"Age of consent laws vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, though most jurisdictions set the age of consent in the range 14 to 18"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

Things just got a lot murkier, didn't they. Actually, they have always been a lot murkier. Because "our culture" isn't actually homogenous. And these things have changed a lot over time.

> Expressing doubt about this cultural norm

Well, which norm excactly? The one at 14? Or the one at 18?

"some jurisdictions may also make allowances for minors engaged in sexual acts with each other, rather than a single age."

Murkier.

"There are many "grey areas" in this area of law, some regarding unspecific and untried legislation, others brought about by debates regarding changing societal attitudes, and others due to conflicts between federal and state laws. These factors all make age of consent an often confusing subject, and a topic of highly charged debates"

Are all the people in a society that has the 14 boundary horrible beyond the pale?

Or maybe things are a bit more complicated than you make them out to be.

It’s history which has the opportunity of final judgement, and it almost always looks dimly on the moral sensibilities of their predecessors.

Somewhere is a metaphorical Bernie whose career has disappeared, but I’m glad for those people who didn’t hop on political opportunism just because as a messaging and thought leader it’s the strong move which reads the room.

Advocating for adults to rape children, on the other hand, is reprehensible.

Your argument appears to be that there is no way to tell the difference between good things and bad things.

My counterargument is that there are ways to tell the difference. And that when you do, you'll conclude that adults raping children is one of the bad things.

This is a very new and very strange trend to redefine all teenagers as children and the moral panic around this is interesting to say the least. The extreme backlash against any slight questioning of this is likewise something people should be skeptical about.

Your counter-examples are historically poor choices as 50 years ago (less in many parts of the US) the majority of people would have seen homosexuality as a perversion indistinguishable from pedophilia (attraction to pre-pubescent children, not 17 years olds), and miscegenation, a word we don't even use any more, would have held the same status if you go back just a bit further.

Again, 50 years ago you could just have been one of the people who would have said "... you'll conclude that sodomy is one of the bad things" or go back another 50 and "... you'll conclude that intermixing pure blood is one of the bad things"

This moral absolutism is definitely not part of a "bright line" in our culture, and its sudden and rapid emergence needs both more questioning and more understanding. Of course anyone who proposes this is a "child rapist" in your view so we likely won't get much discourse on this topic anytime soon.

If that was intentional the you are lying.

If it was not intentional the it's ironic that you are so sloppy and cavalier in your wording on a topic which is all about precision in language.

Please stop.

Any sex between adults and minors is rape, that's what the concept of statutory rape means. He has expressed that those interactions could be mitigated by "willing" and "voluntary" actions by the children, and that in those situations there's no real harm done.

That's literally what he said. He's completely and totally within his rights to say that. I will support his rights to the death. But that saying shit like that is going to get you socially shunned, predictably, and I'm fine with a society that does that.

Society, and the groups he leads, have the right to find those statements reprehensible and cut ties with him. And I think they should.

I mean what's the counterargument that you're making, that he only kind of implied that raping kids was OK? That he merely insinuated it? That his suggestion that pedophilia was not that big of a deal fell short of actual advocacy?

Assuming you successfully win the argument that there's an important distinction here how does that change the answer?

The core point I've attempted to make is that if you write blog posts about how kids getting fucked by adults is no big deal you might lose your job.

Do you find that concept confusing? I bet you don't. Nobody really does. He knew he was going to make people upset saying that and didn't care. That, in fact, is likely why he did it.

Eventually, his actions had consequences.

You do understand that rape can't be voluntary, and voluntary sex is not a rape?

>Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent.

It's in the definition. If there is a consent, there is no rape.

Hence, Stallman is not advocating for rape.

You seem to classify statutory rape as a subcategory of "rape", and thus I am assuming you would be perfectly content calling anyone convicted of statutory rape a rapist. This is semantically unhelpful. "Rape" is widely understood to mean violent rape, and statutory rape is legally (and to most people, morally) the lesser crime.

There may be cases where even you might find it desirable to make a distinction in language between someone advocating for "violent rape is ok", and someone arguing for example that the existing age of consent in their country should not be increased, which requires acknowledging that the two are really distinct things.

Those politicians which advocate for antagonism against Latinos and other minorities are reading the room too.

Conversely the idea of adults fucking children is not admirable to MIT. So they fired him.

Nobody's talking about censorship, or politicians. We're talking about an organization saying hey we can't have a guy that seems to think adults fucking children is OK being our leader or representative. That's definitely within their rights.

