6 ms·

Great. You know him. So do I. Now, does your knowledge of him justify this headline: "Richard Stallman resigns from FSF, MIT after defending child rape" - OSNe

Great. You know him. So do I. Now, does your knowledge of him justify this headline: "Richard Stallman resigns from FSF, MIT after defending child rape" - OSNews Seriously. Yes, he's awkward around women, and has sometimes hit on women in sometimes cringeworthy ways. He's also awkward around men, for that reason. There's a difference like night and day between the actual issues, which are about on-par for much of the population, and what's reported. Heck, I'd say that's about on-par for about half of the MIT student body back when it was a genuine nerd school rather than the "#1 branded university in the world." But he knows that no means no, he doesn't mean harm, and he doesn't abuse his power. And compare the treatment he gets to other people in position of power. Compare that to the MANY MIT faculty who DO use power dynamics to abuse female students, and who DID fly to Epstein's island to party. Heck, compare that to executives and politicians, or, well, many others in positions of power. You're not going to convince me Stallman is worse than the median there, or even the 25th percentile. It's just that one group is politically savvy, and the other, socially awkward. And this is exactly how you get a plausible smear. You start with a smaller issue, and you twist and exaggerate it until you have a pedophile-rapist. And yes, it was intentional.

bitwize 6y ago
EDIT: Former comment snipped. krapp has the correct take on this. RMS is a known defender of pedophilia, and what happened to him was not a smear campaign at all, but understandable revulsion to someone who is provably a very gross individual when he put his foot in his mouth (figuratively speaking).
- identity0 6y ago
  I can't tell if you're for or against the Stallman smear campaign. You can't possibly say that "We live in a post-truth world" and actually think that's a good thing, right? EDIT: Your other comment makes me thing you're 100% serious about this. The fuck? We need to smear him because he's an awkward nerd? An awkward person is not inherently harmful simply for being awkward. What harm has he "continually done" to deserve this?
  - Shared404 6y ago
    I read it the other way. It appears to me that Bitwise is both against the smear campaign, and showing the "logic" that those behind it use.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    > I can't tell if you're for or against the Stallman smear campaign. You can't possibly say that "We live in a post-truth world" and actually think that's a good thing, right? You're making an is-ought distinction. Of course we should not believe serious accusations against someone until they can back up their claims -- in an ideal world. In the real world, standards of evidence are routinely weaponized against decent people by assholes. Everybody knows that Trump has colluded with Russia, but no one can make anything stick. As another example, there is a small but growing movement to weaken the standards of evidence for rape and sexual assault. These crimes are notoriously difficult to get evidence for that meets the burden of proof, and the result is a very low conviction rape and active harm to women and society by rapists on the loose. I find it increasingly hard to challenge this argument except on theoretical or procedural grounds, and some countries -- such as Spain, which has special violence against women tribunals where the burden of proof is essentially on the accused to prove innocence -- have already followed through with this idea in their laws. > What harm has he "continually done" to deserve this? Numerous women have come forward with stories about being sexually harassed by Stallman over the years. He creates what is known in law as a hostile work environment. Women are afraid to work with him because they might be inappropriately propositioned, and risk consequences if they turned him down. (Stallman was "protected" by people in the MIT community, including Marvin Minsky.) And of course, he actually did advocate for legalization of child rape earlier in his career.
    - identity0 6y ago
      Is-ought, whatever, you defended the practice by citing its "positive" consequences. > Numerous women have come forward with stories about being sexually harassed by Stallman over the years. Sources? Not trying to be dismissive, but I can't find any on DDG or Google. > And of course, he actually did advocate for legalization of child rape earlier in his career. He never did that. He advocated for child consent. You may think I'm nitpicking but it's an important distinction. Child rape colloquially means unconsentual / forced sex, but technically means any sex since children cannot legally consent. If you say he defends child rape you are colloquially saying he defends unconsentual sex, when he never did such a thing.
- krapp 6y ago
  RMS advocated for the normalization of sexual relationships between minors and adults (aka "child rape") in his blog posts for years[0]. That's not a smear, nor a failure to understand him simply because he's awkward and stubborn, that's on the record, in his words, the intent and meaning perfectly clear. It's not post-truth, it's truth. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006
  - bitwize 6y ago
    RMS was naïvely and foolishly applying the "no harm, no crime" principle. Once he was educated that adult-child sex invariably causes long-term psychological harm to the child, he changed his mind. He even called Epstein a serial rapist and was not shy about expressing his disgust for the man. If you're wondering "How can a grown man not know that child sexual abuse causes harm?" well, this puts us back into awkward nerd territory: what you think is common sense may not be to a sufficiently awkward nerd.
    - krapp 6y ago
