Re:Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
by danparsonson on Monday March 22, 2021 @09:07AM
(#26540237)
I think you and I must be reading that differently and I also think maybe you're forgetting the context of all this. The victims were as young as 11 years old and that was widely known (and surely obvious to the men involved); his comment therefore boils down to "is it REALLY statutory rape if she seems like she's OK with it?" and the answer is, of course, yes. Surely you can understand why people would see that as an endorsement of sexual assault, albeit perhaps coming from a place of absurd ignorance rather than malevolence?
Re:Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
by literallycancer on Monday March 22, 2021 @09:35AM
(#26540555)
First of all statutory rape is mostly a US phenomenon. In most other countries something either is a rape or isn't. Second, the term statutory rape is engineered to make people stop thinking and short circuit to "rape". Therefore it's toxic. There's nothing wrong with consensual sex between a 19 yo and a 17 yo. However, in the US they will be put on the rapist list and have their lifes ruined.
Re:Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
by jkaplowitz on Monday March 22, 2021 @10:19AM
(#26541165)
Your close-in-age example among people who are near the age of majority is quite morally different than an adult having sex with an 11-year-old. Some US states even have close-in-age exceptions to keep cases like your example legal, and the most common age of consent in the US for purposes of sex is 16, although certain states do have it at 18.
Re:Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
by danparsonson on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @05:30AM
(#26552836)
As others have pointed out, your specific example is usually covered by the legal system and a strawman in this case - Epstein's friends were middle-aged or old men (Minsky himself was in his seventies when he visited the island), so it's a totally different situation.
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.
Re:Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
by compiler-guy on Monday March 22, 2021 @10:20AM
(#26541181)
Most US states have “Romeo and Juliet” laws that specifically exempt cases like this where the two are close in age but one is past the line.
"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.