[miopa]

That last sentence is what caused the outrage in the wider public. It was amplified by the manipulative post of Selam Jie Gano and the media that parroted it, but his original claim did hit the nerve (that it shouldn't be called sexual assault if no physical force was used in the sexual act).

[JaimeThompson]

Not all force is physical.

[DATACOMMANDER]

Actually, his claim was that it shouldn’t be called assault if no force or coercion was used by the older man, and the older man couldn’t be expected to know that his partner was being coerced by someone else.

[lostjohnny]

> Selam Jie Gano

People should be outraged that a nobody working on automated vehicles for the US military (AKA drones) believes she on a higher moral ground than Stallman, that never hurt anybody.

People should be outraged that said nobody wrote "Remove Stallman and all the other toxic people in tech" like if "removing" people is ok, like she knows who they are, 'cause she's the ultimate judge, and as if building weapons is not toxic...

BTW

RMS has been much more brave and clear than that.

He wrote

    "if someone in csail says in this discussion group that Minsky was accused of sexual assault, a very serious accusation, and someone else in csail thinks that he was not, should the latter person refrain from saying so in this same discussion group out of concern that the conversation will leak and be misconstrued by the press?"

    The in stands for "science". The job of scientists is to evaluate evidence and seek truth. We have a social responsibility to do that as well. I hope that we scientists will never evade our social responsibility to seek and defend the truth out of fear that the press will misconstrue our search. That would not be a reputation I would like attached to my affiliation.

   I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone.

He did what he believed was the right thing to do.

He was doing it to protect the movement and the protest from

a - leaks to the press

b - bad PR, if they used sexual assault people could spin it as "but he didn't assault her, it was consensual sex" like they usually do: they shoot the messenger or the form of the message to not address the real issue and divert the attention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts)

c - he was UNDOUBTEDLY right! nobody is talking about the protest against Epstein-MIT involvement.

good job Selam, good job everybody

[zzzcpan]

> working on automated vehicles for the US military

Somehow I missed this, so a person literally working on helping the government kill people was the one asking to remove RMS? Interestingly enough, such hypocrisy came up in all the deplatforming cases too, where they removed some relatively innocent stuff claiming it had bad impact on people, but ignored and keep ignoring all the weapons promoting content, war propaganda, etc. that literally causes death and destruction.

[lostjohnny]

> Somehow I missed this, so a person literally working on helping the government kill people was the one asking to remove RMS?

Yep

https://www.linkedin.com/in/selam-gano-089895ba/

[sireat]

"Passionate about using engineering for a positive impact on the world." - well most of us think we are not the bad guy but the cognitive dissonance is strong here.

[Fnoord]

"Mission accomplished." Reminds me of the women who accused Assange. Then there is the witchhunt against Jacob Appelbaum. Sense a pattern?

Regardless of whether these allegations are true or false, there is a lesson to be learned here. The lesson here is that [some] men have a severe weakness related to their sexuality. I'd assume US HUMINT knows about this lesson, very well.

[dependenttypes]

> Then there is the witchhunt against Jacob Appelbaum. Sense a pattern?

DJB too, see https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160607-dueprocess.html and https://eindhoven.cr.yp.to/false-statements-by-henry-de-vale...

[lostjohnny]

> me of the women who accused Assange

There's a huge difference though.

Assange after he was accused of rape escaped from the process and started rambling about a “radical feminist conspiracy”

Stallman is not accused of anything, never escaped and if you write to him (he still answer to everybody) will ask you to support the FSF because it's important

And this is the man women and students should be afraid of...

[dependenttypes]

> after he was accused of rape

Rape implies... rape. He is just accused of removing a condom.

> escaped from the process

Wasn't that due to the (rightful imo) fear of being sent to the US?

[cptskippy]

Ok just so we're clear...

You're arguing that defending a statutory rapist isn't supporting pedophilia BUT working on the guidance systems for an autonomous ground vehicle is "help the government kill people"?

[lostjohnny]

> You're arguing that defending a statutory rapist isn't supporting pedophilia

Wrong.

I'm saying that Stallman never defended a statutory rapist.

He tried to defend the protest from the backlash of using the wrong terms and a dead person from an accusation that is hard to prove anyway now that he's dead.

Statutory rape is just a safer option given the circumstances.

BTW defending a statutory rapist is not supporting pedophilia or any attorney who defended an alleged (there is no official accusation yet) statutory rapist was also supporting pedophilia?

> for an autonomous ground vehicle is "help the government kill people"?

That's what drones are for...

And I've never said that either.

I've only said that she works there.

[lawnchair_larry]

That was not his claim.

[DanBC]

> that it shouldn't be called sexual assault if no physical force was used in the sexual act

The fact Stallman doesn't understand what assault means, and then used his lack of understanding of the word assault to defend Minsky, is exactly why people are annoyed with him.

Assault does not require force or violence.

[concordDance]

A. That was not what he argued.

B. One could quite reasonably object to the use of a term whose legal definition is very different from the everyday meaning or connotations.

[DanBC]

Yes, it was waht he argued. Here's what he said.

> The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

> The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef... records-unsealed.) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

Read this last paragraph.

Now read an English definition of assault. English words have several meanings. Stallman is ignoring the every day English meaning of the word assault because he doesn't understand how English works.

> Assault:

> 1) violent physical or verbal attack

> 2) any act that causes someone to feel physically threatened, which is considered reckless or intentional, and which need not necessarily involve any physical violence

> 3) rape or attempted rape

I don't understand why you'd say this...

> One could quite reasonably object to the use of a term whose legal definition is very different from the everyday meaning or connotations.

The legal definition isn't different to the everyday meaning, but even if it is Stallman needs to understand which definition is being used before he launches into his rape-apology, and he made no effort to do that, did he?

[dependenttypes]

> Assault does not require force or violence.

To the minds of the majority of people sure it does.

[lostjohnny]

> The fact Stallman doesn't understand what assault means

he knows very well.

He meant, and it's obvious from the emails, that the term is slippery if used to accuse someone.

It would have been better something like "statutory rape"

because it's not disputable.

[DanBC]

But assault in law and English does not require use of force, and if Stallman meant to say "let's call Minsky a statutory rapist" he could have said that. He didn't, he went on to say that we shouldn't define rape by age -- clearly trying to prevent people calling Minsky a rapist.