Richard Stallman Defends Epstein: Victims Were ‘Entirely Willing’ | Hacker News Reader

Richard Stallman Defends Epstein: Victims Were ‘Entirely Willing’

thedailybeast.com

11 pointsglfharris8 comments

I've not yet read Stallman's own writing on this matter. However, even if he believes that the age of consent should be lower; or if he believes some of the girls involved in the Epstein affair were actually willing participants -

That is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for his employer to consider terminating him.

Your employee advocating for child molesters is a big PR problem. Anyone running a business would be insane to keep that person employed.

If you think people shouldn’t be fired for sincere beliefs/speech, would you draw a line anywhere? Would you say Stallman should be fired for supporting the ideology of ISIS? What if he said he believes a 5 year old can be a sexual being and consent to sex?

Stallman did not defend Epstein. This is clickbait that misquotes him.

"Presented as entirely willing [to Minsky, a person who is not Epstein]" is not the same thing as saying "Epstein's victims were entirely willing."

That seems to be a distinction without a difference. Stallman did argue that Giuffre, a child victim of both Epstein and Minsky, was "willing".

Further, the articles presents much more damning, direct evidence. Ex:

> A deep dive into [Stallman's] writings shows this isn’t the first time Stallman has expressed such questionable views, however. He has written dozens of posts on his personal website in favor of legalizing pedophilia and child pornography for more than 15 years.

The gist of the headline is accurate: Stallman defended Epstein's behavior and went further to argue against laws protecting children from sexual abuse.

* Stallman did argue that Giuffre, a child victim of both Epstein and Minsky, was "willing".*

He absolutely did not. He speculated that Minsky believed she was willing, while she was in fact being coerced by Epstein. If true, that's a substantial difference.

Where did he say that Guiffre was willing? In the leaked email I saw, he said

"We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex...". What he's disputing is whether Marvin Minsky knew she was being coerced. There's also some usual RMS verbiage about how age o consent laws are arbitrary (which I don't think he's necessarily wrong about, it's just not a tactful thing to bring up)

I'm guessing Stallman won't be a visiting scientist at MIT much longer. People like him irritate me because now people with associate his pedophilia with the other stuff he has done. IMO if people want to be an activist they need to keep their nose clean.

"Clickbait" is generous. It's a flat-out lie bordering on libel.

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