We don't have to tolerate people who make women feel unsafe and unwelcome in our (or any) industry.
You seem to be arguing the usual tired old thing: "but he's a genius and does such great work that we should tolerate the bad things he does". I really thought we'd started to move past that over the last few years.
Also, you're doing a bait and switch, neuro-atypical covers a large swathe of people including autistic people. May be you're using it here as a mere synonym for "autistic" for lingual flare, but it includes people who are generally typical in social settings.
It's absolutely true that neuro-atypical people can learn from others, even if they can't pick up on social cues the way neurotypical people can. I'm guessing stallman just goes unchallenged on much of this stuff because of the lingering effects of the rockstar syndrome in tech, where "great men," geniuses, whatever, get cut a lot of slack because of their position in the industry.
It's only recently that I've seen a shift away from prizing our jerk 10x rockstars ("hey, he's so smart he can keep the whole codebase in his head!") to valuing better-behaved people. stallman seems like he'd be even more isolated than the typical one of those, with less chance to have the rough edges smoothed off in the rock tumbler of social interaction.
Again, not an excuse, but I'm more interested in, "how did we get here?" (where "here" is a decades-long public figure questioning the wrongness of pedophilia and making jokes like the "emacs virgin" thing well into the 2000s).
Stallman's job as head of FSF wasn't just to be technically competent, which he has in spades, but to forward the mission of the foundation and a certain level of social acuity is a necessary part of that.
It has quotes you might be able to follow up on.
No it's not an insult to anyone. It's an attemoted explanation of why some neuro-atypical people behave in atypical fashion.
The original claim was that saying that someone's anti-social behaviour was due to being neurological atypical, was an insult to everyone who is neurological atypical. This is clearly nonsense.
If we're just going to throw around absolutist statements: No, it's not.
I certainly would not excuse him! Nor should anybody else!
But given his stature, it's surely worth discussing and understanding him. And any attempt to do that would certainly have to include his famously black-and-white and self-described borderline autistic thinking.
Pointing out that somebody is austistic (or left-handed, or that they have psoriasis, or dyslexic, or seven feet tall, or...) and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.
I did. To me, it says "I've known a lot of creepy people; as long as they get their work done, it's ok". And I don't agree with that.
> self-described borderline autistic thinking.
That's another thing: has he actually been diagnosed? If not, well, he may still be autistic, but that just sounds like RMS himself hiding behind a shield of autism that he's crafted himself, which is pretty low.
> Pointing out that somebody is austistic and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what was written. The parent even said "if RMS was some random superhacker doing his thing" he'd defend him. To me, that's excuse-making, not empathy or critical thinking.
But I do agree that autism can certainly explain some behaviors, and it's worth trying to understand people, even though the explanations may not excuse the behavior. The parent's post just did not strike me as that.
Nobody thinks this of RMS. He's a competent developer who was in the right place at the right time to found a new ideology: The idea that software should work for the user, the only way for software to do so is to empower the user to also be a developer themselves. That's all.
Being competent himself wasn't a sufficient condition for anyone to listen to him, but it was necessary.
Promoting intolerance of people we disagree with, even if we vigorously disagree with them, is perhaps not the best response.
If we want to talk about disagreement...
He only recently recanted (with quite suspicious timing) his view that pedophilia is fine if the child gives consent. No, I'm not going to tolerate that view. I wouldn't want to work for someone that had that view.
In the email thread under discussion, he wanted to redefine "sexual assault" and "child rape" to something that agrees more with his sense of linguistic purity. No, that's not ok.
At some point, when people keep having disgusting views, and won't change them, you give up on them entirely. It's just not worth the effort anymore.
Hand waving and quietly ignoring is the mark of tolerance. But one wonders exactly how polite society is. One certainly presumes the existence of both knights for justice and hot ladies in a nation of millions. What society are we talking about?
