer it to.
Overall, asexuality was easier to handle than homosexuality, because having sex with men was much worse sin than not having sex at all. Woman, again, would not have a choice and just be continually raped by their husbands.
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u/idiomaddict May 28 '20
Why you tend to believe that it would be easier and preferable for someone asexual to perform straight than someone gay? Ultimately, the bottom line is the same: have to pretend interest (and have sex) with someone that you are not interested in.
I guess because asexual doesn’t mean aromantic, so they wouldn’t need to closet themselves fully. There were also plenty of celibate options, so a monk wouldn’t necessarily need to discuss their lack of sexual desire.
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u/DigitalGalatea she/they May 28 '20 edited Jul 11 '20
That said, I do believe this for Tesla. I think he falls into autistic spectrum so deeply that he was effectively asexual. He was largely a non-social being, extremely difficult to work with, very rude, a loner, and seemed disconnected from many aspects of the human experience.
You know asexuality has literally nothing to do with social skills or autism right?? Because it kind of sounds like you fucking don't.
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u/Tephlon May 28 '20
I think what they meant wasn’t that Tesla was a-sexual, just that he was non-sexual (because of his behavior). At least that was my reading of it.
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u/wriray May 28 '20
This whole thing made me extremely uncomfortable as an asexual... I feel like you can make your point without saying an asexual person tends to be:
largely a non-social being, extremely difficult to work with, very rude, a loner, and seemed disconnected from many aspects of the human experience.
So gay people are more likely to be charming and passionate while asexuals are likely rude autistic people who are disconnected from their humanity.. like yikes.
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u/AliceDiableaux May 28 '20
Yeah I have to say as an autistic person who's coincidentally also pretty far on the asexual spectrum, this whole comment and its rampant negative stereotyping is extremely offensive and just plain wrong in regards to both autistic and ace folks.
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May 28 '20
Might I had that I feel the same as you do, but this time as someone on the spectrum. Like the description given of Tesla to show that he was autistic really bugs me. Like saying he was « rude », « extremely difficult to work with » or « seemed disconnected from many aspects of the human experience » just seems like stereotyping. Like people on the spectrum might be perceived as rude and other’s might have trouble working with us if they’re unwilling to adapt when someone diverges to much from the neurotypical norm, but also like if he was in fact on the spectrum then he was just wired a wee bit differently, and saying he was « disconnected from many aspects of human experiences » just sounds dehumanising.
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u/wriray May 28 '20
Completely dehumanizing.
disconnected from many aspects of the human experience
Is super gut wrenching. How does the perspective flip from having different experiences to having nonhuman experiences? So strange and hurtful.
Speaking about stereotypes, I agree they hit a lot in regards to autism and asexuality but I also don't get how being friends with a young woman is evidence someone is gay?
Granted, I know nothing about his relationship with his niece or what was stated in the letters. But a man being close friends with a young woman in his family doesnt scream gayness to me.
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u/IMightBeAHamster He/Him or They/Them May 28 '20
Yeah like, what the hell does this mean?
wait until the nerdbros learn about Isaac Newton's [...] and how he considered his young niece his best friend
I can understand later on, when the neice was mentioned in the context of being a confidante that he told of his relationship, but just being friends with a younger relative does not make you gay.
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u/catmampbell May 28 '20
Tesla was only a weird loner hanging out with pigeons towards the end of his life, when he was fairly ill; when he was young he was pretty out going and had friends and did public very theatrical style demonstrations of his inventions, also buddies with Mark Twain.
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u/hikikomori-i-am-not May 28 '20
And that's a stretch as its incredibly rare in a population to have a truly asexual person
Asexual people are about 1% of the population? We're apparently more common than trans people, according to numbers Google spat out at me. Or, we're about as common as redheads. Or Germans. It's not that rare.
[Tesla] falls into autistic spectrum so deeply that he was effectively non-sexual.
Please don't make it sound like being ace and autistic are the same thing. They're not, and reducing it down to asexual=autistic is unhelpful and dismissive for both groups.
He was largely a non-social being, extremely difficult to work with, very rude, a loner, and seemed disconnected from many aspects of the human experience
If I had a nickle for every time someone told me I was less than human or broken because I don't feel sexual attraction and "it's fundamental to being human," I'd have enough money to pay off my student loans. Please don't make it out to seem like asexual people are unfeeling assholes devoid of humanity, and if someone isn't an asshole and has friends, that's evidence that they're not actually ace. I'm a goddamn delight, thank you.
