I hate the RMS cult. He’s done good stuff for software, but he’s not a guy you should worship.
Richard Stallman on paedophilia:
“The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013
E: FFS. “But he changed his mind” - no, he put out a statement saying he doesn’t believe those decades-held opinions days after there were calls to remove him from a public-facing position. Call me a pessimist, but that timing seems awfully convenient to me. He didn’t change his mind, he was just trying to keep his job.
The RMS cult is fucking insane. Are the downvoters paedophiles too, or are they merely fine turning a blind eye to these views, just because their guy was the one to say it? If it was, idk, Zuckerberg who said this, would you defend him like you people are defending Stallman?
Yea, at the moment I think (or want to think) that he himself doesn’t pose a threath to children or is pedo and also do belive that he generally is a person with a good intent with a terrible take on this topic.
This is something he mentioned literally a few times between 2003 and 2013 (and he talks about a lot of stuff - check stallman.org) and he doesn’t even believe anymore. In 2019 he said that it was something he used to believe, but he realised he was wrong. You can read it on Wikipedia (unfortunately I can’t find the original source for the quote right now): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controvers…
I would agree with a small portion of it, but pedophilia, no, no way.
Though I do have something to share on the subject. I used to go out with this girl, I was 19, she was 17. We had sex and all that (willingly, of course). Legally speaking, I was a pedophile, but let’s take a look at the age gap and how old I was.
Anyway, I wasn’t that into this girl, so I break up with her. I did know that she kinda had a crush on me, but I didn’t think it was that serious. Three weeks pass after the breakup and her dad shows up at my doorstep with 2 other guys (his relatives… or at least I presumed as much) accusing me of raping his daughter… I tried to explain that there was no such thing and that yes, we did have sex, but at no point was it against her will. Sure, I might have been the one that instigated the intercourse, but it wasn’t like she didn’t like it. Regardless, her dad was pissed as hell and even threatened to submit this to the DA 😱… I was about to be taken to trial and very possibly go to jail for what? A girl that I broke up with that was probably deeply hurt (I am sorry for that, but you can’t force someone to love someone else) and wanted to get back at me, so she involved her parrents in the ordeal, not thinking things through (of course, she’s young) how this might affect the other person and stain him FOR LIFE.
Luckily, things cooled down, I went to talk to her parrents about this, I said I was sorry and I shouldn’t have had sex with her, but the truth of the matter was that, I didn’t rape her! They also called her to confront me on this, we had a long converstaion with her parrents present, she was furious, lying through her teeth, portraying every single time we had sex as rape. I think her parrents saw through this, since there were personal insults at my expense, not to mention that “why did you break up with me!?” was mentioned quite a few times throught the conversation and that kinda sealed the case that this was nothing more than a broken heart. I promised them I’ll never contact her again, for her sake (and mine as well), and to let her heal, and I never did.
My point is, things could have ended up being A LOT worse for me. I think that me showing up alone at their house kinda made them think about the whole situation and that maybe our daughter is actually lying to us (why would I show up there and risk getting my head chopped off if I really did rape her, right). Just goes to show you that people can be mean, take advantage of a certain situation and portray it as something completely different.
I always asked a partner’s age after that, ALWAYS. Unless it was blaintly obvious she’s not a minor.
When I read your story originally I remember that I had mixed feelings. But lately I’ve been reading some of the lies that RMS haters tell about him and his views on sex. Reading his blog posts changed my mind about some things and now I’ve realised that you were right and that RMS has a similar opinion.
Richard Stallman was criticised for saying that it’s normal for teenagers (Stallman defines them as people that are at least 14 years old) to have sex with adults. He believes that the laws that call sex with children or teenagers “rape” are dishonest and that the definition of rape shouldn’t depend on someone’s age. His haters criticised him for that too, but your story shows how crazy such laws are.
When he made that statement about pedophilia, I think he was just trying to extend the rights that teenagers normally have onto children (Stallman defines them as people that are 13 years old or younger). I think that he meant well and he really didn’t realise that pedophilia is harmful.
Still, if he’s talking about cases like mine, yes, I can get onboard with that. But with an age gap of 10+ years, no, I really can’t.
I’ve been thinking about the age gap argument and that’s also something his haters like to point out. I think Stallman doesn’t believe that an age gap itself is wrong. So I’m curious why do you think it’s wrong? I couldn’t think of a logical reason and I realised that I’m unable to define what the acceptable age gap should be. Because as you pointed out, big age gaps seem weird even when both people are adults:
My mom was almost 20 years younger than my dad m, but she was 27 and he was 46. That may seem weird, but both of them are adults.
