It's a shame that his words are being twisted once again after everything he went through.
MIT gets outed as having numerous researchers who took money from and traveled with a convicted pedophile sex abuser, sex trafficker, and likely financial criminal, and Stallman writes an e-mail that sounds very much as if he's obliquely defending Epstein.
I imagine someone at MIT's communications office having a heart attack. "Oh fuck shut this idiot up NOW!" someone probably shouted.
This wasn't #metoo. This was Stallman embarrassing MIT and numerous powerful people.
I feel sort of sorry for Stallman because it's clear that he's "on the spectrum" or at least is the sort of person who thinks ultra-logically and doesn't understand the irrational power machinations of politics. He felt like he was writing something logical, and he was, but he stepped in a gigantic bear trap that would have been obvious to anyone with any social understanding.
Pro tip: if your institution is enmeshed in scandal, keep your mouth shut unless you are coordinating with your communications department or whomever is in charge of such things. If you do check, 99% of the time they will tell you to keep your mouth shut. If you do open your mouth, even with good intentions, polish up your CV first.
It amuses me that this entire 500+ post thread is about "cancel culture" when that's not what happened at all in this case.
Complete misinterpretation of what RMS has written about. He defended Minsky, not Epstein.
Hell CEOs can be fired for such things... unless they have Elon Musk or Steve Jobs levels of reality distortion fields and cult followings.
It's amazing what defenders of the Critical Theory / Twitter driven cancel culture will defend. Really, victim blaming an autistic person for not having social skills, literally one of the things affected most by their disorder? This is a new low to sink to for you lot.
What's next, you gonna blame an amputee for not running out of the way of a moving truck?
I don't think willingly is the best way to put it. It was more along the lines that he was told there would be consequences and he could avoid them if he resigned.
However, even if I'm wrong, and he really was forced to resign, I don't think it detracts that much from my point that GP is arguing against strawmen like "fired for hitting on a women and being rejected" that are completely unrelated to RMS's case.
He could say "I previous thought the word sexual assault meant the word assault added a qualifier that required the application of force or violence, but I now know that the word assault in this case mean a legal definition that also includes negligent to seek consent and absent of intent to cause harm.". Would that change the media perception?
(only thing would be, that his "voluntary resign" was obviously done with a lot of pressure)
you are going to need to cite that. the only accusations of 'sexual harassment' i have seen are asking women at conferences on dates.
And if it is harassment, I'd probably say it's sexual harassment since it relates to unwanted seeking of romantic or sexual relationships in a professional environment.
And why women feel uncomfortable around such a men? And why it therefore might be a bad idea to have such a person in a leadership position?
I have not seen the sign in person, but been told by people that it was indeed there.
It's in the last paragraph.
And I lack the sources, but I recall people saying that the sign was there for quite a while, even if he did not wrote that by himself. And I actually would like a quote from him, to confirm that he did not write it. All that is in that source is someone saying it was not put up by him.
If it was really put up by someone else, it would be the question if it was a joke. Making fun of RMS well known attitude - and he left it as in agreeing, at least for a while - or if it was ammo for a smear campaign. Then it would make sense to investigate that and put it right.
But I actually suspect the former.
As a result, the new forms of dating are that in order to move forward your risk for "making a move" (be it small or large) is not only rejection but also, apparently, potentially career ending for many (especially public figures).
I'm glad I'm happily settled and far removed from the dating scene. Perhaps my principles are too crass for many but I feel in today's romantic relationships, you almost need to have an attorney with you on a date and notary that can sign off that both parties are going to consent to physical contact before making physical contact or much beyond verbally flirting in the most uninteresting ways leaving both parties wondering if the other is at all interested in them romantically.
I'm not condoning rape or flat out sexual assault, there is certainly a line that should never be crossed, but I think we've been moving that line too far for reasonably acceptable human behavior. Heaven forbid you take the chance of misreading the situation and attempt to kiss someone before also having that notarized by your attorney present.
I can't believe anyone seriously thinks this.
It's bad if you're in a position of power and you hit on someone under your influence - doesn't matter if they would reciprocate or not.
We maybe did. But we are also far from the dystopian scenario you described. I can tell you, in the real world dating still just works fine.
But yes, some behaviours like slapping on some ass, are more frowned upon and called out. Rightfully so.
The times where a woman had to marry her rapist, (this is actually from the bible) are gladly mostly over. But those times were the reason, now it got pushed back too much.
Because there is some unresolved anger left. And being aware of it - can help understand some rections better.
Like the original blog post that started all this. Which many here waved away as a sneaky smear campaign to create attention. Well no, it was a very emotional, honest expressed post. Maybe not really fair in all points, because - emotions. But authentic.
When you are a leader in an idealistic movement and you are incapable of sensing other peoples feelings - before you wave accusations of rape just away - then you are just wrong in that position.