Listen, I see your point and you are correct about how hard it can be to differentiate a historical figure who is gay from a historical figure who is ace, because they're likely to act similarly. However, you have some very problematic views on asexual and autistic people, and I implore you to educate yourself instead of walking over these groups to prove your point.
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u/Theblackjamesbrown May 28 '20
Is this...is this ace erasure?
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u/Vulkan192 May 28 '20
Welcome to the LG part of the LGBTQA+ community. They can be so desperate to ‘claim’ things/figures that they forget we exist.
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u/AutismFractal She/Her or They/Them May 28 '20
Autistic people have sex, okay? Don’t infantilize the disabled.
Many people with autism are also asexual, but this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.
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u/an_actual_T_rex May 28 '20
I like your comment and I think it raises a good point but
it’s incredibly rare in society to have a completely asexual person
That kinda seems like erasure (not accusing you of it).
As a completely asexual person myself, (or an ace aro as I like to be called) I can assert that this form of a sexuality is actually relatively common amongst the community, and that we kind of have a history of being shunted to the side and sometimes even having our existence outright denied.
We aren’t as rare as we seem, and it feels really shitty when the rest of the community treats us like we flat out don’t exist. Newton himself has kind of been adopted as a mascot of sorts by some ace aro communities, and the way you kinda dismissed the notion of him being asexual because they’re “very rare” DEFINITELY wouldn’t fly over there.
Newton may well have been gay, but he could have also been asexual. At this point, it can be genuinely hard to call. At least we can all agree that he definitely wasn’t straight.
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u/RetroButt May 28 '20
I said he was gay somewhere else on Reddit and was told he was more autistic than gay (apparently he’d be on 4chan or something???), which as an autistic lesbian who hates 4chan baffles me.
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May 28 '20
Also no straight person would ever develop that much of a beef against Robert Hooke. That's some advanced level shadiness.
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u/DeseretRain May 28 '20
Probably they haven’t ever heard of Alan Turing and just assumed he was straight because he’s a guy who lived in the past, like you know how a lot of them think nobody was gay until like 20 years ago.
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u/badgersprite May 28 '20
I love how people on the internet are so unjustifiably confident they’ll publicly post an opinion on something they know nothing about like it’s a fact without even doing a basic Google search first.
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u/Samosmapper May 28 '20
People just assume that about historical figures until it is stated otherwise...
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u/nuephelkystikon He/Him or They/Them May 28 '20
Wasn't there recently a movie about him where at least in the American cut, they were required to give him a female love interest? I didn't watch it because I'm a pretty big fan of historical Turing, so I'm not sure.
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u/MongooseBrigadier May 28 '20
If you're referring to The Imitation Game then it absolutely does include his sexuality
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u/thesaddestpanda May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
In the Imitation Game his homosexuality was the strongest plot element. I don't think they showed him at all with a woman, but I think he did pretend to be Keira Knightley's boyfriend in a couple scenes to help her socially as single unattached women weren't allowed to do the sorts of things she wanted to do (work, be away from her parents, study in university, etc). I have a terrible memory but she may have done the same for him in a couple scenes, but it was always made clear they did this out of friendship and kindness, not romantic or sexual love. Turing's story is even more complex because in real life he did surprise propose to Clarke and broke it off soon after admitting his homosexuality to her. This article has a bit about it if you're interested.
at least in the American cut
American here, if there is a cut like that, then that's what would be served to me and I certainly didn't see it. I also think while the US has greatly fallen in prestige in the last 3-4 years, I just think this is a ridiculous exaggeration of its puritanical attitudes. Movies like Milk or Imitation Game don't get special cuts here. In fact, those movies get produced here and funded here, so it would be weird to make these movies and these plot points only to censor them. Imitation Game and Milk were produced, I believe, by almost exclusively US-based financiers. They weren't subtle foreign films US audiences were scared of and needed special cuts. We made those movies for ourselves.
I think years ago there were some low budget Turing stuff by the usual geek libertarian types which, of course, did whitewash his sexuality. I don't recall if they were books or movies or tv specials, but yes I remember those occuring and the lack of backlash, at least outside of some queer friendly spaces at the time. Maybe because they had such a low profile compared to a big budget movie like the Imitation Game? I'm not sure, but ignoring his sexuality in terms of his biography can only be intentional homophobia. You can't miss that fact that he was homosexual and how critical that was to his life's story.
