[SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon

[Paul N. Edwards]

I expect “openly gay,” with all the implications that phrase carries today, is an anachronistic label -- not an accurate description of Turing’s public persona, nor truly of his private one either.

Paul


On Jun 5, 2014, at 0:36 , Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:

> My initial guess was that this was an anachronism. Hodge's book Alan Turing:
> The Enigma appeared in hardcover late 1983, and one might expect it to have
> taken a while to spread far into popular awareness or to have its rather
> complex narrative reduced to "won World War II." The Turing play "Breaking
> the Code" was not written until 1986. That did a huge amount to boost
> Turing's public profile, at least in the UK. 
> 
> However, the Amazon "search inside the book" finds a line of this kind in a
> recent reissue of The Normal Heart script and a 2000 volume combining it
> with the sequel. It is of course possible that the play was revised from its
> original 1985 version, which is not searchable online.
> 
> So apparently Kramer was a pioneer in taking the complex portrait of Turing
> given in the Hodges biography, which I believe was widely reviewed on its
> initial release, and turning it into the slogan that "it was an openly gay
> Englishman who was as responsible as any man for winning he Second World
> War." Kramer continues, "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." 
> 
> That would be an important passage in a history of Turing in popular memory,
> which would be a great dissertation topic for someone.
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
> Behalf Of Janet Abbate
> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 4:42 PM
> To: sigcis
> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon
> 
> Did anyone catch the shout-out to Alan Turing in the HBO AIDS-themed movie
> "The Normal Heart"? The main character rants, "A gay man won World War II!
> They should teach that in schools." 
> 
> I wonder if that was actually the image of Turing in 1985 (when the original
> play was written) or something they added later for the movie? (I mean that
> he won WWII, not that he was gay.)
> 
> 
> Dr. Janet Abbate
> Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society Co-director, National
> Capital Region STS program Virginia Tech www.sts.vt.edu/ncr
> www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055
> www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS
> 
> 
> 
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___________________________

Paul N. Edwards
Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan 
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010)

Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing)

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