Good job smearing mud without saying anything i guess. Did stallman say something since he was invited that was particularly noticeable? if not then these organizers don't know what they 're doing and this reflects bad on them
>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.
Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy). I totally get why it wouldn't fit the values of a university
He said he didn’t understand the issue and talking to abuse survivors helped him understand it better, and that led to him changing his view. To me, that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others. Labelling it as “back-pedalling” seems to me to be needlessly uncharitable to him
It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is often ignorant of mainstream trends, or feels no motivation to care about them. His former position on this was actually reasonably mainstream on the Left in the 60s/70s, so in itself far from unusual for someone of his vintage, what was unusual was it took him so long to abandon it (or at least learn to shut up about it). But, if you try to understand him, rational explanations for it taking him that long may occur to you
I’ve never seen any evidence he has any actual sexual interest in children - just that children are somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to him. Before I became a father, children were somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to me too. I think that is a large part of why the wrongness of his former view was not obvious to him in the way it is to many others
Yes, he rarely changes his mind-but, all evidence I’ve seen is that if he says he’s changed his mind about something, then he indeed has. I don’t see any good reason to doubt him on that-he’s the kind of person who speaks their mind (maybe even one of those people with a “poor filter”), I’ve seen zero evidence he’s someone who tries to hide their true views
> But in any case my point was mostly that he actually made pretty controversial statements at some point, and it's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the statement in the article was just baseless smearing and that we won't know which statements are against their values.
Why does it matter what his past statements were if he has made clear he no longer agrees with them?
Saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their current views on unrelated topics - I feel uncomfortable about it, but in some cases it may be defensible. But saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their past views which they’ve since renounced on an unrelated topic - how is that defensible? “Baseless” seems an entirely apt description for it.
There are still people in 2020 that get surprised when people talk about assault which does not involve coercion. Sweden as an example updated their laws in 2018 to change from a coercion based definition to a consent based definition (Stallman post was in 2003).
Stallman changed his mind in 2019, by highlighting that harm can exist even without coercion.
What I recall before they changed the law, people did occasionally discussed the word definition of coercion when it came to sexual assault. It was one of the major reason why they changed it to a consent based definition. I don't know however if the US academic word had similar discussion, but I wouldn't be surprised.
It was 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21092184
Stallman is also not known as someone who can be coerced to say he believes something that he doesn't believe in.
Stallman’s ideas on open source are well thought out, and vigorously defended for decades.
His terrible ideas are neither well thought out, nor extensively defended.
It's an awkward journey to have in public. I'll step off the gangway with a personal example: I did not know much about abortion a few years ago. I had misguided assumptions and changed (or more accurately, developed any) views as I learned. It would have been totally inappropriate for me to express scepticism about anything in any direction publicly before having done the research. A better answer is "I don't know."
Someone needs to invent a time machine, so that I can go back and slap myself before each foot-in-mouth incident.
No he said he was skeptical that pedophilia harms children. The quote wasn't "say, anyone know does this pedophilia thing actually harms children?" He did more than that: He imputes claims of harm to parents not wanting to admit their kids are "maturing". Now his position his quite hard to distinguish from someone who fully supports pedophilia. If they were in his position, I would expect them to go this well-trodden route: Question the harm; accuse opponents of being puritanical; claim it's already happening anyway.
I believe the poster you are replying to was referring to what Stallman said at a later date, recanting his "skepticism" because he "didn't understand the issue" at the time he made that comment.
> It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is often ignorant of mainstream trends, or feels no motivation to care about them.
That's an absurd take on this. He's not updating his stance on over easy eggs, or beer preference (not as in free, but IPA vs porter), this is about children. And "different place in society" doesn't excuse it either, this isn't knowing the current memes or bands. This is simple fundamental logic, common sense, etc.
Before I had kids, it was still completely and utterly obvious that sex with kids is wrong. Yes, there's a grey area around age of consent + one year older or whatever, but that is entirely not applicable to his comments, Epstein, etc. Trying to justify Epstein is just wrong.
Obama once said that gay marriage is wrong [0]. I have always thought gay marriage is correct and a fundamental right. Does that mean that Obama can never be redeemed for his earlier incorrect thoughts and beliefs. Is he doomed to be judged forever based on his egregious historical beliefs?
What do you think someone needs to do for redemption?
[0] “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” on not supporting gay marriage but only civil unions https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-...
And this was decades ago. Maybe he changed his mind after people responded to his enquiry? Anyway, it doesn't seem relevent to this recent cancellation.
It's germane to his current persona because of his statements that what Minsky supposedly did does not constitute assault because he was deceived about the victim's age. It was taken as "here we go again, Stallman is defending chomos again."
Maybe it was ok on the internet back then, but 2006 isn't that far away. So we can't even say that the cultural context was different. I'm not saying he lied when he said that it just took someone to talk him through it... But it sure is weird that a grown 40yo+ educated man didn't understand that having sex with children was bad.
Prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness
Would you be advocating that anything other than 17 is wrong? It reminds me of people who are born into a random country with a random god, and insist that only that god is correct. What luck!
The "age rule" [1] about dating is that the younger person is at least half the age of the older person plus 7 years. This implies that it's okay for a 20 year old to date a 17 year old, but not a 21 year old (unless the 17 year old is 17 and a half).
It's a kind of silly rule, but has some purpose in terms of "ickyness" (edit: and equivalent maturity) when applied to people in the first decade after puberty.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/...
A 40 year old coupling with a 20 year old is still icky to me due to the life experience as an adult divide. A 30 year old with a 50 year old much less so; I just think the 30 year old is setting themself up to spend a lot of time as a caretaker at some point.
