This doesn't rebut any of those allegations, and in fact adds new ones, like the time Stallman threatened to commit suicide if a woman refused to date him.

Doesn't it seem more likely that that was a cliched hyperbolic statement than a threat?

Hyperbolic statement or not, it's inappropriate to say if the person on the other end doesn't know you well

It is certainly inappropriate to say today. It may have been closer to being acceptable in 1985, when it (allegedly) took place. Customs and morals change with the times, sometimes more than we want to imagine or recall.

Remember, this was only one year after the movie Revenge of the Nerds was a lasting hit (it spawned one theatrical sequel and two more TV sequels). Viewed with today’s eyes, the movie is unequivocally terrible, with rape perpetrated by the movie’s protagonist being played for laughs, among many other things. But it was not viewed as terrible by audiences at the time. However, the people who liked the movie at the time, and even the people who made the movie at the time have presumably changed in the intervening years, and may not deserve to be judged by something they did forty years ago.

This is the second time on this thread you've suggested that in 1985 it was acceptable to threaten to commit suicide to coerce someone to date you. No, it was not.

No, but this is the second time that you have hallucinated that I did.

> It is certainly inappropriate to say today. It may have been closer to being acceptable in 1985,

It was not.

> Remember, this was only one year after the movie Revenge of the Nerds was a lasting hit

Holy non-sequitur Batman!

> It was not.

I’ll take your word for it (and I upvoted your other comment which stated this).

> Holy non-sequitur Batman!

It was not a non-sequitur. It was an example meant to conclusively illustrate of how radically morals and attitudes (in the time period in question) differ from the current ones, even though we collectively might feel and remember otherwise.

I found more information about that incident: https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...

Stallman said that it was a misunderstanding, that it was never meant as a threat, nor a demand.

What'd you think he was going to say? He obviously didn't attempt suicide over the refused date. This is such a strange hill to die on.

No, it was not in fact OK to coerce someone into a date with a threat of suicide in 1985. I was there. It's telling, about this whole Stallman debate, that anyone would even try to make this claim.

Anyways, I didn't know anything about the suicide threat before seeing this link, and didn't know my contempt for Stallman could get any deeper. So thanks for that!

>No, it was not in fact OK to coerce someone into a date with a threat of suicide in 1985.

In 1985 you still had towns where blacks weren't allowed after sundown in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

The sort of things that were OK then would make the average sjw have a meltdown, just like how eating meat will be viewed in 40 years and everyone will pretend they always ate soy burgers.

I grew up in a part of Chicago where it was not safe for my Black friends to be on the street with me after dark. And even then, you'd have been ostracized for using a suicide threat to coerce someone into dating you. It's a remarkably fucked up thing to do.

> > No, it was not in fact OK to coerce someone into a date with a threat of suicide in 1985.

> In 1985 you still had towns where blacks weren’t allowed after sundown in the US

Literal, de jure, sundown towns were no longer permitted by federal civil rights law and the interpretation of the 14th Amendment for…quite some time before 1985.

The term persisted (and persists) for systems of informal racial discrimination (which may or may not have any significant association with time of day), and in that sense, yes, “sundown towns” existed in 1985 – and also in 2022.

(Not that even if you were literally correct would this be anything but a total irrelevancy to the point you responded to with it.)

Were there some significant cultural differences in 1985? Yes, sure. Were threats of suicide to coerce someone into dating within the window of acceptable adult behavior? No, not at all. It was viewed as a sign of unusual and dangerous obsession and instability when the person doing it was a teenager.

I mean, at least, it was by everyone of all ages the one whole time it occurred anywhere in my social circle within a few years of 1985.

I'm struggling to understand how the author of this page thought Stallman's "voluntary pedophilia is fine" statement would seem better with them providing the context that he wrote that in reference to a movement to lower the age of consent in the Netherlands to from 16 to 12 and from there eliminate it entirely.

Firstly, it is slightly disingenuous of you to bring that up, since RMS has not held that opinion for more than seven years now¹.

Secondly, you are mischaracterizing what he actually wrote¹.

The context, that this was a debate specifically about the age of consent, is relevant. Otherwise you seem to imply that any discussion of the age of consent is reprehensible. The age of consent differs quite a lot over the world, and you could declare every citizen of those countries to be terrible people, which would at least be consistent, or you could concede that there was a debate to be had. You might not agree with what RMS wrote (neither does RMS, now), but would you declare every person in a debate to be a terrible person who does not argue the side of the prevailing one? Even if they have since changed their minds?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21092184

Well, what Stallman actually wrote in his post referenced by this portion of the page I was referring to was:

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily 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."

There are no links in this original post besides the one to the news article about the Dutch party pushing to lower the age of consent to 12. The page defending Stallman quotes from the news article (omitting the detail about the party's goal to go on to remove the age limit entirely) and then adds this comment:

"When people talk about pedophilia, what usually comes to mind is prepubescent children. Not what Stallman was referring to."

I'd say my previous comment contained an accurate statement of the view Stallman expressed there (and later retracted): that pedophilia is fine, if it's voluntary. Stallman's own later distillation of his prior view in his own words was "I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it."

This page was written in the context of Stallman already having disavowed those earlier posts, but its tack for defending Stallman in relation to this quote is still to essentially say "12? misleading to call that pedophilia." On the one hand, this statement is itself misleading (Stallman offered no lower age limit for his views on voluntariness, in the context of discussing an article that included the idea of completely removing the age of consent, and further, the idea that he didn't really mean pedophilia here rests on the idea that famous language pedant Stallman repeatedly misused the word).

Beyond that though, my point in my previous comment was more that, as an implied statement of the author's idea of what the public generally believes and as a matter of rhetorical tactics for defending Stallman it was... a choice.

> "When people talk about pedophilia, what usually comes to mind is prepubescent children. Not what Stallman was referring to."

Yes, that was what they actually wrote.

> "12? misleading to call that pedophilia."

Mischaracterization of that same sentence.

However, what you are actually criticizing is apparently not actually Stallman, but the defense of Stallman? In that case, perhaps this page does a better job:

https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...

They’re exactly the sort of allegations one would level against a principled activist who couldn’t be removed any other way.

This covers the Epstein comment drama, but what about the actual sexual harassment allegations?

The link I gave does cover those, from what I can tell.