this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Explanation: Alan Turing was a mathematician and computer scientist whose revolutionary work during WW2 helped the British shorten the war considerably by breaking (and thus having access to) Nazi coded messages.
A little over half a decade after the war, a chance break-in at his house led to him accidentally incriminating himself - by admitting to the presence of his boyfriend. This being the 1950s UK, the courts gave him a choice for the horrific crime of homosexuality - chemical castration, or several months in prison. Turing considered that he would not last in prison, and opted for the chemical treatment. Some time later, he bit into an apple laced with cyanide and died, which many consider to be an act of suicide (though it is still disputed, some believe it was genuinely an accident).
Wait a second, Alan Turing was a queer icon? I had no idea.
I cannot fathom how anyone can allow people to be punished for loving who they love, in a consenting relationship between two adults. What a terrible and tragic story. Fuck anyone who wants to punish people for doing something that doesn't hurt anyone; for doing something that in fact is literally the direct opposite of hurting anyone. Like, fuck them to the core, and not in any nice way.
Yeah. He's a queer icon, and a god among humans to computer science fans.
It breaks my heart that he didn't get to see the current era of queer federated computing. If there's any kind of after-life, Alan has got to be rooting for the Fediverse.
I wouldn't say that he's a well-known queer icon, but well-known enough that there's been an enduring myth that the early Apple icon was a reference to him - the apple with a bite taken out of it and colored like a rainbow. However, the designers have said that they had no idea at the time and it was purely coincidence.
I'm not sure about that (the icon bit). I've gay friends who have been surprised that Turing was gay - personally I knew about it since I knew about Turing, but I was a nerd who was interested in the theory of computation. It's only relative recently (with the popularity of unbelievably lousy character-assassination like "the Imitation Game"*) that he's been more in the general public eye, I think.