Please stop. He argued that pedophilia was okay.
He has since removed the post and stated that its more complex than he initially thought.
RMS did not (as the parent said) directly argue that pedophilia is ok, but I don't see much distinction between directly arguing that vs. linking to something that does argue that, and him saying he agrees with it.
[0] Not removed; https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...
There is a wide gap between being sceptical of a claim, and supporting its negation. Anyone who is applying critical thinking will occasionally be sceptical of things which are obviously correct. People were sceptical of the wheel. People have been sceptical of money since the creation of money. People were sceptical of soap. Many software engineers appear to still be sceptical of soap.
The age of consent in, eg, Brazil is 12 [0] so it isn't like the opening salvo of that paedophile party is so radical an idea as to be unthinkable. Stallman linking it is not an extremist position.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_of_co...
The article says what most people would call the age of consent in Brazil is 14.
[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html#28%20June%20...()
Furthermore Stallman isn't mocking them. He is making a claim about why people are acting the way they are and is probably serious in his claim. He's also probably wrong, but being wrong and mocking someone are different things.
The full quote you're referencing is about a long list of things including "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia". Most of that is disgusting, but not anyone's business. I vehemently disagree with the idea that prostitution should be illegal, especially if my money is being wasted prosecuting it. Talk about bailing out a sinking ship trying to stop prostitution. Stallman was also probably wrong on pedophilia - even then depending on what he meant, he didn't flesh that one out very much.
It isn't exactly a damning case against the man when there is one questionable (and vague) addition in an otherwise non-notable list midway down a very long page of random political opinions. Stuff like that being a major line of attack is why he is back on the board of the FSF - the attacks are over trivialities, especially compared to the remarkable success and prescience of his life's work.
Here is a comment I made two years ago pointing them all out as well as the context by which any reasonable person would consider them to be in support of pedophilia.
And while it is true that he made a single comment after the controversy retracting his beliefs, almost as if he were forced to do so to try to put out the PR trashfire that he started, that does not mean OP's comment misrepresents RMS's views. It is correct that RMS was a stalwart, passionate advocate for pedophilia for decades.
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> Stallman is a scientist
False
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> has an inquisitive mind, will question the world, the laws
Yeah, like pedophilia laws. This is not actually desirable in all cases.
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> Petty minds have never understood the language of great minds.
Insulting people won't make your point.
All of Stallman's claims to fame are software that other, more serious CS people wrote. All of them.
He would see stories in the media about pedophiles being arrested and would comment on those stories, expressing outrage that society considered sexual relationships between grown men and children to be a taboo or a crime. He believed it was possible for children to give consent for sexual relationships (a view that, to be fair, he retracted, and to be completely fair, he retracted in the least convincing way possible,) and that children should be trained for sexual relationships by adults.
And you've lost the plot - you made Stallman out to be a brilliant scholar, intellectual and world travelling bon-vivant, which just makes him look pathetic in hindsight given what happened to him. But the narrative is that he's a fragile, socially awkward autistic who barely understands basic human behavior and can't operate in the cold, cruel world, and who shouldn't be held accountable for his words or behavior. Isn't that right? Isn't that supposed to be where the cult of Stallman is circling the wagons?
Please try better with your next troll account.
And he didn't change his mind for over a decade, until he got in trouble for defending Marvin Minsky. I'm still not convinced his "updated opinion" would have happened without the scrutiny brought by the Epstein case.
This comment used to be on one of the main info pages of the site.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060821211348/https://www.stall...
Alternatively : “Have you stopped beating your wife?” A simple yes or no answer will suffice. :)
And now having looked into what he was actually accused of, of trying to imply that a sexual "assault" didn't necessarily happen, it's just strengthening my view that this "wokeness" is getting way out of hand in today's society.
As a society we deem young people too immature to make important decisions for themselves.
Nothing about calling him on his ridiculous views is related to "wokeness". One guy saying "hey maybe fucking kids isn't bad" is not in any way related to social injustice - society in general says that fucking kids is bad. Edit: unless you agree with his claims - then I guess you might see it as "social injustice".
This is just a weirdo saying weird shit, and then other people (you) trying to latch onto the new version of "don't blame me, back in my day it was OK".
The law? In which country? Who is correct? Is 18 mature but 17 isn't? Or 15? There is no hard coded rule/value, only arbitrary laws trying to generalize.
And the rest of your post is not even worth dissecting (even though it would be moderately amusing), you're clearly missing both what I and RMS are trying to say.
Now, homosexuality has been allowed everywhere in the US for a decade or so. It wouldn't have been if it was not appropriate to talk about it.
Richard Stallman was, for my understanding, just daring to ask questions, and debating over a sensitive topic, and he got blamed for it.
