
Remove Richard Stallman - Anon84
https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794
======
beatgammit
I think the problem here is that Stallman seems to value technical correctness
over propriety, and doesn't seem to value political correctness at all.

I get his point that using the term "assault" is probably incorrect, though it
may be the correct term in some jurisdictions. The (usually unofficial) term
I'd use is "statutory rape", which covers any nonforcible sexual activity
between an adult and a minor (roughly paraphrased from Wikipedia [1]). So,
using the term "assault" is technically incorrect in some jurisdictions, and
that seems to be the point he was trying to make.

That being said, it's not an important point to make at all, and it is
absolutely valid to see it as completely insensitive and inappropriate for
someone in his position. Stallman does this type of thing a lot, and perhaps
it's time to have him take a less public role and pass the mantel to someone
who is willing to follow the ever changing rules of considerate speech.
Speaking with tact doesn't limit the ability for the FSF to spread its
message; to the contrary, it can only help.

I feel both sides here are in the wrong. The author made a big deal over what
I (and likely many others) see as another of Stallman's eccentric rants, but
then again, we probably shouldn't continue giving him a pass just because of
his contributions. Maybe he needs to talk to whomever Linus Torvalds spoke
with about being more careful with public speech. I appreciate the edit the
author made about being a bit hasty, and I'd also appreciate something similar
from Stallman about his choice of arguments to involve himself in.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape)

~~~
AndrewBissell
"nonforcible" is 100% bullshit in this context. A university professor in his
70s with liver spots on his bald pate who is "approached" by a 17 year old
girl for sex on his rich buddy's island is knowingly participating in rape,
full stop.

~~~
dependenttypes
> is knowingly participating in rape

What makes you think that? For all we know he might have thought that said
girl was 18 or 25. But even if he thought that she was a 17 years old
prostitute I can't see how it would be rape.

~~~
jcstauffer
Even if she were 18 or 25, it wouldn't really change the morals of the issue -
_maybe_ the legality, but forced sex is wrong regardless of the age of the
victim, and it's not in any way reasonable to argue that he wouldn't have
known the circumstances.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Hard to imagine it even changes the legality. These defenses of Minsky remind
me of someone who buys a shiny new high-end stereo from someone off the street
for one quarter its retail price, then protests to the cops "well he didn't
_tell_ me it was stolen!"

------
badatshipping
I've noticed that people who write posts like this like to quote their
subject, and then go, oh my, how shocking! what an appalling thing to say!
without addressing the thing that was said, which in this case was (among
other things):

 _“I think it is morally absurd to define “rape” in a way that depends on
minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18
years old or 17.”_

He was responding to a student, who said "Giuffre was 17 at the time, this
makes it rape in the Virgin Islands." He was addressing her specific point. He
brought up the 17-18 thing because _the student herself_ specified Giuffre's
age as the condition of her being raped.

Like, if the student had said "Giuffre was raped because she was coerced
against her will," that'd be different. But you can't yourself bring up the
technical definition of rape to make your point, then get mad when other
people point out that the technical definition makes no sense. If what you
really want say is that rape is wrong because it's wrong, just _say that!_

Of course, the author cares about none of this, because what Stallman said was
"problematic." What does that even mean, by the way? This whole post consists
of the author repeatedly asserting that various things Stallman said were
problematic without explaining why.

This brings me to my next point. Here's an article about "tact filters," a
term describing how different people deal with the issue of tact:

[http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html](http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html)

People like Stallman don't get offended, so they assume other people won't
either. People who do get offended try hard not to offend others, and expect
the same courtesy. These two groups of people have difficulty getting along.

Neither point of view is invalid, in the sense that both sides get along
extremely well with other people who are like them. But people with outward
tact filters happen to be the majority, so Stallman gets seen as the bad guy.
But I could imagine an alternative universe where inward-tact-filter nerds
were the majority, and people like this author were expected to e.g. have the
mental resilience to not let other people's words hijack her emotions.

So I guess I'm offended that people like Stallman are made to feel bad for
being who they are, just because they're a minority.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Stallman seems quite "offended" on behalf of Minsky in his original email, so
your whole thesis here that he is somehow blind to the moral considerations at
play won't hunt.

What is shocking about Stallman's email is he apparently thinks it would
_absolve Minsky of guilt_ to simply assume that Virginia Roberts "willingly
presented herself" to him for sex. But this is of course nonsense -- it's the
exact set of conditions under which sex is forced on many trafficked victims
who are handed off by some procurer. And of course no one really believes that
Minsky didn't know the score; many try to defend him by saying, "but he was
disturbed by her offer and didn't accept it!" That he continued to associate
with Epstein after that, rather than immediately leave or offer help to
Roberts and Epstein's other victims, says all there is to day about Minsky's
character which Stallman feels so compelled to defend.

