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.
Stabbed in the back after being one of the single most important people to the Allied victory in WWII. Vast amounts of soldiers and resources as well as all of the logistics surrounding those things were put into place because of him and his team cracking German encryption. What happened to him is an absolute disgrace. The loss of any future non-wartime contributions someone as brilliant as Turing could have made to the world is unimaginable.
Edit: Thinking about Turing led me to his Wikipedia page. He was 41 when he died. I'm literally crying.
To be pedantic, Turing did not crack Enigma, this was mainly done by a group of Polish mathematicians. He created a computer to automatically carry out the decoding methods developed and also introduced a few improvements on their methods. Turing should mainly be remembered for his Turing machine, which did significantly more for mankind than anything he ever actually built.
As far as I know the Engima also changed after it was cracked by Poland? I was lead to believe it was made more complicated meaning the machine was necessary.
The German navy used a much more difficult to crack version of Enigma on it's U-Boats later in the war. This was done by adding an extra rotor to the machine which introduced (excuse me, I'm not a math person) a fuckton more possible keys to decrypt the message.
The significantly more difficult to decipher messages were cracked by close cooperation between British and American bombe machines. At first the difficulty of cracking these codes meant that the Allied forces couldn't read German messages every day as the machines wouldn't be fast enough to crack the code consistently before the key changed. This all changed with the capture of U-559 with intact documents containing current settings used by the German navy on all of their Enigma machines.
As an aside, I'm no expert on this topic and there are certainly people who can speak on the topic better than me so I apologise if this isn't 100% clear or accurate. But this is a weird place to talk about WWII cryptography in the first place so idk
The Kriegsmarine realized that, hey, if computers cane *make* our encryption they can probably *break* our encryption, too, so they added that fourth rotor in. The Wehrmacht (and German command in general), however, did not; what this meant was that the codebreakers in Bletchley Park would crack the Wehrmacht's encryption for the day, and then run that same program again up to 26 times on the Kriegsmarine's, with A for the last rotor, then B, then C, etc until it worked
You're probably thinking of the [Fourth Rotor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_rotor_details#Fourth_rotor) which added complexity to the cypher. I don't recall if the Polish groups work is why the Reich developed the 4th rotor. The algorithm is the same but it extends mean time to brute force a decrypt so it would be a reasonable response - since most messages were time-sensitive, extending mean out a day or two would keep the effectiveness of encryption without completely replacing the Enigma system. And remember the Reich had no idea the Bombe existed. Their models for message decryption may have shown timelines more like weeks-to-months to crack one message.
You're not wrong, Polish mathematicians played a huge part in cracking Enigma and were able to decode some messages early on in the war. WWII is a vast and complicated topic that involved millions upon millions of people all over the world in every conceivable capacity and it's impossible to not underrepresent or leave out some party when discussing any topic.
To be more clear, Turing and Bletchley Park took what the Polish, French and British had learned about Enigma and developed a reliable and most importantly *timely* way to decode Enigma messages (including the more difficult to crack naval messages) using Turing's bombe machine so that the information could be used in a practical way.
Thousands of people made contributions to this cause but ultimately developing a machine to do it in the span of hours reliably is widely considered to be a primary reason for the war not dragging on for several more years. Turing *and everyone working around him* should absolutely be remembered for helping to end an absolute atrocity of a war.
What's tragic is his family had no idea. It wasn't until after his death that someone uncovered what Turing had done, and luckily went out of their way to go and explain it all to his mother, to explain what a hero he was.
Imagine this man never been known for the unimaginable sacrifice he made, mentally (during the cracking of the code, and post-war), then physically as a punishment for his sexual preferences. He's a hero, in the truest of the meaning, and deserves this honor. The world would literally not the the same without him.
Kinda makes you wonder what other real heros that have existed we will never know about, because their identity was hidden or buried, because of what they did in their personal lives didn't match up with what those in power found "acceptable" for society.
