IIRC the Scientology E-Meter is quite similar to this, I can't quite remember if one spawned the other.
Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#12“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More info…
I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#13IIRC the Scientology E-Meter is quite similar to this, I can't quite remember if one spawned the other.
The concept of having a machine that can measure X attribute from humans have probably been a thing for long before both of those. Probably the earliest example of that (I can remember from the top of my head) is finding out if someone is a witch by throwing them into water with a stone attached to them. It's just with more technology, the "tests" become more advanced/elaborate.
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#14“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” O Canada I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular l…
I don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.
In the 1960's "I don't want gay men to work here" was acceptable and would not have been seen as unpalatable. Same sex sexual activity was made legal in Canada in 1969.
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#15“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More info…
This was also practiced (somewhat pederastically) in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan#Militar...
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#16IIRC the Scientology E-Meter is quite similar to this, I can't quite remember if one spawned the other.
The concept of having a machine that can measure X attribute from humans have probably been a thing for long before both of those. Probably the earliest example of that (I can remember from the top of my head) is finding out if someone is a witch by throwing them into water with a stone attached to them. It's just with more technology, the "tests" become more advanced/elaborate.
Indeed. See also: phrenology
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#17“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” O Canada I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular l…
I don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.
There's blackmail, but also it was the zeitgeist at the time that homosexuals were in some way morally compromised in the same way that drug users are seen as immoral (personally I don't feel that drug users are immoral but I feel I'm in the minority).
I sometimes come into contact with more old-fashioned industries where I hear similarly old-fashioned ideas from time to time. The idea is dying but not dead yet unfortunately.
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#18“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More info…
I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.
Unlikely. When people talk about homosexuality being acceptable in ancient societies they leave out the fact that it was acceptable for barely pubescent boys to be the receiving partner for adults. So are we going to head down that route in another decade or two when we become even less authoritarian?
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#19Article contains some a priori speculative criticism of the test. I wonder if its empirical efficacy has been assessed in the current epoch, and how that would compare to using AI to assess facial features towards the same end. Peculiar that the designers tried to measure interest rather than arousal (which can be done somewhat reliably by taking readings from the genital area).
Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
#20“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More info…
I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.
The labels we give to sexual orientation are mostly a political and cultural construct, and different societies draw the lines of propriety and transgression in different places.