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I’m much more concerned about him playing the “childbirth is far more traumatic than having an abortion” card in the discussion about the patch. Until this mome

I’m much more concerned about him playing the “childbirth is far more traumatic than having an abortion” card in the discussion about the patch. Until this moment, I wasn’t even aware that was a card. It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it, particularly a person who will never experience the situations upon which he’s speaking conclusively. You’re right, the conflict is elsewhere. However, something about Richard Stallman making that statement, which marginalizes the intense conflict women often feel over intentional abortion in their own lives, not to mention traumatic abortions brought on by rape or medical issues, really speaks to a yawning gap existing between him and empathy for other people. It seems to imply that he thinks women leveraging their right to choose are pleased or joyful that they can do so, and this distantly makes the joke worth keeping. He might be pro-choice, and keen to defend it, but the way he defends it models an entire cadre of people who look up to him. He’s speaking from a position with multiple layers of privilege, on account of his stature, race, and gender, and basically saying “abortion, no biggie, right?” How does that help us recruit women in tech? Did my nose find it, or do we care more about who maintains a C runtime? Immediate future prediction: -4 on this comment, a disengaging reply from you, a barrage of comments below me lining up to defend Stallman (likely calling him Dr. Stallman) or tell me I’m misinterpreting a direct quote and/or its context, and I sign out again and return to dormancy and lament this community’s symptomatic demonstration of this industry’s faults: it’s about who runs glibc! That matters! Ignore everything else, it’s a tizzy! Just look at the top thread. Not an abortion joke, an abortion law joke. That makes it all better. Edit: Oh good, we are on to the apt-get cow.

