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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 addres

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.

krapp 7y ago
>I'm offended that people like Stallman are made to feel bad for being who they are, just because they're a minority. Richard Stallman is not a minority, either at MIT or in programming culture.
- badatshipping 7y ago
  Fair point, but the expected norm in society, the one that posts like this draw from, centers around outward tact. Like, the whole moral injunction the author is trying to establish here is that he's saying tactless things.
  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    No, it's not about tact, it's about advocating a viewpoint which demonstrably enables child predators and instills justified feelings of fear in women working at institutions alongside Stallman.
    - badatshipping 7y ago
      That's my whole issue here. The author's post makes it sound like her problem is with his lack of tact. She complains about his "choice of words," about how it wasn't "appropriate" to send an email to undergrads, how "shocked" she is. If the problem is that his viewpoint is morally reprehensible, why not just say that, and let's hear some arguments in that direction?
      - krapp 7y ago
        >If the problem is that his viewpoint is morally reprehensible, why not just say that, and let's hear some arguments in that direction? I had no problem parsing that subtext from the article. I don't know why you didn't, maybe you just skimmed it?
        badatshipping 7y ago
        I know she thinks that, but it's not what her post is about. She quotes Stallman, assumes the reader will agree that what he said was problematic, then spends the rest of the article discussing how we shouldn't tolerate problematic people.
  - krapp 7y ago
AndrewBissell 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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?
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  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    This is such an odd argument. No one kvetches over the meaning of "murder" because some are more brutal or premeditated than others.
DanBC 7y ago
> He was responding to a student, He is responding to say that this rape of children was not rape and it was not assault and it was not so bad after all. Of course people are going to be upset if he interjects a "well, actually" to defend a child rapist.
eesmith 7y ago
> People like Stallman don't get offended What? Quoting Stallman himself at https://stallman.org/notes/2010-jan-apr.html https://stallman.org/notes/2010-jan-apr.html : "I have often felt offended by criticism of my views, but people have a right to criticize and even insult ideas they disagree with, so I learned to live with it and Muslims must learn it too. Nothing that people do or say is entitled to immunity from criticism — not even the Church of Emacs." Also: "The idea of charging people to use a toilet offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet." - https://stallman.org/notes/2017-mar-jun.html https://stallman.org/notes/2017-mar-jun.html "I consider this just as offensive as barring women from seeing a film would be, or barring them from driving their children to school." - https://stallman.org/notes/2015-mar-jun.html https://stallman.org/notes/2015-mar-jun.html "I don't object to the existence of the song "God Bless America" although I find it insipid, and I love Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame despite its explicitly Catholic text and purpose--but I would take offense at the use of either one in an official context which implies government endorsement of the statements about religion." - https://stallman.org/notes/archive-2002.html https://stallman.org/notes/archive-2002.html Or, he was offended when I refused to say "GNU/Linux". Since he certainly does get offended, the rest of your comment doesn't seem to apply.
- badatshipping 7y ago
  The article takes issue with Stallman commenting callously on a sensitive topic, having a view the author finds offensive, and directing those comments insensitively toward the wrong people. She never presents an argument why what he said was problematic. This makes me believe that regardless of the correctness of what he's saying, the mere fact that he's "defending" this side of the issue is itself offensive to her. Suppose Stallman suddenly wanted to optimize himself to offend the author of this post as little as possible. Having a more correct point of view would hardly move his metrics. Having more tact would, drastically. That was my point in bringing up the tact article. You're entirely right; everyone gets offended by something. I should've been more precise.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    > She never presents an argument why what he said was problematic Okay, then I will. Stallman states incorrectly that "The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex." That is incorrect because "sexual assault", according to US law, means "any nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal, or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent." - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/12291#a_27 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/12291#a_27 (34 U.S. Code § 12291 (29)). While the military has a different set of laws, I'll point to https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/920 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/920 as an example, because it's clear and easy to find: (b)Sexual Assault.—Any person subject to this chapter who— (1) commits a sexual act upon another person by— (A) threatening or placing that other person in fear; (B) making a fraudulent representation that the sexual act serves a professional purpose; or (C) inducing a belief by any artifice, pretense, or concealment that the person is another person You can see that "force or violence" is not a requirement for sexual assault. Similarly (again, this is from military law, but similar principles apply to civilians) (2) commits a sexual act upon another person— (A) without the consent of the other person; or (B) when the person knows or reasonably should know that the other person is asleep, unconscious, or otherwise unaware that the sexual act is occurring; It's still sexual assault even if no force or violence is needed because the other person is unconscious. In all of these, the key aspect is "consent", or rather, the lack of consent. Many of Selam G.'s arguments are based on the legal concept of consent. For examples: > then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. The law is that an enslaved child cannot consent to sex in this way, so cannot be regarded as being "entirely willing." (As another example, an 11 year old student may be "entirely willing" to have sex with his/her 35 year old teacher - it's still illegal as the presumption is that proper consent cannot exist at that age and power relationship.) Stallman attempts to justify this as: “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.” As the topic is an accusation of sexual assault, which is a legal definition, and which seems to be correctly applied for this case, it is irrelevant to bring up a personal view that the law is wrong. More problematic, we all know that hard age numbers like this have problems. What magic is there that I can buy beer in Canada at 18 but cross the border it's a problem? But age is an attempt to make the law clear. If 17 is fine, why not 16? 13? 8? 2? Make it too young, and there cannot be consent. Since Stallman doesn't seem to accept that concept of consent, can we assume that if Prof. X of MIT had sex with an "entirely willing" 5 year old, it would have been okay according to his morals? I hope not! But the problematic part is Stallman never presents a valid argument why sexual assault is the wrong term, and the best reading I can make of his views is that he doesn't understand consent. Which is indeed problematic. As an example, if someone notifies him that FSF organizer Foo sexually assaulted Bar by having sex with Bar while Bar was drunk and asleep, and who did not previously give consent, would Stallman respond that that wasn't assault, and not address the actual issue?