You can try to die on some hill of principle here but 10/10 times if you write blog posts saying something like "hey, so pedophilia is not that big of a deal right?" you're going to have some issues in the professional world.

Not sure why everyone is pretending to be confused.

> Yes, I believe publicly advocating for certain things can severely break cultural norms and make it impossible for you to effectively hold a leadership role in an educational or advocacy setting.

I'd characterize your general approach to the issue as "We don't need to debate the morality of a leader because speaking against norms is already disqualifying."

So do you want to look at a leader based on whether they simply violate social thinking, or do you want to discuss "fucking children"? But if I'm not mistaken, just discussing this matter for you is a kind of disqualification. And here you are, basically saying that other people are advocating for pedophelia and fucking kids. Is that your instinct for speech? Do you just want to talk <at> people?

Bernie Sanders spoke for gay rights at a time when it was a bad issue for any candidate. The advice for him as a campaign consultant would be to shutup, wouldn't it? Is this not a leadership sin?

Pol Pot advocated genocide. That was bad because genocide is bad.

Richard Stallman argued that pedophila was OK.

Pedophilia is not OK. It’s really far from OK. Hence the problem.

Perhaps you think it’s actually OK as well. Then the two of you agree. If you also advocate for pedophilia in public you may find people don’t want to hire you as well.

All this talk of formerly unpopular opinions and leadership only makes sense if you think that the underlying problematic opinion will be vindicated by history, like the other examples cited.

I think it won’t.

You’re saying this:

> We don't need to debate the morality of a leader because speaking against norms is already disqualifying

Nope. Didn’t say that. I said this specific norm is well founded and valid.

You can’t debate the morality of a leader’s statements in the abstract. There’s no generic class of “norms” there’s just the facts in question.

Some statements are morally defensible, some aren’t.

Saying it’s OK for adults to have sex with children is a problem, it’s gong to upset people and make them not trust you and be leery of having you represent them.

As literally everyone knows.

Legally, frequently you are correct, but not always culturally. To leave Minsky aside, I believe a lot of people accept the misrepresentation argument even when the law doesn't, usually when the ages are close and the minor is somewhere they shouldn't have been allowed. The typical example would be a 20 year old meeting a 17 year old at an 18+ event.

Stallman is an ivory tower thinker. His inability to accept the societal rules you mention are core to him being Stallman. At some point he seems to have decided that his moral philosophy revolves around the concept of harm rather than rules. This is what led him to his earlier posts on incest, sex with minors and necrophilia, if nobody is being harmed then in what way is it wrong? The most obvious answer is that Stallman is incorrect that nobody is being harmed, however I should point out that these topics are actually discussed in related academia (the incest and necrophilia ones are more popular because they doesn't garner the same backlash).

The Minsky issue is complicated by the difference between what Stallman was defending and what now seems to be the actual case. As far as I can tell Giuffre was actually 18 (she was 17 the previous year when she was on the same flight as Minsky) and it seems she didn't actually have sex with Minsky (this isn't clear, she never actually said she did and apparently Minsky mentioned the encounter to people at the time and said he rejected her).

However, Stallman was arguing for the facts as he thought they were, which was that Minsky did have sex with her when she was 17, with her instigating things at Epstein's behest. Stallman was again engaging his ivory tower, questioning how we can call him a rapist if she was 17 but not if she was 18, and how can we blame him for things he didn't know (that she was being coerced). This is exactly how we already knew Stallman thinks. He has ignored some things here, such as what 75 year old Minsky could reasonably believe was going on when an 18 year old came on to him on Epstein's island, but they're facts that could have been pointed out to him and might have changed his opinion. Or perhaps not, if that situation happened to Stallman he might indeed think that finally, after all these years, he has found the cute 18 year old who is into geriatric nerds.

It is not at all a very bright line when you can legally have sex with a consenting 16 year old in West Wendover, NV but be a criminal for the same act with a 17 year old in what is essentially the same city of Wendover, UT.

Assuming that by "bright line" you're not referring to the boundary separating Nevada from Utah.

But all of that is just the disparity between two states in the same country! That "bright line" gets even fuzzier when you factor in the global age of consent: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Age_of_Consent.png

I wish that were true, but the sufficiently well-connected and powerful continue not to be brought to account.

Exactly. There's no need to pretend, as some other comments in here are doing, that he's being hauled off by some sort of cultural police force.

