> He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong.
That alone makes him unfit to lead anything (among the many other things he's done). I do not want to hear his opinion on this subject.
That alone makes him unfit to lead anything (among the many other things he's done). I do not want to hear his opinion on this subject.
I don't think he did.
"False accusations -- real or imaginary, against me or against others -- especially anger me. I knew Minsky only distantly, but seeing him unjustly accused made me spring to his defense. I would have done it for anyone. Police brutality makes me angry, but when the cops lie about their victims afterwards, that false accusation is the ultimate outrage for me."
He was arguing that he was wrongfully accused of rape, because according to the testimony the sex never happened and nobody has been able to prove otherwise (an eyewitness swears that Minsky refused her).
He then added that even if the sex happened, and he had no doubt that it could be possible, the victim was sent to him to act as willing, so that would make it statutory rape, due to the age of the girl (unknown to Minsky at the time).
He was contesting the legal semantics, not the fact per se.
More importantly, he was talking about it on the mailing list of MIT in response to this
“deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims)”
In his own words Stallam said
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.
[...]
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
Hardly a defense, he was calling for better and more precise terms to describe what happened.
Something I would expect from someone of his age talking with young students, fueled by passion and rage
I’m writing this because I’m too angry to work. says Selam G. on her blog post.
Angry people that let their anger win never made the World a better place IMO.
Whatever is the truth, I think it takes courage to defend someone you know "only distantly" when you think he's been wrongfully accused (in your opinion) and to do it publicly even though that could cost you your career and you have nothing to gain.
Anyway Minsky's long been dead.
I would not work with someone who conversed like this in a professional setting. I'm not alone. It's wildly inappropriate at the very least. It's not his field and he's personally involved with the accused.
Yes, that's exactly it. Respectable people would have felt the same way about homosexuality 100 years ago as you do about sex involving minors.
Further, your characterization as "rape of a minor" is problematic. What's a minor? If one minor is involved, it automatically becomes rape? In much of Europe ages of consent are surprisingly low (14) to Americans, who tend to expect 18. What about a 17 year old and a 19 year old? Two 14 year olds? A 15 year old and a 20 year old? Is what's 100% wrong and prison-bound in the U.S. morally permissible in Spain because the laws are different?
Or maybe you have access to the Objective Moral Truths, such that this game is easy for you? If so, do share. It'd make all of this so much easier.
YES. This is how it works legally, because one person does not have the emotional and intellectual maturity to provide fully informed consent.
What about Japan where age of consent is 13?
Or Switzerland were the age of consent is 16, although if the age gap between parties is three years or less – for example between a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old – no charges can be brought
Even if we grant the latter is harmful and wrong, the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm.
Most countries have laws allowing relationships within an age difference of 3 or 4 or 5 years.
But some people want to blur the lines around consent claiming that a 15yo can consent to sex with some 45yo without the latter being held responsible.
> the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm
I never argued otherwise.
Just like for any other illegal behavior, legal systems are designed take into account the circumstance and impact of an event.
But this does not change the initial point about informed consent and rape being rape.
I think it does. "Rape being rape" relies on the word having a precise meaning where all things in the category share essential characteristics that allow you to make moral judgements based on category membership.
But "rape", like all heavily contested political words with high moral weight, is definitely not such a word. It has a canonical example value (unfortunately I feel I have to be specific here: a stranger dragging a fighting women into the bushes and sticking his penis in her until he cums), but has a range of meanings that varies fairly drastically across conversational contexts (e.g. we talking ethics/morality? Law? Descriptiveness?), geography (e.g. is drunk sex rape? Depends on jurisdiction. What counts as a "minor"?), time and even subcultures.