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Comment by cmeacham98 | Hacker News Reader

Every[1] reputable[2] source[3] I[4] can[5] find[6] (literally just the top search results for "stallman resigns" that have any info about the reason) says that Stallman resigned over his comments defending a fellow computer scientist over his participation in the Epstein scandal. Do you have a reason to believe otherwise?

1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...

2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richa...

3: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard...

4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-ri...

5: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer...

6: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma...

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This is what he said which some idiotic people have taken for some kind of endorsement of sexual assault:

"The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” 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... The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing... We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates…"

If pontificating as to the actual perpetrator of a crime is somehow being complicit in that crime, then I think we may need to overhaul our system of policing and justice for yet another reason.

I think you and I must be reading that differently and I also think maybe you're forgetting the context of all this. The victims were as young as 11 years old and that was widely known (and surely obvious to the men involved); his comment therefore boils down to "is it REALLY statutory rape if she seems like she's OK with it?" and the answer is, of course, yes. Surely you can understand why people would see that as an endorsement of sexual assault, albeit perhaps coming from a place of absurd ignorance rather than malevolence?

First of all statutory rape is mostly a US phenomenon. In most other countries something either is a rape or isn't. Second, the term statutory rape is engineered to make people stop thinking and short circuit to "rape". Therefore it's toxic. There's nothing wrong with consensual sex between a 19 yo and a 17 yo. However, in the US they will be put on the rapist list and have their lifes ruined.

Your close-in-age example among people who are near the age of majority is quite morally different than an adult having sex with an 11-year-old. Some US states even have close-in-age exceptions to keep cases like your example legal, and the most common age of consent in the US for purposes of sex is 16, although certain states do have it at 18.

Most US states have “Romeo and Juliet” laws that specifically exempt cases like this where the two are close in age but one is past the line.

As others have pointed out, your specific example is usually covered by the legal system and a strawman in this case - Epstein's friends were middle-aged or old men (Minsky himself was in his seventies when he visited the island), so it's a totally different situation.

The concept of statutory rape recognises the difference between informed and uninformed consent. Children can be coerced or persuaded to consent to things they don't understand, and that are not in their best interests; that's why such laws exist.

I think the issue here is that you've misunderstood the politics of these kinds of "resignations".

In the public mind (even if not in reality) when someone "resigns" because of "past comments", they have either been given an ultimatum - "Jump or be pushed" - or they are experiencing intrusions into their personal life (or there is behaviour from the community that makes this person believe these intrusions are imminent)

My understanding at the time was that it was the former - there were murmurings of possible action against him, and whether it was to avoid harm to the FSF or risk the public damage to his reputation I have no idea, but he decided to gracefully step aside.

So yes, officially you may be correct - but especially with someone like RMS, it is highly unlikely that he just chose to resign because he previously made comments that people didn't like. RMS is very used to making controversial statements and weathering the storm, I find it unlikely (though not impossible) that this was just one storm he couldn't weather - and much more likely that he chose the path of least damage, to himself or his cause or his legacy.

Even if he really ""resigned"" rather than resigned, I think we both agree the cause was his comments about the Epstein situation, not a "MeToo/racism witch hunt" that I've seen no evidence to support.

I would have liked to personally drive a cattlerod through Epstein's brain, and yet I don't think there was anything wrong with Stallman's comments. How do you square that? Maybe you have not properly characterized the situation.

What "resignation" can mean in the context of such a situation for top high-level people might not be your typical resignation concept for e.g. employees, or even middle management.

For example ministers of most gov "resign" when they are told to do so, and yes they do resign, even when this is not from their own initiative, and even if they absolutely would not have done it if not told to. For other structures, you can have various kind of pressure playing a role.

We will probably never know the exact degree of pressure and the comprehensive list of who did it, the alliances, maybe the threats etc, and technically it absolutely was a resignation, but given RMS further actions in the GNU Project (that is: not resigning despite additional attempts to leverage his departure from the FSF to make him do likewise here too), I can only say I have my doubt on the total amount of practical freedom he had concerning the FSF part; and it is now probably not just him phoning back and saying: "oh by the way I changed my mind I want to come back", but more likely other "political" and/or alliances changes at the top letting that be even possible.

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