      Unfortunately, he had a years' long public record of pro pedophilia statements versus, as far as I know, only a single post mentioning his change of heart in 2016. Being an awkward nerd doesn't grant one a "get out of social consequences" card, especially when one is a public figure whose job is political advocacy. If he'd put as much effort into distancing himself from his past beliefs as he did advocating for them, he likely wouldn't have found himself in the position where no one was willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt when he footgunned himself and MIT with an awkward, tediously pedantic argument on the nature of consent. What happened to him wasn't a smear campaign by enemies of free software, or a witch-hunt by prudish SJWs who hate neuro-atypicals, it was inevitable.
      - murgindrag 6y ago
        No, this is false. The reality of the people and the personalities was that there was a smear campaign of RMS by his enemies going back to at least ESR and early versions of CaTB. The open source movement started out as "free software without Richard," with some pretty nasty people wanting to be the new leadership. Perhaps it was inevitable that RMS would be taken down by neutral third parties, but now we'll never have any way to know. The reality is he WAS taken down by people who had been smearing him with exaggerations and half-truths for at least the last quarter-century, and this was part of that dynamic. I don't feel bad if people are taken down fairly. I only feel a little bad if people are taken down by, in your words, "a witch-hunt by prudish SJWs." I feel very bad when people are taken down by enemies spreading half-truths.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
titanomachy 6y ago
Your comment actually led me to read Stallman's original comments in context, since I was aware of his dismissal/resignation but didn't know the particulars. In my opinion, what he actually said on the listserv is very benign compared to the consequences he faced for it. If that is the whole story, he was treated unfairly.
- LukeShu 6y ago
  > If that is the whole story, Here's another part of the story http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
  - murgindrag 6y ago
    And that part of the story is pretty fair. RMS held non-mainstream /academic/ views on sexual morality. It's like dropping someone from the 2020s, accepting of LGBTQ, into Victorian England. Or a 2020 Saudi Muslim in San Francisco in the sixties. Or vice-versa. Or worse yet, and ancient Roman/Spartan in 2020. Imagine they adapt their behavior, but continue commenting on how the place they're in is bizarre. In some ways, that made him less effective as a free software advocate, as did many of his other more controversial views on just about every topic. In others, that made him more honest. That's not what's being reported, though.
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    Thank you for the additional context. I liked this line: "The message of universal software freedom is a radical cause; it's basically impossible for one individual to effectively push forward two unrelated controversial agendas at once."
gumby 6y ago
The statement plucked from his comment was contentious (not anodyne) but reasonable, so you are correct that the widely bandied about snippet was, on its own, extreme. But the full sentence is not adequate context: it was part of a lifetime of behavior, comments, statements, etc. And to be honest he has defended child rape, denying that it is rape at all. Were there people who didn't care about the issue at hand but just wanted him to go for other reasons who opportunistically seized upon the issue to finally rid themselves of the troublesome monk? Of course, and I have some particular people in mind. But the converse is also very much true. RMS is a complex person and you cannot pull but one thread from the fabric. > And compare the treatment he gets to other people in position of power. That's simply whataboutism, not an argument. The rms issue is the rms issue. I would be delighted if you worked on some of the other injustices in the world as well. RMS has suffered a crippling emotional blow but he will get back on his feet. In these regards rms is hardly unique: he grew up in a community of people very much like him, many of whom routinely make far more shocking statements than he ever did. Leaving that environment for Harvard, and later MIT demonstrated and developed in him an ability to learn, which few apparently can see (and which even fewer possess themselves).
- murgindrag 6y ago
  > That's simply whataboutism, not an argument. The rms issue is the rms issue. I would be delighted if you worked on some of the other injustices in the world as well. My experience with people going after corruption (n>3): No one is perfect. Everyone breaks some laws, does something taboo, holds some controversial view, or does something improper. If you're going after power structures, they'll take that and pull on it to destroy you unless you back down. This was done to an extreme in Communist regimes. For the most part, people didn't go to prison for criticizing the government. People who criticized the government went to prison for some other, complete inane but technically correct reason. For a public examples, See Hunter Biden. Compare to Donald Trump. Yes, there appears to be corruption with Hunter. No, it's not out-of-mainstream for DC. Yes, it's greater than Trump's family. Only Biden has the resources to defend himself -- half the country is supporting him. Unless you're a presidential candidate, something like that WILL take you down. Allowing that to work really benefits the power structures who can do PR and hire investigators. And it really harms anyone out of the mainstream or with unpopular views, where a simple cancel culture can kill your career.
jkaplowitz 6y ago
> And compare the treatment he gets to other people in position of power. Compare that to the MANY MIT faculty who DO use power dynamics to abuse female students, and who DID fly to Epstein's island to party. None of those people should remain in positions of power, including faculty positions at MIT. The fact that RMS finally got consequences for the behavior we're discussing is good; the fact that the others didn't is bad; the fix is to apply consequences to the places where they're deserved but missing, not reverse some just deserts that were finally given.