I don't expect MIT to be any more representative of society than the NFL. It is a magnet for extreme people who defer common sense and common acceptance in search of very particular goals. I wonder if we were to get rid of Stallman and replace him, deserving as he must be, for a bust in our Hall of Fame if our society could resist defaming his very image and existence.
A lot of people (mostly men) hugely overestimate just how fragile and vulnerable women are.
The semi-autistic are a lot more likely to be made unwelcome than women.
And yes, celebrities will get more of a pass than others. Which isn't ideal.
> Gano also posted a photo of Stallman's office door, which has a sign on it reading: "Knight for Justice (Also hot ladies)."
Gano posted a photo of the sign, not the sign itself.
What does this mean ? He is a leader of an organisation related to software freedom (or more pedantically, the choice of licences used for software). How is it relevant ? All you are saying is, "Famous people can't talk like that".
* General principle that people in influential positions have less protections and should have more scrutiny than average John Doe. Celebrities and influential people have less legal privacy protections.
* People are free to speak as individuals, but they may not be free to speak while they have public position in the organization. Elected members of the organization like FSF don't have the same protections as employers have. They represent the organization even outside the work. Their public position gives them a platform where what they say goes trough bullhorn and private becomes public and reflects the organization. If something they say harms the organization they should go even if they are right.
If your leader appears to advocate pedophilia, then your organisation no longer becomes "that organisation that advocates for free software", but "that organisation run by a pedophile apologist".
He doesn't advocate pedophilia. Nothing has changed for years. Are you advocating it?
He has just been completely misrepresented by some popular media as supporting statutory rape, and you are fueling the fire.
It is pure bullshit - the journalists that write (or publications that publish) headlines that completely reverse meaning should be held accountable for their lies.
It is libel: make it appear Richard said she was willing when he definitely said she was coerced (within the exact same paragraph as the "quote"). Seems she was 18 too - any organisation publishing clearly slanderous headings designed for sensation and payment for eyeballs should be punished.
Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. [Reference updated on 2018-04-25 because the old link was broken.]
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children
You've described basically every single human being in tech I've ever met, they just don't have as big a platform. See: Musk's twitter feed, for instance.
There are only a handful of case studies of really bad cases I'm aware of. And they're not that exacting in follow-up.
Note research, not opinion pieces.
Good quality papers. I found just a handful. I'm having trouble fishing then out from the thousands of opinion pieces.
Edit: I found one credible meta-analysis so far, and the results are not good. Most of abuse is not reported. Impact is not known, how handling of it is done is unknown to affect severity.
Because people believing in that wrong thing will point to you as a figure of authority.
Not fair, but life's not fair.
If he said this anonymously or in private it would've been fine. The problem is him using his platform for stuff that it's not meant to be used for. So now they're taking away his platform. Seems fair to me.
Everyone bar nobody has formed an opinion on an important topic that is completely wrong at some point in their life. To correct their opinion, they will need to talk to somebody who will explain why it is wrong.
This wasn't Stallman trying to use his position on the FSF to spread his opinions, he was using his position at MIT to try and defend a colleague to other academics. And what you are describing is an unreasonable standard to hold anyone to if a topic isn't supposed to be their central area of expertise.
It does matter what he advocates and it does matter whether his opinions are technically correct and incorrect. The 5-days-comment-to-resignation mob are doing damage here; and setting up terrifying dynamics. They aren't going to stop at Stallman.
Truth doesn't count if the thing hurts someone. Intent doesn't count if harm was caused. This is a view that many here would seem absurd but which many here would also agree with.
Does this still seem fair? Is truth and intent not that important when it comes to tricky issues?
"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."
RMS on June 28th, 2003 https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily 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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party
" There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue. "
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013) https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(PedophiliaBut, he resigned himself. This is moot.
FSF was pressured. RMS did not decide this all on his own of his free will.
It's just reasonable to remove him from those positions.
Independly I find it very weird what he was saying nonetheless and for this he falls under a category of humans which I don't think are worth it to give such amount of support.
There are other people out there which are worth it more.
