Turing's suicide is placed in the context of a move from regarding homosexuality as criminal to regarding it as a medical problem, and an increasing suspicion of homosexuals in classified government work. Hodges seems to conclude that Turing felt he had nowhere else to go.

Turing was made to take cross-gender hormones (i.e. oestrogen) as an attempt to "cure" his homosexuality. That would have given him gender dysphoria, and a fair proportion of those of us born into the condition tend to top ourselves. Inflict it on someone cisgendered in adulthood and they tend to fail to cope in a fairly spectacular way.