Posthumous Justice for Alan Turing
Sep. 1st, 2009 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaI have a lot to blog about, but this is possibly the most optimistic piece of News that came my way today.
About six or seven years ago I was in England visiting my sister who was living there at the time. One of the weekends I spent there, the family went on a day trip to Bletchly Park.
This was very exciting for me, as the family as a whole are history buffs (to some extent) and if there was something I wanted to see it was Enigma.
I knew who Alan Turing was merely as the genius who cracked the code, as an unsung hero of WWII, I was about to enter my IDF service as an Air-Force Intelligence NCO.
I was excited at being in a place of historical gravitas.
I was unaware of what had been done to that hero and as a young, partially closeted, queer woman, this is not surprising as I did not know the history of my people before me.
For those who do not know, or were only peripherally aware, in 1952 Alan Turing was incarcerated for gross indecency under the same law that put Oscar Wilde in jail half a century earlier. He was given the choice of jail or chemical castration.
This ended his career as a scientists and more than likely brought about the end of his life two years later. He died at the age of 41, from cyanide poisoning.
The death was deemed a suicide.
Why is all this important, you ask?
Last month in Britain, a petition to issue a posthumous apology to Alan Turing was put into motion.
An international treasure was lost due to bigotry and homophobia.
These two blights of humanity are not gone, they still affect our lives and they have affected history. We do not know what Turing could have done in the years he did not live, we can only mourn the life of a man who was persecuted because he did not fit the cultural and societal norms and mores.
Those norms and mores still hold strong and are still lethal.
An international petition has been set up as well (info, links etc).
As long as some people are considered more human than others, simply because they do not fit the little boxes deemed "appropriate", noise must be made about this.
A big resounding shout in the dark.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm for the heads up and the link to xtricks' post on the matter.
About six or seven years ago I was in England visiting my sister who was living there at the time. One of the weekends I spent there, the family went on a day trip to Bletchly Park.
This was very exciting for me, as the family as a whole are history buffs (to some extent) and if there was something I wanted to see it was Enigma.
I knew who Alan Turing was merely as the genius who cracked the code, as an unsung hero of WWII, I was about to enter my IDF service as an Air-Force Intelligence NCO.
I was excited at being in a place of historical gravitas.
I was unaware of what had been done to that hero and as a young, partially closeted, queer woman, this is not surprising as I did not know the history of my people before me.
For those who do not know, or were only peripherally aware, in 1952 Alan Turing was incarcerated for gross indecency under the same law that put Oscar Wilde in jail half a century earlier. He was given the choice of jail or chemical castration.
This ended his career as a scientists and more than likely brought about the end of his life two years later. He died at the age of 41, from cyanide poisoning.
The death was deemed a suicide.
Why is all this important, you ask?
Last month in Britain, a petition to issue a posthumous apology to Alan Turing was put into motion.
An international treasure was lost due to bigotry and homophobia.
These two blights of humanity are not gone, they still affect our lives and they have affected history. We do not know what Turing could have done in the years he did not live, we can only mourn the life of a man who was persecuted because he did not fit the cultural and societal norms and mores.
Those norms and mores still hold strong and are still lethal.
An international petition has been set up as well (info, links etc).
As long as some people are considered more human than others, simply because they do not fit the little boxes deemed "appropriate", noise must be made about this.
A big resounding shout in the dark.
Thanks to
rm for the heads up and the link to xtricks' post on the matter.