Remove Richard Stallman
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I get his point that using the term "assault" is probably incorrect, though it may be the correct term in some jurisdictions. The (usually unofficial) term I'd use is "statutory rape", which covers any nonforcible sexual activity between an adult and a minor (roughly paraphrased from Wikipedia [1]). So, using the term "assault" is technically incorrect in some jurisdictions, and that seems to be the point he was trying to make.
That being said, it's not an important point to make at all, and it is absolutely valid to see it as completely insensitive and inappropriate for someone in his position. Stallman does this type of thing a lot, and perhaps it's time to have him take a less public role and pass the mantel to someone who is willing to follow the ever changing rules of considerate speech. Speaking with tact doesn't limit the ability for the FSF to spread its message; to the contrary, it can only help.
I feel both sides here are in the wrong. The author made a big deal over what I (and likely many others) see as another of Stallman's eccentric rants, but then again, we probably shouldn't continue giving him a pass just because of his contributions. Maybe he needs to talk to whomever Linus Torvalds spoke with about being more careful with public speech. I appreciate the edit the author made about being a bit hasty, and I'd also appreciate something similar from Stallman about his choice of arguments to involve himself in.
And that's the type of hair splitting that RMS does, and he needs to be more careful about it. He's not wrong in what he said, but he could be wrong for saying it.
> An assault is the act of inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. > > ... > > Traditionally, common law legal systems had separate definitions for assault and battery. When this distinction is observed, battery refers to the actual bodily contact, whereas assault refers to a credible threat or attempt to cause battery.
So, to prove assault, you need to prove that the victim didn't want the physical contact.
Rape usually involves assault (in fact, it's defined as a type of "sexual assault"), but statutory rape is a bit different because it essentially says that an individual cannot consent under a certain age and is defined as not involving force. So, I think it's fair to say that statutory rape is a special case of rape that doesn't involve assault. Some jurisdictions use the term "assault" to describe statutory rape as well, but I personally think that's unhelpful because we want statutory rape to include cases where the victim made every indication that they wanted the encounter (they're below the age of consent, after all), so using the term assault just confuses the term.
And that brings us to force. A rape can happen where physical force isn't involved, but it can involve other types of force, like intimidation or other types of manipulation (e.g. encouraging use of drugs to reduce inhibitions). I think nonphysical assault still involves force at some level (again, maybe not physical force), so I would say rape requires force.
If you're going to claim that someone is guilty of assault, I think you need to prove some use of force, physical or otherwise. I believe that statutory rape does not necessarily involve assault, at least not in the sense that we use it for people over the age of consent. Sex with someone under the age of consent may be considered rape even if the exact same set of circumstances above the age of consent wouldn't be treated as such. Therefore I don't think we can automatically assume assault from a statutory rape case.
A real dictionary (Chambers) says this:
Assault:
1) violent physical or verbal attack
2) any act that causes someone to feel physically threatened, which is considered reckless or intentional, and which need not necessarily involve any physical violence
3) rape or attempted rape
Stallman is attempting to use human language like a programming language, but it does not work like that. That's not a problem with humans or other people: it's a deficit that Stallman has. Stallman is also claiming to ignore the legal definitions of technical words, while relying on those legal definitions when they support his points. This is an inconsistency in his argument.
Wikipedia has a strong Americo-centric world view and that sucks when we're discussing rape because in some states an act doesn't count as rape unless the victim uses physical force to fight off an attacker. That's a pretty terrible definition.
True, and that's one of many reasons why it's necessary to be precise. Otherwise it leads to confusion and uncertainty, just because of vague definitions.
It's not the same, or else they would use the same terms, do you agree?
Thing is, definition of crimes are better left to experts, I.E. Lawyers. It's not an easy task in any way as you can see.
> He's not wrong in what he said, but he could be wrong for saying it.
You can never be wrong by speaking the truth. And this is what RMS did.
According to Wikipedia, sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will.
