It could be true.
I'm not saying I agree with him or that I would have said the same things (I'm no Stallman, nobody cares about what I say anyway) but what he said was just the result of logical reasoning
For example if you look at the titles it's easy to dismiss RMS as someone who favours rapists, but in the article he's always quoted in full and the things he said are a bit different
For example quoting the VICE article
> RMS: “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.”
And he's not entirely wrong.
Rape in rape even in space at the age of 93.
And that's absurd.
Do we all agree on this?
for different reasons
- 17 years 364 days is any different from 18 years old 0 days?
- Stallman was talking (at the time) about consensual sex, not rape
- Stallman said he found absurd that rape was defined in terms of `minor details` not that rape does not exists. He's not wrong.
> still American moral and culture norms apply.
In USA people should be horrified by Facebook spying kids[1], not about what Stallman thinks
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/
I guess it’d make sense to base it on brain development.
I have no idea what the best windows would be to promote the greatest reduction in false positive rape cases.
The biggest thing we as a society really need is a culture where the raped feel more comfortable speaking up. It’d probably be a decent thing to fund testing the massive backlog of rape kits piling up at the nation’s police forces as well.
No solution will ever be perfect so you can only attempt to do the least harm and help the most people in these awful situations.
Improving sexual education across some of our more religiously oriented states would be a positive as well.
Hopefully we keep moving forward. And what would be really nice is if some of these awful people Epstein trafficked these girls to went to prison.
It’s high time the rich and powerful started being held accountable for their absolutely atrocious behavior, whether it’s selling enough oxycontin to hook huge swathes of the population on heroin (the Sacklers certainly seem to be getting a better treatment than your average crack dealer), raping underage sex slaves, or leaking hundreds of millions of Americans social security numbers the rich and powerful seem to laugh and shrug it off.
That’s gotta stop.
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/clp/faq.html
Rape is always illegal.
Sex is not.
> Just like drinking with 21 and 20.99 years is not the same, because
they're American.
We start at 18, no problems here, no mass shootings, no one selling out to older people to buy alcohol for them.
> So by applying your logic to that, 13 and 364 days would be OK too?
So by your logic 14 and 1 days is ok?
Or, as Stallman said, rape cannot be defined by minor things such as the place where it happened or the age when it happened?
> How do you feel about that, not entirely comfortable right?
Completely.
It's your country that allows older people have sex with baby girls, not mine.
> Because you're used mentally to 18 years being the line,
Don't assume we are all like you.
I'm mentally used to being normal at 15-16...
Because that's the age when people around me started, when I was their age.
> But all the laws are like that
Not even those about rape are all black and white.
Even statutory rape is usually treated differently if the minor is just around the age of consent or not.
> If 18 is the legal age, you just don't mess with minors, how complicated is that really?
That's exactly what Stallman did.
He never messed with minors.
What upset you so much?
- If person is 18 and sex is consensual it's not a rape. - If person is 17y 354 days old it doesn't matter what the minor person acted like, because law treats it as a non-consensual sex, so it's statutory rape.
> So by your logic 14 and 1 days is ok?
If both persons involved are living in Serbia it is OK. Unusual thing nowadays and to many here (me included) not seen as something morally positive, but some minorities have a different customs than mainstream Serbian culture, so it's fully legal. Most of Europe has the age of consent at 16, which in my own eyes makes more appropriate age than 14, but law is what matters.
> That's exactly what Stallman did. He never messed with minors.
No one said he did. But he, completely uncalled for, defended someone who did - who broke the law in a very obvious way - and he did it by trying to put the blame on a victim, although her being a minor makes her behavior completely irrelevant from the legal point of view. And that sucks.
That's why USA are the motherland of mass shootings then...
I'm 18 today, my girlfriend is one day younger than me, it's rape.
What a lovely country.
> If both persons involved are living in Serbia it is OK
But is it OK for you?
Because you implied that I was ok with it...
I'm curious now.
> No one said he did. But he, completely uncalled fo
Like he always did?
Did someone called him to invent the GPL?
> defended someone who did
But he did not.
That's utterly false.
> and he did it by trying to put the blame on a victim
He was arguing that it wasn't not pedophilia but statutory rape.
I don't know why you people love so much to put words in the mouth of RMS, he's perfectly capable of shooting himself in the foot.
It won't be the last time.
It still does not make him someone who argues in favour of rape.
Legal drafting always leads to absurdities. It is not possible to draft laws that don't; the practical need for unambiguous rules combined with complex reality means there are always edge cases.
