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I mean, his statements regarding pedophilia are enough. It's not exactly a hidden secret. Saying stuff like >I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedop

I mean, his statements regarding pedophilia are enough. It's not exactly a hidden secret. Saying stuff like >I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy). I totally get why it wouldn't fit the values of a university

lostmsu 3y ago
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- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  There’s a difference between a controversial opinion and one of the strongest taboos in American culture.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Pedophilia isn't exactly an American only issue. I'm not American but if thinking that pedophilia harms children is an American "taboo"... Then consider me thoroughly americanized lol.
    - kayodelycaon 3y ago
      It's far from exclusive, but I don't know enough about other cultures to definitively say universally strong in all existing ones. (It hasn't been historically.)
      - deleted 3y ago
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      - lflflspaasdd 3y ago
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    - elif 3y ago
      It is certainly not exclusive to the USA and no one is trying to deny or diminish victims in other countries, but statistically, it is an endemic US problem. According to US HHS "over the course of their lifetime, 28% of young people in the US, aged 14 to 17, had been sexually victimized." Compare that to 4.8% for the UK, also a country with a severe child SA problem. The US is thusly quite anomalous, and is only really comparable to undeveloped nations in terms of CSA rates. So when an American goes out of his way to defend forms of CSA on his personal webpage, unprompted, it can certainly be seen as symptomatic of this larger US cultural issue.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    It's a fairly modern taboo, historically speaking. While the unrestricted age of consent is between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the laws have widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7.[104] The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century.[105][106] By 1920, 26 states had an age of consent at 16, 21 states had an age of consent at 18, and one state (Georgia) had an age of consent at 14.[104] Small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. Damn Deleware, 7?!
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - belorn 3y ago
      If I remember right, the median age of people who have sex before the age of 20 is 15 years. (where I live) It is one of those slight odd statistics, especially if it is similar in places where the age of consent is 18. It does however explain why there are so many different age of consent, and why it is hard for law makers to fix it to a number that make people happy.
    - dls2016 3y ago
      I live in one of four US states where you must be 18 to get married. Most other states have "parental consent" laws that allow you to get married at age 16. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/01/child-marriage-is-rare-in-the-u-s-though-this-varies-by-state/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/01/child-mar... Not to mention like every big rocker had a teenage girlfriend in the 1970s.
- deleted 3y ago
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- bjornasm 3y ago
  Where does it say that no one is allowed to have controversial opinions?
  - maxbond 3y ago
    Nowhere. Where does it say RMS is entitled to give this talk?
    - ithkuil 3y ago
      OTOH, presumably somebody invited him?
      - maxbond 3y ago
        Sure, and then he was disinvited. If they had the agency to invite him, they had the agency to disinvite him. One time I got in a fight with an ex and made a scene at a party. We weren't invited to any more of their parties. I was miffed but it made sense to me.
- deleted 3y ago
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- brookst 3y ago
  Straw man. Nobody is saying he’s not allowed to have that opinion. What people are saying is that organizations have a right to choose whether to associate, or not, with people based on their opinions. It would be a grim world if we took freedom of thought to the extreme of mandating that people who disagree must not object.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    I did not mean "allowed" in a sense of permitted legally or otherwise. EPFL is not a person. It does not have a set opinion on the subject. And its individual members likely disagree on the matter. I am also not denying EPFL right to associate, I am questioning their judgement here.
Retric 3y ago
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- mardifoufs 3y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your point. Obviously children experimenting with each other is very different from children having sex with adults. He didn't even mention older teens, he straight up implied that he 1) thinks that voluntary pedophilia is a thing 2) children can consent to sex with adults (again, broad statement that he didn't even limit to older teens) That's very different from children experimenting together. Stallman implies that not wanting some adult creep to prey on your kid is just some sort of moral panic, which is... a pretty horrible take and one that is often repeated by predators. A teen having sex with another teen is normal and part of the process of maturing, but with an adult it has a completely different power dynamic. Plus, being attracted to prepubescent or pubescent teens as an adult is inherently awful and problematic. It has nothing to do with a teen being attracted to another peer.
  - Retric 3y ago
    I think you’re misunderstanding the definition of what that word means. 1) A 12/13 year old and a 16 year old experimenting is likely pedophilia depending on the biology of the 12/13 year old. 2) consent is a circular argument. The assumption that they can’t give consent arises from the assumption of harm and therefore cannot be used to justify harm. Animals for example can’t give consent to each other, that doesn’t make two bald eagles reproducing harmful.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      That's the thing, Stallman does not say anything about teenagers being attracted to other, younger teenagers! Especially since the quote was in the context of dutch pedophiles organizing to create a pro pedophilia party. Those are explicitly adults, some were very old adults too, organizing to be able to have sex with kids and teens. It wasn't just him defending teenagers fooling around or sending nudes. (I added a bit more to my other comment after I posted, sorry about that)
pfannkuchen 3y ago