I stopped working with people who might be technical good or very good but dicks. I hate working with dicks. There is no amount of brilliance which justifice being a dick.
But sure, he is probably a dick so let us remove them...
You know what? He actually probably isn't the easiest person to be around. Just saw him once and he certainly isn't the guy to move crowds.
But let us be certain that we have very distinct definitions of what constitutes "being a dick".
There would have been someone else to create something like the FSF.
Wouldn't you think so?
Linux foundation and FSF have small staff and budget but the total economic value of the projects they steer is in tens of billions.
Rather than, you know, finding some humane, compassionate approach to dealing with the personal shortcomings of someone who has done so very much for the world.
I would agree that the severity of RMS's remarks regarding Epstein/Minsky is lower than the press is making it out to be. But Stallman's bad behavior stretches back decades, and this oddly-shaped, not-entirely-correct straw happened to finally break the camel's back. Good riddance.
I'm talking about there being options other than either "giving him a pass" or "off with his head."
After almost 30 years of people giving him a pass and trying to make him understand, I am glad that he is getting some reckoning. His views are abhorrent and he gives no indication he is willing to change them.
[1] - https://fossforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/RMSleisure....
The text is: sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance tender embraces unusual sense of humor [contact details]
There is perfectly benign interpretation of this expressing the things from which he derives pleasure. The most plausible and available interpretation of "pleasure card" is a dad joke level word play on "business card", especially when considering his role in de-commercializing software.
Talking to women isn't a crime. If he didn't take no for an answer or asked women out in inappropriate circumstances, that's a problem; but we have no accounts of him doing that. All we have here is an Nth hand story [3] in which he supposedly left a conference with a woman (singular, you made it plural.) and then gave her his card. If we choose to imagine there was romantic intent, a) there's no suggestion he coerced her into leaving and b) he took pains to respect the conference's CoC. Even this extremely reaching accusation has zero implication that he disrespected an individual's volition. Sage Sharp's indictment that he "skirted around the conference's CoC" is bizarre unless the real intent is that men like Stallman should be closeted heterosexuals.
There are numerous aspects to all this hand wringing about his cards and interest in meeting women that one has to choose to view through a prurient lens to make it sexual. Even then, it's only problematic to a puritanical world view in which it's wrong for people to be sexual beings and individuals are dispossessed of their self-determination.
[1] https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch14.html [2] http://ju.outofmemory.cn/entry/119457 [3] https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1173637158181072900
This just happened. Let's check in with him in six months, and see if he's still breathing. If his experience is like many of the shitty men whose misbehavior has been unmasked as part of the MeToo movement, I'm sure he'll end up back on his feet at some point, whether he deserves to or not.
Is it OK to treat men poorly?
Why single out women for special treatment?
Because college is where women are driven out of computer science, by behavior from professors and peers. If you want to talk about fields where men are driven out (and they do exist: primary school teaching and nursing come to mind) go to a thread about those. But either way, derailing this discussion doesn't help.
A lot of people take that for granted based on anecdotes, but actual data is elusive.
Some things we should expect to see if this theory is correct:
* CS student gender ratios close to 50:50 at admission
* A relatively large change in CS student gender ratios between admission and graduation, compared to other majors
* A relatively high rate of "misbehavior" (e.g. sexual harassment) in CS programs and/or the tech industry, compared to other fields
From what I can tell, though, we don't observe any of those.
> If you want to talk about fields where men are driven out (and they do exist: primary school teaching and nursing come to mind)
The same questions could be raised about those: why are we so sure they're being "driven out" at the college level?
Here's a paper investigating the causes of gender imbalance among primary school teachers: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ysu1515846...
The men interviewed for the paper disagreed that discrimination, social barriers, stereotypes, or other forms of injustice play a role. ("I don’t feel that there is any injustice… men who want to teach, are able to. It’s not like we’re being held down.")
It also points out that a greater number of men than women choose to go into primary education during college, which is the opposite of what we'd expect if they were being driven out by professors and peers.