krapp 7y ago

>I'm offended that people like Stallman are made to feel bad for being who they are, just because they're a minority. Richard Stallman is not a minority, either at MIT or in programming culture.

badatshipping 7y ago
Fair point, but the expected norm in society, the one that posts like this draw from, centers around outward tact. Like, the whole moral injunction the author is trying to establish here is that he's saying tactless things.
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  No, it's not about tact, it's about advocating a viewpoint which demonstrably enables child predators and instills justified feelings of fear in women working at institutions alongside Stallman.
  - badatshipping 7y ago
    That's my whole issue here. The author's post makes it sound like her problem is with his lack of tact. She complains about his "choice of words," about how it wasn't "appropriate" to send an email to undergrads, how "shocked" she is. If the problem is that his viewpoint is morally reprehensible, why not just say that, and let's hear some arguments in that direction?
    - krapp 7y ago
      >If the problem is that his viewpoint is morally reprehensible, why not just say that, and let's hear some arguments in that direction? I had no problem parsing that subtext from the article. I don't know why you didn't, maybe you just skimmed it?
      - badatshipping 7y ago
        I know she thinks that, but it's not what her post is about. She quotes Stallman, assumes the reader will agree that what he said was problematic, then spends the rest of the article discussing how we shouldn't tolerate problematic people.
- krapp 7y ago

AndrewBissell 7y ago

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 7y ago
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?
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- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  This is such an odd argument. No one kvetches over the meaning of "murder" because some are more brutal or premeditated than others.

