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Comment by ryan_lane | Hacker News Reader

Find a few women who've met RMS and ask them about their experience. For years I've been hearing stories from women about RMS that paint a pretty clear picture, and if you look on twitter, there's a number of threads about his abusive behavior towards women. One example: people kept plants around because he hates plants and that made it less likely he'd come around to harass them.

He's discussed his views on pedophilia for a very long time, and this was just the latest on that. It's finally the last straw that was able to bring enough attention on him for action to be taken. It should have been taken decades ago.

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> He's discussed his views on pedophilia for a very long time, and this was just the latest on that

Yes, he has.

This is his view as of Friday[0]:

> Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.

> Through personal conversations in recent years, 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.

Can you help me understand what's wrong with that view?

[0] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

Maybe I'm missing something, but if I had made such a comment on a public platform and any of my previous employers learned of it, I could 100% expect to be terminated if it came to light. Whether his final philosophical view on the matter is morally correct or not is not the focus here. I can completely understand why a foundation would not want a man who apparently had to be talked into understanding why sex with a child is wrong to be its very visible leader.

You're talking about a role that has to inspire by example, someone responsible for advocating for your institution publicly, recruiting supporters, and so on. No one who has a history of making incredibly suspect comments about children and sex should expect to stay in such a role.

Incidents like this are NOT about setting up an ethics court and decide the morality or immorality of the person's views. They're about an organization waking up one morning and saying, You know what, we really would rather not have someone with a history of bizarre pro-pedophilic comments as our leader. For god's sake, how would you feel if your CEO had a personal web page with a history of arguing for lower age of consent laws? At a certain point people just don't want to come 'work for' such a person.

And really, who among us would be surprised to wake up and find "RMS indicted on child porn charges" on the front page news? People with normal views on child sex topics tend not to be the ones out there talking about 'ephebophilia' and "now I'm no psychiatrist, but here's my argument for why children actually CAN consent to sex with adults." I'm not saying I'm convinced he's a pedophile, or even that I believe him to maybe be one. It's just not a revelation that would shock me.

The cornerstone of modern justice system is that people can get fixed. Shall we cancel that and roll it back to slip-once-criminal-forever mob justice?

There is a huge difference between an organization saying they no longer want you as their leader and a government trying and imprisoning someone.

I don't know, would you be reassured when a 66 year old man says "Contrary to what I've written on the subject, I have recently learned that having sex with children is wrong"?

People can be fixed. But that doesn't mean that people will still be comfortable with them heading up their ideological non-profit, or that it's unreasonable to question whether or not he is fixed.

And even if he is fixed on the matter of his views on pedophilia, we still have all his creepy behavior toward women to contend with.

What's the motive for people to get fixed then?

The social contract is you try to fix yourself up, society looks the other way on your old acts.

Of course, on some crimes it makes sense to put some limits directly for directly related stuff. E.g. not employing ex-child-rapists in schools.

But shunning people for their opinion, not even what they acted on, in an unrelated field... What's the incentive in getting in line with the society then?

You're joking, right? A 66 year old man just managed to learn last week that having sex with a literal prepubescent child is harmful for the child?

And this guy has been the leader and public face of the FOSS movement for decades? And everyone was fine with his views on sex with children? I had no idea, truly incredible.

The fact that he held the view that "voluntary pedophilia" is harmless for over 10 years, and only publicly recanted during this shitstorm is... not a good look, to say the least.

> One example: people kept plants around because he hates plants and that made it less likely he'd come around to harass them.

Try and find a primary source for that "fact". You are just repeating black rumours, which signals that you have no credibility.

Source: https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265

That's a rumour - starsandrobots heard it.

Everything you said is conjecture. This is one of the most baseless and accusatory comments I've read here. It's so low effort and it's immediately transparent that you just don't like the guy.

> Hates plants?

From what I read, he loved to stick them up his nose in front of people. I believe he admits to it on his website.

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