bitwize 6y ago

EDIT: Former comment snipped. krapp has the correct take on this. RMS is a known defender of pedophilia, and what happened to him was not a smear campaign at all, but understandable revulsion to someone who is provably a very gross individual when he put his foot in his mouth (figuratively speaking).

identity0 6y ago
I can't tell if you're for or against the Stallman smear campaign. You can't possibly say that "We live in a post-truth world" and actually think that's a good thing, right? EDIT: Your other comment makes me thing you're 100% serious about this. The fuck? We need to smear him because he's an awkward nerd? An awkward person is not inherently harmful simply for being awkward. What harm has he "continually done" to deserve this?
- Shared404 6y ago
  I read it the other way. It appears to me that Bitwise is both against the smear campaign, and showing the "logic" that those behind it use.
- bitwize 6y ago
  > I can't tell if you're for or against the Stallman smear campaign. You can't possibly say that "We live in a post-truth world" and actually think that's a good thing, right? You're making an is-ought distinction. Of course we should not believe serious accusations against someone until they can back up their claims -- in an ideal world. In the real world, standards of evidence are routinely weaponized against decent people by assholes. Everybody knows that Trump has colluded with Russia, but no one can make anything stick. As another example, there is a small but growing movement to weaken the standards of evidence for rape and sexual assault. These crimes are notoriously difficult to get evidence for that meets the burden of proof, and the result is a very low conviction rape and active harm to women and society by rapists on the loose. I find it increasingly hard to challenge this argument except on theoretical or procedural grounds, and some countries -- such as Spain, which has special violence against women tribunals where the burden of proof is essentially on the accused to prove innocence -- have already followed through with this idea in their laws. > What harm has he "continually done" to deserve this? Numerous women have come forward with stories about being sexually harassed by Stallman over the years. He creates what is known in law as a hostile work environment. Women are afraid to work with him because they might be inappropriately propositioned, and risk consequences if they turned him down. (Stallman was "protected" by people in the MIT community, including Marvin Minsky.) And of course, he actually did advocate for legalization of child rape earlier in his career.
  - identity0 6y ago
    Is-ought, whatever, you defended the practice by citing its "positive" consequences. > Numerous women have come forward with stories about being sexually harassed by Stallman over the years. Sources? Not trying to be dismissive, but I can't find any on DDG or Google. > And of course, he actually did advocate for legalization of child rape earlier in his career. He never did that. He advocated for child consent. You may think I'm nitpicking but it's an important distinction. Child rape colloquially means unconsentual / forced sex, but technically means any sex since children cannot legally consent. If you say he defends child rape you are colloquially saying he defends unconsentual sex, when he never did such a thing.
krapp 6y ago
RMS advocated for the normalization of sexual relationships between minors and adults (aka "child rape") in his blog posts for years[0]. That's not a smear, nor a failure to understand him simply because he's awkward and stubborn, that's on the record, in his words, the intent and meaning perfectly clear. It's not post-truth, it's truth. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006
- bitwize 6y ago
  RMS was naïvely and foolishly applying the "no harm, no crime" principle. Once he was educated that adult-child sex invariably causes long-term psychological harm to the child, he changed his mind. He even called Epstein a serial rapist and was not shy about expressing his disgust for the man. If you're wondering "How can a grown man not know that child sexual abuse causes harm?" well, this puts us back into awkward nerd territory: what you think is common sense may not be to a sufficiently awkward nerd.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Unfortunately, he had a years' long public record of pro pedophilia statements versus, as far as I know, only a single post mentioning his change of heart in 2016. Being an awkward nerd doesn't grant one a "get out of social consequences" card, especially when one is a public figure whose job is political advocacy. If he'd put as much effort into distancing himself from his past beliefs as he did advocating for them, he likely wouldn't have found himself in the position where no one was willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt when he footgunned himself and MIT with an awkward, tediously pedantic argument on the nature of consent. What happened to him wasn't a smear campaign by enemies of free software, or a witch-hunt by prudish SJWs who hate neuro-atypicals, it was inevitable.
    - murgindrag 6y ago
      No, this is false. The reality of the people and the personalities was that there was a smear campaign of RMS by his enemies going back to at least ESR and early versions of CaTB. The open source movement started out as "free software without Richard," with some pretty nasty people wanting to be the new leadership. Perhaps it was inevitable that RMS would be taken down by neutral third parties, but now we'll never have any way to know. The reality is he WAS taken down by people who had been smearing him with exaggerations and half-truths for at least the last quarter-century, and this was part of that dynamic. I don't feel bad if people are taken down fairly. I only feel a little bad if people are taken down by, in your words, "a witch-hunt by prudish SJWs." I feel very bad when people are taken down by enemies spreading half-truths.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

