I would like to listen to what they have to say. This is the first I'm hearing of this, and I've been following RMS and the FSF since their inception. The term "dealing with it" is too vague - are we talking sexual assault, sexual harassment, or RMS being difficult to work with? These are dramatically different scenarios yet they all require a means for "dealing with it."
I'm taking you to task because you're now crossing the line from things RMS has said to things he may have done. If you're going to accuse RMS of sexual harassment then you're going to need to help bring this to light, not just spread hearsay. His alleged victims deserve that and the free software community needs to know the details of any alleged misconduct.
That's because you haven't tried. You're biased in ways you don't see. I'm not pointing a finger or trying criticize here. You seem to have a lot of anger - figure out where that comes from.
I'm biased against inappropriate conduct towards people and a lack of respect for other people.
I'm not even angry about this, just deeply disappointed in the FSF and their decision to put one man above the voices of countless people who he has repeatedly acted inappropriately towards and has neither acknowledged nor attempted to improve his behaviour.
In other words, they chose to resist the cancel culture, stick to what they believe is right instead of appeasing an angry mob, and ignore the obviously ill-intended mischaracterizations spreading over the social media.
I'd say they did a good job.
A good read, referenced on Wikipedia: https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
"Acting inappropriately" is not a crime. If you dislike his behavior, don't come near him - you're free to do so. Trying to force your way of thinking on him, instead, is wrong. The fact that he used to ask random women to have sex with him (actually, to "go out with him") does not make him misogynist. The fact that he said that "14 and above" people should be able to have sex if they want, and that "abstaining from sex after puberty is unnatural" does not make him a pedophile. The fact that he questions the use of "sexual assault" phrase in a situation where the "assaulted" person "appears entirely willing" does not make him a rapist.
You might not like his "inappropriate conduct" and that's ok. He, on the other hand, might not like your standards of what is appropriate or not, and that's also ok. I, for one, don't like the hypocrisy and puritanism you seem to espouse. I wouldn't want to be your friend, what with having to worry about my "conduct" constantly. But that's ok, I don't have to be your friend. It's all good. At least until you start forcing your (to me - misguided) values on others, start forming a mob with the intention of lynching him (or me), and try to shame all the people with contrary views into silence.
It's about consent. You do not do things to someone, without someone else's consent. An example: If you repeatedly prod me, and I ask you to stop, and you carry on going -- that makes you the asshole. That I asked you to stop, and you ignored me, does not put the blame on me.
You claim he is not a misogynist. The fact that he makes women, in general, uncomfortable by repeatedly making unwanted and unwarranted passes at them constantly -- to the point at which almost all of the women who had to deal with him bought specific plants just to deter him, shows that he is not fit to lead a movement. Because he does not listen to others when they ask him to stop disrespecting their boundaries.
The fact that, when he was asked to stop soliciting women for sex, that he circumvented these rules by passing out cards that asked for sex, shows he fundamentally misunderstands the reason he was asked to stop. That he fundamentally does not understand, or has no will to understand, accept and more importantly respect the personal boundaries of the people -- more often than not women -- around him.
It's not like he was never given any warning. People asked him to stop making the women around him deeply uncomfortable, repeatedly, and he repeatedly refused to listen. At this point, 20 to 40 years later, this is a pattern of abuse.
If this happened at a workplace, they would fire you. If this happened anywhere in society, they would remove you. The FSF did exactly that because people exercised their free speech to say no more to this.
When you constantly, repeatedly act like an asshole in public, and show no respect for the boundaries and space of other people, that will make people very understandably irritated, even angry if it happens constantly. We even have a legal definition for this enshrined in our law -- harassment -- to account for the fact that doing something to another person, or a group of people, without their consent, is psychologically and physically damaging to their health.
That is why he is not fit to lead a movement. That is why people are irate and angered by the refusal of people to listen to the voices of others.
Come on, that is very hard to believe.
He wrote that 14+ teens should be able to engage in sexual acts for fun, if they want. It's incredibly damning, right? And it's advocating child abuse.
Meanwhile, billions of people live in jurisdictions where 12 year olds get routinely married to 3-4 times older people. But, it's Stallman with his benign and - in the civilized world - quite obvious claims that is so wrong that he should never again take part in public discourse!
I can't, for the life of me, understand what's so wrong with people helping each other to orgasm. What's so damaging to the psyche in engaging in consensual sexual acts. Yes, people who didn't yet reach physiological sexual maturity should be protected, and obviously using any kind of force to elicit consent should be punished. Other than that? It's just sex - one of the healthier ways of feeling good. There are cultures where sex has been treated as a normal activity for adolescents for literally tens of thousands of years, where it only became a problem after colonial rule started enforcing taboos and rules alien to the indigenous peoples.
Well, it has nothing to do with this discussion, so I'll end the rant here. My main point is that the twisted view of all sexual activity of young people as "child abuse" is wrong, as is using advocacy for the opposite (ie. treating sex as normal activity; this comment included) to discredit people. Please, try to rethink your stance on the matter. Or alternatively, point me to a quote which actually is "in favour of child abuse". I feel silly writing this, but I think I have to: actual, real child abuse is also, of course, wrong.
I'm not sure how meditating on it is supposed to negate the latter. Nor how that is supposed to provide a space in which software is free of the shackles of the misogyny of the popular.
[1]: Literally just listen to the women who have had to work along side him on the MIT campus for decades. The fact that it was a known fact in the whisper network on campus and that they had developed tactics for "dealing with it" shows you pretty much everything you need to know.