While Turing's sexuality as something of an open secret is certainly a complicated issue, there are several historical accounts that suggest he was very open about his sexuality. I think the clearest and most widely quoted is from the IEEE <http://computer.org/computer-pioneers/turing.html> -- In a set of interviews in 1992 with I. Jack Good and Donald Michie, [Sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation.] both colleagues of Turing during his Bletchley Park sojourn, I led them to discuss their knowledge of Turing's homosexuality: Good: ...when we walked down King's Parade [in 1947] that was the first time I discovered that he was homosexual. That was when he said that he was going to Paris to "see a boy." It was obvious that he was admitting or proclaiming his homosexuality. Lee: He was very open about it? Good: Yes, at that time. Michie: He certainly wasn't during the war, for some of us, including both of us, were quite unaware.... I took quite seriously his engagement to ... Good: Joan Clarke? Lee: Peter Hilton [1991] quotes you, Jack, as saying, 'It was fortunate that the authorities did not know during the war that Turing was a homosexual, otherwise the Allies might have lost the war." Good: Yes. Michie: Oh but that's absolute nonsense, because Bletchley had some flamboyant homosexuals--Peter's ideas that security people were down on homosexuality itself, is absolute nonsense. I can't think how he could write that. The most flamboyant case was Angus Wilson--he later became a very successful novelist, and he had a boyfriend called Beverly, and these two, Angus was about that high [indicating small] with flowing yellow hair (I remember it went white later) and Beverly (I forget his second name) was very "weed-like," very tall. They could be seen shambling along the horizon, a daily sight, as they took their walk around lawns after lunch. -- It certainly seems anachronistic to ascribe our contemporary definition of homosexuality as a coherent and fixed identity, but by many accounts he viewed the trial and arrest with humor and openness, and the letter Bernard included above might be read in that light. -- Jacob Gaboury -- Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Visual Culture Dept. of Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook University -- Junior Fellow, MECS Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany (Summer 2014) -- Staff Writer, Rhizome.org New Museum for Contemporary Art -- http://www.jacobgaboury.com/ On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:45 PM, <geoghegb@cms.hu-berlin.de> wrote:
Hi Sigcis,
I concur with Paul. Turing's fear of being thought of as a gay man is alluded to in the letter below, which I've copied and pasted from http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/yours-in-distress-alan.html . It suggests his fear that his professional credibility would collapse if his sexual identity became public knowledge. As an aside, I think I read something in archival correspondences -- maybe among Norbert Wiener and Warren McCulloch? -- suggesting that suspicions about Walter Pitts' sexual orientation (among other issues) likewise threatened his employability. In case I'm confabulating, don't quote me on that though...
Best, Bernard
Turing wrote the following letter in 1952 to his friend and fellow mathematician, Norman Routledge, shortly before pleading guilty.
(Source: Alan Turing: The Enigma - The Centenary Edition; Image: Alan Turing, via.)
My dear Norman,
I don't think I really do know much about jobs, except the one I had during the war, and that certainly did not involve any travelling. I think they do take on conscripts. It certainly involved a good deal of hard thinking, but whether you'd be interested I don't know. Philip Hall was in the same racket and on the whole, I should say, he didn't care for it. However I am not at present in a state in which I am able to concentrate well, for reasons explained in the next paragraph.
I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven't the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out.
Glad you enjoyed broadcast. Jefferson certainly was rather disappointing though. I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.
Turing believes machines think Turing lies with men Therefore machines do not think
Yours in distress,
Alan
Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin www.bernardg.com
On Jun 5, 2014, at 4:01 PM, Paul N. Edwards wrote:
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@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@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@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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