This is unusual, but it’s not wrong. So why would big age gaps be wrong for a teenager and an adult? After all we accept that teenagers should be able to have control over their own bodies (at least in most of Europe and most of US). So shouldn’t it be their decision?
Sorry for posting such a long comment on an old post. I just realised how insane the whole hate campaign against RMS was, because he is right about most of the things he was criticised for.
Most teenagers are too young at 14 to know how the consequneces of their actions might reverbirate in their lives. Sure, they might feel up to the task, but ask any saman of any tribe, 18, 19 is the age when you actually get to be called an adult. Yes, they still lack eperience, by they make up for it by having youth. You put tyem in risky situations so they learn. Old people aren’t wiser, they just have more life experience.
So, my conclusion would be, 14 is too young (in general, doesn’t mean there aren’t 14 year olds thinking like 20 year olds). 16… depends, but with proper guidnace, a lot better than 14. So… yeah, I would be willing to lower the bar, IF parrenting wasn’t seen as a role, but as a duty (this is a diffeent converstaion).
This is unusual, but it’s not wrong. So why would big age gaps be wrong for a teenager and an adult?
The reasons I explained above: not enough life experience.
After all we accept that teenagers should be able to have control over their own bodies (at least in most of Europe and most of US). So shouldn’t it be their decision?
That “control” is mostly imaginary (as it should be), They THINK they’re in control, but when pushing comes to shoving, they always call the parrents (again, as it should be). There is nothing wrong with that, their parrents know them best (or at least how things should be) and they probably know why they did what they did (again, in this world, this is a best case scenario… these things should be REALLY, realy analyzed by people far smarter than me). So, the assumption is, shit happened, they’re young, they can lie out of spite, which makes thigs even harder… let’s find out what happened 🤷.
Sorry for posting such a long comment on an old post. I just realised how insane the whole hate campaign against RMS was, because he is right about most of the things he was criticised fo
As I said, I would agree about SOME of the things (I would call them sane defaults) he said, but not everything. 14 is too young in most cases. 16… I could probably start debating in that.
Thanks for the answer. So it’s not really about the age gap itself? You just think that the age of consent should be 16 or higher? Or is it both?
14 is too young in most cases. 16… I could probably start debating in that.
Is it possible that you are thinking that, because age of consent is very high in your country? I imagine that people who live for example in Germany, where age of consent is 14, might not think the same. In most of Europe it’s 14-16. In some countries teenagers can even get an abortion.
16 or higher, yes. But, the age gap shouldn’t be too big at that age as well. My personal opinion, 10 years at that age, max. Anything above 25, add whatever age gap you wan’t, they are adults in the true meaning of the word.
Is it possible that you are thinking that, because age of consent is very high in your country?
Hm… maybe. After all, I was raised that way.
But still, I’ve seen how much teenagers at that age have going on up there, they’re just thrill seekers at that age, they really don’t know anything about life, they could easilly be fooled by someone older than them.
You are right about teenagers, but on the other hand not all people are the same. For some reason we’ve decided that they are competent to make those kinds of decisions and to do other things like driving a car. So even though they are not adults, we don’t think of them as children either. There is probably no simple answer to this question, though.
This wouldn’t be illegal in the UK or many countries. Age of consent is 16 here. From what I’ve read, USA is an outlier that infantises young adults to impose mortality.
Always weird because the music videos exported by the US are often soft porn and the music industry has a thing for barely legal girls.
I don’t live in the US BTW. I said “the DA” to conform to what most of the viewers on Lemmy are used to (most are US citizens). In reality we don’t have a district attourney, you involve the police and the state takes care of things onwards.
Always weird because the music videos exported by the US are often soft porn and the music industry has a thing for barely legal girls.
Which just goes to show you that that “imposed morality” thing isn’t really working… in the US or anywhere else. The US is somewhere at the top by number of pedophiles vs. number of population.
Yeah, it kinda feels that there is more diversity here, but still, I do belive the majority is from the US, so I sometimes cater in my comments to that part of the population, just to cut down on explaining myself afterwards.
But people that publicly champion child rape, bestiality, and parent-child sexual relationships doubly so.
The fact there are so many people who are pro child rape, or at the very least pro people who are open advocates for having sex with children, is absolutely disgusting.
Lol, you mean when he changed his opinion 4 days after his comments were outed, and only when it looked like his job was untenable?
Seems awfully convenient that RMS would change his decades-held opinion that paedophilia is fine mere days after he found himself in hot water.
If Andrew Tate, right when Google was mulling over removing his content from YouTube, said “you know, I actually think misogyny is a bad thing. Honest.”, would you believe him? Would you think he’s a changed man?
I wouldn’t. But maybe you’re just more trusting than I am.
It’s funny, because he didn’t get fired, he resigned. And he never returned to his previous position. It wasn’t about losing his job, or getting it back. It was that he grew and changed his opinion. Unless you believe people can’t grow?
