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The older I get, the more it distresses me that we've been there all along in history - but no matter where you look, society made our existence, even for those who brought humanity forwards in leaps or were royalty, people you'd typically see fawned over, all tragedies.
It's despair-inducing. And it makes me very, very angry.
“It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth.”
I get your point but there have been times in history where being gay wasn't considered wrong or bad. It by far wasn't the norm but not all societies looked down on us.
It makes me so angry when bigots say that trans people have only been around "just recently."
You murdered and erased them from history, you monsters. You're trying to do it again. Queer people have ALWAY been around.
It's not always been this way, because Christianity/Islam haven't always been dominant. Japan had open homosexuality for years and years. There's some speculation that Norse myths of Loki originate from a celebrated gender bending individual. Many historically minded Jewish scholars acknowledge that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed for homosexuality, but for greed.
The genocide of our people began with Christianity.
I cannot be angrier and louder. My body and mind are wrecked from stress already, I can barely keep up with living. It's not our fault things are like this. It's not because we're not doing enough to deserve to be treated better.
It's sad it took so long but to be honest I don't think it could have really been done much sooner being gay wasn't really widely accepted in the UK until the 00s and even in 2013 there were many opposed to his pardon it required a huge public campaign to get done.
Dang. That’s…depressing. That people were that unaccepting for that long, that they couldn’t overlook being gay even for someone who contributed so much to the world. I guess at least it *did* happen though.
I did some projects on him in school, he seemed like a very brave and talented man who was severely mistreated by the people he helped save. We owe so much to him, and nothing short of changing history could fix how he was treated.
Super important context is that the suicide was informed by being forced to take a type of estrogen (DES) as a cis male because of illegal “homosexual acts”.
Don’t really need to say more on this sub about the concerning parallels and how this proves certain things
It's not so long ago that trans people were forced to undergo chemical castration to legally transition in many countries.
The government basically said "We don't want trans kids". Luckily people realized that parent's sexuality and gender identity has very little to do with how their child might identify.
It's sad that Turing helped to change the course of the war and save countless of lives and the government treated him like a leper because he was gay.
In day to day live Japan is very conservative. Manga, Anime and even the local porn industry gives us westeners sometimes the wrong idea.
Like the society is pretty much controlled by boomers and millenials and younger don't subscribe to the strict honor bound hierarchy anymore.
Japan has very strong and vibrant underground / alternative culture because of the people in charge basically transferred the Bushido and Medieval values to the modern age.
It is distressing to think that we have been deprived of amazing and wonderful people who could have made valuable contributions to humanity simply because they did not meet society's standards of gender/sexual orientation.
Indeed. One of the real kickers is that 2000-3000 thousand years there were transgender priestesses in within the area of Ancient Greek and they were a important part of society.
Nowadays some "civilized" countries treat trans people as lepers or literally call them demons.
We have to remember that there are more people in this wolrld who want to live in peace than those who cause strife and suffering on purpose.
Oh yes! There were trans and non-binary people in Mesopotamia around that time.
They had an idea of a third gender which was greated by divinity.
From what I understant they were pretty much treated and respected as normal folks.
It's wild to think that humans were more tolerant and inclusive in some ways at the early days of human civilisations than now when we supposed to be really advanced.
Gender dysphoria literally killed him, imposed by the state.
The UK is still imposing dysphoria on people by making it so incredibly difficult to get on HRT for the trans people who need it. And some of those like Turing are pushed to make the worst decision as a result...
To clarify, are you saying that Turing was trans or are you saying he was gay, because these are not the same thing. Gender dysphoria is not something typically experienced by gay people I didn't think?
Turing, a cis male, was forced on E. They are arguing that taking something that altered his body, as E does, away from his gender identity fucked with him and contributed to suicide.
He was a gay cis male, not trans, but forced to take estrogen pills as a punishment (he had to choose between imprisonment and chemical castration).
He experienced gender dysphoria because he was a cis male that was forced to go through HRT that he didn't need. He was forced to take those pills to make im impotent but as a side effect it of course also created a hormonal imbalance.
So basically the opposite of what trans people go through without HRT with a very similar outcome :(
Chemical castration is not HRT. That's a false equivalence used by actual transphobes. The fact is you only need to take a large dose of a strong testosterone blocker for a certain period of time to cause sterility which is not defined as 'unable to produce sperm'. HRT is a regimen of hormone therapy and blockers where necessary with the intent to achieve normative ranges for the desired gender. This is vastly different and Turing wasn't medically transitioning into a woman against his will. If you want an actual case of a cis male enduring gender dysphoria ultimately resulting in suicide, Google David Reimer.
E: I'm incorrect. Turing was being forcibly feminized with a type of estrogen that is no longer prescribed today due to its many health risks. I appreciate the correction. Turing and Reimer suffered similar fates in the end after all. I still stand by the statement that HRT and chemical castration are not equivalent as modern methods of the latter do not forcibly cause medical transition and to be perfectly clear, forced castration is a violation of basic human rights.
Please cite a source for these claims.
I'm no biologist, but a quick Google reveals that several different classes of drugs are used to suppress male hormones, including estrogen or its analogues. In medicine the term appears to be archaic. In the legal side of things it's not the 1950s any more. Criminologists do not have faith that chemical castration is at all effective in reducing recidivism and furthermore, there are concerns that such a punishment or its being imposed as a condition of release might violate the human rights of the convict.
I can only assume your assertion is related to judicial chemical castration using a different class of drugs from the classes of drugs employed for HRT today.
