So the lesson is: Don't selflessly give your work away for nothing out of idealism lest it improve the world in some fashion all out of proportion to the budget involved because, if you do, we shall surely expect your head on a pike at some point for some wholly unrelated personal gaff.
Rather than, you know, finding some humane, compassionate approach to dealing with the personal shortcomings of someone who has done so very much for the world.
No, the lesson is: don't treat women poorly, period. And if you happen to be a notable public figure and treat women poorly, it'll be that much worse for you. Giving your work away for free and being idealistic doesn't give you a pass on bad behavior.
I would agree that the severity of RMS's remarks regarding Epstein/Minsky is lower than the press is making it out to be. But Stallman's bad behavior stretches back decades, and this oddly-shaped, not-entirely-correct straw happened to finally break the camel's back. Good riddance.
The thing is, people told him about his behavior for years, and he never changed his ways. When conferences added that speakers were not supposed to flirt or give sexually suggestive comments to attendants, he circumvented that by asking women to go across the street and gave them his "pleasure cards" [1].
After almost 30 years of people giving him a pass and trying to make him understand, I am glad that he is getting some reckoning. His views are abhorrent and he gives no indication he is willing to change them.
He gave men his "pleasure card", too. [1]
He put in books he signed (for a man in this example.) [2]
The text is:
sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance
tender embraces
unusual sense of humor
[contact details]
There is perfectly benign interpretation of this expressing the things from which he derives pleasure. The most plausible and available interpretation of "pleasure card" is a dad joke level word play on "business card", especially when considering his role in de-commercializing software.
Talking to women isn't a crime. If he didn't take no for an answer or asked women out in inappropriate circumstances, that's a problem; but we have no accounts of him doing that. All we have here is an Nth hand story [3] in which he supposedly left a conference with a woman (singular, you made it plural.) and then gave her his card. If we choose to imagine there was romantic intent, a) there's no suggestion he coerced her into leaving and b) he took pains to respect the conference's CoC. Even this extremely reaching accusation has zero implication that he disrespected an individual's volition. Sage Sharp's indictment that he "skirted around the conference's CoC" is bizarre unless the real intent is that men like Stallman should be closeted heterosexuals.
There are numerous aspects to all this hand wringing about his cards and interest in meeting women that one has to choose to view through a prurient lens to make it sexual. Even then, it's only problematic to a puritanical world view in which it's wrong for people to be sexual beings and individuals are dispossessed of their self-determination.
Who says his head got lopped off? He was forced to resign his position at MIT, which seems fair given past bad behavior there (plus he really has no useful relevance there anyway), and he was forced to resign as head of the FSF, which is perhaps debatable, but not the end of the world.
This just happened. Let's check in with him in six months, and see if he's still breathing. If his experience is like many of the shitty men whose misbehavior has been unmasked as part of the MeToo movement, I'm sure he'll end up back on his feet at some point, whether he deserves to or not.
Because college is where women are driven out of computer science, by behavior from professors and peers. If you want to talk about fields where men are driven out (and they do exist: primary school teaching and nursing come to mind) go to a thread about those. But either way, derailing this discussion doesn't help.
The men interviewed for the paper disagreed that discrimination, social barriers, stereotypes, or other forms of injustice play a role. ("I don’t feel that there is any injustice… men who want to teach, are able to. It’s not like we’re being held down.")
It also points out that a greater number of men than women choose to go into primary education during college, which is the opposite of what we'd expect if they were being driven out by professors and peers.
"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 https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
--------------------------
"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) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party
--------------------------
" 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. "
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013) https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(Pedophilia
Yes, precisely this. It's a controversial opinion, certainly that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but it also seems to be a considered one. Notably absent from posts where people pasting these quotes is any argument against the claims made by RMS. We are apparently meant to assume he is both wrong and malevolent merely for holding an opinion we find uncomfortable.
Who owns a corpse? If the former inhabitant of the then-living body had designated a particular heir via a will or similar legal instrument, one might acquire consent from that heir?
Yes. That's that's my point. You seem to think that I'm contradicting myself. Either I'm expressing myself badly or you are misunderstanding my argument.
You write this like it's an insult, but with a dozen stuff and million dollar budget he's done more for the world than most of us could do with 1000 staff and a billion dollar budget.
I wrote it as a poke at the parent poster who suggested that top leaders should expect to be held to different standards than the rest of us when speaking of a man who enjoyed none of the perks of being a "top leader" while contributing a lot.