Minors arguably cannot give consent. A lack of consent is all that is needed to meet this definition. It doesn't matter that Epstein enslaved her first. Unless Stallman wants to argue that Minsky had no idea she was under age, his argument is dead in the water.
I obviously can't speak for Stallman, but I don't think he was trying to make the case that the guy was innocent, I think he was arguing that what he did may be okay in other jurisdictions and that it isn't technically assault. That's it.
Stallman is usually very precise in his speech and doesn't go out of his way to counter potential misunderstandings of what says. I see that as a problem, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.
What makes you think that? For all we know he might have thought that said girl was 18 or 25. But even if he thought that she was a 17 years old prostitute I can't see how it would be rape.
> Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
(not that I think the author was even technically wrong to use the word "assaulting" for suspected statutory rape)
“I think it is morally absurd to define “rape” in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”
He was responding to a student, who said "Giuffre was 17 at the time, this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands." He was addressing her specific point. He brought up the 17-18 thing because the student herself specified Giuffre's age as the condition of her being raped.
Like, if the student had said "Giuffre was raped because she was coerced against her will," that'd be different. But you can't yourself bring up the technical definition of rape to make your point, then get mad when other people point out that the technical definition makes no sense. If what you really want say is that rape is wrong because it's wrong, just say that!
Of course, the author cares about none of this, because what Stallman said was "problematic." What does that even mean, by the way? This whole post consists of the author repeatedly asserting that various things Stallman said were problematic without explaining why.
This brings me to my next point. Here's an article about "tact filters," a term describing how different people deal with the issue of tact:
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
People like Stallman don't get offended, so they assume other people won't either. People who do get offended try hard not to offend others, and expect the same courtesy. These two groups of people have difficulty getting along.
Neither point of view is invalid, in the sense that both sides get along extremely well with other people who are like them. But people with outward tact filters happen to be the majority, so Stallman gets seen as the bad guy. But I could imagine an alternative universe where inward-tact-filter nerds were the majority, and people like this author were expected to e.g. have the mental resilience to not let other people's words hijack her emotions.
So I guess I'm offended that people like Stallman are made to feel bad for being who they are, just because they're a minority.
Richard Stallman is not a minority, either at MIT or in programming culture.
If the problem is that his viewpoint is morally reprehensible, why not just say that, and let's hear some arguments in that direction?
I had no problem parsing that subtext from the article. I don't know why you didn't, maybe you just skimmed it?
What is shocking about Stallman's email is he apparently thinks it would absolve Minsky of guilt to simply assume that Virginia Roberts "willingly presented herself" to him for sex. But this is of course nonsense -- it's the exact set of conditions under which sex is forced on many trafficked victims who are handed off by some procurer. And of course no one really believes that Minsky didn't know the score; many try to defend him by saying, "but he was disturbed by her offer and didn't accept it!" That he continued to associate with Epstein after that, rather than immediately leave or offer help to Roberts and Epstein's other victims, says all there is to day about Minsky's character which Stallman feels so compelled to defend.
"Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism."
"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."
He's not wrong that "sexual assault" is used ambiguously to describe a wide range of behaviors, some worse than others. If a guy does something that's 7/10 bad, and everyone's saying it's 9/10 bad, what's the right way to point out that it was only 7/10 bad?
This assertion is patently wrong. Discussions whether an homicide constitutes murder (1st degree or felony) or manslaughter (voluntary or not) are plentiful.
He is responding to say that this rape of children was not rape and it was not assault and it was not so bad after all.
Of course people are going to be upset if he interjects a "well, actually" to defend a child rapist.
What? Quoting Stallman himself at https://stallman.org/notes/2010-jan-apr.html :
"I have often felt offended by criticism of my views, but people have a right to criticize and even insult ideas they disagree with, so I learned to live with it and Muslims must learn it too. Nothing that people do or say is entitled to immunity from criticism — not even the Church of Emacs."