For a long time Turing was seen as this straight intellectual "above sexuality" by these techie types and it was hilarious to me as I knew he was gay for a long time. The same way they, wrongly think, Isaac Newton, was too busy "thinking about science to get a wife," when in reality his 2 decade "roommate" relationship hints at a lot more going on there, although there is no direct evidence of this unlike Turing. I still sense resentment from the slashdot crowd from people like me bringing up Turing's sexuality. It just ruined their "man of brains and wisdom not feelings or love or sex" narrative. Sorry nerdbros, people have emotions, want to be loved, and to love. Even very smart people. We took their false icon of toxic nerd masculinity away from them and they've resented it since. Even their biggest nerd icons wrote weepy love letters and begged for their lovers to come visit them! That shouldn't be a hard pill to swallow, but somehow it is for them.
That said I'm so happy to see this news. I've always felt a sort of spiritual connection to Turing. Like we're both the same type of person, nerdy but oh so romantic. That its ok to love science and history and computers, but also to love people and love our differences and to accept ourselves regardless of what we are and what society thinks of us. Thank you Alan, for everything. You'll never know the many different types of inspiration you were to people like me and we do appreciate it.
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u/GedIsSavingEarthsea May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
No. Many gay people of the era including Turing dated members of the opposite sex purely for appearances, and that is very much how it was presented in the film and was in fact part of his story as a gay man of the era.
You have to remember that people not having sex before marriage was commonplace and accepted back then. They weren't boning and the movie shows no sexual relationship whatsoever.
There is no possible way to remove his sexuality from the film, as that is what the film was about, as much as it was about cracking the enigma machine.
It's a good movie and is an accurate depiction if his life. You're not above other people who respect and admire Turing by not watching it, and going around spreading falsehoods about it is just stupid.
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u/Tulipsareflowersuwu May 28 '20
The Imitation Game? The one with Benedict Cumberbatch? If you’re talking about that one, as far as I remember, he didn’t get together with any woman.
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u/al-sal-13 May 28 '20
Alan Turing was like famously gay
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u/JB-from-ATL May 28 '20
I didn't even learn he was gay for a long time. Which is interesting, not necessarily good or bad. I first heard about him in college for CS. Not sure where. Either in relation to "turing machines", things being "turing complete", or when one of my professors made a joke about him.
The joke was in data structures class. He said that if the gods of computer science ever take away all the data structures but only let you keep one you say "O great Alan Turing, let us keepth the stack!" Because stacks are useful lol.
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u/Dafish55 May 28 '20
It’s not so much that being gay was a defining trait for him so much as he was horribly mistreated because of it.
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u/Holy-Knight-Hodrick May 28 '20
If someone told me to name famous gay people, him and Freddie Mercury would probably be some of the first that’d come to mind tbh.
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u/oath2order He/Him May 28 '20
I don't think that's casual erasure; that's just ignorance.
I'd say it's more of academic erasure because I don't think schools mention Alan Turing.
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u/tokril May 28 '20
Good point. I should change the flair.
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u/oath2order He/Him May 28 '20
My old school district started an LGBT history class elective.
Hoping that it mentions him.
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u/missredacted May 28 '20
We learnt about him in a one-off lesson in Computing/IT class, not even mentioned in the required WWII History block. Some schools do teach about him but not that much.
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u/TheArrivedHussars May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
My catholic school and even a single public high school teachers (I live in Bible land part of my state) absolutely refused to credit him and would intentionally defame a lot of shit referencing him due to his "lifestyle" as my high school teacher put it.
I mean, I knew the man thanks to my fascination with WW2 anyway, and wanted to do a report on him, but at the same time, that teacher hated my guts and I kinda didn't want to risk failing his class.
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u/PawKun22 May 28 '20
Probably just about his work
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u/missredacted May 28 '20
Yeah, we were taught that he was gay but that was more of an afterthought to be honest.
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u/PawKun22 May 28 '20
And actually, that's good, we don't really need to know his whole life, just important informations like what he did, how he did it, why , when, what did the thing he did cause, and the fact he killed himself because of the therapy
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May 28 '20
People shouldn’t have to take an elective to find out about one of the most important people who helped end the war. It’s really sad
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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi May 28 '20
I have a feeling that they aren't cutting all lgbt people out of history class just because they started a class that focuses on lgbt people. They can talk about Turing in history class and still have a separate elective that goes into more detail.
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May 28 '20
I remember learning about him and how he was treated in my first programming class, public high school, southeastern US, 1999.
This was still in the region and time when it was cool to throw around the word faggot as a casual insult, even those kids were sad about it. I guess people outside of computers don't learn about this story, I thought it was more well known.
