Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else)

[Sandra Loosemore]

I'd like to clarify some things, and provide some references.  Since I 
sent my original post in this thread, several people have accused me of 
slandering or defaming RMS, lying about what he has said, making false 
accusations against him, repeating false media reports, and the like. 
Well, I am not a liar.

I'm aware that some news reporting and social media posts have 
inaccurately characterized RMS's remarks about Virginia Guiffre as a 
defense of Epstein.  I'm aware that is not what he actually said in that 
particular instance, and I have not repeated those false 
characterizations, or based any of my thinking on that inaccurate reporting.

Here are some actual things that RMS has said about sexual exploitation 
of minors, with references to the sources of the quotes.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children."

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29

"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that 
willing participation in pedophilia hurts children."

https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29

"Cody Wilson has been charged with hiring a "child" sex worker. Her age 
has not been announced, but I think she must surely be a teenager, not a 
child. Calling teenagers "children" in this context is a way of smearing 
people with normal sexual proclivities as "perverts". [...]   She may 
have had — I expect, did have — entirely willing sex with him, and they 
would still call it "assault". "

https://web.archive.org/web/20181005115646/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson)

"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."

https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html

There are many more of them, but you get the picture.  These are the 
kind of statements I referred to as "disgusting" in my previous message. 
 And yes, these quotes came from his personal web site and not the FSF 
or GNU project, but it's an organizational problem when RMS's public 
comments in any forum result in news coverage like this

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing

and this

https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing

and this

https://www.zdnet.com/article/richard-m-stallman-resigns-from-free-software-foundation/

and this

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/richard-stallman-leaves-mit-after-controversial-remarks-on-rape/

that all highlight his organizational ties and role in the free software 
movement.  MIT got the brunt of it because of their other problematic 
involvement in the Epstein scandal, but note that the reporter of the 
first article linked above is specifically asking for help in 
investigating "abuse in the open source community" (with the underlying 
assumption that this actually exists and is a serious problem) so we've 
all been tarred with the same brush.  Beyond the news articles, there've 
been a *ton* of blog and social media posts trashing both Stallman and 
the free software community for looking the other way for far too long. 
Some of those comments have been wildly inaccurate and off-base, but 
there is a public perception that the problem is all of us, not just 
RMS.  :-(

I'm confident that RMS's statements on child pornography, pedophilia, 
etc do not reflect a consensus view of the GNU developer community.  So 
why can't we stand up and say that "this is not us"?  It makes no sense 
for us to die on this particular hill trying to defend those views or to 
defend having him as the public face of our organization.  And trying to 
excuse him by claiming he didn't really say those things is not going to 
work, either, because the evidence is there.

I can talk about my own personal experiences working at the FSF in the 
early days of the GNU project in a separate post if people are 
interested (it's mostly tangential to the current discussion about 
leadership), but for now let me just say that I enjoyed my time there 
and have always been grateful to RMS for finding me something useful and 
fun to do when I was between "real" jobs.  I don't have a grudge against 
him, and I'm not trying to smear him with fictional stories of things he 
didn't really say or do.  It's the things he really *did* say that are 
problematic.

-Sandra