DanBC 7y ago

> He was responding to a student, He is responding to say that this rape of children was not rape and it was not assault and it was not so bad after all. Of course people are going to be upset if he interjects a "well, actually" to defend a child rapist.

eesmith 7y ago

> People like Stallman don't get offended What? Quoting Stallman himself at https://stallman.org/notes/2010-jan-apr.html https://stallman.org/notes/2010-jan-apr.html : "I have often felt offended by criticism of my views, but people have a right to criticize and even insult ideas they disagree with, so I learned to live with it and Muslims must learn it too. Nothing that people do or say is entitled to immunity from criticism — not even the Church of Emacs." Also: "The idea of charging people to use a toilet offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet." - https://stallman.org/notes/2017-mar-jun.html https://stallman.org/notes/2017-mar-jun.html "I consider this just as offensive as barring women from seeing a film would be, or barring them from driving their children to school." - https://stallman.org/notes/2015-mar-jun.html https://stallman.org/notes/2015-mar-jun.html "I don't object to the existence of the song "God Bless America" although I find it insipid, and I love Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame despite its explicitly Catholic text and purpose--but I would take offense at the use of either one in an official context which implies government endorsement of the statements about religion." - https://stallman.org/notes/archive-2002.html https://stallman.org/notes/archive-2002.html Or, he was offended when I refused to say "GNU/Linux". Since he certainly does get offended, the rest of your comment doesn't seem to apply.

badatshipping 7y ago
The article takes issue with Stallman commenting callously on a sensitive topic, having a view the author finds offensive, and directing those comments insensitively toward the wrong people. She never presents an argument why what he said was problematic. This makes me believe that regardless of the correctness of what he's saying, the mere fact that he's "defending" this side of the issue is itself offensive to her. Suppose Stallman suddenly wanted to optimize himself to offend the author of this post as little as possible. Having a more correct point of view would hardly move his metrics. Having more tact would, drastically. That was my point in bringing up the tact article. You're entirely right; everyone gets offended by something. I should've been more precise.
- eesmith 7y ago
  > She never presents an argument why what he said was problematic Okay, then I will. Stallman states incorrectly that "The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex." That is incorrect because "sexual assault", according to US law, means "any nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal, or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent." - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/12291#a_27 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/12291#a_27 (34 U.S. Code § 12291 (29)). While the military has a different set of laws, I'll point to https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/920 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/920 as an example, because it's clear and easy to find: (b)Sexual Assault.—Any person subject to this chapter who— (1) commits a sexual act upon another person by— (A) threatening or placing that other person in fear; (B) making a fraudulent representation that the sexual act serves a professional purpose; or (C) inducing a belief by any artifice, pretense, or concealment that the person is another person You can see that "force or violence" is not a requirement for sexual assault. Similarly (again, this is from military law, but similar principles apply to civilians) (2) commits a sexual act upon another person— (A) without the consent of the other person; or (B) when the person knows or reasonably should know that the other person is asleep, unconscious, or otherwise unaware that the sexual act is occurring; It's still sexual assault even if no force or violence is needed because the other person is unconscious. In all of these, the key aspect is "consent", or rather, the lack of consent. Many of Selam G.'s arguments are based on the legal concept of consent. For examples: > then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. The law is that an enslaved child cannot consent to sex in this way, so cannot be regarded as being "entirely willing." (As another example, an 11 year old student may be "entirely willing" to have sex with his/her 35 year old teacher - it's still illegal as the presumption is that proper consent cannot exist at that age and power relationship.) Stallman attempts to justify this as: “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.” As the topic is an accusation of sexual assault, which is a legal definition, and which seems to be correctly applied for this case, it is irrelevant to bring up a personal view that the law is wrong. More problematic, we all know that hard age numbers like this have problems. What magic is there that I can buy beer in Canada at 18 but cross the border it's a problem? But age is an attempt to make the law clear. If 17 is fine, why not 16? 13? 8? 2? Make it too young, and there cannot be consent. Since Stallman doesn't seem to accept that concept of consent, can we assume that if Prof. X of MIT had sex with an "entirely willing" 5 year old, it would have been okay according to his morals? I hope not! But the problematic part is Stallman never presents a valid argument why sexual assault is the wrong term, and the best reading I can make of his views is that he doesn't understand consent. Which is indeed problematic. As an example, if someone notifies him that FSF organizer Foo sexually assaulted Bar by having sex with Bar while Bar was drunk and asleep, and who did not previously give consent, would Stallman respond that that wasn't assault, and not address the actual issue?