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.