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The conditions that apply to an "Ethics tutorial in a philosophy paper" aren't universally applicable, and that isn't a sign of something being wrong. It took m
by pryce 7y ago
The conditions that apply to an "Ethics tutorial in a philosophy paper" aren't universally applicable, and that isn't a sign of something being wrong. It took me a while to understand this myself.
Suppose you wished to discuss "ethical problems" in a tutorial, people can do that, and in some other (limited) environments too. You might - to invoke a particularly awful idea - like to hypothetically explore whether what people wear had relationship to their likelihood of being targeted for sexual assault.
If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. People under your leadership must be confident that if someone were to tell you they have been sexually assaulted, your response would not be to wonder what they were wearing. The reason for this is, as is well established, that speculation over what women (or survivors in general) were wearing at the time they were sexually assaulted is a loaded idea that has widespread use in casting blame on the victim of sexual assault, and has been very effective at this for hundreds of years, leading to a vast amount of preventable suffering, all because of we continue to tolerate the mistaken idea that women might somehow 'invite' their own assault.
A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract, because they have a duty to be aware of how incredibly damaging that is in the general sense, and how public speculation about that sort of relationship would clearly act to dampen survivors of sexual assault from coming forward, including in the org they are leading, in addition to being distressing for the people who have experienced it in the past, which is a significant fraction of people in general, even supposing the speculator meant well.
- gruez 7y ago>If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. [...] >A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract [...] How is this applicable to Stallman? What was Stallman doing at MIT? It doesn't seem like he's in any sort of leadership position.
- pryce 7y ago1) President of the FSF is a leadership position. 2) It would take a staggering feat of mental gymnastics to suggest Dr. Stallman's idiosyncratic role at CSAIL -described variously as "visiting scientist"- absolves him of having leadership responsiblities to students. 3) Though I did not go into details at the time, the argument above applies more widely than leaders per se - it applies to people who affiliate with and represent organisations; for example, I think we could probably agree it would apply to television anchors whether or not they led a 'team' of any kind. Stallman's relationship with MIT (and vice versa) is a public enough role that I've known about for nearly 20 years though I live on the other side of the planet.
- lazylizard 7y agoPresident of the fsf. Free as in speech.
- kelnos 7y agoThank you for this. A lot of people here don't seem to get that who says a thing, and in what context, matters a great deal. Even though Stallman wasn't a professor, and was "just" a Visiting Scientist, he maintained an office on campus, and was afforded a certain level of status by MIT. With that status comes an amount of responsibility. Making "philosophical" arguments that appear to defend abhorrent positions, regardless of the intent behind those arguments, is not in line with that responsibility.