[safety1st]

RMS has been subjected to a defamatory smear campaign which has falsely accused him of being transphobic, sympathetic to pedophiles and hostile to women. The attacks targeting him have largely come from people who aren't involved in free software and in some cases not even involved in the tech industry. While his behavior has been awkward at times he is absolutely none of these things and he deserves respect for his contributions to our field.

Please read:

https://stallmansupport.org/richard-stallman-is-not-transpho... - Leah Rowe, who accused the FSF of being transphobic, defending Richard Stallman as not transphobic.

https://stallmansupport.org/nadine-strossen-hannah-wolfman-r... - Nadine Strossen, former President of the ACLU and a feminist icon, affirming Richard Stallman's support for women and her support for many of his positions.

[red_admiral]

I'm not sure about transphobic, as that allegation did not come up when the original "package" that led to RMS' resignation was published. It could be that new evidence has come to light since, or it could be that the allegation of transphobia is unfounded.

Some of the original allegations that I think are proven correct are that RMS:

  - defended Marvin Minsky on a mailing list when Minsky was accused of sex with an underage woman, and made similar comments in defense of Cody Wilson. I believe Stallman's quote on the MIT listserv was that "[it is] normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents" when referring specifically to an allegation concerning someone under the legal age of consent. I think "sympathetic to paedophiles" is a defensible interpretation of such comments.

  - The accusations of sexism are also supported by evidence, such as the "EMACS virgins" incident in July 2009 which RMS himself admitted the basic facts of (while claiming it was meant to have been a joke). One version of the lines involved reads "The virgin of emacs is any female who has not yet learned how to use emacs. And in the church of emacs we believe that taking her emacs virginity away is a blessed act." @daringfireball (John Gruber) also quotes a Wired article claiming RMS had a card on his door at MIT saying "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)". I think "hostile to women" is a defensible interpretation of these facts, especially as there is testimony from women in tech who say they find this sort of thing hostile.

On the basis of the evidence I have seen, some of which I have quoted above, I rebut the allegation that the accusations against RMS are a smear campaign, though I make no comment on the allegations specifically of transphobia as I have not fact-checked that part myself.

[safety1st]

Please read claims 1-5 on this page. I could rehash them but the page does a better job with these issues than I would:

https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...

Regarding the "Cult of the Emacs Virgin" issue, here is Stallman's statement about it: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-women-list/2009-Novemb... - this was a reference to the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Along with references to the "Church of St. IGNUtius" he was parodying what he saw as cult-like elements of Christianity. Because Mary was female, he referenced females.

When he was informed in 2009 that some women found this joke offensive, he changed it to be gender neutral, because as he said in 2009, and continues to say today, he supports involving women in free software as much as possible.

Stallman has a long history of advocating for womens' rights and it's unfortunate for all women that a few women have decided to attack a supporter of womens' rights over a joke that probably didn't make anyone bat an eyelash when he first started using it. Standards have changed today, but he amended the joke 14 years ago....

Nadine Strossen's comments really hit the nail on the head about how poisonous this inability to forgive people for awkward statements made almost 20 years ago (and later recanted or apologized for) has become. If people on the other side are not allowed to apologize, reform and join your team, how do you ever win? If you brand them as enemies for life, short of your movement imprisoning, exiling or killing them, how does society as a whole ever make progress?

[d_tr]

> Stallman has a long history of advocating for womens' rights ...

I 'd like to add that he regularly posts political notes on his website which make this pretty clear to anyone who cares to take a look.

[foldr]

There is more to the weird 'emacs virgin' thing than just the joke itself.

https://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard...

[eesmith]

I have not heard the transphobic claims either.

I have come across multiple sources which describe Stallman's creepy behavior towards women, which I listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008835 .

One of them worked in the same building as Stallman. She writes software under an open source license and co-organizes an open source conference, so definitely "involved in free software."

You can't trust me though. Stallman said I'm an enemy of free software since I wouldn't say "GNU/Linux" to him.