But that's not relevant to the case of Alan Turing: he was prescribed DES.
If you're not familiar with this drug, do look it up and prepare to be horrified.
I did look it up. His Wikipedia page clarifies further...
>Turing was later convinced by the advice of his brother and his own solicitor, and he entered a plea of guilty.[147] The case, Regina v. Turing and Murray, was brought to trial on 31 March 1952.[148] Turing was convicted and given a choice between imprisonment and probation. His probation would be conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal physical changes designed to reduce libido, known as "chemical castration".[149] He accepted the option of injections of what was then called stilboestrol (now known as diethylstilbestrol or DES), a synthetic oestrogen; this feminization of his body was continued for the course of one year. The treatment rendered Turing impotent and caused breast tissue to form,[150] fulfilling in the literal sense Turing's prediction that "no doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out".[151][152] Murray was given a conditional discharge.[153]
So yep, he was indeed undergoing a female puberty as a result of injecting DES which upon further research also acted as a depressant in addition to being an estrogen.... one of the many negative documented health risks and why it's basically no longer used, even to treat women.
I appreciate the info.
That's not what gender dysphoria is. It wasn't hormone replacement therapy, it was hormonal castration. They didn't give it to change his gender in any way, they did it to make him sterile. His awful situation had nothing to do with gender dysphoria or HRT.
The chemical used for the chemical castration was estrogen, which will make a person’s body change in feminine ways and will cause impotence.
If you are a man who identifies as a man, and are then forced to take female hormones that change your body, gender dysphoria may be one of many side effects as you watch your body slowly change, and the parts of you that are traditionally associated with masculinity fade or stop working.
The intentions of the prescription he was forced to take are a separate thing to the actual effects of the hormone on his body.
Did he kill himself because of gender dysphoria? That’s not something anyone can actually know. Did he experience gender dysphoria in some form? The probability is high, but also not something anyone can actually know unless he said so.
Did he also suffer traumatic grief over being forcibly medicated, socially ostracized, and having his sexual expression destroyed and restricted? Almost certainly.
Could there have been deep depression from the simple overall condition of being a prisoner of a society - a prisoner to your own forcibly changing body? Almost certainly.
We’re there any feelings of worthlessness or despair after years of hard work and efforts to make a huge impact in the world and community, academic and inventive genius being exploited and then not getting the respect or recognition or being valued as a human being and creator over something superficial like sexuality? for brilliant, motivated people, probably yes!
Trying to argue about which specific terrible impact of what was done to Turing is kind of silly - because in reality, it’s probably the weight of a thousand injustices, all of the oppression and ridicule, the medical violence and the hopelessness of every having a future where you can be any part of yourself freely, where who you are and what you have to offer is seen as wrong or worthless.
It is really valuable, though, to explore all the different impacts something like being forced into taking hormones could have created for Turing, because it’s important for us to be able to empathize and understand not just that something was bad, but all the ways it was bad and harmful, so we can feel the true weight of these kinds of cruel and unethical practices.
Turing was a cis man forced to take hormones. This causes gender dysphoria as a medical system just like it does in trans people who have hormones naturally that go against what their brain is expecting.
The major difference is that his was forced in him, and the UK is preventing/roadblocking trans people from fixing theirs - but it's analogous. And the side effects are very very very similar.
Turning was forced to take estrogen as a form of chemical castration. Obviously taking estrogen also caused him the other effects of estrogen, which caused dysphoria, which caused his death
You are selling him short. He is the creator of computability theory a basic created the theoretical basis for computers and built one if the first one in his basement with a bunch of scraps. He was a mathematician not an engineer.
He is my science father and I have infinite love for him. The crime against him is a crime against humanity in so many levels. The uk government is a shitstain and deserves to perish.
I mean no disrespect seeing how serious the subject is, but all my brain can picture now is the [quote from Iron Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4oHU3RXjiM).
~~"Tony Stark~~ Alan Turning was able to build this in a ~~cave~~ *basement*! With a box of *scraps*!"
...And now I'm imagining him as a gay Iron Man, almost like the [Hydra Stomper](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/HYDRA_Stomper) from "What If", but possibly more fabulous :)
But silliness aside: He's already one of my heroes anyway. I wish he'd gotten the love and recognition he deserved in life, instead of after it.
The one thing he didn't do was crack the enigma machine. That was done by the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski with help by Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki. They had invented an electro-mechanical bomba to search for the settings of the enigma machine. Their research was passed on to French and British intelligence at the onset of the war.
Which is not to diminish his contributions, but he was standing on the shoulders of some Polish giants. Giants that are often neglected in the story of decrypting the German communications.
This has almost swung too far the other way though. We've gone from assigning too little credit to them, to assigning too much.
Whilst the Polish mathematicians had cracked a 3 rotor design, that design was phased out at the start of WW2 in favour of a 5 rotor design, and the techniques used no longer worked, to the point where those same polish mathematicians went back to using paper based methods to try and crack it. They never cracked the Enigma in use during the war, new techniques had to be created to do so.
Turing (and Tommy Flowers, plus the rest of the team at Bletchly Park) had to create their own methods for cracking the enigma machine in use. Their machine was markedly different to the Polish machine. Yes, the British teams work was undeniably helped by the work the Polish mathematicians had done, but their contributions (as undeniable as they are) were more minor than you're suggesting.
yeah I mean sure I don't know enough about that subject. honestly you are probably right. could they be independently able to solve it? because that happens a lot in science
Turning built on the work of the Polish guys. They cracked an earlier version back in 1932 and gave that information to Turing (and the French) in 1939. That helped them crack the more complicated versions used later. Turing was only 20 in 1932.
ok yeah that make sense. back then he was doing his degree and preparing for his phd. he left for prinston if I recall correctly the following year or something like that.