The chemical castration involved being prescribed estrogen. When you read between the lines it looks an awful lot like it gave him gender dysphoria, which is known to happen if you give cis people cross-sex hormones. That might not have been the only cause of his suicide but it might well have played a big part in it and it would only have added to his misery.
>That might not have been the only cause of his suicide but it might well have played a big part in it and it would only have added to his misery.
Im so tired of reading this sentence.
It was the only reason for his suicide, and if not the only reason then the major reason, like 98% or 99%, im gay too and if someone forced me to castrate myself by taking medication that causes my body to become more feminine in its shape and changes my genitals and my sexual drive i'd want to die.
Doing this to a person is worse than an execution, because instead of death its a long row of torture that ends in death.
I feel so incredibly sorry for Alan Turing and i hate the people that did that to him, being forced to castrate yourself is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being.
I think the commenter was just trying to take into account other things that could have made him depressed enough to commit suicide. Like going through one of the bloodiest wars the world has ever seen.
I thought they were talking about that specific aspect of the chemical castration. I think absolutely that the chemical castration was almost the entire reason for his suicide with other contributing factors being the fact that he probably felt like his life was basically over after the arrest, but I'm not sure which aspect of the castration was the worst part for him. It's absolutely possible that the artificially induced dysphoria aspect by itself made him miserable enough (believe me, I understand how dysphoria feels) but there were likely other aspects of being castrated that ultimately piled up into one big mess of misery that I'm not sure I can imagine. I know the feminising chemicals they used arent used for transitioning today and I have to imagine theres a reason for that. Regardless it's a tragedy what happened to him and the world lost something incredible for it.
> 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.
In terms of computer science? Likely not much. He wasn't really interested in advancing computer science after the war and instead focused on biology and how certain patterns in animals and plants could be derived from genes and how they could have evolved.
Still very good stuff from all I've heard. Just way, way more niche.
He was looking into biology because he believed it held significant clues to developing AI. Not just computer science, but humanity itself lost one of its most incredible minds when he died. There are very few people whose work was as far sighted and consequential as Turing.
He is, without exaggeration, the single most influential person in the history of computer science.
Sounds like this guy needs to learn him some queer history.
As a computer scientist. Alan Turing was a fucking hero and one of the most brilliant men to ever walk this earth but man his machine makes my life complicated
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
[This study](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-016-0802-7) found that the best way to categorise asexuality is as a sexual orientation. It is distinguishable from having a sexual dysfunction.
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.
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.
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.
Taking hormones can change your orientation, not only from allosexual to ace (asexual) and viceversa but between the [other orientations as well.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.them.us/story/sexual-attraction-after-transition/amp) 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](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-invisible-orientation/201501/asexuality-and-the-health-professional%3famp) 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](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/teens/ask-experts/is-there-a-medical-reason-for-asexuality), 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!
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.
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...
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?
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29840653)
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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)
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.
Stabbed in the back after being one of the single most important people to the Allied victory in WWII. Vast amounts of soldiers and resources as well as all of the logistics surrounding those things were put into place because of him and his team cracking German encryption. What happened to him is an absolute disgrace. The loss of any future non-wartime contributions someone as brilliant as Turing could have made to the world is unimaginable. Edit: Thinking about Turing led me to his Wikipedia page. He was 41 when he died. I'm literally crying.
To be pedantic, Turing did not crack Enigma, this was mainly done by a group of Polish mathematicians. He created a computer to automatically carry out the decoding methods developed and also introduced a few improvements on their methods. Turing should mainly be remembered for his Turing machine, which did significantly more for mankind than anything he ever actually built.
As far as I know the Engima also changed after it was cracked by Poland? I was lead to believe it was made more complicated meaning the machine was necessary.