Also:
"The idea of charging people to use a toilet offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet." - https://stallman.org/notes/2017-mar-jun.html
"I consider this just as offensive as barring women from seeing a film would be, or barring them from driving their children to school." - https://stallman.org/notes/2015-mar-jun.html
"I don't object to the existence of the song "God Bless America" although I find it insipid, and I love Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame despite its explicitly Catholic text and purpose--but I would take offense at the use of either one in an official context which implies government endorsement of the statements about religion." - https://stallman.org/notes/archive-2002.html
Or, he was offended when I refused to say "GNU/Linux".
Since he certainly does get offended, the rest of your comment doesn't seem to apply.
Suppose Stallman suddenly wanted to optimize himself to offend the author of this post as little as possible. Having a more correct point of view would hardly move his metrics. Having more tact would, drastically. That was my point in bringing up the tact article.
You're entirely right; everyone gets offended by something. I should've been more precise.
Okay, then I will.
Stallman states incorrectly that "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."
That is incorrect because "sexual assault", according to US law, means "any nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal, or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent." - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/12291#a_27 (34 U.S. Code § 12291 (29)).
While the military has a different set of laws, I'll point to https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/920 as an example, because it's clear and easy to find:
(b)Sexual Assault.—Any person subject to this chapter who—
(1) commits a sexual act upon another person by—
(A) threatening or placing that other person in fear;
(B) making a fraudulent representation that the sexual
act serves a professional purpose; or
(C) inducing a belief by any artifice, pretense, or
concealment that the person is another person
Similarly (again, this is from military law, but similar principles apply to civilians)
(2) commits a sexual act upon another person—
(A) without the consent of the other person; or
(B) when the person knows or reasonably should
know that the other person is asleep, unconscious,
or otherwise unaware that the sexual act is occurring;
In all of these, the key aspect is "consent", or rather, the lack of consent.
Many of Selam G.'s arguments are based on the legal concept of consent. For examples:
> then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
The law is that an enslaved child cannot consent to sex in this way, so cannot be regarded as being "entirely willing."
(As another example, an 11 year old student may be "entirely willing" to have sex with his/her 35 year old teacher - it's still illegal as the presumption is that proper consent cannot exist at that age and power relationship.)
Stallman attempts to justify this as: “I think it is morally absurd to define “rape” in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”
As the topic is an accusation of sexual assault, which is a legal definition, and which seems to be correctly applied for this case, it is irrelevant to bring up a personal view that the law is wrong.
More problematic, we all know that hard age numbers like this have problems. What magic is there that I can buy beer in Canada at 18 but cross the border it's a problem?
But age is an attempt to make the law clear. If 17 is fine, why not 16? 13? 8? 2? Make it too young, and there cannot be consent.
Since Stallman doesn't seem to accept that concept of consent, can we assume that if Prof. X of MIT had sex with an "entirely willing" 5 year old, it would have been okay according to his morals?
I hope not! But the problematic part is Stallman never presents a valid argument why sexual assault is the wrong term, and the best reading I can make of his views is that he doesn't understand consent. Which is indeed problematic.
As an example, if someone notifies him that FSF organizer Foo sexually assaulted Bar by having sex with Bar while Bar was drunk and asleep, and who did not previously give consent, would Stallman respond that that wasn't assault, and not address the actual issue?
Stallman's defense of Minsky was that she appeared "entirely willing" to Minsky, probably on the orders of Epstein. He does not say at any point that she was "entirely willing" - only that Minsky was probably ignorant of the fact. Going from all the previously observed good character of Minsky to judge that probability is reasonable.
>As the topic is an accusation of sexual assault, which is a legal definition, and which seems to be correctly applied for this case, it is irrelevant to bring up a personal view that the law is wrong.
Why? He is making direct reference to the fact he thinks the law is problematic. He thinks it's morally absurd. It is very likely that you, too, have issues with the way certain laws are defined.
>Since Stallman doesn't seem to accept that concept of consent, can we assume that if Prof. X of MIT had sex with an "entirely willing" 5 year old, it would have been okay according to his morals?