And the incident which made him do that (where he even said what was done is wrong!) is not related to the previous comments you’ve listed.
Hey, wasn’t Bill Gates on Epstein’s flight logs? The same Bill Gates who claims he’s never been on any of his islands? Huh, someone with genuine connections and not just pedantic with words. Someone should really look into that. Funny how nobody brings up those who are actually involved.
EDIT: why’d you add two whole paragraphs about Tate a day after I replied? Were you hoping I wouldn’t notice and it’d look like I ignored them? The difference is Tate continually reiterates his opinions (I.e. there’s not a decade gap between him saying it and then saying his opinion changed in light of evidence) and also, actually acts on them (which Stallman has never done).
People in high up positions often “resign” when their position is no longer tenable.
It’s an opportunity afforded to people at the top so they can save face.
I don’t see why you’re bringing whataboutism about Gates into this. The discussion isn’t about Gates, nor do I like Gates. Why bring him up other than to muddy the debate and shift focus away from padeo-champion RMS?
The discussion is about RMS being pro paedophilia, and his cult being in denial about that fact.
He still didn’t return to his position. And again, the things said that lead to him resigning are not related to his previous comments. And again, he actually denounced what happened, in that email chain. He absolutely wasn’t defending it. Go read it yourself, in full. Not some chopped up version.
Hey, Stallman answers his emails, how about you ask him what his opinions are yourself?
rms@gnu.org
Also, I’m bringing up Gates because while there’s massive uproar over some misplaced pedantry a lifelong activist did (again, while denouncing what happened and saying Epstein is described too lightly), it seems eerily silent when it comes to people in the same sector actually having real connections to Epstein and not just unpopular opinions on how words should be used.
The entire thing led to him resigning. It was his comments on Epstein that got the ball rolling, but people bringing up his public championing of child rape using his work email address, as well as women alleging that he had been creepy with them, all led to him losing his position.
Look, you can defend him all you want. That’s fine. I’m just on the “child rape is bad” side of the fence.
We’re on the same side of that fence, don’t think you’re smart by painting me as pro-pedo. It’s incredibly disingenuous and tells me you’re running out of arguments to stand on. Stallman is of the belief that that is bad, and has denounced Epstein’s actions. And even if he didn’t, he still did nothing himself, so I’m not sure how me making the point that Stallman isn’t the devil opponents say he is makes me belong on “that side of the fence”?
The “creepy” allegations have all been debunked iirc. I’ve heard of one about a mattress in his office, which wasn’t even in his office or his mattress? I’ve also heard of him giving a business card (why is that creepy?). If you have any examples with actual evidence which isn’t just “I heard that she said that he said”, feel free to share and I’ll look.
My point about him not returning to his previous position makes the argiment that him taking back his previous views wasn’t just to return to the job he had. As you said that he didn’t actually have a legitimate reason to change his opinion. Because if you don’t like someone, it means they never have a benign reason to change their opinions!
No he isn’t of the opinion that paedophilia is bad, because he has publicly said it’s fine/good several times!
And no, he suddenly “changed his mind” as a last-ditch effort to save his job, and it failed.
If you genuinely believe he had an epiphany and did a complete 180 that just happened to perfectly align with him coming under fire, then you’re pretty naive.
This cult behaviour is fucking weird, dude. The guy repeatedly states that having sex with children is fine and yet you’re fine with him. Re-evaluate your position.
The last time I can see him saying that was over a decade ago. This isn’t “sudden” or an “epiphany”.
“He isn’t of the opinion it’s bad because he said it’s fine several times”, yeah right, because opinions can’t change over literal decades. I’ll go dig up stupid stuff you said long ago, because if you said it several times long in the past it means you agree with it now?
And if it was a last ditch effort to save his job, and that failed, then there’s really no more need for effort. So if that’s truly why his opinion changed, surely if you ask he’ll have the old opinion?
You act like anyone changing a long-held opinion after being confronted with evidence is impossible. He originally thought it doesn’t cause harm, he received evidence that it actually does, and so he changed his opinion to reflect the evidence he saw. It says a lot about you that a change in opinion after new evidence is shown to you is unfathomable.
And for fucks sake, stop saying I’m fine with that sort of thing, I’m not. I never once defended his old opinions. Stop trying to degrade my argument with that.
EDIT: You’re also acting like this was more than just a malformed opinion he used to hold. Keep in mind he has never done anything to a child, nor expressed interest in it. As it should be. And he has also long held the opinion that any sex should be consentual, which of course extends to children, who he recognises cannot really consent now. His other past opinions align with his current opinion in this respect.