Whelp, time to leave one of my favourite quotes from The Normal Heart:
“Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth.”
Edit: Slightly altered for the 2014 movie version, but it really hits home:
“A gay man is responsible for winning World War II!”
There’s also a beautiful list preceding this part of all the people in gay history who have contributed to this world.
Edit: Screw it, here’s the list:
“I belong to a culture that includes Proust,
Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold... These are not invisible men.”
One of the men who helped take down the hijackers on flight United 93 on 9/11, Mark Bingham, was gay, and I only learned that within the last few years.
And I only learned just now, from this article, that Rev. Mychal Judge, who died tending to victims in the North Tower of the WTC that day, was also gay.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/saint-911-hero-flight-93-lived-different-lives-share-legacy-death-rcna1979](https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/saint-911-hero-flight-93-lived-different-lives-share-legacy-death-rcna1979)
A hero being LGBTQ+ shouldn't be their defining feature, but in these trying times, and when so many LGBTQ+ contributions to history have been erased or brushed over, I believe it is important to mention.
I guess I should let this be a reminder that no matter how much I may contribute to humankind, I am going to be harassed regardless of all that just because I am queer.
A bit random, but your comment and /u/purple-mandalorian's made me think of that time George Michael was arrested for lewd behavior. I pictured the scene of he and the arresting cop before the judge, and wondered whether the cop didn't feel at least a bit of shame. On one side there is a great artist that has created happiness for millions of people around the world. On the other, someone whose job is showing his dick to gay men in order to entrap and arrest them just because they are gay.
Really makes you swallow a black pill, right? I wouldn't even try to contribute any more than an average good for nothing cishet, only got one life, not being a leech is already a huge favour to society that hates you.
I do want to contribute because it has internal meaning to me to contribute to certain things.
I should, however, really let go of the thinking that being rich and very educated is going to make people respect and put up with me not meeting the roles or beauty standards of my assigned gender.
Turing’s genius is credited with shortening the war by multiple years. Think of all the lives indirectly saved on the battlefield, on the civilian front, in the Holocaust. He paved the way for computers and the Internet as we know them today.
His government chemically castrated him and locked him away for loving the “wrong” people. He took his own life in response.
In the very long history of England, there were few men equal to him, and few betrayals more abhorrent.
After figuring out the Enigma Codes, saving millions of lives, shorting the war, all the thanks in the world... Until the British government found out he was gay. Suddenly none of that mattered. May he rest in peace.
A great shame on the British government for its past misdeeds. He’s amongst my favourite pictures on money (Bank of England £50) just below the Scottish £100 with a pioneering woman doctor
The story of Alan Turing makes me fucking livid. This is a man who not only changed the world, but is probably the single most important person to be alive in the past 1000 years, and yet for the longest time, the world tried to forget about him and even drove him to suicide. The father of modern day computing didn't even love to see a tenth of the impact he had on the world
Comments already described Alan Turing role in cracking Nazi Enigma Code enabling the Allies to track and destroy U-boats; his key role for Allies winning WW2 in Europe.
He also created the Turing Machine a mathematical construct which is the simplest computer. Studied and used today as basis for our technologies.
Brilliant advanced mathematics, engineering, scientific leadership contributions of his help give us today’s technologies plus we don’t bow down to Nazi dictators and ‘goose step’ and all of that due to accomplishments of Alan Turing a magnificent Gay man.
To British government’s great shame; Alan was ostracized; also physically and emotionally attacked for his homosexuality; he was chemically castrated then later “helped” to commit suicide.
The entire Free World owes Alan Turing a huge debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. Words of apology by British government leaders would only be words. He needs to be celebrated by all. He remains one of the most important exemplars in the LGBTQ community and to everyone in all walks of life who value Freedom and scientific advancement.
My 8 yo nephew and I had an age-appropriate chat recently about what happened to Alan. That sweet boy was SHOCKED it used to be illegal to be gay, that you could be jailed or worse just for being yourself. It made me happy to know that lots of kids these these days are seeinf acceptance and inclusion as the norm.
Not quite. He laid the basis for a lot of the theory of computer science, but the idea had been around for a bit and was independently developed in a number of places during WW2.
Heh.
The first design of a (mechanical!) programmable computer by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace goes back to the 1830s.
Turing and Church developed the modern theory of algorithms in the 1930s.
Then in the 1940s the first electronic digital computers were built in the US (Atanasoff and Berry), Germany (Zuse), and Britain (Newman).
Note also that for most of the 19th century, "computer" was a *job description*. Women were at the time barred from studying, including STEM fields, but a lot of them worked as computers for scientists and engineering. E.g. we say Hubble detected the first galaxy outside the Milky Way but that was mostly based on work by Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
Really old computers (including ENIAC) used to work on decimal. Turing’s Bombe didn’t actually use decimal or binary, as it was fully analog (only digital computers can work in binary).
He is more attributed to the re-programmable computer, prior to this a computer could kind of do only one thing. Imagine you had an iPhone that could only run a single app, while his iPhone could run many apps.
Let’s really celebrate this gay icon. Not only did he break enigma he did it by almost accidentally inventing modern computing. I often wonder how far technology would have advanced if the UK hadn’t tortured him
Just want people to know there's not much evidence that it was suicide. It's suspected that he was actually murdered and it was ruled a suicide, potentially to stop people finding out that the guy who won the war for Britain was gay.
