Yes. I’m aware… it’s LITERALLY in the title of the post.
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Not defending the statement, of course, or saying this wasn’t a great time to go (he’s 66 anyway), but I’m a little surprised to see everybody jumping on the “old white male” explanation, when the man is thought by everybody to be on the Aspberger’s spectrum.
He spoke, for free, at a little professional organization I helped run, the Calgary Unix Users’ Group, about 10 years back, and expressed a strong preference to stay with somebody rather than a hotel; he hates seeing his speeches cause even secondary expenses. The guy who hosted confirmed to us all that he had any number of aspie behaviour signifiers and was, in general, a bit of a difficult guest, the kids were leery of him.
People are now learning to understand this and make allowances - and one of the things they’re famous for is popping out with remarkably tone-deaf interactions. I dunno how much of this latest stepping-in-it that explains, but I thought it needed a mention.
Also might need a mention that the now-nearly-lost book, Steven Levy’s “Hackers”, which goes back to 1959 MIT, stresses how the hacker boys, which Stallman joined in the 70s, idolized “Marvin” above all other professors. (And for good reason.) That Stallman felt he just had to speak up isn’t surprising; neither is his totally mangling the effort.
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Please. Plenty of people have aspberger’s who aren’t misogynstic assholes. He’s still an adult and can understand that sexual assault is a crime.
There is no need to “make allowances for” out right bigotry and advocating for sexual assault. None.
Many of us are well aware of his life and history.
So, because of that, he’s willing to excuse sexual assault? No. Just no. He needs to pull his head out of his ass and see the rest of us as human beings, not objects to please men.
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and by resigning, I guess he’s trying to take himself out of the picture-- use the GNU libraries because they are useful, not because you agree or disagree about politics.
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Yes, let’s be precise: Stallman is victim blaming (see above quote). According to Stallman, Minsky is innocent because of the way Virginia Giuffre “presented herself.” According to Stallman, it’s her fault. And if he thinks it’s her fault, then that is tantamount to Stallman believing that it isn’t Epstein’s fault. His defense of Minsky is therefore an implicit defense of Epstein.
Furthermore the other remarks Stallman has made about consent and rape suggest that he doesn’t believe power dynamics have anything to do with validity of consent, nor with acting morally responsible. While that is not a specific defense of Epstein, it is a general defense of a class of pervert to which Epstein belongs.
Please note, I appreciate calls for precision, and I do not think you are trying to defend the indefensible, but I do believe that Stallman was, in effect, defending Epstein.
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I think Stallman believed he was defending the memory of an old friend.
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When I was learning to cope with PTSD, it was someone with high functioning autism who told me that I am still responsible for my actions. This was meant as I am in control of my life, no one else, and also that if I broke the law or any rules I was the one who had to face the consequences.
Anyone who uses a neurological condition as an excuse for their shitty behaviour is just avoiding responsibility.
ETA: To be clear, there are some people who can’t take responsibility for their actions, but they are rarely in the position that RMS was in, and if they are then they got there when they could take responsibility.
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Gotta stick it to the libtard snowflakes! /s
Did you read a single comment I made, you know, where I said, I’ll continue to use FOSS, or did you assume that I was all of a sudden going to be using windows or macs now because of this, since I’m not a high and mighty tech nerd?
[ETA] My first comment in this thread was literally that I have no plans to abandon ship on FOSS…
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loved this pair of quotes
" Andrew Leonard of Salon called Barbrook & Cameron’s work “one of the most penetrating critiques of neo-conservative digital hypesterism yet published.”[3] Louis Rossetto, former editor and publisher of Wired magazine, called it an “anal retentive attachment to failed 19th century social and economic analysis”."
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Being part of an old boys club network does make it less surprising that he would act like he was part of an old boys club network.
Why anyone would think that’s not some kind of completely circular rationalization of his actual actions, escapes me though.
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The premise is whether Minsky can be accused of sexual assault, not whether he was an old amoral, who just did not question the woman’s motives or had the easy way out answer that the more than 50-years-younger woman (actually 56) was a paid prostitute gifted by his associate who lived this misogynistic rich-male-fantasy of living on a private island among young female servants.
Edit: I rephrase this trying to make it mor clear
The premise is whether Minsky can be accused of sexual assault.
He might be an old amoral, who either did not bother to question the woman’s motives or had the “easy-way-out” answer that the more than 50-years-younger woman (actually 56) was a paid prostitute gifted by his associate who lived this misogynistic rich-male-fantasy of living on a private island among young female servants.
Edit: But his ignorance or wishful-thinking does not matter anyway. She was 17, so it was sexual assault.
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Stallman wrote “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 don’t see the blame on the victim.
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For fuck’s sake. Epstein was a rapist. Even if children were able to give consent, we know from the allegations that there are plenty of Epstein’s victims who were most definitely not giving consent. He raped children, he raped adults, too. The argument that “it was consensual” totally falls apart on multiple levels.
So when someone uses the “it was consensual” argument to downplay it, they’re not just justifying pedophilia, they’re generally saying they don’t care about rape (of women and girls, anyways). And yeah, this goes for defenses of abusers around Epstein, too, even if they aren’t being accused of “rape rape” (as Whoopi would have it), because it’s part of the same dynamic of dismissal.
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Are you under the assumption that sexual assault is moral?
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Given the power imbalance in most of the business relationships that most people deal with daily, this view of “consent” isn’t surprising. You either take a shitty job or you don’t get food to eat. You let your phone provider track you and sell the data or you don’t get to use the telephone. Libertarians have no problem with this kind of “consent”. They only recognize one kind of coercion and that in very particular situations and involving very particular individuals.
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I dunno’, I think that it’s all good.
There will be some growing pains.
Men are finally learning to act like people,
myself included.
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Age of consent in Virgin Islands is 18, or sixteen if the other person is within five years. It is incumbent on the adult to ascertain the age of the other person, or you can easily end up having sex with someone younger than you perceive who lacks judgement to decide what’s best in terms of sexual relationships and end up causing great mental anguish. That’s why it’s called statutory rape, and not statutory immorality.
Having been forced to have sex with him, AFAIK, did cause her great mental anguish.
Had she been 18 or 19, probably wouldn’t have been much better in terms of the anguish, but legally, less, well, illegal. I’m guessing a professor who’s spent much of his professional life around young people would be better than average at guessing age, and at knowing she was close to the age of consent. I have worked with a lot of people who experienced sexual abuse at a young age, it is likely I am not completely objective about this. It does make my skin crawl, what the victims went through.
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There is still the whole coercion aspect of this, as well. There is a well known pipeline of young women, who are trafficked into prostitution, usually from Eastern Europe to western European countries or the US, who are there by “choice” but not really, given their lack of options. Epstein was very much a part of this trafficking, and this is what RMS is defending.
Consent is not so simple in these cases, because often these young women are here because of a lack of choices or options. This will continue as long as men see women as objects, instead of people.
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What? English is not my first language. Is my post really so misunderstandable?
I agreed with snigs that Minsky was amoral anyway to have sex with a woman that much younger (without knowledge whether she was minor and/or coerced ). But I’m not sure whether that’s enough to accuse Minsky that he sexual assaulted her.
Ok, it does look like Stallman went out of his way to make it seem like he isn’t defending Epstein.
I do think he’s still coming very close to blaming Virginia Giuffre by claiming Minsky is innocent. Why doesn’t Stallman believe her when she says Minsky assaulted her? Stallman is pulling his defense of Minsky out of his ass; Giuffre was there and she doesn’t think that she “presented herself … as entirely willing.”
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