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In Defense of Richard Stallman

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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#231

Post by prepend »

CPLX wrote: post #47

Our culture has made a very bright line decision that sex with minors is unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly widely accepted. The very concept of statutory rape reinforces how clear this judgment is. The reference to "statutory" means th…

I don’t think Minsky is accused of statutory rape as the age of consent was 16 at the time of the accused event. So at the time, in that territory, sex with minors was legal.

Personally I don’t think it’s ethical for an adult to sex with minors. But many countries and states have laws allowing sex with minors. Maybe those communities think it’s ethical, maybe it’s just one of those historical laws they haven’t gotten around to updating with modern ethics.

So I don’t this this topic really has anything to do with pedophilia and how terrible that is.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#232

Post by smhost »

rvz wrote: post #113
coldtea wrote: post #76

Diversity -- but no diversity of opinion... Inclusiveness -- but let's ostracize the non-conforming aspie... Fairness -- but let's fire people or make them resign from unrelated positions for their personal opinions, because obviously all of a person's life should serve as a big PR, and god forbid they don't play the role 24/7. Someone might call them for it on Twitter, and what could their employee/organization do o…

Spot on. You have just outlined the double-speak of the SV technocracy, which have imposed these hidden codes on those that they disagree with. Mind you that the media has now amplified this and have used all of this to create a new enemy called Richard Stallman. As long as this appalling cancel-culture behaviour stops, he certainly won't be the last one to fall victim to these purity tests. Absolutely hypocritical i…

from reading just this comment, i would have assumed that stallman was stripped of all his land and titles and made to starve under a bridge.

what really happened was that he went from holding leadership positions in three prominent institutions to just one. it's easy to have strong feelings about these issues, but let's try to keep things in perspective.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#233

Post by sgt »

blackhaz wrote: post #32

Why do we even need to invoke Stallman's achievements as an excuse here? What did the man say - he expressed his opinion that accusations of sexual assault are probably inflated and inaccurate. For fuck's sake!

>he expressed his opinion that accusations of sexual assault are probably inflated and inaccurate.

What is wrong with that, if indeed the accusations were inflated and inaccurate?

As far as I can see from this case, he is correct. He could have expressed himself better, but we're talking about RMS here.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#234

Post by DanBC »

ndury wrote: post #189
CPLX wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I believe publicly advocating for certain things can severely break cultural norms and make it impossible for you to effectively hold a leadership role in an educational or advocacy setting. Are you arguing that no social norms violation should ever result in being fired? You can go to work and scream at people at the top of your lungs? Tell the receptionist you’re glad she had a miscarriage? Use the sink as a u…

Correct me if i'm wrong but it sounds like you're trying to say 'People who have a leadership role in an educational or advocacy setting are not entitled to have a certain opinion or preference that does not fall within the lines our "society" has drawn out to be normal?' AFAIK there are plenty of high positioned people in important positions whom have a special preference to something. Whether it be a kink or a tota…

> Correct me if i'm wrong but it sounds like you're trying to say 'People who have a leadership role in an educational or advocacy setting are not entitled to have a certain opinion or preference that does not fall within the lines our "society" has drawn out to be normal?'

No, it means that if you think raping children is okay you don't get to say that as part of your work, unless your work is for a pro-child-abuse organisation.

If you're a spokesperson for any other organisation they may want to distance themselves from your comments supporting child sexual abuse.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#235

Post by _57jb »

coldtea wrote: post #76

Diversity -- but no diversity of opinion... Inclusiveness -- but let's ostracize the non-conforming aspie... Fairness -- but let's fire people or make them resign from unrelated positions for their personal opinions, because obviously all of a person's life should serve as a big PR, and god forbid they don't play the role 24/7. Someone might call them for it on Twitter, and what could their employee/organization do o…

Well fucking said

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#236

Post by toxik »

barry-cotter wrote: post #158
toxik wrote: post #45

Humanity is converging on ideological monoculture. There is one correct way to think, and if you're dumb enough to step outside of those bounds, people _will_ come after you, and destroy whatever you have. One comment here even suggested that RMS is a rapist in so many words, really? I submit that you cannot have innovation without inconvenient characters. You must allow a plurality of ideas and ideals to exist, even…