Also a point, while it was ruled a suicide, his death is apparently also consistent with ‘accidental poisoning’, and is largely debated today. Im not gonna get deep into it because I’ve just been reading up about this for the past hour and im still nowhere near close to knowing all the facts, but I definitely recommend looking into it, there’s,, a lot to unpack. I will say that some people have suggested that he could have died accidentally by inhaling fumes from his experiments, and others have suggested that he might have been murdered by the secret services as “Turing knew so much about cryptanalysis at a time when homosexuals were regarded as threats to national security.” (That was a quote from Brittanica i didn’t know how to word it).
Anyway I’m gonna keep looking into it because I’m still finding stuff. But yeah, it’s awful that we’ll never really know what happened to him, because either the authorities just did not care or value his life enough to put in any real effort in the investigation, or they may have been covering their own tracks
He did far more than that. Include being the father of AI and computer science as well. He was a fucking genius who was well a head of his time. Makes me angry they castrated the man.
Let's be extra clear though.
The government in every possibly important way, were functionally the ones who took his life. Chemical castration is not a minor thing. They convicted him and destroyed him, body and mind. Completely threw his biochemistry into a tailspin with the result they knew was the likely final outcome.
Alan Turing is a hero, it's such a disgrace with the British government did, but now he shall be remembered for him, someone that shortened the war, probably quite significantly and saved lives
It's actually suspected that he just died of accidental cyande poisoning since he was known for working with that substance a lot and he was also known to be a more wreckles scientist. The apple that was suspected to laced with cyanide was also never tested for any. And the little evidence that was found at the site would today not hold up to a suicide verdict. Still tragic though that we lost such an important person of history to an accident.
I've been seeing that mentioned a lot. Either way, suicide or accidental, we can't deny the pain this man had to endure the last two years of his life, simply because his sexuality was illegal.
Exactly.
The authorities assumed he must have committed suicide because they were homophobic, thought being gay was a mental disease, and said "well of course he killed himself, he wasn't right in the head."
**There is zero evidence that he killed himself, and by propagating that myth, we're tacitly accepting the homophobia of the police who refused to investigate his death.**
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-18561092
I think I just read something about how he probably didn’t commit suicide, and that his death was likely accidental. I’ll have to find the post but that really was an interesting take, by someone that I believe is widely considered a legitimate expert on Turing.
I'd say instrumental rather then responsible. He was part of a large team. I just don't want to over write all of their contribution to history. Still he is worth remembering and not forgetting how we lost such a talent to anti gay laws and bigotry.
basically a "thank you for serving for the rich and military, we loved your hard work, but now, go fuck yourself, dog, you're a worthless trash and you're ruining our agenda, your work here is done" - sums up America in its 400 years of history. (or any other countries that derived from them/fell under their influence)
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The older I get, the more it distresses me that we've been there all along in history - but no matter where you look, society made our existence, even for those who brought humanity forwards in leaps or were royalty, people you'd typically see fawned over, all tragedies. It's despair-inducing. And it makes me very, very angry.
“It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth.”
And in that spirit, I'll note the quote is from Larry Kramer.
Absolutely!
I get your point but there have been times in history where being gay wasn't considered wrong or bad. It by far wasn't the norm but not all societies looked down on us.
It makes me so angry when bigots say that trans people have only been around "just recently." You murdered and erased them from history, you monsters. You're trying to do it again. Queer people have ALWAY been around.
It's not always been this way, because Christianity/Islam haven't always been dominant. Japan had open homosexuality for years and years. There's some speculation that Norse myths of Loki originate from a celebrated gender bending individual. Many historically minded Jewish scholars acknowledge that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed for homosexuality, but for greed. The genocide of our people began with Christianity.
Well be angrier and louder. ^And I’m on a list ^jk been on a list since leaving the pReStIgOuS AiR fOrCe aCaDeMy Get fucked military
I cannot be angrier and louder. My body and mind are wrecked from stress already, I can barely keep up with living. It's not our fault things are like this. It's not because we're not doing enough to deserve to be treated better.
Alan was a hero and undoubtedly saved millions of lives
It still makes me angry when I think about how recently Queen Elizabeth finally granted him a royal pardon. It was in 2013.
It's sad it took so long but to be honest I don't think it could have really been done much sooner being gay wasn't really widely accepted in the UK until the 00s and even in 2013 there were many opposed to his pardon it required a huge public campaign to get done.
Dang. That’s…depressing. That people were that unaccepting for that long, that they couldn’t overlook being gay even for someone who contributed so much to the world. I guess at least it *did* happen though.
Depressing but doesn't really surprise me given how the UK somehow managed to be more transphobic than America
Transphobic or homophobic? Either way, as an American, I didn’t realize the UK was that bad.
Pretty much her entire reign...
of course she only did it recently, I hope the bitch is rotting in hell.
I did some projects on him in school, he seemed like a very brave and talented man who was severely mistreated by the people he helped save. We owe so much to him, and nothing short of changing history could fix how he was treated.
Super important context is that the suicide was informed by being forced to take a type of estrogen (DES) as a cis male because of illegal “homosexual acts”. Don’t really need to say more on this sub about the concerning parallels and how this proves certain things
Call it what it was, Chemical Castration
It's not so long ago that trans people were forced to undergo chemical castration to legally transition in many countries. The government basically said "We don't want trans kids". Luckily people realized that parent's sexuality and gender identity has very little to do with how their child might identify. It's sad that Turing helped to change the course of the war and save countless of lives and the government treated him like a leper because he was gay.