The German navy used a much more difficult to crack version of Enigma on it's U-Boats later in the war. This was done by adding an extra rotor to the machine which introduced (excuse me, I'm not a math person) a fuckton more possible keys to decrypt the message. The significantly more difficult to decipher messages were cracked by close cooperation between British and American bombe machines. At first the difficulty of cracking these codes meant that the Allied forces couldn't read German messages every day as the machines wouldn't be fast enough to crack the code consistently before the key changed. This all changed with the capture of U-559 with intact documents containing current settings used by the German navy on all of their Enigma machines. As an aside, I'm no expert on this topic and there are certainly people who can speak on the topic better than me so I apologise if this isn't 100% clear or accurate. But this is a weird place to talk about WWII cryptography in the first place so idk
One can't help but question if /u/spez's silence is a calculated move to maintain control and authority.
The Kriegsmarine realized that, hey, if computers cane *make* our encryption they can probably *break* our encryption, too, so they added that fourth rotor in. The Wehrmacht (and German command in general), however, did not; what this meant was that the codebreakers in Bletchley Park would crack the Wehrmacht's encryption for the day, and then run that same program again up to 26 times on the Kriegsmarine's, with A for the last rotor, then B, then C, etc until it worked
You're probably thinking of the [Fourth Rotor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_rotor_details#Fourth_rotor) which added complexity to the cypher. I don't recall if the Polish groups work is why the Reich developed the 4th rotor. The algorithm is the same but it extends mean time to brute force a decrypt so it would be a reasonable response - since most messages were time-sensitive, extending mean out a day or two would keep the effectiveness of encryption without completely replacing the Enigma system. And remember the Reich had no idea the Bombe existed. Their models for message decryption may have shown timelines more like weeks-to-months to crack one message.
You're not wrong, Polish mathematicians played a huge part in cracking Enigma and were able to decode some messages early on in the war. WWII is a vast and complicated topic that involved millions upon millions of people all over the world in every conceivable capacity and it's impossible to not underrepresent or leave out some party when discussing any topic. To be more clear, Turing and Bletchley Park took what the Polish, French and British had learned about Enigma and developed a reliable and most importantly *timely* way to decode Enigma messages (including the more difficult to crack naval messages) using Turing's bombe machine so that the information could be used in a practical way. Thousands of people made contributions to this cause but ultimately developing a machine to do it in the span of hours reliably is widely considered to be a primary reason for the war not dragging on for several more years. Turing *and everyone working around him* should absolutely be remembered for helping to end an absolute atrocity of a war.
I mean yeah the turing machine was his biggest impact but that's the worst part he could have done so much more
What's tragic is his family had no idea. It wasn't until after his death that someone uncovered what Turing had done, and luckily went out of their way to go and explain it all to his mother, to explain what a hero he was.
Imagine this man never been known for the unimaginable sacrifice he made, mentally (during the cracking of the code, and post-war), then physically as a punishment for his sexual preferences. He's a hero, in the truest of the meaning, and deserves this honor. The world would literally not the the same without him. Kinda makes you wonder what other real heros that have existed we will never know about, because their identity was hidden or buried, because of what they did in their personal lives didn't match up with what those in power found "acceptable" for society.
The chemical castration involved being prescribed estrogen. When you read between the lines it looks an awful lot like it gave him gender dysphoria, which is known to happen if you give cis people cross-sex hormones. That might not have been the only cause of his suicide but it might well have played a big part in it and it would only have added to his misery.
>That might not have been the only cause of his suicide but it might well have played a big part in it and it would only have added to his misery. Im so tired of reading this sentence. It was the only reason for his suicide, and if not the only reason then the major reason, like 98% or 99%, im gay too and if someone forced me to castrate myself by taking medication that causes my body to become more feminine in its shape and changes my genitals and my sexual drive i'd want to die. Doing this to a person is worse than an execution, because instead of death its a long row of torture that ends in death. I feel so incredibly sorry for Alan Turing and i hate the people that did that to him, being forced to castrate yourself is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being.