Citation needed. What kind of behavior? What exactly did he do?
"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."
RMS on June 28th, 2003 https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily 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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party
" There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do
not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue. "
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013) https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(PedophiliaI'll just leave this here
https://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Myth-Sexual-Children-Aftermath...
I wonder how that is supposed to work. How would one acquire consent from a corpse?
And no I won't link. You defamed someone. Where I come from it is up to you to prove your defamation is justified.
My point is that public leadership position is not related to humane retirement of people individuals. Leadership is never entitlement.
If RMS was just random superhacker doing his thing. I would defend him.
That's a testament to his vision and leadership.
I agree that there's a current climate that's even less amenable to open discussion than at other times. However, I disagree that words carrying perceived intent is something new. Any time you make an assertion about individual facts of a particular situation, people's first assumption is going to be that you're pushing the narrative best supported by that assertion. Telling people what you're not saying will continue to be important even if the current climate improves.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm stating a general principle, not saying anything about what RMS did or didn't say, or did or didn't intend to say. I don't have time to dig into all that.
If his past behavior was sufficient justification for his sacking, then that should be enough. However, that is not why he was sacked. He was sacked on the basis of false allegations, and as an attempt by MIT to deflect from their own complicity in the Epstein scandal.
This is not (only) about finding a place for weirdo super-hackers to contribute to society (without bothering people too much) but about the truth dammit.
The only people who deserve less consideration are those that pick and choose who to treat justly.
Really?
https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
As someone actually autistic, he doesn't get to blame being a douchecanoe on being autistic.
> His socially clueless black and white thinking makes it look like he is far in the spectrum.
Then _learn_. Also, we're not talking about not getting social cues about when it's okay to start talking, we're talking his considered and repeated position on issues such as sexual assault, and his _actual actions_ towards teenagers.
> But if they do their work well they can stay. Others give them some room. It's called tolerance.
Great tolerance for the people your creeps chase out or abuse, thanks. You actually do have to pick, and if you pick people like RMS, you pick against all the people that can't - and shouldn't have to - deal with an environment people like RMS create.
I was trying to give explanation, not excuse.
I was trying to communicate understanding, not acceptance.
Was he a douchecanoe? Is that even a helpful label for you to apply to him? Was he claiming he behaved / behaves the way you think he does solely because he's borderline autistic, or are you extrapolating?
That’s the standard for being “canceled” now? An accusation? Anybody can accuse people of things. We have courts and the presumption of innocence for a reason.
The courts are for determining whether someone should go to jail. But anyone can draw conclusions about whether or not they want to deal with someone who is accused of a crime.
Someone might be accused of child molestation, but never stood trial. Would a parent then be obligated to be ok with the accused being alone with their children since 'hey he's innocent until proven guilty'? Should someone who had been credibly accused of many instances of sexual misconduct be trusted as if they are a model citizen?
The presumption of innocence is there to ensure someone gets a fair trial in court. It doesn't mean everyone else has to ignore evidence of criminal conduct until a conviction comes down. It also doesn't always mean that someone who was found not guilty by a criminal court, didn't actually do what they were accused of. It just means the court didn't find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Who can say what would have been in place if a particular leader hadn't? They take oxygen. Some would even say we should move away from the model of a few leaders representing many.
This culture voted overwhelmingly for the other option.
I have worked in jobs where there have been very strange creepy people, both women and men. Some are angry and tense. Some are odd and talk restless or slightly disturbing stuff that make everyone uncomfortable. But if they do their work well they can stay. Others give them some room. It's called tolerance.
If RMS was just random superhacker doing his thing. I would defend him. His boss should find a position for him where he can contribute and other people should feel free to feel uncomfortable and avoid him.
But RMS is de facto leader and public figure in movement that is also political. He does not deserve the same level of consideration as normal HR headache would. Even if everything against him would be completely unjust, there is no requirement for just treatment for top leaders. They can be sacked for any reason whatsoever.