Is he talking about pre or post puberty? The term pedophilia sometimes lumps both together. Pre seems quite unnatural, or at least there is no obvious natural mechanism that would make it normal or beneficial. Post is a cultural matter, since age of marriage has fluctuated a lot over time. Discussing post seems reasonably defensible, discussing pre immensely less so.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  This isn't the place to have this discussion. As a writer who writes stories set in the past, you have to be really careful with this topic. It's not one you bring up in a general forum.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    Thanks for the input. To be clear, I'm not advocating for any social changes here, and I generally agree with the current social approach given brain development stages and the fact that individuals choose their own partners these days. But one thing is, like, brain damaged levels of icky, and the other one is more of an eccentric and socially tone deaf opinion.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Personally I don't think the distinction matters (both are bad), but even then he also doesn't seem to make the distinction. Here is another quote [to be clear, I don't disagree with the first two lol]: Prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    Thanks for the quote. I do agree both are bad, but in the way that severely beating someone and murdering someone are both bad. It sounds like he is pretty out there.
  - 3y ago
mistrial9 3y ago
edit skissane and others have said it better (above) IMO. comment edited.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  It wasn't taken out of context, considering the context was him reacting to the news of a possible new pro pedophilia party in the Netherlands. It wasn't a one off comment either. Again, I'm not saying he is guilty of a thought crime just that I understand that (and why) there is a controversy and that it isn't accurate to say that "We ll never know what "the situation" is and whatever "statements that do not correspond to any of our values" are". We know those statements.
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skissane 3y ago
> Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy). He said he didn’t understand the issue and talking to abuse survivors helped him understand it better, and that led to him changing his view. To me, that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others. Labelling it as “back-pedalling” seems to me to be needlessly uncharitable to him It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is often ignorant of mainstream trends, or feels no motivation to care about them. His former position on this was actually reasonably mainstream on the Left in the 60s/70s, so in itself far from unusual for someone of his vintage, what was unusual was it took him so long to abandon it (or at least learn to shut up about it). But, if you try to understand him, rational explanations for it taking him that long may occur to you I’ve never seen any evidence he has any actual sexual interest in children - just that children are somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to him. Before I became a father, children were somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to me too. I think that is a large part of why the wrongness of his former view was not obvious to him in the way it is to many others
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  To be clear, I'm not implying that he himself is a pedophile. I also get that he might have changed his mind, but Stallman is also not known to actually change his mind very often. I'm not a mind reader and it's just an impression that I've gotten in the way he apologized. But in any case my point was mostly that he actually made pretty controversial statements at some point, and it's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the statement in the article was just baseless smearing and that we won't know which statements are against their values.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > I also get that he might have changed his mind, but Stallman is also not known to actually change his mind very often. Yes, he rarely changes his mind-but, all evidence I’ve seen is that if he says he’s changed his mind about something, then he indeed has. I don’t see any good reason to doubt him on that-he’s the kind of person who speaks their mind (maybe even one of those people with a “poor filter”), I’ve seen zero evidence he’s someone who tries to hide their true views > But in any case my point was mostly that he actually made pretty controversial statements at some point, and it's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the statement in the article was just baseless smearing and that we won't know which statements are against their values. Why does it matter what his past statements were if he has made clear he no longer agrees with them? Saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their current views on unrelated topics - I feel uncomfortable about it, but in some cases it may be defensible. But saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their past views which they’ve since renounced on an unrelated topic - how is that defensible? “Baseless” seems an entirely apt description for it.
irthomasthomas 3y ago
He is skeptical of the basis of the laws and is requesting more information. And this was decades ago. Maybe he changed his mind after people responded to his enquiry? Anyway, it doesn't seem relevent to this recent cancellation.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Somebody had to sit down with him and walk him through why pedophilia is bad and is rape, irrespective of whether the victim gave consent. It is, as they say, "not a good look, my dude". It's germane to his current persona because of his statements that what Minsky supposedly did does not constitute assault because he was deceived about the victim's age. It was taken as "here we go again, Stallman is defending chomos again."
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Exactly! I think this is why "he changed his mind" does not really sit right with me. This isn't rocket science or even some culture war contentious issue. Having sex with kids is bad, and was considered bad when he said those things and put the blame on parents for being mad that their kids got abused. If there's one thing that communists, liberals, conservatives, fascists, anarchomonarchists (lol) can all agree on is that pedophilia is bad. It's a bi/tri/partisan issue. It's not some status quo position that he just happened to defend by force of habit. Maybe it was ok on the internet back then, but 2006 isn't that far away. So we can't even say that the cultural context was different. I'm not saying he lied when he said that it just took someone to talk him through it... But it sure is weird that a grown 40yo+ educated man didn't understand that having sex with children was bad.
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gerash 3y ago
If someone says something controversial without malice they should not be "cancelled".
randombits0 3y ago
Who cares what his thoughts and opinions are! As long as he doesn’t harm anyone I couldn’t give a damn! We don’t shun people for abhorrent thought, only abhorrent behavior!
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  I can't read French (shoot, scroll down to the English), but I believe he was originally invited to share his thoughts and opinions. So the audience of EPFL cared. Now, EPFL doesn't want to risk giving a platform to, or otherwise being associated with, potentially problematic speech that they do not control. I'm sure he can still be a member of the audience at EPFL, so I don't know that this is shunning, per se.
  - ilceltico 3y ago
    Hi, EPFL PhD student here. Please note that the lecture was organised and then canceled by CLIC, which is a student association. EPFL did not write this statement: the linked website is CLIC, not EPFL.