"So we see the term sexual assault and sexual harrassment used for example, when a guy asks a woman out on a date and she doesn’t find that an appealing invitation. Maybe he used poor judgement in asking her out, maybe he didn’t, but in any case that is NOT sexual assault or harassment. To call it that is to really demean the huge horror and violence and predation that does exist when you are talking about violent sexual assault. People use the term sexual assault / sexual harassment to refer to any comment about gender or sexuality issues that they disagree with or a joke that might not be in the best taste, again is that to be commended? No! But to condemn it and equate it with a violent sexual assault again is really denying and demeaning the actual suffering that people who are victims of sexual assault endure. It trivializes the serious infractions that are committed by people like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. So that is one point that he [Stallman] made that I think is very important that I strongly agree with." https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
The commented pedophilia was the allegated one of Marvin Minsky with a 17 yo girl, whose coercion (by Epstein) into sexual acts was maybe (probably, in the words of RMS) not made clear to Minsky (nor the age).
I precise, because 17 yo is a quite mature age for sexual activity (and more so for a girl than for a boy, because the sexual maturity of the body happens earlier), and the context of being presented by Epstein may make it not obvious that there was slavery.
So, even if I do not condone, I can see where the position of RMS comes from.
No, it was a comment in response to a group of Dutch pedophiles forming a political party with the stated goal of first reducing the age of consent for sex to 12, and eventually eliminating it altogether.
What Minsky was accused of is sex with someone post-pubescent but below the age of consent, which isn't an act indicative of pedophilia, so defending pedophilia to defend Minsky would be gratuitous in the same way that defending allowing the Voting Rights Act to expire by saying the practice of slavery in the US wasn't actually harmful to those enslaved would be.
I think an adult having sexual acts with a minor is not good because of the power imbalance. At the time of the act, the age of consent in that jurisdiction was 16 [0], so the person was not below the age of consent. It has since been changed to 18.
I’m not agreeing with having a low age of consent, but since that’s a legal term, I’m posting this just to help you correctly state since this whole episode seems to be fraught with the need for precision.
[0] Minsky was in USVI, I believe, at the time was 16, now 18. Also oddly, the typical age of consent in the US is 16. https://www.ageofconsent.net/world/united-states
Could you provide some source as to when the age of consent was changed from 16 to 18 in the US Virgin Island? That would be really illuminating! A link to the Act, an article, something? I haven't been able to find any.
[1] https://www.cwsdefense.com/blog/2020/january/state-lines-and...
Arguing for purposes of nerd accuracy (or whatever you call it) not based on any endorsement of circumventing age of consent laws or abusing individuals.
If someone is traveling for other purposes and does have sex, then the local age is applied, not federal.
The reasonable person test is sure to be resolved by court. But given their example, if someone is in Vegas and has sex with someone then the Nevada age of consent applies. But not if someone goes to Vegas with someone.
If I remember the details of the Minsky scenario, it’s that Minsky was visiting Epstein for some retreat and had (or was accused, I don’t remember) of sexing a 17year old (who was basically human trafficked and forced to sex people by Epstein). So that would seem like the purpose of travel was not sex, so local age of consent would apply. But a court could decide.
Of course, an admiral goal is to never be involved in any such scenario and I think a good heuristic is if one has to ask oneself if sex could be illegal, then one should not have that sex.
A witness testified Giuffre was on the plane with Minsky.
I did not know of this Dutch group, and I think their purpose is wrong.
This doesn't take the edge off, it makes it sound worse
As I read it, he is saying:
Original quote: "I am skeptical about <widely believed thing".
Added context: "because <the arguments people present to not actually address the issue in question>"
The added context moves him even further away from saying anything about pedophilia itself, and further into saying stuff about other people who are saying something about pedophilia.
But that's not it; he does seem to accept that children are forced into pedophilia in at least some instances, but somehow believes that those are few enough, and "consensual pedophilia" (which, no, that's not a thing) is common enough that we should just throw out age-of-consent laws (he links to an article about a Dutch group who wants to do just that).
But... no. He's just absolutely wrong here. And the swipe at allegedly-hysterical parents in the second half of the sentence just illustrate how ignorant he is.
I do not believe that any sane human being believes that pedophilia in the sense understood by himself/herself is OK in any circumstances.
Nevertheless there are millions or billions of humans who do not consider as pedophilia some acts that are considered pedophilia in USA, therefore they consider that those acts are OK, because they are not pedophilia.
For example, until recently few countries had such a high age of consent as USA.
Where I was born and I have grown, the age of consent was 14. So any consensual activity with someone e.g. 17-year old was considered OK and not pedophilia.
I have certainly never seen or heard any undesirable consequence of this lower age of consent, so I do not believe that there exists any proof that the belief of the US citizens, that consensual sexual relations with someone under the age of 18 are pedophilia, is right.
As another example, until recently, the consensual relations between an adolescent boy (i.e. older than 14) and a mature woman, unlike the opposite sex case, were never considered as pedophilia in most of the world, unlike in USA were there were many highly-publicized convictions in such cases.
I have still not seen any valid argument about why this American belief, that such relations must be considered pedophilia, is correct.
[1] https://stallman.org/notes/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_2019_(...
"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."
What was criticized by RMS was the overly broad generalizations of the harmfulness.
No, the context is the totality of RMS's behaviour over the years, as was made clear by a parent comment:
"A few final statements did bring him down, but he had been chipping at the foundation for years."
I don't know all of the accumulated missteps he did, so of course I will refrain from concluding. At least, the one about the over-generalization seems legit (with the example of a willing 17 yo).
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...