He didn’t change his opinion over decades. He “changed” his opinion over days. Specifically, days after there started to be pressure for him to step down or be removed.
Sorry, when was the last time he stated this opinion? Because it wasn’t anywhere near when there were calls for him to resign. There’s a literal decade gap.
Again, what made him lose his job was actually him denouncing these actions and having his words spun. Because again, these are unrelated issues. From there people dug into very old opinions. It’s almost as if it was nothing to do with his past opinions at all and people were looking for an excuse.
And I mean, just look at the headline that made him do it. "Stallman says Epstein’s victims “entirely willing”. What a blatant lie. He said the fucking opposite. He said they were coerced and told to act like they were willing to his associates…
Even if you don’t like him you can’t deny that there were plenty of lies about him at that time, smearing him.
Also: he was never an “advocate”, just like I’m not an advocate of the idea that eating chocolate won’t kill you, it’s just an opinion I hold.
You go ahead and look at the article which kicked this all off. He was being pedantic, someone was unhappy about the inappropriate timing of that, leaked the email chain, and wrote a headline stating “Stallman says they were ‘entirely willing’”.
Read the actual email that quote is taken from and you’ll see the exact opposite. They cut out key words to make that sensationalist headline.
This is easily verifiable.
This situation is nothing like Tate. The last time Tate made a misogynistic comment was probably 5 minutes ago, compare that to over a decade ago for Stallman’s out-of-place opinion.
He also makes it his whole personality. A core part of him.
Tate has also acted on his opinions and caused real harm. Stallman, never did.
He also is not a logical person, whereas Stallman is pretty much driven purely by logic. He has never so much as hinted that he’s open to evidence to change his opinions.
I’m not talking about his chat about Epstein, you brought that up for zero reason, specifically to muddy the conversation and distract from the topic, just like the Bill Gates tangent.
I’m talking about him being a proud and loud advocate of paedophilia, bestiality, parent-child relationships.
Hm yeah. Very logical to be supportive of raping kids (even your own kids) and fucking your pets. What a logical guy with sane takes.
You are. That is what got the ball rolling to him losing his job, which you brought up. You said that yourself earlier.
I think those opinions are wrong. But again, the last time I’m aware of them being stated before being changed was over. a. decade. ago. Are you going to repeat the same points in different words over and over?
So far, your arguments are:
He held bad opinions over a decade ago and hasn’t stated them since (but people never change!)
How convenient he changed them 4 days after calls to resign (it’s almost like he had no prompt or reason to talk about them before then)
No I didn’t bring it up. I mentioned his views on paedophilia, you brought up he repented, I said he only did it to save his skin because he was in the process of being ousted at the time (in part due to Epstein, but I didn’t talk about that because it’s irrelevant to his view that child rape is fine), then you went all-in on that because deep down you know that raping children is inexcusable.
Look, we’re getting nowhere. We’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’m against having cult followings of people who are proudly pro paedophilia, and you aren’t.
If you like people who are pro child rape and pro bestiality, you’re free to do so. Freedom of expression and all that.
I’m ending it here. Goodbye. I hope you get to re-evaluate your position on child rape proponents, but I can’t force it on you.
“then you know that raping children is inexcusable” yes, I do know that. Are you implying I don’t think that? I’m defending Stallman, and Stallman never did that either.
Notice how my whole argument has been DENOUNCING these things while noting that Stallman has changed his opinions on them (and never did them!). Go find one quote where I defended any of these actions. So why now are you trying to claim I’m actually okay with these things? Because I’m not.
You were talking about why he lost his job, so me bringing up the catalyst for that is perfectly reasonable in my opinion. Especially when it shows that a lot of it was sheer lying AND showcases his current opinion that it is bad, which was clearly present before this whole thing started.
I am opposed to child rape proponents, but thankfully Stallman is not a proponent of that. Stallman has always been a proponent of consent, and when he came to understand children cannot consent under any circumstances, his opinions changed to reflect that.
I don’t understand your motives for putting words into my mouth and claiming I’m defending child rape (when again, I have explicitly stated on multiple occasions that it is wrong). But I don’t appreciate it. I’m done, have a nice day.
EDIT: Okay now this prick is just making stuff up, about me and about Stallman. He never said anything even REMOTELY SIMILAR to what has been said below (and again, has CHANGED the opinions that sparked this argument in the first place completely, last stated over a decade ago). I wonder what would happen if I told them I am a minor myself?
My whole point, for the last time, is that his OLD opinions are WRONG, and that his CURRENT opinions are RIGHT. The mental gymnastics being used to paint me as someone who supports his OLD opinions is insane.
EDIT 2: The reason I still replied after being told “bye” is because I was being slandered lol. I’m sure if someone slandered this prick they’d do the exact same thing.