lostmsu 3y ago

[flagged]

kayodelycaon 3y ago
There’s a difference between a controversial opinion and one of the strongest taboos in American culture.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Pedophilia isn't exactly an American only issue. I'm not American but if thinking that pedophilia harms children is an American "taboo"... Then consider me thoroughly americanized lol.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    It's far from exclusive, but I don't know enough about other cultures to definitively say universally strong in all existing ones. (It hasn't been historically.)
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - lflflspaasdd 3y ago
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  - elif 3y ago
    It is certainly not exclusive to the USA and no one is trying to deny or diminish victims in other countries, but statistically, it is an endemic US problem. According to US HHS "over the course of their lifetime, 28% of young people in the US, aged 14 to 17, had been sexually victimized." Compare that to 4.8% for the UK, also a country with a severe child SA problem. The US is thusly quite anomalous, and is only really comparable to undeveloped nations in terms of CSA rates. So when an American goes out of his way to defend forms of CSA on his personal webpage, unprompted, it can certainly be seen as symptomatic of this larger US cultural issue.
- Clubber 3y ago
  It's a fairly modern taboo, historically speaking. While the unrestricted age of consent is between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the laws have widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7.[104] The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century.[105][106] By 1920, 26 states had an age of consent at 16, 21 states had an age of consent at 18, and one state (Georgia) had an age of consent at 14.[104] Small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. Damn Deleware, 7?!
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - belorn 3y ago
    If I remember right, the median age of people who have sex before the age of 20 is 15 years. (where I live) It is one of those slight odd statistics, especially if it is similar in places where the age of consent is 18. It does however explain why there are so many different age of consent, and why it is hard for law makers to fix it to a number that make people happy.
  - dls2016 3y ago
    I live in one of four US states where you must be 18 to get married. Most other states have "parental consent" laws that allow you to get married at age 16. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/01/child-marriage-is-rare-in-the-u-s-though-this-varies-by-state/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/01/child-mar... Not to mention like every big rocker had a teenage girlfriend in the 1970s.
deleted 3y ago
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bjornasm 3y ago
Where does it say that no one is allowed to have controversial opinions?
- maxbond 3y ago
  Nowhere. Where does it say RMS is entitled to give this talk?
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    OTOH, presumably somebody invited him?
    - maxbond 3y ago
      Sure, and then he was disinvited. If they had the agency to invite him, they had the agency to disinvite him. One time I got in a fight with an ex and made a scene at a party. We weren't invited to any more of their parties. I was miffed but it made sense to me.
deleted 3y ago
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brookst 3y ago
Straw man. Nobody is saying he’s not allowed to have that opinion. What people are saying is that organizations have a right to choose whether to associate, or not, with people based on their opinions. It would be a grim world if we took freedom of thought to the extreme of mandating that people who disagree must not object.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  I did not mean "allowed" in a sense of permitted legally or otherwise. EPFL is not a person. It does not have a set opinion on the subject. And its individual members likely disagree on the matter. I am also not denying EPFL right to associate, I am questioning their judgement here.

