I just read about the death of Alan Turing and it made me immensely sad. A deep, gut sadness that I haven’t had in quite a while. This probably has to do with the fact that he was the kind of genius I revere and wish I could be.
It’s funny that in my simple privilege I was allowed to assume that scientists got to walk around their professional lives without a sex (this doesn’t mean without a gender, as many women scientists will attest). So long as their research doesn’t involve the moral-political hotspot du jour, you can be fairly sure that no one will care very much about who they’re attracted to or who they have sex with. This is also a large part of what is so upsetting to me. With all that everyone makes sure you know about Alan Turing, no one ever mentions the fact that he died, young and well before the prime of a scientist, because he was gay. We celebrate Turing. We honor people and innovations in his honor. We’ve made him a wartime legend with his work against the enigma machine. And in that legend we can comfortably forget that he died at age 41, after ingesting a cyanide-laced apple after 2 years of estrogen therapy to achieve a government mandated chemical castration. Because he admitted to having a sexual relationship with a man.