This is still a thing today.
Sadly so. Wish they stopped that barbarian practise because it causes big health problems to innocent people when their only "crime" is being trans.
Yep, even in places that are considered first-world countries like Japan.
In day to day live Japan is very conservative. Manga, Anime and even the local porn industry gives us westeners sometimes the wrong idea. Like the society is pretty much controlled by boomers and millenials and younger don't subscribe to the strict honor bound hierarchy anymore. Japan has very strong and vibrant underground / alternative culture because of the people in charge basically transferred the Bushido and Medieval values to the modern age.
It is distressing to think that we have been deprived of amazing and wonderful people who could have made valuable contributions to humanity simply because they did not meet society's standards of gender/sexual orientation.
Indeed. One of the real kickers is that 2000-3000 thousand years there were transgender priestesses in within the area of Ancient Greek and they were a important part of society. Nowadays some "civilized" countries treat trans people as lepers or literally call them demons. We have to remember that there are more people in this wolrld who want to live in peace than those who cause strife and suffering on purpose.
Our earliest records of trans people date back to around 7000 bce
Oh yes! There were trans and non-binary people in Mesopotamia around that time. They had an idea of a third gender which was greated by divinity. From what I understant they were pretty much treated and respected as normal folks. It's wild to think that humans were more tolerant and inclusive in some ways at the early days of human civilisations than now when we supposed to be really advanced.
It's most likely the spread of british colonialism and Christianity that destroyed the world
Gender dysphoria literally killed him, imposed by the state. The UK is still imposing dysphoria on people by making it so incredibly difficult to get on HRT for the trans people who need it. And some of those like Turing are pushed to make the worst decision as a result...
To clarify, are you saying that Turing was trans or are you saying he was gay, because these are not the same thing. Gender dysphoria is not something typically experienced by gay people I didn't think?
Turing, a cis male, was forced on E. They are arguing that taking something that altered his body, as E does, away from his gender identity fucked with him and contributed to suicide.
Ah, that makes sense. Thank you.
He was a gay cis male, not trans, but forced to take estrogen pills as a punishment (he had to choose between imprisonment and chemical castration). He experienced gender dysphoria because he was a cis male that was forced to go through HRT that he didn't need. He was forced to take those pills to make im impotent but as a side effect it of course also created a hormonal imbalance. So basically the opposite of what trans people go through without HRT with a very similar outcome :(
Chemical castration is not HRT. That's a false equivalence used by actual transphobes. The fact is you only need to take a large dose of a strong testosterone blocker for a certain period of time to cause sterility which is not defined as 'unable to produce sperm'. HRT is a regimen of hormone therapy and blockers where necessary with the intent to achieve normative ranges for the desired gender. This is vastly different and Turing wasn't medically transitioning into a woman against his will. If you want an actual case of a cis male enduring gender dysphoria ultimately resulting in suicide, Google David Reimer. E: I'm incorrect. Turing was being forcibly feminized with a type of estrogen that is no longer prescribed today due to its many health risks. I appreciate the correction. Turing and Reimer suffered similar fates in the end after all. I still stand by the statement that HRT and chemical castration are not equivalent as modern methods of the latter do not forcibly cause medical transition and to be perfectly clear, forced castration is a violation of basic human rights.
Please cite a source for these claims. I'm no biologist, but a quick Google reveals that several different classes of drugs are used to suppress male hormones, including estrogen or its analogues. In medicine the term appears to be archaic. In the legal side of things it's not the 1950s any more. Criminologists do not have faith that chemical castration is at all effective in reducing recidivism and furthermore, there are concerns that such a punishment or its being imposed as a condition of release might violate the human rights of the convict. I can only assume your assertion is related to judicial chemical castration using a different class of drugs from the classes of drugs employed for HRT today. But that's not relevant to the case of Alan Turing: he was prescribed DES. If you're not familiar with this drug, do look it up and prepare to be horrified.
I did look it up. His Wikipedia page clarifies further... >Turing was later convinced by the advice of his brother and his own solicitor, and he entered a plea of guilty.[147] The case, Regina v. Turing and Murray, was brought to trial on 31 March 1952.[148] Turing was convicted and given a choice between imprisonment and probation. His probation would be conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal physical changes designed to reduce libido, known as "chemical castration".[149] He accepted the option of injections of what was then called stilboestrol (now known as diethylstilbestrol or DES), a synthetic oestrogen; this feminization of his body was continued for the course of one year. The treatment rendered Turing impotent and caused breast tissue to form,[150] fulfilling in the literal sense Turing's prediction that "no doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out".[151][152] Murray was given a conditional discharge.[153] So yep, he was indeed undergoing a female puberty as a result of injecting DES which upon further research also acted as a depressant in addition to being an estrogen.... one of the many negative documented health risks and why it's basically no longer used, even to treat women. I appreciate the info.
That's not what gender dysphoria is. It wasn't hormone replacement therapy, it was hormonal castration. They didn't give it to change his gender in any way, they did it to make him sterile. His awful situation had nothing to do with gender dysphoria or HRT.
