[smt88]

"Tolerance" doesn't mean someone can have any prominent position they want.

I completely support Stallman's right to say that he believes children can consent to sex. It's not sexist or edgy -- it's repulsive and sounds like the stuff Epstein used to say. But he still deserves to have friends and rights.

What he doesn't deserve is coworkers or teammates who are forced to pretend he didn't say that stuff. He said it and there are consequences.

Could any of the rest of us tweet about our theoretical support for statutory rape and still have jobs?

And the things he said that denigrated parents who raise children with Down's syndrome is arguably worse.

Twitter is not destroying careers. People are destroying their own careers.

[buisi]

I think some people have a very naive view of consenting to sex.

The idea is they ask someone whether they want to do it, they say yes, and they do it. And they don't really see the harm there. Everyone's happy, right?

But, children lack the knowledge to understand what it is they are asking. Children might also agree to things they shouldn't because they want attention, even if it is bad for them, and hurts them.

Teenagers might be better off but they're hormone propelled and may make mistakes they really shouldn't. There are power imbalances too where someone feels they should do something they really don't want to do.

To be clear, I'm not for criminalizing sex where a small age gap is involved. Throwing teenagers in prison for having sex with each other is counter-productive and harmful. There are better ways to tackle that. The same applies to sexting.

But, the burden which would have to be met for an adult to be involved is so high, so risky, and so convoluted that it isn't worth it in practice. Can a judge really make the right call all the time there? Is it worth it?

By the way, he has never tweeted his theoretical support for statutory rape. I don't think he even has a twitter account. He made some comments on an obscure personal blog over a couple of decades. Someone went out of their way to dig it out after he appeared in the news.

[smt88]

> By the way, he has never tweeted...

I know. I was just using a common, public method of communication as an example that's more relatable for us.

[Daho0n]

The consequence was that he talked to people about it, changed his mind and apologized. That this gets brought up after the fact is not a consequence of his current opinion and everyone knows this. This is a consequence of a mistake he were big enough to public apologize for (unlike most people online) and then later used against him.

Besides much of what RMS is saying and doing that makes him stick out and he gets harassed over is because of him being neuroatypical.

[pseudalopex]

He didn't apologize for his comments about sex between adults and children.[1] And he didn't say he changed his mind until after he came under pressure to resign. It was his current opinion as far as anyone knew. And that's just 1 of the examples they gave.

Neuroatypical people I know are pretty angry about mostly neurotypical people using their condition to rationalize Stallman's bad behavior.

[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...