True, and when squinting, the scenario is understandable: "High profile employee repeatedly receives negative press, so the organization doesn't want to be associated."

They're free to employ and endorse, or end a relationship, with anyone at will (modulo labor laws). The worrying thing here is, despite decades of bad behavior, they didn't distance themselves until he expressed unpopular opinions picked up by social media.

It's like the saying, "The ends don't justify the means." This smacks of letting social media voices have a say in staff choices. Even if most people agree with the outcome, it's the wrong process.

Edits: removing tangents to focus on the points.

> “High profile employee repeatedly receives negative press [ABOUT HIM BEING OK WITH STATUTORY RAPE AND PEDOPHILIA] so the organization doesn't want to be associated."

Yeah that’s pretty much it.

Yet here we all are, with so many people pretending not to understand it.

Personally I don’t think it’s ethical for an adult to sex with minors. But many countries and states have laws allowing sex with minors. Maybe those communities think it’s ethical, maybe it’s just one of those historical laws they haven’t gotten around to updating with modern ethics.

So I don’t this this topic really has anything to do with pedophilia and how terrible that is.

So you're saying that the only people qualified to be "a leader" are the ones who subscribe to your particular flavour of groupthink and no other? Nice thought policing there.

Are you arguing that no social norms violation should ever result in being fired? You can go to work and scream at people at the top of your lungs? Tell the receptionist you’re glad she had a miscarriage? Use the sink as a urinal?

Assuming we agree that at least one or two things may get you fired from your job, it’s then possible to follow up with some observations:

1) Saying it’s ok for adults to fuck minors is definitely on that list

2) I’m ok with that

AFAIK there are plenty of high positioned people in important positions whom have a special preference to something. Whether it be a kink or a total different view/approach on certain topics.

Does that mean we're going to hunt down every one in a high position because they think outside of the box? Because they have a preference to something society seems not normal? Does that mean we'll need to hunt down every thought leader/high positioned CEO/CFO/COO/board member with public appearance that enjoys the occassional whipping?

This topic is pretty disturbing to me personally. Qualified, intelligent people are criticized/publicly shamed for having thoughts/opinions/preferences which have absolutely nothing to do with their occupation.

It feels to me as if we're, as a society, doing anything we can to remove people who think/feel differently from what they're actually good at/dedicated their life to. My thoughts/opinions might not stroke with what people here have written, if what has been reported is true the behavior is not OK but does that mean the man needs to be removed from a position he dedicated his life to?

But if you publicly say stuff like this:

"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."

Then other people might not want to make the highly discretionary decision to let you, specifically, run their organization.

So, in your opinion, Chinese people are automatically disqualified for any and all leadership positions?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is a concerted and prolonged attempt underway to completely muddy the waters around this issue and either through emotion or insincerity this poster has been hammering away at what they are aware is at best a distortion of the facts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is a difference between disagreement with a norm (or, in this case, a hypothetical argument that doesn't advocate either way), and a violation. When did Stallman advocate against "fuck[ing] minors"?

The whole point of the concept is that there's no such thing as willingness or consent with minors, that the very nature of the act having taken place constitutes rape.

A statement like "there is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children" means he's saying adults raping children is OK.

He literally wrote that on his blog. It's still there.[0]

I mean, what do you think is going to happen when you do stuff like that?

He definitely has a legal right to do it, and on that I'd defend him to the death. But he doesn't have a legal right to work at MIT or anywhere else that's not comfortable with a leader who says stuff like this.

[0] https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-ends-child-marriage-ra...

The same article notes that two states, North Carolina and Alaska have a specified minimum age of 14, and 27 states lack any specific minimum age.

I'm not arguing that the low (or no) minimum age laws are right. I am pointing out that standards, and laws, within the US, and within the past few years, have included marriage, and presumably sexual relations, among minors.

That has been changing, but it's a change that's well within the lifetimes of many adults. Richard Stallman, aged 66, has lived through a period of pretty profound change around many of these norms. Again, not to excuse behaviour, but possibly to explain a possible basis for it.

Strong cultural shifts, should you have the pleasure of living through some yourself, are remarkable to witness and experience.

That leaders should ascribe to societal norms is not always a good outcome. If you want to have revolution, revolutionaries needs to be in place of power/leadership. A society needs to have a mechanism to have such revolutions, or stagnate.

I'd call it gatekeeping. I hear woke people are against this kind of behavior.

LOL - just because of the particular kind of "groupthink" you're talking about here.