Even the US isn’t an ideological monoculture. The woke are ~8% of the US population. No one in China cares. The social strata in India and Pakistan that ape the English speaking world is on the retreat politically. This cultural moment is mostly a US thing, and to a lesser extent an Anglosphere thing, with especially English proficient vassal states like the Dutch or Scandinavians also taking part. If it ever burns o…

It may be true that "the woke," as they are so disparagingly called, is a small group. Actually, I'd say 8% isn't a very small group at all -- but that is besides the point. The point is that this small group has much more than 8% impact on the outcomes of events like these. They may be 8% of the general population, but they are 99% of the people who care at all.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#237

Post by meerita »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #209
meerita wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read the mail from Stallman and I couldn't believe people forced him to resign just because he stated that 1 it is not clear assault 2, he don't disbelieve his colleague had sex. BTW: I have also suffered the tough, complicated, unstable and rare personality of Stallman. Not for that I want to see him dead but like everyone else, when he has been unrespectful with me, I let him know. Everyone who knows Stallman…

Well there were also those posts about having sex with children sometimes being quite fine. Edit: The downvotes are interesting given that this is how Stallman himself characterized those posts: "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it."

What posts are you talking about? He didn't state anything related to child sex, plus, Eptein wasn't only offering that so it is unclear that Minsk had sex with minors. It's obvious that Stallman condemn that, but to his eyes, nothing is crystal clear and he is not the kind of person who will fall so easily in any logic fallacy. I think people is mob lawing him without any reason more than "he just stated some facts".

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#238

Post by spats1990 »

ORioN63 wrote: post #163
spats1990 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On his website, for example, Stallman says that he "reject[s] the term sexual assault" completely.[1] ~edit: I have included the full quote below as I did not intend to twist/misrepresent in any way. Stallman writes: " The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same. There seems to be an excepti…

I'm split on your comment. On one side, you indeed quote Stallman itself and the source of the quote. On the other side the complete quote reads: The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same. There seems to be an exception for TSA agents, however. The term is further stretched to include sexu…

Hmm. I wasn't trying to twist his words at all, so thanks for quoting in full.

If I see a problem with his characterization of the term "sexual assault" / his reasoning in rejecting it, it's that the "broad range of actions" he says are labeled with the term "sexual assault" share one common trait: they happened without the consent of one party. He kind of ignores this in favour of describing the term as "propaganda for treating [acts of non-rape] as the same". And I find the argument that "one unwanted act that I and presumably others find mostly harmless was described as sexual assault, thus this term has lost its meaning in general" somewhat hard to swallow.

Wikipedia: "Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will."[1]

If we did away with the term "sexual assault", I'm not sure what terms we would be left with when describing such things, except to describe the exact acts themselves.

In fact, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that "the term sexual assault is losing/has lost its meaning because it used to mean rape" at all, because there has always been a word for that: rape. As far as I know, this term has always existed to describe a broad-range of sexual acts performed without consent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#239

Post by [deleted] »

dalbasal wrote: post #145
kolektiv wrote: post #18

Sigh. No. It's not just about one incidence of some mistakenly pedantic comments, as has been made clear by many, many people. It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined with no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong. His behaviour towards women in particular has resulted in a lot of people sharing stories of his behaviour which, on their own, should be enough for someon…

FWIW, this is from a wikipedia article: In September 2019, it was reported that Stallman had made statements on an internal CSAIL listserv in defense of deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky, in relation to Virginia Giuffre's deposition that she was directed to have sex with Minsky by Jeffrey Epstein.[117][118] As a response, Stallman resigned from both MIT and the Free Software Foundation.[119][120][121] "What this i…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#240

Post by imgabe »

Sadly, a large number of people seem to have decided that their feelings are more important than the truth. That if something makes you feel bad, this means it is bad and must be destroyed.

This is like how a dark basement might be scary to a child. A normal adult would explain that the basement is actually harmless, and teach the child to see it for what it really is and learn not be afraid of it. The feelings-first crowd would have us simply destroy all basements.

Feelings are important and can help point you in a direction, but they need to be tempered with reason and logic before resulting in action.

People who act solely on feelings are also easy to manipulate because talented writers, actors, etc can evoke strong feelings about anything regardless of facts.

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