Bye bye paedophile apologist. Keep worshiping a guy who thinks kids should be used as sex toys.
I really hope cancer claims Stallman in a way that is gruesome. Fuck him and fuck anybody else who loves the idea of kids being held down and fucked. He deserves a painful death, and hopefully he’ll be remembered as the creep that he is.
Thats the thing about saying an opinion on the internet, its tied to you forever. In real life people tend to change their minds and can re-evaluate on their own shitty opinions after a few decades. Not always, but it happens. But that doesn’t change the fact you said that thing that one time 20 years ago. The people who don’t really care about you and just want a mental straw man to hate don’t care about things like personal growth or that you have changed stance, just that you thought that bad thing at one time.
Im personally guilty of saying some real edgelord shit as a teenager on the internet. If someone somehow collected a few comments I made when I was 15 and went on a 5 paragraph essay about how terrible of a person I am now it would make me roll my eyes and tell them to get bent. Who I was as a 15 year old and my opinions then is completely independent of who I am now and my current stances. But the 5-paragrapher doesn’t care about that, they got their ragebait strawman and a ride on the high horse so they are happy.
We aren’t talking about one thing said 20 years go though, we’re talking about something repeated across decades by someone who was a grown man even then, and who only said otherwise when it was convenient to do so to try to keep his job.
Now, maybe he genuinely did just happen to change his mind on whether child rape is ok or not a mere few days after there were calls for him to step down. I just personally don’t believe it.
I agree with your point, but I don’t think this applies to Stallman at all.
Very well said. I think people tend to not realise that personal development is really a thing that happened when they have instant access to the old opinions of people online.
Incredible that this personal development where he suddenly realised raping children is a bad thing, after decades of publicly championing it (and even using his workplace email address to do so), happened immediately after his job became on the line and there were public calls for him to step down/be removed.
I’ve already replied to you regarding this exact stance you have. Readers: check my (or their) comment history for what I have previously replied. Tl;dr they’re linking two completely unrelated situations together to create a narrative that his past opinions are why he resigned. Opinions which have since changed, and the thing that made him resign was where he was being pedantic, while STILL DENOUNCING what had happened to Epstein’s victims (a part which is often conveniently cut).
You don’t need to post it again. You’d do better just responding to the first one and not posting it again making it look as it hasn’t been responded to.
I repeated my stance to reiterate my point, which you seemingly ignored since you repeated your points (which I addressed!) again.
I’m not entirely sure why you repeated yours even after it was addressed, without so much as an acknowledgement that it had been addressed, it’s pointless at best and bad faith at worst. I can only assume the point of that was to make it look like I had not already addressed those points and that they were completely valid.
What’s the problem? You want people to not discuss things that are offensive? It’s a shame he used to believe that, but he changed his mind, admitted to being wrong and moved on.
What would you want to happen instead? That we cancel people, because they have an opinion we don’t like?
he was just trying to keep his job
What job? The position at his foundation that he does for free? If he only cared about keeping it, why did he quit 2 days later?
He didn’t change his mind. He only “changed his mind” to try to keep his job, and it didn’t work.
He was only sorry once he got a lot of flak for his pro child rape opinions.
Put it this way - if Andrew Tate all of a sudden said that sexism is wrong and he’s sorry for his actions, only once YouTube started removing his videos, would you believe it to be genuine? Or just him trying to maintain his position? It certainly seems like a convenient time to have a change of heart, no?
And he didn’t “quit” he was ousted. He “resigned” in the same way Liz Truss did, for example.
Sorry, I have no time for people who want to see children get raped.
So him changing his mind was fake, him leaving his own foundation was fake, is there anything that could prove you wrong then?
He was only sorry once he got a lot of flak for his pro child rape opinions.
No, he got in trouble, because he was misquoted by the media when he talked about Minsky. If he is such a liar, why didn’t he apologize for that, since that was actually what the drama was about? He could have said that he was wrong and that he no longer believed that. But for some weird reason he didn’t.
Put it this way - if Andrew Tate all of a sudden said that sexism is wrong and he’s sorry for his actions, only once YouTube started removing his videos, would you believe it to be genuine? Or just him trying to maintain his position?
So mentioning pedophilia 3 times over 10 years (2003-2013) makes it comparable to Andrew Tate?
It certainly seems like a convenient time to have a change of heart, no?
Let’s see. He mentions it for the last time in 2013. Then people dig up his old posts in 2019 and he responds. He had only 6 years to change his mind, very suspicious. Btw, do you know how people knew about those posts? They were on his public website. It was not a secret.
Sorry, I have no time for people who want to see children get raped.