~~~
badatshipping
Did he try to absolve Minsky of guilt? I thought the thesis of his defense of
Minsky was:

 _" Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a
specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism."_

 _" The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so
vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims
that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse
than X."_

He's not wrong that "sexual assault" is used ambiguously to describe a wide
range of behaviors, some worse than others. If a guy does something that's
7/10 bad, and everyone's saying it's 9/10 bad, what's the right way to point
out that it was only 7/10 bad?

~~~
AndrewBissell
This is such an odd argument. No one kvetches over the meaning of "murder"
because some are more brutal or premeditated than others.

~~~
rumanator
> This is such an odd argument. No one kvetches over the meaning of "murder"
> because some are more brutal or premeditated than others.

This assertion is patently wrong. Discussions whether an homicide constitutes
murder (1st degree or felony) or manslaughter (voluntary or not) are
plentiful.

------
sheldor
"Did I even really know who Richard Stallman was before those emails? To be
honest, not really"

Oh, dear

~~~
AndrewBissell
Imagine it, someone who works (possibly at some remove) with a set of tools
without necessarily engaging in a deep, intensive study of the figureheads who
led in their creation. And then to engage with the written words of that
figurehead as if they were on some sort of equal footing. The gall!

~~~
abeger
I seriously can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.

------
kentrado
_First, he didn’t even give the typical, whiney, ‘he’s accused but not
convicted’ defense. No, Stallman went much further than that._

I find it curious that she talks about this as if it is a bad thing. The most
sensible thing is to wait until conviction to pass judgement. Why is that
whiney?

~~~
AndrewBissell
> The most sensible thing is to wait until conviction to pass judgement.

This is the most sensible thing if you're _a juror on a case_. Otherwise,
judgment may be called for long before a trial even starts, particularly when
it comes to dead men (or participants in an elite criminal network which
operates above the law) who will never even be brought to trial.

~~~
rumanator
> This is the most sensible thing if you're a juror on a case.

No, it's the most sensible thing in each and every single case, whether you're
a juror or just someone reading the news.

Let the pitchforks remain in the past, and let's enjoy the benefits of living
in a civilized society where rule of law and demonstration of guilt is what
dictates punishment.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Do you honestly believe moral judgments of historical or famous figures have
to be suspended in every case where word of their misdeeds emerged after their
deaths and they were never brought to trial?

~~~
rumanator
It's painfully obvious that "moral judgement" should not be mandated by a
random blogger with an axe to grind and desperately seeking the spotlight to
signal his/her own personal moral virtues to the world.

Everything else is the equivalent to grasping at pitchforks.

------
ubu7737
"I'm writing this because I'm too angry to work."

This is a poor premise.

I give it a pass because RMS was probably in a similar pique when he sent his
ridiculous email.

But elevating this conversation (and actually ditching RMS) will require calm.

------
DoreenMichele
This is a really hard topic to discuss. It has a tendency to become a he
said/she said argument space where women line up on one side to bash what a
man is saying and men line up on the other side to defend the man. That just
deepens the "gender war" conflict.

I didn't read entirely through the whole thing. It's not my cup of tea.

I don't know how we get to a better place, but attempts to dissect a piece
written by a woman who is extremely upset, so upset she can't function and
feels compelled to publicly vent, is probably not it.

------
catacombs
This might be the end for rms.

~~~
netfl0
Stallman never gives up.

~~~
catacombs
He probably doesn't know this is happening.

------
johnnyAghands
Getting a 404

~~~
dang
Fixed now.

------
aortega
It's interesting that Stallman very likely left those weird pedophilia
comments on purpose, like a canary to measure how much freedom he has.

------
krapp
No one is going to remove Richard Stallman. That would be akin to removing God
from Mount Sinai. Who are we to criticize the Prophet of Free Software?

His belief that children can give valid consent for sexual acts and his
"skepticism" of "the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children"
has been documented and well known for years, no one cares.

If anything, his pro-pedophilia views have probably helped normalize a general
lack of concern over pedophilia and sexual abuse in programming and internet
culture, and might have contributed to the acceptance of people like Epstein
at MIT.

He's Richard Stallman after all... if he thinks sexual assault isn't a big
deal, it's probably isn't, right?

~~~
krapp

        401kguy 18 hours ago [dead] [-]
        > No one is going to remove Richard Stallman.
        This comment sure did not age well. 
    

You're right, woof. I stand behind the rest of it, though.

~~~
401kguy
I just came across a line in Bushnell's reflection
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21006252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21006252)):

> RMS’s mere presence on the scene in this way has served to make it harder to
> deal with other cases of bad leaders’ bad behavior.

which echoes what you said:

> his pro-pedophilia views have probably helped normalize a general lack of
> concern over pedophilia and sexual abuse in programming and internet culture