Statistically, you are 3x as likely to meet your future spouse in the workplace than a bar/club.[1]
Let's take a look at the stereotypical man in STEM:
* Looks: Below 80 %ile --> Failure at Tinder[2]
* Socially: Below average --> No romantically successful friends groups to set them up
* Early life: Never cool in school / male dominant peer group --> Still single by the time they graduate
This massively raises the stakes of a workplace romantic encounter, because every other avenue has already been shut in their face.
At this point, "it's only harassment if you are undesirable" is a well known anecdote. So, uncharismatic + unattractive men are basically doomed. The alternative is to fully acknowledge the brutally objectifying nature of it all, objectify yourself and go for obnoxious outward displays of desirability. Ie. "look expensive" and target demographics that value your ability to be gainfully employed and accumulate moderate wealth.
The harder alternative is to hit the gym, learn social skills and actually learn how to be charismatic. This is way harder, especially when society actively ostracizes you. Like trying to make a fish climb a tree.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10135
[2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
And can you maybe see, how this makes women uncomfortable? And wanting to avoid such a person? And all together .. avoiding the whole group he has a leadership position?
Oh right. I probably confused parent posters words for .. I don't know. Isn't he or she (less likely) exactly saying this? That RMS was targeted because he is white and male and not because of what he did and said? How is that not thinking along the lines of conspiracy? Exaggerated, yes. But strawman? Where exactly?
When the Stallman thing was still fresh, I saw people online argue that it _didn't really matter_ whether Minsky actually did anything wrong, or whether it was inappropriate for Stallman to defend him. There are too many old white guys in prominent positions in tech, and reducing their numbers is a good thing. Sure it'll mess up Stallman's life, but whatever, that's a small price to pay for progress. In other words, explicitly: it's okay to target him, even if the accusations aren't correct, because he's an old white guy.
I think that's something people really believe. I also think it's unfair, and shouldn't be tolerated. And yet...I don't believe anything _close_ to the argument you put in OP's mouth (and by extension, mine). No, white guys aren't even close to the most persecuted people on the planet--and yet, that doesn't make them immune from persecution in all forms, either.
So: you attempted to rebut an argument by reducing it to a ridiculous caricature of itself. That's called a strawman.
But they usually don't have much power or influence.
Implying that he was targeted because he was white and male, implies that those crazy people have a lot of power and influence - which means conspiracy. Now sure, conspiracies can be true, but you maybe know how they say, extra ordinary claims, require extra ordinary evidence.
1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richa...
3: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard...
4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-ri...
5: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer...
6: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma...
"The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X... The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing... We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates…"
If pontificating as to the actual perpetrator of a crime is somehow being complicit in that crime, then I think we may need to overhaul our system of policing and justice for yet another reason.
The concept of statutory rape recognises the difference between informed and uninformed consent. Children can be coerced or persuaded to consent to things they don't understand, and that are not in their best interests; that's why such laws exist.
In the public mind (even if not in reality) when someone "resigns" because of "past comments", they have either been given an ultimatum - "Jump or be pushed" - or they are experiencing intrusions into their personal life (or there is behaviour from the community that makes this person believe these intrusions are imminent)
My understanding at the time was that it was the former - there were murmurings of possible action against him, and whether it was to avoid harm to the FSF or risk the public damage to his reputation I have no idea, but he decided to gracefully step aside.
So yes, officially you may be correct - but especially with someone like RMS, it is highly unlikely that he just chose to resign because he previously made comments that people didn't like. RMS is very used to making controversial statements and weathering the storm, I find it unlikely (though not impossible) that this was just one storm he couldn't weather - and much more likely that he chose the path of least damage, to himself or his cause or his legacy.
For example ministers of most gov "resign" when they are told to do so, and yes they do resign, even when this is not from their own initiative, and even if they absolutely would not have done it if not told to. For other structures, you can have various kind of pressure playing a role.
We will probably never know the exact degree of pressure and the comprehensive list of who did it, the alliances, maybe the threats etc, and technically it absolutely was a resignation, but given RMS further actions in the GNU Project (that is: not resigning despite additional attempts to leverage his departure from the FSF to make him do likewise here too), I can only say I have my doubt on the total amount of practical freedom he had concerning the FSF part; and it is now probably not just him phoning back and saying: "oh by the way I changed my mind I want to come back", but more likely other "political" and/or alliances changes at the top letting that be even possible.
Voluntary suicides are in your pipeline as well, no? Dictatorship sure doesn’t innovate.
No "mob justice" happened here. No women came forward and said RMS "hit on them" or whatever. RMS faced criticism for comments which justified rape and were close to victim blaming, and willingly resigned from his position at the FSF because of it. A position I personally believe he could have kept had he decided not to resign (and the fact that he is able to return to it so soon after leaving suggests I am correct).
Edit: I think that several people are placing too much importance on the "willingly resigned" part of my comment downthread. If you believe that RMS was forced out and he had no choice in the matter (i.e. it was "resign or get fired"), then feel free to replace the words "willingly resigned" with "was fired" in my comment (and ignore the last sentence in that paragraph), the point being made still stands.