Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
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The "fruit machine" was a device developed in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
by Frank Robert Wake, a psychology professor with Carleton University in the 1950s that was supposed to be able to identify gay men (derogatorily referred to as " fruits"). The subjects were made to view pornography; the device then measured the diameter of the
pupil The pupil is a black hole located in the center of the Iris (anatomy), iris of the Human eye, eye that allows light to strike the retina.Cassin, B. and Solomon, S. (1990) ''Dictionary of Eye Terminology''. Gainesville, Florida: Triad Publishing ...
s of the eyes (pupillary response test), perspiration, and pulse for a supposed erotic response. The 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 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...
(RCMP), and the military. A substantial number of workers did lose their jobs. Although funding for the project was cut off in the late 1960s, the investigations continued, and the RCMP collected files on 9,000 people who had been investigated. The machine used a chair similar to that used by dentists. It had a pulley with a camera going towards the pupils, with a black box located in front of it that displayed pictures. The pictures ranged from the mundane to sexually explicit photos of men and women. It had previously been determined that the pupils would dilate in relation to the amount of interest in the picture, in a technique termed "the
pupillary response Pupillary response is a physiological response that varies the size of the pupil, via the optic and oculomotor cranial nerve. A constriction response ( miosis), is the narrowing of the pupil, which may be caused by scleral buckles or drugs such ...
test".
The RCMP Security Service
'' (Doubleday Canada, 1980) , chapters 10 and 11.
People were first led to believe that the machine's purpose was to rate stress. After knowledge of its real purpose became widespread, few people volunteered for it.


Faulty test parameters

The functional mechanism of the "fruit machine" was pseudo-scientific, and its results inaccurate. First, the pupillary response test was based on fatally flawed assumptions: That the chosen visual stimuli would produce a specific involuntary reaction that could be measured scientifically with 1960s technology; that homosexuals and heterosexuals would respond to these stimuli differently with enough frequency to sort them; and that there were only two types of sexuality.''The Current'', CBC Radio, 9 May 2005 One physiological problem with the method was that the researchers failed to take into account the varying sizes of the pupils and the differing distances between the eyes. Other problems that existed were that the pictures of the subjects' eyes had to be taken from an angle, as the camera would have blocked the subjects' view of the photographs if it were placed directly in front. Also, the amount of light coming from the photographs changed with each slide, causing the subjects' pupils to dilate in a way that was unrelated to their interest in the picture. Finally, the dilation of the pupils was also exceedingly difficult to measure, as the change was often smaller than one millimeter. The idea was based on an unrelated study done by an American university professor, which measured the sizes of the subjects' pupils as they walked through the aisles of grocery stores.


In popular culture

Brian Drader's 1998 play ''The Fruit Machine'' juxtaposes the fruit machine project with a parallel storyline about contemporary homophobia. Sarah Fodey's 2018 documentary film '' The Fruit Machine'' profiled the effects of the project on several of the people affected by it."The Fruit Machine: Why every Canadian should learn about this country's 'gay purge'"
CBC Arts CBC Arts (french: Radio-Canada Arts) is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that creates and curates written articles, short documentaries, non-fiction series and interactive projects that represent the excellence of Canada's div ...
, 30 May 2018.


See also

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Gaydar Gaydar (a portmanteau of ''gay'' and ''radar'') is a colloquialism referring to the intuitive ability of a person to assess others' sexual orientations as homosexual, bisexual or straight. Gaydar relies on verbal and nonverbal clues and LG ...
*
GCC homosexuality test Gulf Cooperation Council homosexuality test was a proposed homosexuality test that would have been used in Gulf states to prevent any homosexual travelers from entering the countries. The director of public health Yousuf Mindkar from the Kuwaiti ...
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Lie detector A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked an ...
polygraph, a device to detect the physiological responses indicative of lying * Lavender scare *
Penile plethysmograph Penile plethysmography (PPG) or phallometry is measurement of blood flow to the penis, typically used as a proxy for measurement of sexual arousal. The most commonly reported methods of conducting penile plethysmography involve the measurement of ...
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Vaginal photoplethysmograph Vaginal photoplethysmography (VPG, VPP) is a technique using light to measure the amount of blood in the walls of the vagina. The device that is used is called a vaginal photometer. Use The device is used to try to obtain an objective measure o ...
y *
Voight-Kampff machine ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's ...
, a fictional device that detects non-human emotional responses


Notes


Sources

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Gary Kinsman Gary William Kinsman (born 1955) is a Canadian sociologist. Born in Toronto, he is one of Canada's leading academics on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.John Sawatsky Ferdinand John Sawatsky (born 1948) is a Canadian author, journalist and interviewer. Early career Born in Winkler, Manitoba in 1948, he graduated from Mennonite Educational Institute in Abbotsford and attended Simon Fraser University in the late ...
. ''Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service.'' (Doubleday Canada, 1980) , chapters 10 and 11. * CBC Radio 1 ''The Current'', 9 May 2005 *