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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

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There was a note on stallman.org in which he said he was made aware of the mental implications that pedophilia, even with supposed consent, would have on the development of the person, and apologized for his previous stance.

Can't find it now, though.

It's quoted literally in the arstechnica article.

> "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," Stallman wrote. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."

Having a look at the Richard Stallman entry in Wikipedia[0] it menions this quote you're referring to, which links to this Engadget article[1] that links to rms's blog with that specific entry[2]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

[1] - https://www.engadget.com/2019-09-17-rms-fsf-mit-epstein.html

[2] - https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

I don't think Stallman has been unreasonable in pointing out that rape definition is "forcing someone to have sex against their will" but, as per victim's deposition, she was instructed to seduce and have sex with Minsky by Epstein. Is it so unreasonable to not call Minsky a rapist? Even the victim herself points out that Minsky was not aware of her being coerced.

I have no real sympathy for Stallman besides his FS movement, I find the man disgusting for many reasons, last but not least his hygiene, and his statements about pedophilia were another part of this disgust (albeit he later condemned his own words and apologized). But taking his words out of context to say that he is a rape apologists is no more than Twitter-level witchunting.

I wanted to say exactly this (the first part, I don't care enough about Stallman to have any kind of opinion about him). In plenty of countries in the world (including UK) the age of consent in 16 (which personally I find problematic but there's nothing I can do about it). So the objection Stallman raised is not irrational. Not only was it not "forcing someone to have sex against their will" but if it happened in a different country it would have been completely legal. Of course it did not happen in another country, it happened in a country where it was illegal, so it should be investigated and prosecuted but as sleeping with an underage person not as rape.

The same happens in the other direction though.

Just because you can marry a child in some parts of the world doesn't mean I'm not gonna consider sex with a 12 years old anything but rape just because it doesn't break local law.

Doesn't this contradict your previous statement where you defined rape as "forcing someone to have sex against their will"?

Is having sex with a 12 years old despicable and morally unexcusable? Yes. Is it rape? Unless you're willing to say a 12 years old doesn't have a will at all, calling it rape contradicts your own definition.

Having had these thoughts in relation to this one case where the victim was 17 does nothing to hide the idea that he held these beliefs and what did that mean for other cases when it came up in other contexts?

If one feels the need to make judgements it should at least try to stick to facts, not speculations.

fair enough anyways i hope he beats cancer

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