Illustrating this general fact with the highly specific case of old rich men screwing young, powerless kids is going to cause other people to wonder about why it seems like you're only interested arguing about legal absurdities in this specific context. After all, you could illustrate your point with, say, the catch 22s inherent in the modern debt peonage systems in the US, or how pro-bono plaintiffs are regularly abused for not following rules they have no access to see, or a nearly endless parade of other examples.
Let's just say that if defending rich old men screwing young kids is apparently your hill to die on, a lot of folks are going to be less focused on your nuanced legal argumentation.
Agree, and that's exactly the kind of absurd RMS was talking about.
That's it, just that.
He can't concive that something is illogical.
Does he deserve the blame for it?
> let's just say that if defending rich old men screwing young kids is apparently your hill to die on
It never happened though.
That's the point: in court you could be charged for saying it.
If someone has a history of complaining about absurd legal results, it would not be surprising to hear them use this situation as an example while beating that drum. (It may be a tacky example to use, but that's a different question.)
On the other hand, if someone has a history of doing and saying things that other people take indicative of treating women as less than fully equal, and, having never before shown any interest in a particular legal argument, trots it out to defend (and yes, that exactly what it was) abhorrent behavior, people are going to take it differently.
> That's the point: in court you could be charged for saying it.
You lost me here. Do you mean to say someone could claim I libeled them? Well sure. In the US, people can sue over anything they like. But if that's what you meant, I still have no idea what "charges" you're talking about.
that's a big IF
and BTW Stallman notoriously complained about absurd legal result, that's his real life achievement: a legal framework for free software!
that's his bread and butter.
> if someone has a history of doing and saying things that other people take indicative of treating women as less than fully equal,
that's false premise
> You lost me here. Do you mean to say someone could claim I libeled them?
Yes.
Because "defending rich old men screwing young kids" never happened.
It's a fabricated lie.
My reasoning is: rape victims are victims regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, time and space.
But it's not Twitter crowd that decides if it is rape or not.
Well, it's not Richard Stallman who decides either, but he tried to do exactly that... and that's why people are pissed at him
He expressed an opinion as single individual person, he didn't ask for support or rioting against someone or something.
And he didn't ask for nobody to be fired in the first place.
> and that's why people are pissed at him
No, they are pissed because people suck.
They've been also pissed at Terry Davis, another troubled man (more troubled than RMS for sure), that didn't harm anybody in his life, except himself.
I tend to agree, and I suspect most people would, including Stallman.
> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing but that she was coerced into doing so?
Nor does RMS have an excuse for what he said and now we're finally seeing that the aloof misanthrope schtick only goes so far. Good riddance.
> Computer scientist Richard Stallmann, who defended Jeffrey Epstein...
> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.
stop. stop and think about this. you’re telling me that some random person on the internet can sit there and claim, with a straight face, decades removed from the event, and completely unaware of what went down in that room, that “the most plausible scenario” is that she was willing? are you kidding me? how do you know? he wasn’t there. he doesn’t know this person. and why is this so plausible? on what actual basis here is he making this statement? oh, that’s right, nothing except his own prejudices.
he doesn’t know a damned thing about what happened in that room, and for him to jump to the conclusion that, well obviously, she wanted it, is freaking absurd.
he entirely deserves to get pilloried for this statement alone. he had no business jumping into this discussion, he has absolutely no basis on which to make his judgements except his high opinion of himself, and to go out of his way to engage in a public debate about such a highly sensitive subject when he knows jack squat about it shows an incredible lack of judgement.
the media didn’t do this to RMS, he did.
He claimed that she was unwilling, but was coerced by Epstein into pretending otherwise, and that Minsky was deceived.
That is also, technically speaking, the most plausible scenario. Epstine wouldn't have girls going up to people and reading a script like "I don't give consent, I hate you, you have to rape me now" without knowing anything about the prospect. There would have been an element of acting.
No, Stallman did not say that. Selam G and the media said he said it, but he did not say it. Not in spirit, not in words.
Also, he doesn't say that she wanted it, but that she might have lied about whether or not she was there willingly (possibly being coerced into lying).
Paraphrasing "The most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing": "I have a hard time imagining my late friend willingly raping someone."
Not that I think that, even in that scenario, Minsky would have displayed sound judgement by having sex with her (especially given Epstein's reputation and past conviction).
Stallman:
> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.
Selam G.
> [Stallman] says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
VICE:
> Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.
New York Post:
> MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’