Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

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I remember that. It was a massive shitshow from all sides in my opinion.

So Larry was into BDSM, that basically made women slaves. He was into the whole community thing and went to a wedding that was in the community. He gave a speech. he shared his speech. Larry's enemy used that as a weapon.

But Larry's girlfriend was/is mentally challenged - I dunno what exactly but there were some issues on the mental side of things that she needed help with. (Not meant to be nasty, I dunno how else to put it in a better way) Larry said he talked to the therapist/doctor/whatever who looked after his girlfriend and explained their kink to make sure they were ok with it and she wasn't being taken advantage of. This was a big deal to the people who didn't like Larry and they kept banging on about how he was taking advantage of a vulnerable woman.

Larry took her to a drupal conference thing. She wrote some code that went to Drupal's code base and those commits were attributed to Larry. There was an implication that she was forced and enslaved to write code for Drupal.

Larry's enemy as far as I know actually broke the code of conduct and I believe was banned.

Larry as far as I know while didn't do anything against the code of conduct was stopped from being allowed to contribute to conferences and various other things and basically stripped of his position within the Drupal Community and he was reasonably well respected within the PHP and Drupal community however he wasn't banned like the other person and remained in the community. He is still active there with his last post being 2 days ago.

BDSM doesn't "make women slaves".

Either women or men can choose to take submissive roles, and that is their free choice among practitioners. Likewise, either women or men can choose dominance (in fact it is popular for a dominatrix to be paid for her services.)

The BDSM community (not merely people who have a fetish) is very careful about safety and respect for others. There are safewords and failsafes and safety checks at every stage of the scene.

I think it is dismissive and close-minded to say that such a community "makes women slaves"; it shows that you are an outsider and that you know nothing of their customs, morals, or attitudes.

> BDSM doesn't "make women slaves".

This specific BDSM-fetish did. That was part of the kink and the ideology behind it.

Do you have documentation of that? Can you prove that it was non-consensual? Was there a prosecution of human trafficking that followed on?

I ask because I'm not surprised at all that there's slavery among BDSM aficionados, but it is supposed to be consensual, and Larry himself asserts that every slave relationship is consensual in the communities he belonged to, as of 2017: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing

So forgive me if I've misread your implication that any of this was non-consensual or forced. You didn't say so, but you seem to be implying that.

Sounds like it would fall under the umbrella of "consensual non-consent (CNC)"

There is no such implication. And you yourself described it as a slave relationship. So I’m not really sure what your point really is?

Their kink was a slave relationship and some people thought that was taking advantage of a mentally challenged woman. He says he even consulted with doctors to ensure they were able to consent. He says police also attended and were ok with it (but Dahmer and others prove that doesn’t really mean anything).

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