[mhh__]

> Richard Stallman has said some sexist and edgy things.

done some sexist and edgy things. On stage, spoken directly at women.

Also, Stallman is a totally incompetent leader - the project is sufficiently niche that I won't name it, but the maintainer mentioned to me that he entered rms's bad book merely by virtue of having children.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

It is nice how you prove your point about Stallman being totally incompetent leader by providing a very specific and verifiable allegation.

Also, now we know that rms has 'bad book' where he puts people with children.

[mhh__]

I would give more detail but the exact project is a reasonably major but narrow piece of GNU with not many maintainers, which I should also add they nearly missed out on for other rms related reasons.

[mhh__]

C+P of a compelling list from the gcc mailing list I read:

1. 'skeptical that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.’ stallman's own archives 2006-mar-jun I note that children are incapable of consenting. That’s what the age of consent means.

2. 'end censorship of “child pornography”’. Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html Notice use of “quotes” to down play what is actually being requested.

3. 'gentle expressions of attraction’ Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html Condoning a variant of the wolf-whistle. Unless one’s talking to one’s lover, ‘gentle invitations for sex’ by a stranger is grooming (be it child or of-age).

4. Defends someone charged with ‘"sexual assault" on a "child" after a session with a sex worker of age 16.’ stallman's archives 2018-jul-oct Notice the quoting here, implying the child is not a child. ‘The article refers to the sex worker as a "child", but that is not so. Elsewhere it has been published that she is 16 years old. That is late adolescence, not childhood.’ No, they are a child, that’s what the ages of majority and consent mean.

5. The ‘St Ignatius’ ‘EMACS virgins’ non-joke. ‘The commenter writes about seeing the routine when she was only 15, and how RMS singled her out several times during that performance: He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.)’ No wonder women want nothing to do with him.

6. A business card that is completely repelling image on oreilly

7. He knows those cards are inappropriate. He broke the code of conduct he helped author. wiredferret's twitter feed.

8. I understand he’s tried to circumvent such codes of conduct by asking women to meet him outside of the conference venue. _sagesharp_'s twitter feed.

9. He doesn’t acknowledge the few women he has worked with ‘I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.’ Completely ignoring Sandra Loosemore, who is a coauthor, with him, of the Glibc manual. Sandra was involved with LISP standardization, so I would be surprised if he was unaware of her involvement there. As you well know, she has worked significantly on GCC, GCC has several other women contributors, but too few for complacency.

10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of utterly inappropriate social interactions.

[incrudible]

The question of whether children are capable of consenting to sex with adults is something that's been widely debated in the time and space RMS grew up in. Several important people on the leftist/queer side came out in favor of it:

https://uncommongroundmedia.com/derrick-jensen-queer-theory-...

RMS may simply not have gotten the memo that this is a completely unacceptable opinion in the 2000s. Sensibilities change.

> Defends someone charged with ‘"sexual assault" on a "child"

This is just not true, it's the same misrepresentation that RMS attempted to defend Marvin Minsky against.

Marvin Minsky was never charged with anything, on account of being dead and unable to defend himself. Marvin Minsky also has never been accused of sexual assault by the victim herself. The victim accused Ghislaine Maxwell of directing her to have sex with Marvin Minsky.

There's a huge difference between "Marvin Minsky sexually assaulted a child" and "Marvin Minsky had sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old that was forced into prostitution by a third party". Not just in terms of labels, we're talking about years of prison time.

Even if we supposed that the latter was legally considered "sexual assault" (which it is not), it should be acceptable to argue that the name doesn't fit the crime.

[pseudalopex]

Since when has Stallman cared about what other people consider acceptable?

[psychiatrist24]

Obviously the age of consent can be discussed, it even varies from country to country.

I don't understand the EMACS virgin joke?

I don't think asking women on dates is automatically "inappropriate behavior". How are men and women supposed to get together? Even in a "professional setting", because the feminist claim that it is demeaning to women if somebody is attracted to them is simply wrong.

I can't claim RMS is "ok", but I'd like to see better evidence against him. Some women disliking him is not enough, either.

[mhh__]

> I don't understand the EMACS virgin joke?

The "joke" is that they are virgins and thus have to have said honour taken away from them. Bad taste aside, the issue is really that he specifically singles out women when reciting it. More detail: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke

> I don't think asking women on dates is automatically "inappropriate behavior".

There's a time and a place. Ultimately it's highly dependent on context, but if women are made uncomfortable by it in this case I don't think it's unreasonable to try and stop. Also just to spell it out, the implication here is that he was only talking to her to get into her pants.

FWIW I don't believe Stallman is a deeply rooted sexist, but rather than he has certain extremely unhelful patterns in his behaviour which he is wilfully blind to. When he says he believes women deserve free software too, I do believe him, but that isn't good enough i.e. sometimes words have no meaning.

[psychiatrist24]

"The "joke" is that they are virgins and thus have to have said honour taken away from them. "

According to the article, the "virginity" of never having used EMACS before. I dunno - doesn't really move my "hate RMS" meter, tbh. Not that I think it is a joke that is necessary to be made, but not the end of the world, either.

"Ultimately it's highly dependent on context, but if women are made uncomfortable by it in this case I don't think it's unreasonable to try and stop."

According to the story, he asked her for a date, and that was it. So he did stop?

It is a nice thought to avoid things that make women uncomfortable, but it is not actually a practical rule. Sometimes you can not know beforehand what makes them uncomfortable. It also seems unfair to simply demand unattractive men should never attempt to get dates. And you should not simply give a group of people to rule over other people at their whim - if you establish that rule, women can just control everything, because anything else would make them uncomfortable. For sure they can control who gets to be made the boss of companies or organisations.