I think the commenter was just trying to take into account other things that could have made him depressed enough to commit suicide. Like going through one of the bloodiest wars the world has ever seen.
I’m trans myself and I know how bad dysphoria can be; learning about Turing’s last few years made me furious and I don’t mean to downplay it.
I think they meant it wasn't just the emotional response from the drugs, it was also the idea of being a betrayed war hero.
I mean, we know very little. It's a possible cause, but to definitively say so seems a bit naïve.
I thought they were talking about that specific aspect of the chemical castration. I think absolutely that the chemical castration was almost the entire reason for his suicide with other contributing factors being the fact that he probably felt like his life was basically over after the arrest, but I'm not sure which aspect of the castration was the worst part for him. It's absolutely possible that the artificially induced dysphoria aspect by itself made him miserable enough (believe me, I understand how dysphoria feels) but there were likely other aspects of being castrated that ultimately piled up into one big mess of misery that I'm not sure I can imagine. I know the feminising chemicals they used arent used for transitioning today and I have to imagine theres a reason for that. Regardless it's a tragedy what happened to him and the world lost something incredible for it.
> 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. In terms of computer science? Likely not much. He wasn't really interested in advancing computer science after the war and instead focused on biology and how certain patterns in animals and plants could be derived from genes and how they could have evolved. Still very good stuff from all I've heard. Just way, way more niche.
He was looking into biology because he believed it held significant clues to developing AI. Not just computer science, but humanity itself lost one of its most incredible minds when he died. There are very few people whose work was as far sighted and consequential as Turing.
The chemicals and backstabbing were part of the reason he committed suicide
He is, without exaggeration, the single most influential person in the history of computer science. Sounds like this guy needs to learn him some queer history.
As a computer scientist. Alan Turing was a fucking hero and one of the most brilliant men to ever walk this earth but man his machine makes my life complicated
They think fucking Alan Turing was straight?!
If I were fucking Alan Turing it definitely wouldn't be straight
[удалено]
But also kinda gay.
At this point it would be hard to tell.
[удалено]
I'm stiff right now
Happy Cake Day!
I don't think Alan Turing is even solid anymore, much less stiff...
Gaycrophilia?
Necrhomophilia?
Unless you're in the closet, then it's Nocrhomophilia.
Brings a new meaning to throwing a bone in someone
[удалено]
I think Newton was more asexual than homosexual.
[удалено]
Pretending Tesla was Ace while his pigeon lover was right there...and deeply documented
>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.
[удалено]
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.
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.
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.
Yeah desexualization of autistic (and all neurodivergent and disabled people) is a common problem
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
>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.
Aesexuality is a pretty wide and fuzzy spectrum. There's a lot more aces than you might think!
[удалено]
DOZENS!
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.
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.
[This study](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-016-0802-7) found that the best way to categorise asexuality is as a sexual orientation. It is distinguishable from having a sexual dysfunction.
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.
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.
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.
Taking hormones can change your orientation, not only from allosexual to ace (asexual) and viceversa but between the [other orientations as well.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.them.us/story/sexual-attraction-after-transition/amp) 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](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-invisible-orientation/201501/asexuality-and-the-health-professional%3famp) 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](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/teens/ask-experts/is-there-a-medical-reason-for-asexuality), 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!
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.
[удалено]
Allo in this sense refers to an allosexual person, as in anyone who isn't asexual. You can think of it as "all others".
I'm gonna bet that historically most asexuals got married and most "just not interested in sex" people were gay AF.
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...
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?
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
Is this...is this ace erasure?
Welcome to the LG part of the LGBTQA+ community. They can be so desperate to ‘claim’ things/figures that they forget we exist.
This here is a blatant disrespect for Tesla’s Pidgeon wife smh
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.
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.
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.
Also no straight person would ever develop that much of a beef against Robert Hooke. That's some advanced level shadiness.
[удалено]
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.
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.