No, because he specifically mentions the issue of being "whether the victim was 18 years old or 17" - at the very most you can draw from this that he views 17 years old as a more appropriate age of consent. Nowhere is he embarking on a "slippery slope" or "where do you draw the line?" or a gradient/heap of sand fallacy.
>by having sex with Bar while Bar was drunk and asleep, and who did not previously give consent, would Stallman respond that that wasn't assault, and not address the actual issue
Perhaps he would, though he would also most likely view it as a heinous act, just as he views the abuse of minors to be a heinous act.
Note that he only thinks that after people spoke to him. He hasn't always held this view.
I don't need to consult theology to be skeptical of God, I don't need to consult Marx to be a skeptic of capitalism's exploitation, etc. Nobody had hitherto presented him with an argument he found sufficiently compelling. I can probably pick any topic outside of my field of knowledge (or yours) which is well established within the field but we are skeptical of, simply because we haven't heard the argument.
Lets say you publish somewhere saying "I am skeptical that Emacs is the best editor." Are you skeptical that Emacs is the best editor? That requires work. You haven't bothered to look for any research; you haven't talked to users of Emacs; you haven't spoken to people who work with Emacs. You don't know what you're talking about. The issue here isn't that he published it (and you didn't publish your skepticism about Emacs). The issue here is being skeptical whether you express that to others or not. With the amount of things Stallman comments on, it's unreasonable to expect him to research every topic he's skeptical of.
I don't know. Stallman doesn't address it. Hence, if he's really trying to change minds, he's doing a bad job of it. If he researched the issue - which I don't think he did - he would have known to cover issues like this before using 'appeared "entirely willing"', and qualified things appropriately.
> Why?
Because others have the personal view that it's sexual assault.
It's a very weak argument to say they are wrong, based on your views, when they can say that you are wrong based on their views.
The thing is, the current law backs their interpretation that this is sexual assault, or at the very least would be some some jurisdictions.
Hence, his personal view that it's absolutely unreasonable is bogus.
> at the very most you can draw from this
Correct. The point is, he doesn't offer any replacement viewpoint, other than "the current law is wrong." Therefore, it's very easy to interpret his statement as promoting sex with minors.
Which is what happened.
Anyone with a basic understanding of the issue would know this - to start with, in trying to understand why those laws exist in the first place, before making a claim that they are immoral. Then would need to show how the existing laws are actually immoral.
Stallman did not do that.
> Perhaps he would
The FSF is small enough that it doesn't fall under federal EEOC training requirements.
Does it fall under MA ones? Who is responsible for FSF EEOC training? Who can reprimand Stallman for violating EEOC laws regarding sexual harassment?
Has he had EEOC training? How often? Does he have enough understanding to be able to follow the relevant law, even if it doesn't believe it to be correct?
> just as he views the abuse of minors to be a heinous act
Sure. Now, what does he consider to be "abuse of minors"? Because apparently his definition doesn't include what the US VI law would now define as second degree rape.
As an example to show what I mean about the importance of knowing what "abuse" means, I could say that spousal abuse is wrong, yet reject the idea that raping my spouse is possible. The logic, which once held in the US, was that the wife's marriage contract was also consent to sex any time the wife wanted.
Or, "child abuse" is bad, but many in the US think that spanking a child is not abuse - though it is illegal in some countries.
Hence why it's useless to say that "abuse is bad" without knowing what counts as abuse.
I agree, and after the media started to gather around his comments, he regretted that he did such a poor job of communicating.
>It's a very weak argument to say they are wrong, based on your views, when they can say that you are wrong based on their views.