[ulisesrmzroche]

Why do you keep avoiding the details? It's public knowledge that women have been avoid Stallman's office for decades.

[psychiatrist24]

"public knowledge" - I don't know about his exploits, and I am part of the public.

I repeatedly said I can not defend him because I don't know enough about him. But I can comment on the attacks that are being launched. I have looked into the alleged "support for paedophilia" and comments of "old guy hits on young women", for example.

Maybe if you want to kick out RMS, you should compile a good overview of the public knowledge, with as many verifiable claims as possible.

[bartread]

> I don't think asking women on dates is automatically "inappropriate behavior".

In general I agree with you but in this specific instance RMS would have been about 50 years old at the time (please see my other comment in direct response to GP). 50 year old men asking out 19 year old women is very much inappropriate behaviour.

[psychiatrist24]

Serious question, why is it inappropriate? It is against the "Bro Code" from "How I met your mother", but other than that? Sure, we are trained to feel uneasy about it, but if you really think about it, why exactly? Because you consider 50 year old men disgusting? Shouldn't you leave that to the women to decide? Many people also feel a bit disgusted about gay sex, yet they are supposed to tolerate and even celebrate it.

My other thought would be it seems like a bad "investment", as the older guy will most likely die before the young woman. But these days, single parenting is the norm rather than the exception. So is it really so much worse if the partner dies than if you divorce them and exclude them from your life? Yet again, single parenting is now almost being pushed as the model to aim for. And also "rainbow families" - if your partner dies, simply find a new one, it doesn't matter if they also already have kids. It is all possible and normal these days.

[bartread]

I consider it inappropriate because whenever I've seen it happen the female on the receiving end of the older man's attention is at best extremely uncomfortable about it. I've seen it happen first hand in an organisation I was a member of on multiple occasions. Men were asked to leave over it. Left unaddressed it becomes a barrier to female involvement.

Does that mean relationships with significant age gaps are wrong? No. And I didn't say that.

But do I think it's a bit off when a much older guy meets a girl young enough to be his daughter and the first thing he does is hit on her. I make no apology for that, because I'd bet nine times out of ten the girl's going to be really uncomfortable about it.

[psychiatrist24]

So maybe the girls are ageist and should be trained out of it, for our modern tolerant society? France has a president with a wife who is 25 years older than him, and that is universally applauded.

I can relate to the feeling, but on the other hand, I don't think it is fair to demand unattractive men should remove themselves from the dating pool. Of course society cares more for young women than old men, but nobody would admit that officially.

I have personally also seen young women throw themselves at old men with power, btw.

[bloodorange]

> But these days, single parenting is the norm rather than the exception.

This is a rather unusual observation I have to say. How did you come to this conclusion, might I ask?

[psychiatrist24]

I didn't look it up beforehand. Just googled for it, for example here it says 57% of millenial mothers are single moms. https://comparecamp.com/single-parent-statistics/

Talk about divorce being on the rise has been going on for years.

[buisi]

It's been a while, but the "child porn" post links to Rick's blog post. Rick made a blog post calling to legalize child porn, and it went over about as well as you'd expect.

He later explained why he called for that. The law is being used against things it shouldn't be. Like historical war photos, cartoons, a mother recording her child's unusual behavior (a sign of abuse) to submit as evidence to the police and getting charged for it, teenagers sexting, and so on.

The argument was never that child porn was good, but that we're going down a really dark path of censorship, and that we'd be better off doing away with that law, if this is what it means doing.

It isn't that child porn is good, but that censorship is worse, and dangerous to the fabric of society. If a former politician like Rick can be misunderstood and taken out of context like that, I can imagine it being even more hazardous for RMS.

[bartread]

> 10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of utterly inappropriate social interactions.

Just in case anybody else picks up on this and wonders what's so wrong with asking a girl out on a date, based on when @corbett attended MIT, RMS would have been about 50 at the time. A ~50 year old man immediately asking out a 19 year old girl the first time he meets her, even if it were intended as a (bad) joke, registers as pretty damn creepy.

The other points, assuming true at face value, all seem well made.

[c0l0]

When my parents met and fell in love, my father was 48 years old, and my mother was 21. I was born four years later.

My father died two years ago, at the age of 86. My mother lovingly cared for him during these last and toughest months of his.

I'm not even sure why I am sharing this here... I guess it just upset me that you, effectively, called him a creep. Maybe try not to judge people who seek (and sometimes even manage to find) love in ways you are not willing to try or to understand.

[bartread]

Oh, come on. I don't know anything about the context in which your parents met, how they got to know eachother, or how they got together.

But I do know that on this specific occasion RMS met somebody who was young enough to be his daughter and then some, and the first thing he did is hit on her. I'd bet that nine times out of ten the girl on the receiving end of that kind of attention will feel extremely uncomfortable. I make that bet both regretfully and confidently because I was a member of an organisation where this happened on multiple occasions and I saw exactly this play out. Girls were made to feel very uncomfortable and creeped out to the point that they were reluctant to be involved. Men were asked to leave because of it.

I understand where you're coming from, and I understand why you might be upset, but I wasn't attacking you or your parents, and I do not apologise for my point of view because the vast majority of the time the behaviour I've outlined is going to come off as creepy to the girl on the receiving end of it.

[antientropic]

> I note that children are incapable of consenting. That’s what the age of consent means.

Completing 18 orbits around the sun does not magically imbue a person with free will and the ability to consent. Of course the law has to draw a line somewhere (and many jurisdictions draw the line differently), but that doesn't mean that people under 18 are categorically incapable of consenting.