You’re just salty, because we are going to destroy your precious little proprietary software and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
If you genuinely believe he just happened to have an epiphany on his decades-held opinion that child rape is fine, right when his job was on the line, then I have a bridge to sell you.
And how are you unaware that top-level people in companies and in government and the like are given the opportunity to “resign” to save face when they’re being kicked out? Surely you know that’s a thing.
“Oh well he only publicly said raping children is fine a few times” - Wow. This is the level that the Stallman cult operates at? Oh well he could have publicly advocated for raping children more, so he’s a nice guy really!
Brightened my day so much finding out that sick fuck got cancer. Can’t rape kids, or advocate doing so, when you’re dead.
Let’s create a society where people can’t be wrong. Instead they will be always right! Otherwise they will get cancelled! Isn’t that a great idea?
We will only discuss opinions that everyone agrees with. Child abuse? Well, we don’t like that, so let’s pretend it doesn’t exist and never talk about it. Somebody mentions it? Cancel them! Disagrees with us? Cancel! Changed their mind? Too late! Already cancelled!
“Oh well he only publicly said raping children is fine a few times”
He never said rape, so you are wrong! Cancelled!
Brightened my day so much finding out that sick fuck got cancer. Can’t rape kids, or advocate doing so, when you’re dead.
I hate to worsen your day then, because he is not dying. You were wrong again. Double cancelled!
Stop trying to justify child rape. It’s not acceptable.
And yeah, someone who uses their workplace email address to champion the noble cause of raping children probably should be out of their job.
I know if I started talking about the merits of having sex with kids using my workplace email address, I’d be out of a job pretty quick. As would you.
This guy you simp for is a creep. I can’t believe you’re so deep in his cult that now you’re defending having sex with children. Have a word with yourself.
And their whole argument is based on believing that changing an opinion which wasn’t really thought that hard about at the time, and rarely stated, is implausible. But everyone holds at least some opinions which they have not done too much research on, and do not think about much. Why would this one be thought about frequently? The answer is it wouldn’t have been.
Of course, when such an opinion is scrutinised you suddenly have to dig into it and scrutinise it yourself, and this is where Stallman changed it. It’s not some mad conspiracy to save his (volunteer) job, it’s basic stuff.
I’d disengage if I were you. Eventually, they’ll get angry at you, then they’ll try to claim that you support his old, misinformed opinion (even if you explicitly condemn it).
As you’ve seen they’ll also try to claim that Stallman himself wants to do these things, when that has never been so much as hinted at. They make things up. They have no real argument.
It took me a while to realise this, but 2 of the quotes that this person has posted were not full quotes. I will post them here in case you are curious.
The one from 2003:
The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia” also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people’s interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent’s will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).
There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue.
The one from 2006 was a full quote, but that post contains a note now:
[Many years after posting this note, I had conversations with people who had been sexually abused as children and had suffered harmful effects. These conversations eventually convinced me that the practice is harmful and adults should not do it.]
Exactly. There have been things that I had believed for most of my life that were false. If we punish people for being wrong, then nobody will ever change their mind. The cost of doing so will be just too big.
Richard also doesn’t care if some subject seems disgusting or if his ideas seem radical to most people. He will talk about the ethics anyway, without any emotions attached. That’s what philosophers do.
They have to make it look like some conspiracy, a “cult”, etc., since they have nothing else that they could use. There are always people attracted by that sort of thinking and for them it will be enough. In 2019 we saw multiple Free Software projects joining a hate campaign against Stallman based on a blog post that misquoted him and another blog post with fake rumours. The second one was linked by the Software Freedom Conservancy (sfconservancy.org/…/rms-does-not-speak-for-us) and it contained stories like these:
I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”
I think all of those people are either blinded by hatred or have some other motive (in this case it’s hard for me to believe they are all this stupid and can’t recognise obvious trolling). Maybe some of them want proprietary software to exist and Richard’s ideas are too radical for them. But the only way they can fight him or the FSF is with lies.
beat me to it… yeah, he said that weird shit about ‘consenting’ underage children not being traumatized or some shit… or there was no evidence they were…
later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah… plus the whole Epstein friendship thing…(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? ) dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu… but he’s definitely not cool
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it. Between 2003 and 2013 he really used to believe that pedophilia doesn’t harm children. But he really only mentioned it a few times and hadn’t talked about it again until 2019 when it was brought up again. He said then that he had changed his mind since and that he was wrong (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controvers…).
I don’t think we should cancel people for believing something stupid 10 years ago, but his haters love to use this. Just like they like to misquote him or spread fake rumors about him (stallmansupport.org). They are probably too angry to think clearly or verify information, but sometimes I wonder if for some of them it’s really only about his position on proprietary software (he wants to destroy it) and that’s why they wanted him removed from the FSF.
beat me to it… yeah, he said that weird shit about ‘consenting’ underage children not being traumatized or some shit… or there was no evidence they were… later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah… plus the whole Epstein friendship thing…(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? ) dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu… but he’s definitely not cool
That’s not exactly what happened.