Firstly, it is not as "absolute" as you make it sound. Nowhere does he actually use that word or imply that his moral judgements are handed down from heaven. He explicitly says "I think" - and as a moral claim, it only requires as much justification as our other moral claims, which all reduce to "ought", which cannot be gained from an "is". Your moral view is that all humans are of equal moral worth, your view is that murder is wrong, etc. - all of these reduce to matters of opinion which are difficult if not impossible to justify absolutely. Stallman, for one, does not appear to be a moral realist. If Stallman had proclaimed that he was actually a subscriber to the doctrine of moral error theory (perhaps even with good reason, say he read a paper on the doctrine which he found convincing), he wouldn't have to justify "That's morally wrong" any more than he'd have to justify "I don't like bananas".
>Correct. The point is, he doesn't offer any replacement viewpoint, other than "the current law is wrong." Therefore, it's very easy to interpret his statement as promoting sex with minors.
His statement is more than that, it claims (a) that the law is wrong (again from his point of view) that it is of consequence if the victim is 17 or 18, (b) that the law (perhaps globally) is wrong that whether this act in particular is permissible depends on the specific location of the act. Whatever misunderstanding comes about from these two points is only from reading more into what he said than what he actually expressed, a chain of inferences that build up until someone on HN can say that by the same logic he'd be OK with the rape of a five year old.
>Then would need to show how the existing laws are actually immoral.
It's immoral according to his system of morality. You don't have to listen to it, and he doesn't have to listen to yours. The law is a different matter.
>Now, what does he consider to be "abuse of minors"?
I did not put that part in quotes myself because he never uses that term, even so, I apologize for the misattribution on my part. He says,
"Since then, through personal conversations, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
That is to say, he thinks that "sex with a child" can harm them psychologically, and as such, "adults should not do that". Granted, this is not a comment on the law (there are many things we should not do which are not illegal), but they are comments on his moral system (by the use of "should" in this apparently non-instrumental sense).
Stallman wrote: "I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
How is "absolutely wrong" not a use of "absolute"?
You'll note that I have the context correct too.
> The thing is, the current law backs their interpretation that this is sexual assault, or at the very least would be some some jurisdictions.
> Hence, his personal view that it's absolutely unreasonable is bogus.
You misread Stallman, and misread me, which makes it hard to have any sort of discussion.
>Why? He is making direct reference to the fact he thinks the law is problematic. He thinks it's morally absurd. It is very likely that you, too, have issues with the way certain laws are defined.
The context of this is that he thinks there is a moral problem with someone being able to provide sex without it being classified as assault at 18 but not at 17. We are talking about a moral principle here. You responded to this point (by quoting me asking "Why?") with:
>Hence, his personal view that it's absolutely unreasonable is bogus.
I believe we're still talking about a moral principle when you introduce the word "absolutely". My response to that, in turn, was:
>Firstly, it is not as "absolute" as you make it sound. Nowhere does he actually use that word or imply that his moral judgements are handed down from heaven. He explicitly says "I think" - and as a moral claim, it only requires as much justification as our other moral claims, which all reduce to "ought", which cannot be gained from an "is".
The whole time the usage of the word "absolute" in the way I referred to it in my last quote has been in reference to what Stallman thinks of morality, and my claim is that he does not consider it "absolutely immoral" or anything else "absolute". This is because he prefaces it with "I think", but also because he just doesn't use that word when speaking about morality. The fact he uses the word in another context, namely the notion of accusation inflation, has nothing to do with his metaethics.
His email had:
> 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 term "sexual assault" is no more vague and slippery than "copyright infringement." Sure, there are edge cases, but "sexual assault" in general means "any nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal, or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent". https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/12291#a_27 (34 U.S. Code § 12291 (29)).
Is that so hard to understand?
This isn't a moral question, this is a legal definition.
Why it is not reasonable, under the generally understood US legal definition, to use the phrase "sexual assault" with sex between a 73-year old man and a woman under the age of consent?
Why is it not reasonable, under the generally understood US legal definition, to use the phrase "sexual assault" when describing sex with a sex slave who is not meaningfully able to give consent?
He may not consider the age-of-consent laws to be morally justifiable. That's all well and good. I'm not arguing that point, which is the one you bring up.
