English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate. Was Turing thus a "victim" of "oppression"? We're quibbling about words. Your notions of "victim" and "oppression" are simply different from ESR's. (Note: I'm confident that ESR isn't in favor of chemical castration for homosexuals.)

He could have easily avoided this fate? How? As far as I know, Turing's choices were either 1) chemical castration 2) prison 3) stop having sex with people he was attracted to. Which of those alternatives qualifies as "not oppression"?

It's not clear to me that (3) was an option that would have helped him avoid (1) or (2): he was found guilty of a previous "crime," and (1) and (2) were his two options for punishment/"rehabilitation".

You're arguing with ESR, not with me. ESR implies that there was another alternative. My role in this is to explain ESR's position and to defend its correctness assuming his premises are true. My role is not to defend his premises, which in fact I am unqualified to do.

Not sure I understand the point of that. Is ESR somehow less wrong for saying Turing wasn't a victim of oppression if he says this because he's mistaken about what Turing was faced with?

Apparently. I feel that if someone suffers due to a bigoted policy, then that person is the victim of oppression. He seems to think that it is not "oppression" if the person who suffers had an out. The mental gymnastics bit come in when he tries to gel that with what demonstrators suffered during the civil rights movement, which he does classify as oppression.

Was Einstein the victim of oppression? How about Feynman?

If "No", how does that jibe with your definition?

If "Yes", is being a victim of oppression necessarily that big a deal? (Both Einstein and Feynman seemed to do OK for themselves.)

(Note that nothing here excuses or condones the antisemitism that affected both Einstein and Feynman.)

They were both also victims of oppression, in different ways and to different degrees. A large number of people were and are.

More attention is paid to the oppression that Turing underwent because it seems likely that it was a major factor in his death. If Einstein's life had been ended at a young age, but after he had made contributions to physics that made clear what had been lost, his death and the circumstances around it would be a large part of what we remember about him.

Einstein fled Europe because of it. That seems like "a big deal" to me. That he "did OK" for himself afterwards does not somehow make having to leave your home continent less of a big deal.

Einstein fled Nazi Germany due to their anti-semitism. Are you actually trying to claim that Nazi Germany's oppression of Jews was not necessarily a big deal?

> English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate.

Yes, Turing could have chosen to go to prison instead. Would that have been better somehow? How were homesexuals treated in English prisons then?

Exactly. The fact that he (and his equally obtuse commenters) are actually taking it that far is what truly disgusts me.