Retric 3y ago

[flagged]

mardifoufs 3y ago
I'm not sure I understand your point. Obviously children experimenting with each other is very different from children having sex with adults. He didn't even mention older teens, he straight up implied that he 1) thinks that voluntary pedophilia is a thing 2) children can consent to sex with adults (again, broad statement that he didn't even limit to older teens) That's very different from children experimenting together. Stallman implies that not wanting some adult creep to prey on your kid is just some sort of moral panic, which is... a pretty horrible take and one that is often repeated by predators. A teen having sex with another teen is normal and part of the process of maturing, but with an adult it has a completely different power dynamic. Plus, being attracted to prepubescent or pubescent teens as an adult is inherently awful and problematic. It has nothing to do with a teen being attracted to another peer.
- Retric 3y ago
  I think you’re misunderstanding the definition of what that word means. 1) A 12/13 year old and a 16 year old experimenting is likely pedophilia depending on the biology of the 12/13 year old. 2) consent is a circular argument. The assumption that they can’t give consent arises from the assumption of harm and therefore cannot be used to justify harm. Animals for example can’t give consent to each other, that doesn’t make two bald eagles reproducing harmful.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    That's the thing, Stallman does not say anything about teenagers being attracted to other, younger teenagers! Especially since the quote was in the context of dutch pedophiles organizing to create a pro pedophilia party. Those are explicitly adults, some were very old adults too, organizing to be able to have sex with kids and teens. It wasn't just him defending teenagers fooling around or sending nudes. (I added a bit more to my other comment after I posted, sorry about that)

pfannkuchen 3y ago

Is he talking about pre or post puberty? The term pedophilia sometimes lumps both together. Pre seems quite unnatural, or at least there is no obvious natural mechanism that would make it normal or beneficial. Post is a cultural matter, since age of marriage has fluctuated a lot over time. Discussing post seems reasonably defensible, discussing pre immensely less so.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
This isn't the place to have this discussion. As a writer who writes stories set in the past, you have to be really careful with this topic. It's not one you bring up in a general forum.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Thanks for the input. To be clear, I'm not advocating for any social changes here, and I generally agree with the current social approach given brain development stages and the fact that individuals choose their own partners these days. But one thing is, like, brain damaged levels of icky, and the other one is more of an eccentric and socially tone deaf opinion.
mardifoufs 3y ago
Personally I don't think the distinction matters (both are bad), but even then he also doesn't seem to make the distinction. Here is another quote [to be clear, I don't disagree with the first two lol]: Prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Thanks for the quote. I do agree both are bad, but in the way that severely beating someone and murdering someone are both bad. It sounds like he is pretty out there.
- 3y ago

mistrial9 3y ago

edit skissane and others have said it better (above) IMO. comment edited.