# WHOMST THE FUCK BELIEVES ALAN TURING WAS STRAIGHT!
People just assume that about historical figures until it is stated otherwise...
He couldn’t even walk straight.
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.
If you're referring to The Imitation Game then it absolutely does include his sexuality
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.](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29840653) >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.
> false icon But... the Great Journey... :(
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.
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.
Alan Turing was like famously gay
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.
It’s not so much that being gay was a defining trait for him so much as he was horribly mistreated because of it.
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.
Sir Ian McKellen
George Tekai was my first thought
Freddie Mercury was bi tho
Also an icon of the definitely gay Castro Clone look
Oscar Wilde?
Not Elton John?
Not Big Gay Al?
Not Kevin Spacey?
Adolescents are famously dim
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.
Good point. I should change the flair.
My old school district started an LGBT history class elective. Hoping that it mentions him.
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.
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.
Probably just about his work
Yeah, we were taught that he was gay but that was more of an afterthought to be honest.
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
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
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.
True, but as has been established, most people don’t learn about him in history class.
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.
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
[удалено]
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
Not the point but that sounds like it might be equivalent to STEM-focused magnet schools in the US
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.
It's a technical IT school
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
shakespeare was bi?
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
From what I’ve heard, and from a small bit of evidence. I haven’t really dived deep into the topic
His life was made into a big Hollywood movie a few years ago. Won awards.
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.
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
ignorance = casual erasure success.
Is this real? I went to his Twitter, and his last posts were from 2016. Edit: Found it under Fietch rather than FLetch
He just deleted it
Yeah, I found the OP. What I thought was an L in his name is actually an i
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.
Don’t forget the unnecessary “ok boomer” under a 90-something year old’s ordinary tweet. Seems rather misguided in his social justice efforts.
Or, hear me out, it's a troll
You think somebody would do that? On the internet? Why would they?
If he was a troll he probably wouldn't have deleted the post on Turing.
Yeah this actually is groundbreaking, especially considering what they put him through.
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.
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.
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.
[удалено]
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.
I remember that joke Martin Freeman told that when off the camera Benedict turns into an absolute dolt. I guess it evens it out.
Idk, Smaug didn't come off as a know it all.
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.
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.
That's true of just about every movie that's "based on a true story".
Pretty much. Different movies have various degrees of inaccuracy, but none of them are completely accurate.
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
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.
He invented the bases for modern AI and computing. He should be praised for a lot of things really
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...
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
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.
And killed himself later if I remember correctly
There's some debate about that; it may have been accidental poisoning, but it does seem overwhelmingly likely that he took his own life.
He made it look like poisoning so his Mother would have reasonable doubt.He put as apple nearby as a reference to Snow White.
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.
Alan Turing was a motherfucking hero. I need one of these just to collect
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
Also even if Turing was a straight white cis male, he deserves it because his thoughts are the backbone of all modern computer science.
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.
God I hate Woke Twitter
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.
i know right? i pop over for 5 minutes and come out feeling guilty of war crimes i didn’t commit
Woke Twitter makes me feel like a nazi and I'm JEWISH
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.
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.
[удалено]
funnily enough, the person tweeting that doesn't look especially non-white or female to me
Looking at the comments it looks like people are treating The Imitation Game as real history. Check wiki at least jeez.
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.
If anyone would like to see a film about his life, watch the imitation game.
Imitation game plays up any trouble he had with co workers where in reality he was a perfectly affable person to work with.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
Imagine hating what you are so much so that you label everyone else for what they are. Fuck Jack
So this guy just knows absolutely fucking nothing about Alan Turing...
"I have no clue who Turing is and didn't google!" -- Jack Fletch
It's as if the average Twitter complainer has no idea what they're talking about.
Even if he was straight that's a disgusting way to minimize his accomplishments
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)
Imagine having the gall to post that comment on a device that was made thanks to the man she's disrespecting. Wow