Stallman's mistake was expressing his key point in two sentences using many words of three or more syllables.
This apparently put it beyond the reading comprehension level of the reporters at Vice and Daily Beast, and of Selam G., and so his point was completely misunderstood/misrepresented.
Our culture has made a very bright line decision that sex with minors is unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly widely accepted.
The very concept of statutory rape reinforces how clear this judgment is. The reference to "statutory" means that the mere facts of the act taking place mean that the conduct is off limits. Things like "consent" or even a misrepresentation of the person's age are generally considered irrelevant.
As a society we've decided that there aren't really exceptions to this. If sex with minors occurs it's not OK, there isn't much need to further investigate why it happened.
Stallman, and anyone else commenting here, has really no basis to claim ignorance of this phenomenally clear social norm, which if broken will result in being fired from just about any public facing institution. It's on a pretty short list of such norms, alongside things like displaying your genitals in a board meeting.
While I appreciate the efforts to make this into some kind of principled argument, I don't find "first they came for the people advocating for sex with minors" to be particularly compelling.
"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."
"I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.)"
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."
The first quote isn't defending sex with minors. It's criticizing inconsistent definitions of minor. Do you disagree that it makes no sense morally for, say a 19 year old and 17 year old having sex together to be OK in one place, and rape if they had first moved a few feet over, if that movement happens to cross a border where the laws change?
> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
As I understand it, the latter 2 quotes are now rather old and Stallman has publicly renounced those views.
While I'm sure it wasn't your intention, a casual reader of your post might get the impression that they were all part of the conversation he appears to have been fired for.
Stallman made those questionable, problematic statements on his blog a decade ago.
He was cancelled because of a email thread related to Epstein that media outlets lied about. If the blog statements were enough to cancel him, why now and not a few weeks ago or a year ago?
>Our culture has made a very bright line decision that sex with people of the same sex is unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly widely accepted.
While I agree what RMS said was incorrect, let's recast CPLX's arguments into the Middle Ages and see what happens:
> Our culture has made a very bright line decision that being an atheist is unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly widely accepted.... While I appreciate the efforts to make this into some kind of principled argument, I don't find "first they came for the people advocating for not believing in God" to be particularly compelling."
Does the problem become clear now? (Substitute abolitionism, suffragism, civil rights, etc. for atheism if you like.) Ironically, much like the conservatives they oppose, progressives are arguing that it is acceptable to crucify people who say something that is agains the status quo and tradition.
RMS is pretty old (66). I wonder if he was given the option to fight it but decided he'd rather retire than deal with all the politics, or if it was a fait accompli situation where he only had the choice between resigning and being fired.
The FSF is his life’s work, and he is getting close to retirement age.
I could see the decision as having been at least somewhat voluntary if he wants to keep the FSF’s mission relevant (GNOME and the SFC were threatening to break ties).
Are women coerced into doing and accepting things that they would rather not due to misogyny. Absolutely.
But they still have free will and a choice. At the end of the day, sexually harassed women make a Faustian bargain. They didn’t have to. But they did. It might be the devil but when you choose to consort with the devil, you play in hell.
A lot of times(admittedly not always), the solution is to walk away. Walk away. The damage to the ego can be dealt with and maybe even vindicated. But it’s wiser to walk away to a place of strength to strategize and wage a bloody war to win rather than engage in puny battles for fragile hollow victories. It’s easier to nurse a wounded ego and come back to fight another day than endure systemic harassment that rips your very spirit apart. Stupid battle of the sexes.
The author expects people to fully understand stallmans world view and to thoroughly examine his position.
However, the author did not pay the same regard to Salam G., the author of the original post reporting on the most recent of Stallmans shitty proclamations. The author shows no sign of understanding why it's important that Stallman was fired, nor did he show he had done to work to try and get it.
You can safely ignore this. I came away worse for having read it.
> The author shows no sign of understanding why it's important that Stallman was fired...
Not sure that's fair. In the conclusion he writes:
> The goals Selam G. seeks to advance are good ones. Institutions like MIT need to closely consider their past and present treatment of women. People at those institutions, and perhaps even Stallman himself, need to have their worst impulses checked, or possibly even be removed altogether.
He was arguing for something like a due process in firing Stallman, not for not firing him.
> Not sure that's fair. In the conclusion he writes:
I feel confident with my assessment. He showed no indication that he understood the current movement to hold powerful men accountable for their actions. For example, where's the due process for the women Stallman excluded by his horrible behaviour for decades?
Stallman went down for being a creepy perv for decades. He should have gone down for one of the many lines he crossed before today. Eventually, when you give a creep enough passes he'll say something so creepy it's indefensible, Yet here you are trying.
Since when did anyone ever expect due process when being fired? This is a world where you can be fired for showing up 30 seconds late because of a road closure.
Maybe not, but this seems like a terrible way to advocate for something better. Thousands of people get unjustly fired every day for much worse reasons than this. Why is this one the one to fight?
Should point out that we're both forgetting that Stallman actually resigned, though who knows under what pressure. So this entire debate is pretty moot. But for the sake of argument, we'll say he was fired.
So it seems like we agree that this particular aspect (snap firings) of the USA sucks. So why is this _not_ the one to fight? If we both think the core issue is a problem, it doesn't seem intellectually honest for one of us to say that a specific instance of that general concept doesn't count because the dude at the heart of it is scummy.
If you can build a strong and convincing argument that his termination is wrong, it'd be trivial to apply that argument to the case of the fast food worker. And therefore have a better shot at improving their lot.
Right! There's millions of injustices in this world and you're fighting for a misogynist who has pushed women out of tech for decades? What are your priorities?
I suspect it’s because the typical programmer can’t really put themselves in the shoes of a fast food worker who gets fired for refusing to clock out and keep working. But an eccentric techie with uncomfortable and unconventional views on sex hits way too close to home.
Why would anyone pay any attention to Salam who is being intellectually and factually dishonest to advance their agenda against Stallman?
If you have an issue with Stallman’s comments, then you go after those comments, not misquoting and twisting his words into something he clearly did not write.
And my very reasonable comment about it was flagged and removed because we can't have reasonable discussions on Hacker News because we all have to be woke!
Seems like he's being removed for being an asshole for years and years, and for things he very explicitly did say, repeatedly, for years. And this seems very much like a "straw that broke the camel's back".
This apparently put it beyond the reading comprehension level of the reporters at Vice and Daily Beast, and of Selam G., and so his point was completely misunderstood/misrepresented.