lmitchell 8y ago
I guess I understand the downvotes here, but I really do think you've hit on at least an issue. Maybe not the issue, but it's a pretty big problem. RMS's conduct here is just... pretty inappropriate. Jokes about abortion, rape, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc, are not something you should be touching as the maintainer of a public project, no matter what your opinions are or how strongly you hold them. The glibc maintainers (completely reasonably) decided that the man pages weren't a good place for potentially-charged jokes like this, and removed it. RMS overruled them in a pretty childlike and insensitive fashion, and that's not appropriate when you're the public face of anything. I don't give a shit about the politics of glibc - but I do care that someone who is a role model and a public figure acts like this.
- sillysaurus3 8y ago
  I do care that someone who is a role model and a public figure acts like this. Why? It's fine to be offended. It's his project. Just fork and move on, if necessary.
  - lmitchell 8y ago
    This ignores both the fact that RMS is much more than just the maintainer of glibc, and the fact that 'just forking' glibc doesn't stop the maintainer from having a significant amount of public influence. The problem is not anything to do with glibc - it's the conduct of someone who, like it or not, is a role model for a lot of people in the community, and has taken on a very public role.
    - sillysaurus3 8y ago
      So? Policing humor is a trope in dystopian novels for a reason. If someone wants to make unsightly jokes, you're free to be offended. But implying that it's not acceptable to act that way is probably a bit far.
      - jsmthrowaway 8y ago
        Counter to your glorious Fahrenheit 451 perception of either contemporary society or our future one, it’s just as dystopian to permit humor to be used as suppression of a marginalized subset of people. It is perfectly acceptable to expect that people not discriminate against others that are unlike them, in any way, lest that be a possibility. The key to humor that is actually funny is understanding that, particularly how the word I intentionally emphasized applies to comedy. (Not saying that happened here, just reacting to your broadening to “policing humor.” Humor is also, you know, funny. That did happen here. Stallman should stick to his day gig.)
        sillysaurus3 8y ago
        Isn't it a little hyperbolic to imply that an offhanded joke is suppressing a marginalized subset of people? Or that it was discriminatory? Here's his full reply in context: https://lwn.net/Articles/753654/ https://lwn.net/Articles/753654/
djsumdog 8y ago
> Immediate future prediction: -4 on this comment Commenting on downvotes is discouraged in the HN guidelines. It's boring, it's trite and this isn't Reddit/Voat.
- jsmthrowaway 8y ago
  I know. Good thing it was neither part of a point nor sprinkled within many other substantive points, or we might be talking about it. HN needs Wikipedia-style acronyms for the guidelines, and yes, I’m making multiple points with the comparison. HN:NODV, with a dash of HN:IRONY, the lament of boring, trite comments in a comment solely about guideline violations. In a thread about a mailing list argument. On the Internet.
- rimliu 8y ago
  > this isn't Reddit/Voat. Indeed, sometimes it feels like Stepford.
- alex_hitchins 8y ago
  It is discouraged yes, but also it's human nature to want to understand why ones opinion isn't popular. I have seen previously my own posts be downvoted with no comments given and no clear idea of what I was doing to displease the hive mind.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    I've come to accept the occasional downvote as noise in the process. It's probably not healthy to take them seriously.
    - alex_hitchins 8y ago
      Definitely. Agree with you on both points. Maybe I find it strange as commenting on your downvotes is shunned, but it's largely OK to downvote something without explanation. This is only HN after all and I'm very comfortable being different from the 'average-HN'er'.
- 8y ago
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I’m much more concerned about him playing the “childbirth is far more traumatic than having an abortion” card in the discussion about the patch. Until this moment, I wasn’t even aware that was a card. It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it, particularly a person who will never experience the situations upon which he’s speaking conclusively. It's a standard talking point in the pro-abortion (I am solidly pro-choice and I use pro-abortion deliberately here) crowd who feel the need not merely to negate but to invert everything the anti-abortion right argues.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Well aren't the majority of what rabid pro life considers abortions taking some pills and having a bad morning or in some loonies cases putting on a condom?
kelnos 8y ago
I agree with you. I think it's possible to ignore the content of the joke and examine the interplay between the glibc maintainers and RMS, and I think that's an interesting conflict all of its own. But... there's also an unnecessary joke in the public documentation of an important free software project involved here, and I think it's also interesting (perhaps even important) to talk about the content of the joke, and if things like that are ok/productive/positive/offensive/bad/exclusionary in our world. Unfortunately, I wouldn't really expect any discussion of this latter point to be particularly productive on HN. I don't say this with any amount of derision; I just feel that's the way it is. (For the record, I say good riddance to that particularly unfunny joke, and I think it's worthwhile to remove dreck like that from our projects.)
shub 8y ago
RMS has always struck me as the kind of person you generally avoid, except when you can't because they're family, and when they say things you smile and change the subject. Where he's unusual is that the ranting isn't about minority groups or political parties, it's proprietary software.
eesmith 8y ago
"It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it" In https://stallman.org/articles/children.html https://stallman.org/articles/children.html Stallman describes "Why it is important not to have children." I can easily see "don't have children because it's a traumatic experience" as fitting on the list. Among other things, btw, he says that his decision to not have children opened up time to work on GNU and free software.

lmitchell 8y ago

I guess I understand the downvotes here, but I really do think you've hit on at least an issue. Maybe not the issue, but it's a pretty big problem. RMS's conduct here is just... pretty inappropriate. Jokes about abortion, rape, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc, are not something you should be touching as the maintainer of a public project, no matter what your opinions are or how strongly you hold them. The glibc maintainers (completely reasonably) decided that the man pages weren't a good place for potentially-charged jokes like this, and removed it. RMS overruled them in a pretty childlike and insensitive fashion, and that's not appropriate when you're the public face of anything. I don't give a shit about the politics of glibc - but I do care that someone who is a role model and a public figure acts like this.