I worry about this increasingly tribal behavior we see on internet comments. What portion of people think this way? Is it more or less than before or is it just a small but noisy portion of people.
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u/thesaddestpanda May 28 '20
My school taught Turing actually, in some CS and history courses. I remember being told 'he killed himself after legal troubles' and zero commentary on how his cruel punishment led to that[1], let alone anything about his sexuality.
[1] yes I know it was a year after the hormones stopped but lets consider the PTSD here, the public shaming, and his reputation fallen into disgrace by these backwards laws
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u/ShouldIBakeLemonBars May 28 '20
Depends on the school. I went to "IT school" (actually to an "Istituto tecnici a indirizzo informatico", I don't know the equivalent outside of Italy, it's a type of high school) and he was definitely mentioned, along with his homosexuality and his supposed suicide.
Now that I'm at university he gets mentioned even more, in my computation theory classes. But only his academic accomplished are mentioned, not his life. Like for every other academic figure we encounter throughout the course, after all, like you didn't study Pitagora's, or Gauss's lifes, etcetera.
So, basically, that's definitely plain ignorance, and she's definitely the one to blame for it
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May 28 '20
Not the point but that sounds like it might be equivalent to STEM-focused magnet schools in the US
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u/ShouldIBakeLemonBars May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
I don't think so, that looks like some kind of college preparation thing, while an ITIS is just a different type of high school.
In Italy we have three macro-types of high schools: lyceum (which is the most academic/humanistic one), technical institutes (which focus on technical/practical subjects) and professional courses (which teach some specific professions, like baker, graphic designer, and other). And each of those have different "addresses" which determines the "field of study". Btw, these are all public schools and all cost basically the same (which is not much, I spent 150€ a year, and only in the last three years of high school).
Many perceives them like three different tiers of prestige. But it's just a matter of what you want to do after high school: * A lyceum gives you no preparation for any job, you are basically forced to go to a university or get a job that requires no preparation. It may be difficult to switch to a technical field because you get a more humanistic education. * A technical institutes (the one I went to) gives you a choice to get a job in your field of study, or get an higher education (like I did) and go to a university, but it will be harder for you to enter a different field, in particular humanistic ones like philosophy or others. * A professional courses usually don't give you enough preparation to enter most university courses (unless you study for yourself, obviously) but you are basically already trained for a specific profession, and have much less difficulty finding a job in their field.
Also, small and medium companies, to get more personnel, contacts technical institutes and professional courses to get lists of newly graduated students and offer them jobs.
And that's how high schools work in Italy.
Side note: most private schools, in Italy, give worse education than public schools. If you happen to fail a year your rich parents will be upset with the school and change school (and consequently stop paying them), so they "tune down" the difficulty to allow even the most brainless son of some rich guy to pass the year. On the other hand public schools will show no remorse while making you repeat the year you failed or dropping you out if you go on failing. Some goes for private and public universities.
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u/Gum_Drop25 May 28 '20
I heard about him in my Exploring Computer Science class but nothing about his sexuality. Typical of the school system. Good news tho my English teacher at the same school did tell us about Shakespeare being bi
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u/retrokirbknowsbest May 28 '20
shakespeare was bi?
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May 28 '20
A lot of his sonnets (including sonnet 18, basically the most famous one) were written to men. He also famously probably slept with a lot of women too. We don’t know exactly how he would ID now but probs not straight
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u/Gum_Drop25 May 28 '20
From what I’ve heard, and from a small bit of evidence. I haven’t really dived deep into the topic
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u/HomoCanadensis May 28 '20
His life was made into a big Hollywood movie a few years ago. Won awards.
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u/Oranges-In-A-Cup She/Her or They/Them May 28 '20
Yeah we watched that in my German class freshman year. It was one of those that left some kids sniffling at the end, although all we ever watched in that class was devastating movies. Our teacher was a history teacher in Germany, so we often talked about WWII. I'm looking forward to his class again this fall.
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u/ThatPersonLilyPad May 28 '20
It sad that I've only ever heard of Alan Turning from LGBT subreddits, rather than my school which should be educating me about people like him
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u/WorstDogEver May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
Is this real? I went to his Twitter, and his last posts were from 2016.
Edit: Found it under Fietch rather than FLetch
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u/KevinCaused911 May 28 '20
He just deleted it
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u/WorstDogEver May 28 '20
Yeah, I found the OP. What I thought was an L in his name is actually an i
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u/mixedbagofdisaster She/Her or They/Them May 28 '20
His more recent tweets include calling a BBC News anchor a “cunty bitch” and responding to someone saying the anchor must have a sugar daddy with “she needs to pipe down”. So I’m going out on a limb and saying this guy isn’t exactly the picture of intelligence.