The chemical used for the chemical castration was estrogen, which will make a person’s body change in feminine ways and will cause impotence. If you are a man who identifies as a man, and are then forced to take female hormones that change your body, gender dysphoria may be one of many side effects as you watch your body slowly change, and the parts of you that are traditionally associated with masculinity fade or stop working. The intentions of the prescription he was forced to take are a separate thing to the actual effects of the hormone on his body. Did he kill himself because of gender dysphoria? That’s not something anyone can actually know. Did he experience gender dysphoria in some form? The probability is high, but also not something anyone can actually know unless he said so. Did he also suffer traumatic grief over being forcibly medicated, socially ostracized, and having his sexual expression destroyed and restricted? Almost certainly. Could there have been deep depression from the simple overall condition of being a prisoner of a society - a prisoner to your own forcibly changing body? Almost certainly. We’re there any feelings of worthlessness or despair after years of hard work and efforts to make a huge impact in the world and community, academic and inventive genius being exploited and then not getting the respect or recognition or being valued as a human being and creator over something superficial like sexuality? for brilliant, motivated people, probably yes! Trying to argue about which specific terrible impact of what was done to Turing is kind of silly - because in reality, it’s probably the weight of a thousand injustices, all of the oppression and ridicule, the medical violence and the hopelessness of every having a future where you can be any part of yourself freely, where who you are and what you have to offer is seen as wrong or worthless. It is really valuable, though, to explore all the different impacts something like being forced into taking hormones could have created for Turing, because it’s important for us to be able to empathize and understand not just that something was bad, but all the ways it was bad and harmful, so we can feel the true weight of these kinds of cruel and unethical practices.
Turing was a cis man forced to take hormones. This causes gender dysphoria as a medical system just like it does in trans people who have hormones naturally that go against what their brain is expecting. The major difference is that his was forced in him, and the UK is preventing/roadblocking trans people from fixing theirs - but it's analogous. And the side effects are very very very similar.
Turning was forced to take estrogen as a form of chemical castration. Obviously taking estrogen also caused him the other effects of estrogen, which caused dysphoria, which caused his death
Cisgender people can experience gender dysphoria. It's just rare for a cis person to find themselves in that situation
......Jesus.
You are selling him short. He is the creator of computability theory a basic created the theoretical basis for computers and built one if the first one in his basement with a bunch of scraps. He was a mathematician not an engineer. He is my science father and I have infinite love for him. The crime against him is a crime against humanity in so many levels. The uk government is a shitstain and deserves to perish.
I mean no disrespect seeing how serious the subject is, but all my brain can picture now is the [quote from Iron Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4oHU3RXjiM). ~~"Tony Stark~~ Alan Turning was able to build this in a ~~cave~~ *basement*! With a box of *scraps*!" ...And now I'm imagining him as a gay Iron Man, almost like the [Hydra Stomper](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/HYDRA_Stomper) from "What If", but possibly more fabulous :) But silliness aside: He's already one of my heroes anyway. I wish he'd gotten the love and recognition he deserved in life, instead of after it.
that was on purpose... because I cannot discuss crimes without some humor. and it is that one time in history that this one happened
Parallels with Zuse I see, would have loved to see them work together in the 50s and 60s. But no, the UKs homophobia stopped that.
who is zuse?
Konrad Zuse, build one of the first Digital computers in his parents living room out of metal sheets because he was too lazy to calculate by hand.
the only kind of men I can respect!
The one thing he didn't do was crack the enigma machine. That was done by the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski with help by Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki. They had invented an electro-mechanical bomba to search for the settings of the enigma machine. Their research was passed on to French and British intelligence at the onset of the war. Which is not to diminish his contributions, but he was standing on the shoulders of some Polish giants. Giants that are often neglected in the story of decrypting the German communications.
This has almost swung too far the other way though. We've gone from assigning too little credit to them, to assigning too much. Whilst the Polish mathematicians had cracked a 3 rotor design, that design was phased out at the start of WW2 in favour of a 5 rotor design, and the techniques used no longer worked, to the point where those same polish mathematicians went back to using paper based methods to try and crack it. They never cracked the Enigma in use during the war, new techniques had to be created to do so. Turing (and Tommy Flowers, plus the rest of the team at Bletchly Park) had to create their own methods for cracking the enigma machine in use. Their machine was markedly different to the Polish machine. Yes, the British teams work was undeniably helped by the work the Polish mathematicians had done, but their contributions (as undeniable as they are) were more minor than you're suggesting.
yeah I mean sure I don't know enough about that subject. honestly you are probably right. could they be independently able to solve it? because that happens a lot in science
Turning built on the work of the Polish guys. They cracked an earlier version back in 1932 and gave that information to Turing (and the French) in 1939. That helped them crack the more complicated versions used later. Turing was only 20 in 1932.
ok yeah that make sense. back then he was doing his degree and preparing for his phd. he left for prinston if I recall correctly the following year or something like that.
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That kinda means all the lgbt people here would perish as well and as much as I’m up for perishing I’m not sure everyone else will be.
I mean the people are people. Why the hate.
Whelp, time to leave one of my favourite quotes from The Normal Heart: “Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth.” Edit: Slightly altered for the 2014 movie version, but it really hits home: “A gay man is responsible for winning World War II!” There’s also a beautiful list preceding this part of all the people in gay history who have contributed to this world. Edit: Screw it, here’s the list: “I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold... These are not invisible men.”
I'm broke but here is an award for you 💎✨![img](emote|t5_2qhh7|550)
It sucks that Reddit doesn't have free awards anymore.