sillysaurus3 8y ago
I do care that someone who is a role model and a public figure acts like this. Why? It's fine to be offended. It's his project. Just fork and move on, if necessary.
- lmitchell 8y ago
  This ignores both the fact that RMS is much more than just the maintainer of glibc, and the fact that 'just forking' glibc doesn't stop the maintainer from having a significant amount of public influence. The problem is not anything to do with glibc - it's the conduct of someone who, like it or not, is a role model for a lot of people in the community, and has taken on a very public role.
  - sillysaurus3 8y ago
    So? Policing humor is a trope in dystopian novels for a reason. If someone wants to make unsightly jokes, you're free to be offended. But implying that it's not acceptable to act that way is probably a bit far.
    - jsmthrowaway 8y ago
      Counter to your glorious Fahrenheit 451 perception of either contemporary society or our future one, it’s just as dystopian to permit humor to be used as suppression of a marginalized subset of people. It is perfectly acceptable to expect that people not discriminate against others that are unlike them, in any way, lest that be a possibility. The key to humor that is actually funny is understanding that, particularly how the word I intentionally emphasized applies to comedy. (Not saying that happened here, just reacting to your broadening to “policing humor.” Humor is also, you know, funny. That did happen here. Stallman should stick to his day gig.)
      - sillysaurus3 8y ago
        Isn't it a little hyperbolic to imply that an offhanded joke is suppressing a marginalized subset of people? Or that it was discriminatory? Here's his full reply in context: https://lwn.net/Articles/753654/ https://lwn.net/Articles/753654/

djsumdog 8y ago

> Immediate future prediction: -4 on this comment Commenting on downvotes is discouraged in the HN guidelines. It's boring, it's trite and this isn't Reddit/Voat.

jsmthrowaway 8y ago
I know. Good thing it was neither part of a point nor sprinkled within many other substantive points, or we might be talking about it. HN needs Wikipedia-style acronyms for the guidelines, and yes, I’m making multiple points with the comparison. HN:NODV, with a dash of HN:IRONY, the lament of boring, trite comments in a comment solely about guideline violations. In a thread about a mailing list argument. On the Internet.
rimliu 8y ago
> this isn't Reddit/Voat. Indeed, sometimes it feels like Stepford.
alex_hitchins 8y ago
It is discouraged yes, but also it's human nature to want to understand why ones opinion isn't popular. I have seen previously my own posts be downvoted with no comments given and no clear idea of what I was doing to displease the hive mind.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  I've come to accept the occasional downvote as noise in the process. It's probably not healthy to take them seriously.
  - alex_hitchins 8y ago
    Definitely. Agree with you on both points. Maybe I find it strange as commenting on your downvotes is shunned, but it's largely OK to downvote something without explanation. This is only HN after all and I'm very comfortable being different from the 'average-HN'er'.
8y ago

dragonwriter 8y ago

> I’m much more concerned about him playing the “childbirth is far more traumatic than having an abortion” card in the discussion about the patch. Until this moment, I wasn’t even aware that was a card. It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it, particularly a person who will never experience the situations upon which he’s speaking conclusively. It's a standard talking point in the pro-abortion (I am solidly pro-choice and I use pro-abortion deliberately here) crowd who feel the need not merely to negate but to invert everything the anti-abortion right argues.

michaelmrose 8y ago
Well aren't the majority of what rabid pro life considers abortions taking some pills and having a bad morning or in some loonies cases putting on a condom?

kelnos 8y ago

I agree with you. I think it's possible to ignore the content of the joke and examine the interplay between the glibc maintainers and RMS, and I think that's an interesting conflict all of its own. But... there's also an unnecessary joke in the public documentation of an important free software project involved here, and I think it's also interesting (perhaps even important) to talk about the content of the joke, and if things like that are ok/productive/positive/offensive/bad/exclusionary in our world. Unfortunately, I wouldn't really expect any discussion of this latter point to be particularly productive on HN. I don't say this with any amount of derision; I just feel that's the way it is. (For the record, I say good riddance to that particularly unfunny joke, and I think it's worthwhile to remove dreck like that from our projects.)

shub 8y ago

RMS has always struck me as the kind of person you generally avoid, except when you can't because they're family, and when they say things you smile and change the subject. Where he's unusual is that the ranting isn't about minority groups or political parties, it's proprietary software.

eesmith 8y ago

"It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it" In https://stallman.org/articles/children.html https://stallman.org/articles/children.html Stallman describes "Why it is important not to have children." I can easily see "don't have children because it's a traumatic experience" as fitting on the list. Among other things, btw, he says that his decision to not have children opened up time to work on GNU and free software.