1. In 2019 he was misquoted by a blogger and then by the press:
Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As ‘Entirely Willing’
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 accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See theverge.com/…/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-….) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
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.
I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
There is no “Epstein friendship” that I know of. He called him a “serial rapist” before that (source).
This is what he was criticized for at the time + unconfirmed rumors (some of them debunked now) of allegedly creepy behavior around women. You can read more on stallmansupport.org.
2. Some people dug up his old blog posts.
later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah…
Between 2003 and 2013 a few times he expressed his views on pedophilia. It was literally a few times, but yes this is something he actually said and used to believe. He hadn’t mentioned that topic again until it was brought up in 2019. That’s when he said that he had changed his mind since then and that he was wrong. You can read about it on Wikipedia (can’t find the link to the original quote at the moment): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controvers…
As far as I know that was the last time he mentioned this topic.
So now that we got the facts right, the question is if he should be punished for having a wrong/stupid opinion on something 10 years ago. I think no, but apparently some people disagree.
while his statements on Minsky are mostly logical, it misses some very important things:
“presented herself as willing”
a. i think she was too young to appear willing
b. he’s staying at this weird rich dude’s island and suddenly a very young woman wants to have sex and you don’t think she’s cooerced?
… i guess there’s some point in the term “assault”, but the other term would be statuary rape, which still implies violence…
but that wasn’t what i was talking about… i was talking about the few comments from before where he expressed his views on pedophilia…
given his position, i don’t think it’s responsible to try to claim pedophilia might be moral, if the child is “consenting”, etc…
like sure, it’s okay to discuss ideas… but he acted as if he knew for sure there’s no evidence that it’s harmful…
i don’t think he should be punished, but i don’t think he should be accepted as a spokesperson, figurehead, or leader…
at the very best, he’s speaking very harmful things out of pocket… at the worse, he’s rationalizing something he did.
i felt the same way about Stallman as i did about Allen Ginsberg when i found out he was a pedo…
b. he’s staying at this weird rich dude’s island and suddenly a very young woman wants to have sex and you don’t think she’s cooerced?
It’s certainly weird, but I think there is some chance that he didn’t know.
but the other term would be statuary rape, which still implies violence…
I don’t know much about that, but according to Wikipedia, it’s usually not connected to violence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape. Statutory rape is a legal term, it’s not actually the same thing as rape. See, this is another example of what Richard was talking about.
given his position, i don’t think it’s responsible to try to claim pedophilia might be moral, if the child is “consenting”, etc… like sure, it’s okay to discuss ideas… but he acted as if he knew for sure there’s no evidence that it’s harmful…
It would be better if he didn’t have stupid or weird opinions, but he is a philosopher, so he thinks and talks about ethics and stuff like that all of his life. Especially on his blog - you can check stallman.org. He is even against using paid toilets. I don’t know where he got the idea that a child could consent or that it wasn’t harmful, but I’ve seen some pedo say online that there is some research, which allegedly proves that. So I assume they just cherry pick to find something that supports their claims, but then they of course ignore all of the overwhelming evidence against it. This often happens in pseudoscience. So maybe he read something stupid like that, I don’t know.
i don’t think he should be punished, but i don’t think he should be accepted as a spokesperson, figurehead, or leader…
But if he wasn’t who he is, I don’t know if he would have created the Free Software movement. Many people today still think that it’s a radical idea that users should have rights, which nobody should be able to take away from them. I think we need people like him in our society. I also don’t know anyone else who has been fighting for this for 40 years refusing to make compromises on people’s freedom (unlike Linus Torvalds for example). To this day he still travels the world and gives talks about Free Software in multiple languages.
i felt the same way about Stallman as i did about Allen Ginsberg when i found out he was a pedo…
The FSF brought Stallman back and put him back on the board. He’s on the board now.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, FSF Europe, and Bradley Kuhn are the good guys. FSF, Software Freedom Law Center, Stallman, and Moglen are the bad guys.
At least that’s my thoughts. I’ve written a lot more about all this here.
I thought you didn’t believe in bad people? Or was that just a convenient point that can change at the drop of a hat to help your arguments seem more legitimate?
And it’s kind of funny that some inappropriately pedantic activist is constantly under fire even after saying Epstein isn’t described harshly enough (pedantic again, but useful this time?), but much fewer people seem to care about the tech billionaires with real connections to him. If we should be demanding anyone be disgraced, it should be them.