[didntcheck]

As is usually the case with these "sex pest" witch hunts, these claims require traversing several layers of hyperlinks and "someone told me" just to find a vague claim of "I just find him creepy (in a way that I can't describe!)", which seems to simply mean "dares to exist and talk while awkward and unattractive". Flirting is also not bad behavior, how else would relationships form without someone indicating interest first?

Nobody is denying that rms is an exceedingly eccentric person, often to the extent of rudeness, but this does not justify the serious insinuations of sexual harassment

[eesmith]

Whoa, who said any of this was "sexual harassment"?

The topic was the "reason [free software] has so few women involved", and the claim is that Stallman's behavior towards women was a non-trivial contributing factor.

That does not require sexual harassment.

The counter-claim is that such allegations are "a defamatory smear campaign which has falsely accused him of being transphobic, sympathetic to pedophiles and hostile to women. The attacks targeting him have largely come from people who aren't involved in free software and in some cases not even involved in the tech industry."

I've heard about his creepy behavior towards women since around 2003, from people working in open source software. Thus, that counter-claim cannot be the complete story.

[safety1st]

Yes, at this point the current generation of feminism has an awful track record: by conflating online rumors about "creeps" and "sex pests" with actual women's rights concerns, they've ceded cultural ground to conservatives who have promptly used their new influence to do stuff like limit access to abortions. (Stallman is unwaveringly pro choice.)

Nadine Strossen comments on this problem in one of the links I posted:

> So we see the term sexual assault and sexual harrassment used for example, when a guy asks a woman out on a date and she doesn’t find that an appealing invitation. Maybe he used poor judgement in asking her out, maybe he didn’t, but in any case that is NOT sexual assault or harassment. To call it that is to really demean the huge horror and violence and predation that does exist when you are talking about violent sexual assault. People use the term sexual assault / sexual harassment to refer to any comment about gender or sexuality issues that they disagree with or a joke that might not be in the best taste, again is that to be commended? No! But to condemn it and equate it with a violent sexual assault again is really denying and demeaning the actual suffering that people who are victims of sexual assault endure. It trivializes the serious infractions that are committed by people like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. So that is one point that [Stallman] made that I think is very important that I strongly agree with.

[eesmith]

> So we see the term sexual assault and sexual harrassment used for example, when a guy asks a woman out on a date and she doesn’t find that an appealing invitation.

It's a bit humorous that you agree with the assessment "several layers of hyperlinks and "someone told me" just to find a vague claim" then don't even provide that much support for your own third-hand, fourth-hand, or higher comment.

We know from EEOC training that there are indeed ways to ask someone for a date and have it be workplace sexual harassment.

Scenario #1: "Wanna go on a date tonight? I think I can get you off night shift if you say yes." is straight-forward quid pro quo sexual harassment.

Scenario #2: Whenever employee X sees a new, young, female employee he goes up to her and, while staring at her breasts the whole time, asks her out on a date. The staff get annoyed about the continual sexual objectification and complain about X's rude behavior. Under EEOC guidelines, management acts to prevent claims they have a hostile workplace.

Both of these unappealing invitations are forms of workplace sexual harassment, which has a higher legal requirement than other uses of the phrase.

These laws have been in place for decades .. and you're right, the anti-abortion movement has been around for decades too. But it's not due to online rumors but part of a broader anti-feminist movement wanting "traditional" male power over women.

Can you dig through the hyperlinks and find a less vague account of your example?

Given the 100s of millions of men who have asked women out, this should be millions of times easier to find than the ones I found about Stallman. Examples should be everywhere, not just men's rights forums.

Given I know someone with a first-hand account about Stallman, and don't know anyone matching your story, tells me your scenario is rare.

[teddyh]

See also <https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/>.

[asddubs]

RMS has definitely been sympathetic to pedophiles in his writing in the past. I don't know what his stance is now, but saying it was a false accusation is revisionism, IMO.