titanomachy 6y ago

Your comment actually led me to read Stallman's original comments in context, since I was aware of his dismissal/resignation but didn't know the particulars. In my opinion, what he actually said on the listserv is very benign compared to the consequences he faced for it. If that is the whole story, he was treated unfairly.

LukeShu 6y ago
> If that is the whole story, Here's another part of the story http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
- murgindrag 6y ago
  And that part of the story is pretty fair. RMS held non-mainstream /academic/ views on sexual morality. It's like dropping someone from the 2020s, accepting of LGBTQ, into Victorian England. Or a 2020 Saudi Muslim in San Francisco in the sixties. Or vice-versa. Or worse yet, and ancient Roman/Spartan in 2020. Imagine they adapt their behavior, but continue commenting on how the place they're in is bizarre. In some ways, that made him less effective as a free software advocate, as did many of his other more controversial views on just about every topic. In others, that made him more honest. That's not what's being reported, though.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  Thank you for the additional context. I liked this line: "The message of universal software freedom is a radical cause; it's basically impossible for one individual to effectively push forward two unrelated controversial agendas at once."

gumby 6y ago

The statement plucked from his comment was contentious (not anodyne) but reasonable, so you are correct that the widely bandied about snippet was, on its own, extreme. But the full sentence is not adequate context: it was part of a lifetime of behavior, comments, statements, etc. And to be honest he has defended child rape, denying that it is rape at all. Were there people who didn't care about the issue at hand but just wanted him to go for other reasons who opportunistically seized upon the issue to finally rid themselves of the troublesome monk? Of course, and I have some particular people in mind. But the converse is also very much true. RMS is a complex person and you cannot pull but one thread from the fabric. > And compare the treatment he gets to other people in position of power. That's simply whataboutism, not an argument. The rms issue is the rms issue. I would be delighted if you worked on some of the other injustices in the world as well. RMS has suffered a crippling emotional blow but he will get back on his feet. In these regards rms is hardly unique: he grew up in a community of people very much like him, many of whom routinely make far more shocking statements than he ever did. Leaving that environment for Harvard, and later MIT demonstrated and developed in him an ability to learn, which few apparently can see (and which even fewer possess themselves).

murgindrag 6y ago
> That's simply whataboutism, not an argument. The rms issue is the rms issue. I would be delighted if you worked on some of the other injustices in the world as well. My experience with people going after corruption (n>3): No one is perfect. Everyone breaks some laws, does something taboo, holds some controversial view, or does something improper. If you're going after power structures, they'll take that and pull on it to destroy you unless you back down. This was done to an extreme in Communist regimes. For the most part, people didn't go to prison for criticizing the government. People who criticized the government went to prison for some other, complete inane but technically correct reason. For a public examples, See Hunter Biden. Compare to Donald Trump. Yes, there appears to be corruption with Hunter. No, it's not out-of-mainstream for DC. Yes, it's greater than Trump's family. Only Biden has the resources to defend himself -- half the country is supporting him. Unless you're a presidential candidate, something like that WILL take you down. Allowing that to work really benefits the power structures who can do PR and hire investigators. And it really harms anyone out of the mainstream or with unpopular views, where a simple cancel culture can kill your career.

jkaplowitz 6y ago

> And compare the treatment he gets to other people in position of power. Compare that to the MANY MIT faculty who DO use power dynamics to abuse female students, and who DID fly to Epstein's island to party. None of those people should remain in positions of power, including faculty positions at MIT. The fact that RMS finally got consequences for the behavior we're discussing is good; the fact that the others didn't is bad; the fix is to apply consequences to the places where they're deserved but missing, not reverse some just deserts that were finally given.