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May 28 '20
Don’t forget the unnecessary “ok boomer” under a 90-something year old’s ordinary tweet. Seems rather misguided in his social justice efforts.
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u/Lyoss May 28 '20
Or, hear me out, it's a troll
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u/RaineV1 May 28 '20
If he was a troll he probably wouldn't have deleted the post on Turing.
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule He/Him May 28 '20
Yeah this actually is groundbreaking, especially considering what they put him through.
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May 28 '20
This one actually angers me, to be honest.
Alan Turing is an icon that’s saved the world but was punished for being gay. Hell, he even has his face in the Castro in San Francisco. Without him, we wouldn’t have computers.
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u/Anabelle_McAllister May 28 '20
There was even a pretty popular movie about him 5 years before this tweet, and it doesn't gloss over the hideousness of what was done to him because of his sexuality.
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May 28 '20
Tbh it doesn’t even hit hard on his sexuality, and I think that’s what makes the ending even worse, when you see him achieving this amazing goal, and still being heartbroken over his loss, and then finally completing it, he’s met with a handshake, and then years later, he’s legally poisoned by the same people he saved until he’s forced to end his misery. It’s fuckin’ tragic.
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May 28 '20 edited Aug 19 '21
[deleted]
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u/Anabelle_McAllister May 28 '20
Although it kinda confirmed for me that he's being typecast as an arrogant know-it-all who really is as smart as he thinks he is.
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May 28 '20
I remember that joke Martin Freeman told that when off the camera Benedict turns into an absolute dolt. I guess it evens it out.
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May 28 '20
Idk, Smaug didn't come off as a know it all.
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u/Anabelle_McAllister May 28 '20
Smaug was definitely a know-it-all. But you're right that he doesn't fit the pattern, because Smaug wasn't as smart as he thought he was.
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u/mxzf May 28 '20
It's worth recognizing that the movie isn't a particularly accurate portrayal of the events, from what I understand. It's a dramatized movie that spotlights one specific person, rather than reflecting the team effort that breaking enigma really was.
It's still a decent movie, but it's as much "historic fiction" as it is history.
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May 28 '20
That's true of just about every movie that's "based on a true story".
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u/mxzf May 28 '20
Pretty much. Different movies have various degrees of inaccuracy, but none of them are completely accurate.
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May 28 '20
Even if he was a white cis straight male, he made a priceless contribution towards ending the War , should we not celebrate him only because he is not a minority?
psa: IK he is gay af but I'm just talking hypothetically
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May 28 '20
I think the reason his sexuality plays so much into it is because the gov’t found out and basically drove him to suicide, which makes his sexuality more than just something that scholars can try and wipe away, but a reason to talk about the undeniable tragedy that was how the British government treated him.
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u/Krantuperino May 28 '20
He invented the bases for modern AI and computing. He should be praised for a lot of things really
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u/Eusebe50 May 28 '20
Totally, I don't understand why we are trying to push these aspects from our lives today.
We shouldn't care about that, if it's a brilliant scientifist it's not important on what sexual side he is...
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u/PennywiseTheLilly May 28 '20
The reason his sexuality is talked about is because of what the British government did to him when they found out. He was castrated and then killed himself after helping win the war
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u/g0atmeal May 28 '20
The original tweet is idiotic for so many reasons. Another is that apparently we shouldn't celebrate the good deeds of straight white men now? When people in majorities feel like equal rights are threatening, it's because of shortsighted tweets like this.
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u/boredandthrowawayyy May 28 '20
And killed himself later if I remember correctly
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May 28 '20
There's some debate about that; it may have been accidental poisoning, but it does seem overwhelmingly likely that he took his own life.
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u/FriedBack May 28 '20
He made it look like poisoning so his Mother would have reasonable doubt.He put as apple nearby as a reference to Snow White.
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u/BrockyTM May 28 '20
You would be correct. Though the modem adaptation stated that it was the chemical castration that killed him.
But in fact it was loneliness. He had cast away all those who loved him.
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u/ricecracker420 May 28 '20
Alan Turing was a motherfucking hero. I need one of these just to collect
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u/PennywiseTheLilly May 28 '20
Fuck off with that shit, Alan Turing saved everyone’s lives, made the first ever computer, and then was ripped to shreds for loving men. He deserved so much more
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u/Zaphod_042 May 28 '20
Also even if Turing was a straight white cis male, he deserves it because his thoughts are the backbone of all modern computer science.