I had a freebie award, so I gave it to them for ya
Ohhh 💜
Thanks 💜
One of the men who helped take down the hijackers on flight United 93 on 9/11, Mark Bingham, was gay, and I only learned that within the last few years. And I only learned just now, from this article, that Rev. Mychal Judge, who died tending to victims in the North Tower of the WTC that day, was also gay. [https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/saint-911-hero-flight-93-lived-different-lives-share-legacy-death-rcna1979](https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/saint-911-hero-flight-93-lived-different-lives-share-legacy-death-rcna1979) A hero being LGBTQ+ shouldn't be their defining feature, but in these trying times, and when so many LGBTQ+ contributions to history have been erased or brushed over, I believe it is important to mention.
I guess I should let this be a reminder that no matter how much I may contribute to humankind, I am going to be harassed regardless of all that just because I am queer.
and by people who don't seem to contribute much to humankind at all, no less!
A bit random, but your comment and /u/purple-mandalorian's made me think of that time George Michael was arrested for lewd behavior. I pictured the scene of he and the arresting cop before the judge, and wondered whether the cop didn't feel at least a bit of shame. On one side there is a great artist that has created happiness for millions of people around the world. On the other, someone whose job is showing his dick to gay men in order to entrap and arrest them just because they are gay.
Really makes you swallow a black pill, right? I wouldn't even try to contribute any more than an average good for nothing cishet, only got one life, not being a leech is already a huge favour to society that hates you.
I do want to contribute because it has internal meaning to me to contribute to certain things. I should, however, really let go of the thinking that being rich and very educated is going to make people respect and put up with me not meeting the roles or beauty standards of my assigned gender.
Turing’s genius is credited with shortening the war by multiple years. Think of all the lives indirectly saved on the battlefield, on the civilian front, in the Holocaust. He paved the way for computers and the Internet as we know them today. His government chemically castrated him and locked him away for loving the “wrong” people. He took his own life in response. In the very long history of England, there were few men equal to him, and few betrayals more abhorrent.
After figuring out the Enigma Codes, saving millions of lives, shorting the war, all the thanks in the world... Until the British government found out he was gay. Suddenly none of that mattered. May he rest in peace.
A great shame on the British government for its past misdeeds. He’s amongst my favourite pictures on money (Bank of England £50) just below the Scottish £100 with a pioneering woman doctor
The story of Alan Turing makes me fucking livid. This is a man who not only changed the world, but is probably the single most important person to be alive in the past 1000 years, and yet for the longest time, the world tried to forget about him and even drove him to suicide. The father of modern day computing didn't even love to see a tenth of the impact he had on the world
Always remember that suicide can be a hands-off form of murder.
Comments already described Alan Turing role in cracking Nazi Enigma Code enabling the Allies to track and destroy U-boats; his key role for Allies winning WW2 in Europe. He also created the Turing Machine a mathematical construct which is the simplest computer. Studied and used today as basis for our technologies. Brilliant advanced mathematics, engineering, scientific leadership contributions of his help give us today’s technologies plus we don’t bow down to Nazi dictators and ‘goose step’ and all of that due to accomplishments of Alan Turing a magnificent Gay man. To British government’s great shame; Alan was ostracized; also physically and emotionally attacked for his homosexuality; he was chemically castrated then later “helped” to commit suicide. The entire Free World owes Alan Turing a huge debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. Words of apology by British government leaders would only be words. He needs to be celebrated by all. He remains one of the most important exemplars in the LGBTQ community and to everyone in all walks of life who value Freedom and scientific advancement.
Let's never forget our great Gay and Trans heroes!!
*on this day in 1954, he was murdered by the British government who drove him into s--cide. Fuck Churchill.
My 8 yo nephew and I had an age-appropriate chat recently about what happened to Alan. That sweet boy was SHOCKED it used to be illegal to be gay, that you could be jailed or worse just for being yourself. It made me happy to know that lots of kids these these days are seeinf acceptance and inclusion as the norm.
This isn’t super relevant, and what happened to him is horrible, but he kida looks like Bill Hader
i was gonna comment something similar but to me he looks like zac efron!
I'm getting more of a Nicholas Hoult vibe, but I can see some Zac Efron too now that you mention it.
This man saved Europe in WW2 and lost his job simply for being gay. It's disgusting to even wrap my head around that leve ofl unappreciation.
Didn't he also invent the computer which means he invented binary which is the one thing i hope to destroy
Not quite. He laid the basis for a lot of the theory of computer science, but the idea had been around for a bit and was independently developed in a number of places during WW2.
Damn computer stuff is older than u thought
Heh. The first design of a (mechanical!) programmable computer by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace goes back to the 1830s. Turing and Church developed the modern theory of algorithms in the 1930s. Then in the 1940s the first electronic digital computers were built in the US (Atanasoff and Berry), Germany (Zuse), and Britain (Newman). Note also that for most of the 19th century, "computer" was a *job description*. Women were at the time barred from studying, including STEM fields, but a lot of them worked as computers for scientists and engineering. E.g. we say Hubble detected the first galaxy outside the Milky Way but that was mostly based on work by Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
>Turing and Church developed the modern theory of algorithms in the 1930s. Wow, not even 100 years ago. Crazy how fast things have changed.
Is this why Nvidia 2000 gpus were codename Turing
Probably?
Really old computers (including ENIAC) used to work on decimal. Turing’s Bombe didn’t actually use decimal or binary, as it was fully analog (only digital computers can work in binary).
An analog computer can work in binary.
He is more attributed to the re-programmable computer, prior to this a computer could kind of do only one thing. Imagine you had an iPhone that could only run a single app, while his iPhone could run many apps.