But it doesn't change the fact that "sexual assault" is the correct legal term here, so his personal beliefs don't matter.
He then goes on to write:
> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.
There are two points here. Stallman could have criticized the original email for using the term 'assaulting' (which can mean physical assault), instead of the correct legal term "sexual assault". He did not.
Instead, he coupled the physical aspect of "assaulting" with "sexual assault" and used that to construct his own definition of what sexual assault means - one which is different from the generally understood US legal definition.
That he may not like the term - great. He doesn't like "intellectual property" because he doesn't think copyright, patents, and trademark should be thought of the same as physical "property". I can understand that argument. But here he's not arguing like he even knows what the current widely-accepted legal term means, before wanting to tear it down.
I've even (elsewhere in these comments) pointed to the US military law, at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/920 as an example of a place in US law which distinguishes between 'rape' and 'sexual assault (not all jurisdictions do that). Go to it and see that it's rape which has the association with force or violence:
(a)Rape.—Any person subject to this chapter who commits a sexual act
upon another person by—
(1) using unlawful force against that other person;
(2) using force causing or likely to cause death or grievous bodily
harm to any person;
(3) threatening or placing that other person in fear that any person
will be subjected to death, grievous bodily harm, or kidnapping,
and *sexual assault* which does not.
..
(b)Sexual Assault.—Any person subject to this chapter who—
...
(2) commits a sexual act upon another person—
(A) without the consent of the other person; or
He knows a bunch of lawyers - why didn't he do his homework first, and talk with them?
You point to his moral views on rape, which indeed is prefaced with "I think". But none of my argument has anything to do with his views on rape.
Instead, I'm criticizing:
> I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
Quoting the Big Libowski - 'That's just like, your opinion, man'.
It's such a low grade opinion, farcically wrong given the people who are literally accused, in the legal system, of sexual assault, that it reveals something deeply wrong with Stallman's understanding of the entire topic. Here's one lawsuit accusing sexual assault - https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.557135... .
If it really wants to tear down and replace the legal framework concerning sexual assault, he shot himself in both feet with his effort.
Oh, dear
I find it curious that she talks about this as if it is a bad thing. The most sensible thing is to wait until conviction to pass judgement. Why is that whiney?
This is the most sensible thing if you're a juror on a case. Otherwise, judgment may be called for long before a trial even starts, particularly when it comes to dead men (or participants in an elite criminal network which operates above the law) who will never even be brought to trial.
No, it's the most sensible thing in each and every single case, whether you're a juror or just someone reading the news.
Let the pitchforks remain in the past, and let's enjoy the benefits of living in a civilized society where rule of law and demonstration of guilt is what dictates punishment.
Everything else is the equivalent to grasping at pitchforks.
This is a poor premise.
I give it a pass because RMS was probably in a similar pique when he sent his ridiculous email.
But elevating this conversation (and actually ditching RMS) will require calm.
I didn't read entirely through the whole thing. It's not my cup of tea.
I don't know how we get to a better place, but attempts to dissect a piece written by a woman who is extremely upset, so upset she can't function and feels compelled to publicly vent, is probably not it.
His belief that children can give valid consent for sexual acts and his "skepticism" of "the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children" has been documented and well known for years, no one cares.
If anything, his pro-pedophilia views have probably helped normalize a general lack of concern over pedophilia and sexual abuse in programming and internet culture, and might have contributed to the acceptance of people like Epstein at MIT.
He's Richard Stallman after all... if he thinks sexual assault isn't a big deal, it's probably isn't, right?
401kguy 18 hours ago [dead] [-]
> No one is going to remove Richard Stallman.
This comment sure did not age well.
> RMS’s mere presence on the scene in this way has served to make it harder to deal with other cases of bad leaders’ bad behavior.
which echoes what you said:
> his pro-pedophilia views have probably helped normalize a general lack of concern over pedophilia and sexual abuse in programming and internet culture