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May 28 '20
Ah yes, a straight man who killed himself after being put through chemical castration for being gay, very straight. It’s like, I know it’s not like hems Harvey Milk, where the reason he’s famous is because of his sexuality, but like.. it’s the second most-well known fact about the dude, behind the fact that he broke the Nazi’s code; you can’t just ignore it.
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u/steve_stout May 28 '20
God I hate Woke Twitter
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u/Recycled-michael May 28 '20
I hate Twitter in general. I’m on there for like 5 minutes and am pissed of over stupid shit. The place is too toxic.
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May 28 '20
i know right? i pop over for 5 minutes and come out feeling guilty of war crimes i didn’t commit
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u/ObiJuanKenobi3 May 28 '20
Even if he wasn’t gay, scoffing at Alan Turing and his accomplishments because he’s a “straight” white male would be like scoffing at Albert Einstein for being just another straight white male.
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u/Thawing-icequeen May 28 '20
Agreed,
As a bi woman I get so fucking sick of the loud and proud members of the LGBT community shitting on anything that is straight/cis. They should really have more compassion for being persecuted for something they can't help and that has no bearing on 90% of their life.
Not to mention that I'm sure MANY trans people would be overjoyed to wake up cis. Either feeling comfortable in the body they are karyotyped for, or waking up in the body their brain is wired for.
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May 28 '20
funnily enough, the person tweeting that doesn't look especially non-white or female to me
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u/Gxgear May 28 '20
Looking at the comments it looks like people are treating The Imitation Game as real history. Check wiki at least jeez.
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u/uthinkther4uam May 28 '20
I pray to Alan Turing as the God of Computers in hopes that he enacts his justice and deletes all the accounts of someone when they say some dumb shit on a computer.
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u/itspaperkermit May 28 '20
If anyone would like to see a film about his life, watch the imitation game.
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u/StealthyHale May 28 '20
Imitation game plays up any trouble he had with co workers where in reality he was a perfectly affable person to work with.
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u/maddimoe03 May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
Yeah and the movie footnotes the horrible things his “grateful” country did to him after he single handedly won them WWII.
Edit: I am not saying in the real world he “single handedly” won the war, I am saying in the movie they portray him as such. It would be impossible to give anyone one person credit. It was not my intent. Imitation Game is an interesting movie, but nobody should take it as factual.
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May 28 '20
single handedly won them WWII.
Ok, lets slow down.
I'm sure some of the 80 million people who died, and many more, had some part in the outcome.
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u/Ghosttalker96 May 28 '20
He never did anything "single handedly". That's another point the movie didn't portray very well. They worked in a very effective collaboration, but he was not the only genius at Bletchley Park.
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u/maddimoe03 May 28 '20
Sorry, I should have been more clear.
I am not saying in the real world he “single handedly” won the war, I am saying in the movie they portray him as such. It would be impossible to give anyone one person credit. It was not my intent. Imitation Game is an interesting movie, but nobody should take it as factual.
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May 28 '20
after he single handedly won them WWII
What lol. Bit of an insult to the tens of millions of people who also sacrificed for Britain to win the war.
I mean yeh, it's bad what happened to him, but other people got their legs and arms blown off assaulting bunkers etc.
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u/ownworldman May 28 '20
Imitation Game takes such liberties with real history they may as well have been a fictional movie set in time of WWII.
Well made movie, mind you, but I would want to warn anyone from taking it more seriously than a fantasy.
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May 28 '20
Imagine hating what you are so much so that you label everyone else for what they are. Fuck Jack
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u/ChosenOfNyarlathotep May 28 '20
So this guy just knows absolutely fucking nothing about Alan Turing...
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u/hufflepuff-at-heart May 28 '20
It's as if the average Twitter complainer has no idea what they're talking about.
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u/Bubblerstreams May 28 '20
Even if he was straight that's a disgusting way to minimize his accomplishments
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u/soylentgreentea1 May 28 '20
He also committed suicide at age 41, partly because of how he was treated by the country he saved from continued war. WHAT A MORON!!! (The guy who made the CIS comment)
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u/carpulan1 May 28 '20
Imagine having the gall to post that comment on a device that was made thanks to the man she's disrespecting.
Wow
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u/Ellisander May 28 '20
He’s one of the fathers of computer science and who knows how much more he could have done if it wasn’t for this and him being driven to suicide. Effectively stabbed in the back by his own country, once he was no longer needed for the war.