EDIT: They’ve expressed no more interest in replying and they don’t seem to be being disingenuous, so I’ll not leave another reply, but note how that entire post was devoted to the usage of the words “good” and “bad” and addresses nothing about Stallman’s actions.
Tl;dr his point was that coercion is coercion regardless of age, and of course sensationalist media spun that. Of course, the younger you get the more easily you are coerced, which is why there’s a point where you can reasonably say a person could not have consented. But Stallman was not arguing against that. He was arguing that a year’s difference doesn’t change the morality of the situation.
And his take is that the situation was immoral (“she presented herself as entirely willing”, and noting that she was coerced by Epstein to do that and that it was wrong). Of course people always overlook that part and cut his words short to make it seem like he’s defending it.
EDIT 2: I just noticed that they have also said that after being accepted onto the FSF board after a change in opinions (not even back to his original role!), that means that the FSF endorses the opinions he no longer holds? Make it make sense.
This is way off topic for this thread (sorry to OP), but my take is that “good” (or, being more precise, perhaps something like “pro-social and self-caring” is a better way to put it) is the “natural” way for humans to be and for humans to do “bad” (“antisocial and/or self-destructive”, perhaps?) things needs a reason or explanation in a way that people not doing “bad” things doesn’t. (As opposed to an opposite view that people are evil and require something (authority, religion, whatever) to make them do good.)
My point in bringing it up in that other thread was that one didn’t necessarily have to believe that “Stallman is bad” to believe he shouldn’t have been accepted back into a position of authority at the FSF. Even if he’s a “saint,” giving him a position of authority in the FSF after everything he’s said is very problematic. (Harms the Free Software movement’s reputation, excludes people, sends an unfortunate message, etc.) It can absolutely be appropriate for an organization to exclude/remove/dethrone/etc people (or refuse to take them back) for bad behavior or for expressing reprehensible opinions especially if doing otherwise sends a message that the organization approves of the behavior or speech. (And I don’t feel like Stallman later publicly changing his opinions is enough to make his return to the FSF not be seen as endorsement of his previously-stated opinions.)
In this thread, the person I’m responding to used the term “good person” and I went with it rather than going into something irrelevant to the current discussion. With my previous comment in this thread, I mean that if you’re going to take sides, you shouldn’t put Stallman and the FSF on opposite sides and that the opposite side that is (at least from everything that I know about things at the moment and don’t expect anything to change) worth aligning yourself with is SFC, FSFE, and Bradley Kuhn. (And I’m sure there are plenty of others in the Free Software movement who are also worth aligning yourself with, but these are people and organizations that are leaders in the movement and (more) well known (than most, though that’s not saying much – there aren’t many in the movement who are well known like Stallman, Moglen, and Kuhn.))
If I knew you were going to continue this argument in this thread, I would probably have put “good guy” and “bad guy” in quotes (like I did “saint” a couple of paragraphs back. Sometimes people use convenient shorthands.) But going into all of the above wasn’t really relevant to this conversation. (Until your response, that is.)
At this point, I doubt there’d be benefit to continuing this conversation here in this thread. If you want to respond again, I guess knock yourself out, but I don’t intend to respond here again.
He was talking about both. The “entirely willing” misquote comes from the email where he’s referring to how Epstein made his victims pretend to be willing, and how he believed his former professor was unaware (stupid take imo, but clearly not malicious).
The Software Freedom Conservancy, FSF Europe, and Bradley Kuhn are the good guys.
To me those are the bad guys. Any organization that wants to cancel someone based on unconfirmed or made up rumors is corrupt to me.
Software Freedom Conservancy has literally spread false information about Richard Stallman: sfconservancy.org/…/rms-does-not-speak-for-us. In that post they link to a medium blog post with unconfirmed rumors about him (some of them were later debunked - stallmansupport.org). That medium blog post is a second part. In the first one, the author has misquoted Stallman, which was later repeated by media. But this time she gives us stories, which are supposed to show Richard’s alleged abusive behavior. Here is my favorite one:
I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”
Seriously? Who would believe this? The Software Freedom Conservancy apparently. This just sounds like the blogger got trolled by someone and that post is full of ridiculous stories like that. But I guess SFC will believe anything, even from an anonymous source if it’s something that could hurt Richard Stallman.
More organizations participated in this hate campaign, including Mozilla and Tor Project (thetownreporter.com/mozilla-and-tor-join-calls-to…). I will never donate to them and I even considered quitting making Libre Software at the time. I couldn’t believe that our community has so many people who will spread lies about someone just to destroy their reputation.
What you said makes me think you don’t fully understand the type of work they do. The Free Software movement has nothing to do with Open Source. Free Software is about user freedom. The goal of the Free Software movement is to give people control over their own devices and make sure nobody can take that away from them.
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