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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33038 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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What about Turing, whose castration followed an inappropriate relationship with a teenager?

wait, what?

Chemical castration. See https://spartacus-educational.com/Alan_Turing.htm#section12

In December 1951 Alan Turing met Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old unemployed man while walking the streets of Manchester... Turing and Murray were found guilty. Murray was given a conditional discharge. Turing was placed on probation, which would be conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce his sex drive. He accepted the option of treatment via injections of stilboestrol, a synthetic oestrogen; this treatment was continued for the course of one year. Turing wrote to his friend, Philip Hall: "I am both bound over for a year and obliged to take this organo-therapy for the same period. It is supposed to reduce sexual urge whilst it goes on. The psychiatrists seemed to think it useless to try and do any psychotherapy." The treatment rendered Turing impotent.

Note that I think Turing's actions are eminently understandable here and he gets my full sympathy. One of the best things about the advance of gay rights is that people are now more able to find appropriate partners.

I'm pretty sure everyone here is familiar with the story of Alan Turing's chemical castration and subsequent suicide. The (evidently false!) assertion that Turing was a pedophile as the novel part of your statement.

Did I call him a pedophile? Just pointed out that he had an age-inappropriate relationship with a teenager, which is true.

The broader point is that sexual peccadilloes don't matter one way or another in terms of the value of someone's work, and (secondarily) cultural context matters. In the case of Foucault etc, they lived in a milieu where society hadn't yet decided that having sex with a teenager who was not yet of age was the Worst Thing Ever.

Did I call him a pedophile?

You responded to someone complaining about defenses of actual, non-rhetorical pedophiles, by arguing that Socrates was a pederast, and that Turing had an "inappropriate relationship with a teenager". If you weren't attempting to imply he was a pedophile, I'm at a loss for why you brought him up. It doesn't seem that the age of the relationship was actually what made it inappropriate, which was certainly the implication I took.

I am not friendly to the LGBT community, but ‘had an inappropriate relationship with a teenager’ is a strange way to describe dating a 19 year old, apparently consensually, who he held no actual position of power over.

We must hold Blue Tribe to their own standard, and their standard is that any age gap more than ~2-5 years is a horrible offense.

According to whom?

and their standard is that any age gap more than ~2-5 years is a horrible offense

This is only the Blue Tribe standard if the youngest partner is a woman.

(The Red Tribe standard if the younger partner is a man, but the older partner is a woman, is "nice".)

Murray is not a woman.

definately misleading. thanks much for the follow-up.

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