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by mhh__ 1915 days ago
> 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.

1 comments

"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.

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