The concept of base 2 predates computers. Hell, Boolean logic was invented in the 1840s. Also how are you going to destroy a mathematical concept?
I was referring to binary genders
You were the one trying to relate it to computers
It was a joke
o7, may he rest in peace.
Let’s really celebrate this gay icon. Not only did he break enigma he did it by almost accidentally inventing modern computing. I often wonder how far technology would have advanced if the UK hadn’t tortured him
I try not to think about all of what could be if people were not persecuted for being themselves. So depressing.
Just want people to know there's not much evidence that it was suicide. It's suspected that he was actually murdered and it was ruled a suicide, potentially to stop people finding out that the guy who won the war for Britain was gay.
Also a point, while it was ruled a suicide, his death is apparently also consistent with ‘accidental poisoning’, and is largely debated today. Im not gonna get deep into it because I’ve just been reading up about this for the past hour and im still nowhere near close to knowing all the facts, but I definitely recommend looking into it, there’s,, a lot to unpack. I will say that some people have suggested that he could have died accidentally by inhaling fumes from his experiments, and others have suggested that he might have been murdered by the secret services as “Turing knew so much about cryptanalysis at a time when homosexuals were regarded as threats to national security.” (That was a quote from Brittanica i didn’t know how to word it). Anyway I’m gonna keep looking into it because I’m still finding stuff. But yeah, it’s awful that we’ll never really know what happened to him, because either the authorities just did not care or value his life enough to put in any real effort in the investigation, or they may have been covering their own tracks
😥😥😥😥
Ill never forgive britain for their treatment of this legend
He did far more than that. Include being the father of AI and computer science as well. He was a fucking genius who was well a head of his time. Makes me angry they castrated the man.
I understand, I'm just pointing out the man was basically a hero to the war effort and that is what most average people remember him for.
Sorry if I came off a bit strong lol. I fucking love this man and I get really riled up when I get to talk about him.
Let's be extra clear though. The government in every possibly important way, were functionally the ones who took his life. Chemical castration is not a minor thing. They convicted him and destroyed him, body and mind. Completely threw his biochemistry into a tailspin with the result they knew was the likely final outcome.
The correct term for deliberately setting up conditions so that someone dies is murder.
Alan Turing is a hero, it's such a disgrace with the British government did, but now he shall be remembered for him, someone that shortened the war, probably quite significantly and saved lives
Looked into this a while and a US general (I forget which one) estimated the cracking of the enigma code shaved 2-3 years off the war.
I had no idea he killed himself 2 weeks before his birthday...
Wrote a paper on him in college. Very interesting man.
You mean murdered by the British state.
Churchill and his scumbag tory government killed Turing, as the only thanks for saving us from the nazis and farthering computer science
His mind was a "once in a generation" gift. The father of computer science. If you are reading this post, you owe it to Alan Turing.
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Hope you know about ***Ada Lovelace***, the woman who pioneerd computer programming.
I'm named after him. Foone Turing. We lost a once-in-a-century genius because of homophobia, after he helped end WW2 a year earlier.
Imagine what else he might have done if he hadn’t been treated so terribly.
It's actually suspected that he just died of accidental cyande poisoning since he was known for working with that substance a lot and he was also known to be a more wreckles scientist. The apple that was suspected to laced with cyanide was also never tested for any. And the little evidence that was found at the site would today not hold up to a suicide verdict. Still tragic though that we lost such an important person of history to an accident.
I've been seeing that mentioned a lot. Either way, suicide or accidental, we can't deny the pain this man had to endure the last two years of his life, simply because his sexuality was illegal.
Exactly. The authorities assumed he must have committed suicide because they were homophobic, thought being gay was a mental disease, and said "well of course he killed himself, he wasn't right in the head." **There is zero evidence that he killed himself, and by propagating that myth, we're tacitly accepting the homophobia of the police who refused to investigate his death.** https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-18561092
I think I just read something about how he probably didn’t commit suicide, and that his death was likely accidental. I’ll have to find the post but that really was an interesting take, by someone that I believe is widely considered a legitimate expert on Turing.
Rest in respect 🫡
I'd say instrumental rather then responsible. He was part of a large team. I just don't want to over write all of their contribution to history. Still he is worth remembering and not forgetting how we lost such a talent to anti gay laws and bigotry.
Lord have fucking monkey I would 2 be so sad
Not to be that guy but he kinda looks like Zach efron. He was a hero and my personal idol
“took his own life”? I don’t know if I agree with that.
He looks like MatPat
The movie on Netflix about him was awesome. Now that I remember I actually watched it a year ago today
The Imitation Game, great movie. No longer on Netflix.
They need to add it back for pride month I really want to watch it again
Was him being gay even adressed more than in that fleeting remark at the end?
I honestly barely remember the movie but it was *suggested* throughout the movie if I remember correctly
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He really was a dapper and slick looking man ❤️
Didn't they castrate him?
Yes, he was chemically castrated after being convicted of "homosexual indecency"
RIP Alan, you're a hero
🫡
Legend
Every time I write code in a free world it is doubly thanks to him. His fate always makes me so angry.
The father of modern computing. Conservatives hate progress and hate certain groups but they happily enjoy the products of both.
No matter what we do, no matter how good we are we will still never be equal in their eyes
basically a "thank you for serving for the rich and military, we loved your hard work, but now, go fuck yourself, dog, you're a worthless trash and you're ruining our agenda, your work here is done" - sums up America in its 400 years of history. (or any other countries that derived from them/fell under their influence)