daemon@watmath.UUCP (05/26/84)
Subject: Alan Turing biography : net.motss
A gay newspaper called "The Body Politic" (published in
Toronto, Canada - available throughout the USA at better
periodical vendors) (May 1984 Isssue #103)
contains a short review of a biography of Alan Turing (who was gay)
written by gay activist and mathemetician Andrew Hodges.
Following the short review is an interview with Andrew Hodges.
Question: why wasn't I told Turing was gay in computer science class???
(hummmm, questionable grammar, I'm pretty sure Turing was gay outside
of computer science class too!)
(actually, I can guess the answer, I just find it unfortunate that society
fears potential idols/martyrs, come to think of it my music teachers
never pointed out that Tchaikowsky was gay)
Do you folks care to contribute to the list of gay famous (or soon to be,
or should be famous) persons that an insecure "coming out" gay can
look at and find some sort of comfort or admiration. Perhaps with
any names submitted there should be one or two lines of history/description
just in case the names arent overly recognizable.
[The Book: Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges
Simon & Schuster, New York (General Publishing in Canada)
The Newspaper: The Body Politic,
Box 7289, Station F, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 2N9
(416) 364-6320
Published by Pink Triangle Press, a nonprofit corporation
$2.00/issue $15.95/10issues via international post
]
- Ken Dykes (yes, my real name)
Software Development Group, University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. N2L 3G1
(519) 885-1211 x2452
watmath!watrose!watbun!kgdykes
(not affiliated with Body Politic or Pink Triangle Press)saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (05/27/84)
"why wasn't I told that Alan Turing was gay in class?"
Probably because it wasn't really relevant to the situation. I am sure there
are many other famous gay people who you have learned about in class and
where you were taught that they were gay because it is relevant, i.e their
gayness influenced their work (Oscar Wilde comes to mind). Why should you
have been told that Alan Turing was gay if you were not told anything else
about his life? I think THAT would have been strange.
I don't know if you were implying that "hiding" this information from you is
a certain type of homophobia, but I think it is the contrary. What would
be homophobic would be to ignore his work completely because he was gay, like
is often done for many excellent women mathematicians (those who are not
excellent enough to make it impossible to ignore their work like Noether)
Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax}!watmath!saquigleysaquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (05/27/84)
Well, i do agree with you that our school system should put more emphasis
on personalitites of "great" people, but it doesn't and we don't really learn
about them except in liberal arts classes, or if we're lucky in other classes
if the prof has a liberal arts outloook on the topic.
I also agree that from what I heard Turing seemed to have been greatly discrimi-
nated against in his life because of his homosexuality. From what I have heard,
this was partly due to his foolishness in not realising that even though he was
a genius, society was still not ready to accept homosexuality openly (similarly
for Oscar Wilde).
I just didn't think that the fact that his homosexuality was not mentioned in
class was not overt homophobia, but simply lack of interest from the prof into
dwelling into the personalities of people behind theorems unless it was clear
that certain facets of their personalities had something to do with their genius.
Well, this all looks interesting; I think i might read his biography.
Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax}!watmath!saquigleytrb@masscomp.UUCP (05/29/84)
"why wasn't I told that Alan Turing was gay in class?" Same reason I wasn't told that John von Neumann was straight in class. Actually, "information hiding" is one of the big catch phrases in the new software engineering. Turing's sexual preference must be the information which your prof chose to hide. All in the interest of modularity and clarity, mind you. I bought Hodges' Turing bio a few months ago. Why haven't I read it yet? Must be my subconscious hatred/fear of gays. Probably fear and hatred of myself. Then again, maybe I've just not gotten to it yet. Andy Tannenbaum Masscomp Inc Westford MA (617) 692-6200 x274
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (05/29/84)
I think it ultimately is homophobia not to have heard biographical details about Turing that would at least suggest if not plainly state that he was gay. For example, in literature classes where biography is considered relevant to the author's work, gayness is systematically "covered up" or even bla- tantly denied when it can be, except for well-known gay writers like Wilde (& believe it or not, there are currently afoot attempts to deny Wilde was ever sexually active homosexually, even though there's well-known documen- tation in eg. Andre Gide's journals about Wilde's sexual adventures in Morocco: see Richard Ellmann's absurd speculations in his article on Wilde at Oxford in a recent New York Review of Books); this was true at least when I was in school in the late 60s/early 70s. And current "revisionist" efforts among some major literary scholars to deny that Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson were gay AT ALL make me believe the situation is much the same today (well, maybe a little better, but academic homophobia can hard- ly be discounted). If you major in computer science, surely Turing's name comes up more than once AND in different contexts in both classrooms & texts. Think of how often Charles Babbage is mentioned: many people know scattered biographi- cal facts, including his wife's damn name, their pictures on massproduced T-shirts, etc. Yet Babbage is relatively unimportant today: interest in him is primarily historical. Yet Turing, like Babbage, and Goedel, or Einstein for that matter, is a prime candidate for iconography both within science & popularly because of the startling correspondence between perso- nal eccentricity and scientific originality in his life (think how much many people know about the Einsteins, and how few know that Isaac Newton was most likely homosexual -- information buried in a biography of Newton by Frank Manuel). I understand Sophie Quigley's point (and in this instance, in regard to the computer science curriculum of the particular school in question she may in fact be right), but it can obscure the fact that homophobia is still endemic in (even higher) education, perhaps less directly but maybe more damagingly because of the indirection: that few mathematics, natural or computer science or engineering majors in any school knew as a result of their education that Turing (or Newton) was gay, yet they often receive substantial biographical information from courses, teachers, or teaching assistants about other scientific greats, even though few educators consider biography very relevant to science. Cheers, Ron Rizzo
tj@sun.uucp (Cal Thixton) (06/04/84)
> "why wasn't I told that Alan Turing was gay in class?" > > Same reason I wasn't told that John von Neumann was straight in > class. But if John von Neumann were black, this would be mentioned. At least now anyway, maybe not 10 years ago. In many of our classrooms today, if John Doe is mentioned, he is assumed to be a white, heterosexual anglo-saxon, handicap-less, christian male. Not to mention that John Doe was a woman, not a man, is just as important as mentioning that Alan Turing was gay. Cal Thixton decwrl!sun!tj
johnc@dartvax.UUCP (06/12/84)
I had not heard of Turing much before he was brought up in
this group (I'm only a HS senior, not much CS yet), but I did
see a mention of him today in someplace other than the net --
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. He was mentioned a
couple of times in 'Resurrection' by Damien Broderick. The
story did mention his sexual orientation (right word?), but
only in passing.
"Poor Alan had taken his own life in 1954, hounded
by bigots who would not tolerate his sexual pre-
ferences ..."
Not only that, but the story wasn't bad either :->
--johnc
[ astrovax, linus, decvax, cornell ] ! dartvax ! johnc