If the 30 year is mentally incompetent and unaware of their future as a caretaker then the issue isn’t age, but abuse of the mentally incompetent. And, again, I don’t think this applies to your intent but it reminds me of people complaining about how hard it is to live as a gay person or interracial marriage, etc etc. Where the various difficulties are noted when discussing if it should be allowed or not. Interracial marriage is a right as long as they are consenting adults.
Age is a parameter which can sometimes be shamed because of possible differentials in experience. It can't be shamed all of the time, but there are valid reasons to use it as a first-line gate, even after age-of-consent laws are no longer in the picture.
Part of the pressure to move the world into a total '“don’t kink shame consenting adults” phase' is from people with abusive kinks who don't want to be checked on their abuse. Screw them. Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed, generally shamed (with exceptions), generally not-shamed (with exceptions), or seen as okay to do in private (but not public), or seen as okay in general.
Oh yeah, and who decides? Stop acting as if there is an absolute universal moral. There's none. Everything apart "don't hurt people and living beings" are arbitrary rules we have agreed upon over time. And in any case, even that is just as arbitrary, but pretty much everyone is in favour of.
Sodomy between consenting adults doesn't hurt anyone, nor a weirdly horny 16 yo going at it with an older adult because they wanted to. Prepubescent paedophilia on the other hand is entirely traumatic because one is simply not sexually tuned at that age, so they cannot consent.
I don't know why people make a mountain out of a molehill. Are all involved parties consenting? Are they of sound mind and body? Then do whatever the hell you want.
> Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed
Fuck no, keep your morality ideas for yourself. Who are you to judge?
I think there’s a game theory where whatever people think others think is bad are shameworthy.
It doesn’t seem principle based and instead works backwards from disliking someone and the working backwards to find something wrong. That seems like a bad way to set moral standards and social norms. And sets us up for a constant second guessing of what to do or say, etc etc.
I think having a clear rule set (is legal? Is consenting? Then none of my business) is more productive. The last thing I want is people believing they need to perform some “nested evaluation” to determine if my missionary sex kink is appropriate or not.
An example that I encountered recently is that a friend was asking me to comment on other friends’ open marriage and tried a “would I permit that” reasoning to determine if it was appropriate. Asking simple questions like “is it legal” and “are all parties willing” is possible. But trying to have every person apply their own preference onto other people is a nightmare.
This can be as minimal as PDA, to stuff as egregious as Key & Peele's skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c
If you're discussing about furry sex or 50 shades of Grey, maybe keep it to the privacy of an adult furry community or a book club.
> Fuck no, keep your morality ideas for yourself. Who are you to judge?
You're judging that no one should judge.
I'm not a Libertine. I have a right to be in this world too. I don't have to just go by your standards. I'll live and let live as long as you give me space for my preferences, but that is never where it ends. Because libertines don't like me asserting my boundaries when they are in my space.
If I don't know about it, I can't kink shame it. If I do know about it, then you pushed it into my space.
Totally legal:
> https://www.statista.com/chart/11848/americas-youngest-child...
As our infographic shows, the youngest to marry since 2000 were three ten year olds. According to Frontline, the three girls married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in Tennessee in 2001.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/10/...
> We learned that in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during that period, mostly to men 18 or older.
> Minors such as Siddiqui can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage. Adults being pressured in this way have options, including access to domestic-violence shelters. But a child who leaves home is considered a runaway; the police try to return her to her family and could even charge our organization criminally if we were to get involved. Most domestic-violence shelters do not accept minors, and youth shelters typically notify parents that their children are there. Child-protective services are usually not a solution, either: Caseworkers point out that preventing legal marriages is not in their mandate.
> Women who marry at 18 or younger face a 23 percent higher risk of heart attack, diabetes, cancer and stroke than do women who marry between ages 19 and 25, partly because early marriage can lead to added stress and forfeited education. Women who wed before 18 also are at increased risk of developing various psychiatric disorders, even when controlling for socio-demographic factors.
> Sherry Johnson of Florida, who said she was raped repeatedly as a child and was pregnant by 11, at which time her mother forced her to marry her 20-year-old rapist under Florida’s pregnancy exception in the 1970s.
Such a church lady of me.
In the US, Alaska, Hawaii and dozens of other states have the age of consent at 16 [0] and many countries [1] (Germany at 14, holy smokes. China at 15. And South Korea st 20, good on them).
So while you don’t think the distinction matters, billions of people do think it matters. If you have such beliefs in this matter then you hold the majority of the world as perverts who think “child sex” is appropriate and legal. That’s a rough way to go through the world thinking that you are superior to so many people who are egregiously wrong.
[0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/statutory-rape-guide-state-laws... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/age-of-co...
I suspect a number of adults must be shocked at their own sexual attraction to post-pubescent teens and might have a rather adverse reaction to that....
Again, I'm not saying he is guilty of a thought crime just that I understand that (and why) there is a controversy and that it isn't accurate to say that "We ll never know what "the situation" is and whatever "statements that do not correspond to any of our values" are". We know those statements.
As one commenter has already pointed out, the hyperlinked WWW site is for CLIC, the student-run organization, not for the EPFL as claimed in the title at the top of this page. The page says CLIC in the banner at the top, and CLIC four times in the body.
I'm not sure how "Association des étudiant.e.s en Informatique et Communications" abbreviates to "CLIC". Apparently it was "CDIC" some years ago. That doesn't help to clarify, though. (-:
All we know is that someone was paid by the Swiss tax-payers to write that.
> Did stallman say something since he was invited that was particularly noticeable?
Maybe they found another anonymous blog post to cancel him? Who knows.