mardifoufs 3y ago
It wasn't taken out of context, considering the context was him reacting to the news of a possible new pro pedophilia party in the Netherlands. It wasn't a one off comment either. Again, I'm not saying he is guilty of a thought crime just that I understand that (and why) there is a controversy and that it isn't accurate to say that "We ll never know what "the situation" is and whatever "statements that do not correspond to any of our values" are". We know those statements.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

skissane 3y ago

> Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy). He said he didn’t understand the issue and talking to abuse survivors helped him understand it better, and that led to him changing his view. To me, that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others. Labelling it as “back-pedalling” seems to me to be needlessly uncharitable to him It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is often ignorant of mainstream trends, or feels no motivation to care about them. His former position on this was actually reasonably mainstream on the Left in the 60s/70s, so in itself far from unusual for someone of his vintage, what was unusual was it took him so long to abandon it (or at least learn to shut up about it). But, if you try to understand him, rational explanations for it taking him that long may occur to you I’ve never seen any evidence he has any actual sexual interest in children - just that children are somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to him. Before I became a father, children were somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to me too. I think that is a large part of why the wrongness of his former view was not obvious to him in the way it is to many others

mardifoufs 3y ago
To be clear, I'm not implying that he himself is a pedophile. I also get that he might have changed his mind, but Stallman is also not known to actually change his mind very often. I'm not a mind reader and it's just an impression that I've gotten in the way he apologized. But in any case my point was mostly that he actually made pretty controversial statements at some point, and it's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the statement in the article was just baseless smearing and that we won't know which statements are against their values.
- skissane 3y ago
  > I also get that he might have changed his mind, but Stallman is also not known to actually change his mind very often. Yes, he rarely changes his mind-but, all evidence I’ve seen is that if he says he’s changed his mind about something, then he indeed has. I don’t see any good reason to doubt him on that-he’s the kind of person who speaks their mind (maybe even one of those people with a “poor filter”), I’ve seen zero evidence he’s someone who tries to hide their true views > But in any case my point was mostly that he actually made pretty controversial statements at some point, and it's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the statement in the article was just baseless smearing and that we won't know which statements are against their values. Why does it matter what his past statements were if he has made clear he no longer agrees with them? Saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their current views on unrelated topics - I feel uncomfortable about it, but in some cases it may be defensible. But saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their past views which they’ve since renounced on an unrelated topic - how is that defensible? “Baseless” seems an entirely apt description for it.

irthomasthomas 3y ago

He is skeptical of the basis of the laws and is requesting more information. And this was decades ago. Maybe he changed his mind after people responded to his enquiry? Anyway, it doesn't seem relevent to this recent cancellation.

bitwize 3y ago
Somebody had to sit down with him and walk him through why pedophilia is bad and is rape, irrespective of whether the victim gave consent. It is, as they say, "not a good look, my dude". It's germane to his current persona because of his statements that what Minsky supposedly did does not constitute assault because he was deceived about the victim's age. It was taken as "here we go again, Stallman is defending chomos again."
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Exactly! I think this is why "he changed his mind" does not really sit right with me. This isn't rocket science or even some culture war contentious issue. Having sex with kids is bad, and was considered bad when he said those things and put the blame on parents for being mad that their kids got abused. If there's one thing that communists, liberals, conservatives, fascists, anarchomonarchists (lol) can all agree on is that pedophilia is bad. It's a bi/tri/partisan issue. It's not some status quo position that he just happened to defend by force of habit. Maybe it was ok on the internet back then, but 2006 isn't that far away. So we can't even say that the cultural context was different. I'm not saying he lied when he said that it just took someone to talk him through it... But it sure is weird that a grown 40yo+ educated man didn't understand that having sex with children was bad.

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gerash 3y ago

If someone says something controversial without malice they should not be "cancelled".

randombits0 3y ago

Who cares what his thoughts and opinions are! As long as he doesn’t harm anyone I couldn’t give a damn! We don’t shun people for abhorrent thought, only abhorrent behavior!

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
I can't read French (shoot, scroll down to the English), but I believe he was originally invited to share his thoughts and opinions. So the audience of EPFL cared. Now, EPFL doesn't want to risk giving a platform to, or otherwise being associated with, potentially problematic speech that they do not control. I'm sure he can still be a member of the audience at EPFL, so I don't know that this is shunning, per se.
- ilceltico 3y ago
  Hi, EPFL PhD student here. Please note that the lecture was organised and then canceled by CLIC, which is a student association. EPFL did not write this statement: the linked website is CLIC, not EPFL.