[throwaway5849]

> what the person is doing is calling human trafficking victims "willing."

Please stop spreading this misinformation. As explained in this thread countless times, Stallman never called the victim "willing" -- he just said she might have been threatened into looking like she is.

[ixtli]

I understand what you're saying and i'd like to point out, as i have done in other places, that I am a real fan of RMS and his works and have been for years. I'm not on a witch hunt here.

But.

I think its really important for people making this sort of argument to deal with the fact that public people who make public statements do not get to control how those things are taken. In much the same way that your production as an artist isn't entirely yours when you release it to the public, RMS' actions have consequences outside of what he may have meant. I for one dont think for a moment that he means to justify human trafficking. But what he did do what make a statement that can be taken as victim blaming. This is very, very dangerous and there should be consequences.

[throwaway5849]

I still do not see how it can be taken as blaming the victim. Here's the exact quote from my inbox:

> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.

> Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

It's pretty clear to me that he acknowledges the victim to be a victim, who has to deal with threats and coercion __in addition to__ sexual assault. He just argued that Minsky might not have known what was going on, which has nothing to do with what the victim actually felt.

The only people who interpreted this as victim-blaming are the media outlets who straight up lie in their headlines. Here's Vice:

> Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'

Stallman does have a responsibility to ensure he cannot be reasonably misinterpreted, but this headline is a blatant lie.

[doubleunplussed]

We cannot allow the norm of "people are responsible for all possible interpretations of what they said". This is completely untenable. The misquotes in Vice etc amount to extracting a single adjective phrase "entirely willing" and adding non-existing context around it. There is no protection against that kind of malicious misquoting.

In a world where wilful misinterpretation was not somehow weaponised I would agree with you, but that is not this world. This norm would leave every PR person completely at the mercy of any enemies they are unlucky enough to make.