Here's the Vice headline (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...): Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing' (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965319 )
New York Post (https://nypost.com/2019/09/14/mit-scientist-says-epstein-vic...): "MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’: report"
Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/us/mit-professor-jeffrey-epstein-ass...): "MIT scientist defended Jeffrey Epstein associate in leaked emails, claimed victims were ‘entirely willing’"
These headlines do not match what Stallman wrote. They wrote awful words, and put them in his mouth, in order to support a narrative in which he said something which he didn't. That's not okay.
If Minsky could show up to court for his crimes and he said "Your honor, I didn't know she was 15", he would still go to jail.
He explicitly does not think she was willing. He thinks she was unwilling but was coerced to give the appearance of willingness and that the appearance of the two from Minskys point of view were the same.
This isn't a subtle difference. You think he said almost exactly the opposite of what he said
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe
We are conflating 'law' and 'morals/ethics' in these arguments. If you act with strict adherence to the law, I'm assuming you've never jaywalked, committed piracy, ran a red light, etc.
Oh, these are 'victimless crimes?' What about sex after having a couple drinks? Technically neither of you can consent under the law... a person has probably committed rape if their consensual partner had a 0.08 BAC.
I think that our lack of a legal word other than 'rape' to describe 'statutory rape' does a disservice to those women are victims of forcible, violent sex acts.
Although technically correct in many US jurisdictions, I think you would have a VERY hard time arguing that an 'adult' having consensual sex with a 17 year old being described as 'raping minors' is morally equivalent to the things that 'rape' is typically used to describe.
[Update] In another place he does argue that it is not evident that Minsky eventually did have sex with her - from the deposition it seems that she said she was directed to do it and then the lawyer asks where she went to do that and she answers that question, but it is quite probably that she misunderstood and answered the question 'where was she directed to go to do that', and there is a witness who says that Minsky turned her down. For me this is a fair argument.
I'll repost here a comment found under the original source that started this misinterpretation of words:
I want to point out a problem: The article claims that Stallman states
(…)that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
His claim, which I don’t really believe is well-founded (but that’s beside the point at this instant) was:
(…)the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.
That is, as far as I understand, he’s stating it’s most likely that Epstein coerced her into the situation, but that she led Minsky to believe it was of her own free will — and, while I (and I suspect many other people) don’t see where Stallman gets that idea, and it isn’t necessarily the case here, I would assume we can all agree that in such a case, the individual wouldn’t be guilty of rape (due to a lack of mens rea, that is, not knowing that the person was being coerced). In short: he never states that an enslaved child could be ‘entirely willing’, merely that someone lacking relevant information could believe an enslaved child was entirely willing (requiring them to neither know the individual is enslaved nor that they are a child — which is possible for someone who’s 17 years old)
While it might seem icky, sex between 17 and 75 year-olds isn't a crime.
That is the distinction being made here, especially since in other parts of the world it's even legal to buy weed.
The way you worded this makes the argument much clearer, it's helpful. This is one of the few comments that add value in this thread. Thanks.
"…and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. Let’s also note that he called a group of child sex trafficking victims a ‘harem’, a terrible word choice."
[1]: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...
Actually they did not do that, they simply parroted what had been posted on medium by Selam G.[0] in her call to remove Stallman[1].
Not trying to defend the media, they clearly did not do their job of fact-checking and jumped of the bandwagon of making outrageous headlines to make money, but the actual responsibility of misrepresenting RMS words to call for his removal lies on the original author.
[0]https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/author/selamie/ [1] https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...
Okay, but then they also ran a suite of opinion articles that said "Trump calls Denmark PM nasty" and then "Trumps Problem With Calling Women Nasty." I mean, look.. I get the thread and all that but that springboard article headline is just factually incorrect and then you have a whole analysis piece built off it. CNN has no way I'm aware of to report inaccuracies.
So much of news is just designed to get a rise out of people and EVERY site is guilty. It's particularly bad with opinion pieces which are, IMHO, tailored to specific demographics. News orgs hide behind the "opinion" label but really they just kill the whole orgs credibility. NYT keeps stepping in this; most recently with the Sunday Review piece on the new Kav book..
In no way is he defending Epstein. He actually calls for a harsher sentence for Epstein, and a more concrete term that paints him in a harsher light than the verdict. This is a simple matter of classification, which doesn't seem at all strange to me coming from a scientist at MIT...
Link and full text below.
https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_201...
> (Now) Labor Secretary Acosta's plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein was not only extremely lenient, it was so lenient that it was illegal.
I wonder whether this makes it possible to resentence him to a longer prison term.
I disagree with some of what the article says about Epstein. Epstein is not, apparently, a pedophile, since the people he raped seem to have all been postpuberal.
By contrast, calling him a "sex offender" tends to minimize his crimes, since it groups him with people who committed a spectrum of acts of varying levels of gravity. Some of them were not crimes. Some of these people didn't actually do anything to anyone.
I think the right term for a person such as Epstein is "serial rapist".
Stallman raised the question of Minsky's mens rea, suggesting that Minsky might not have had any criminal intent at all. To people who feel that mens rea should always be a criteria in criminal and moral judgement (such as myself), the existence or lack of existence of mens rea matters to Minsky's moral culpability.
With all that in mind, I'm dubious that Minsky could have been approached by a young woman and not had some degree of mens rea. At the very least, Minsky must have assumed the woman was a paid sex worker and recognized at least some possibility that she was trafficked and/or underage. I can't abide the notion that a old man would have mistaken the invitations of an uneducated young girl as genuine attraction.
Lots of famous men of all ages are approached by groupies. Some accept their advances, some don't. I've never heard of any of them reporting the fact to the authorities.
If elderly fat mildly famous academics get solicited for sex by random teenagers in the VI on a regular basis, I must have missed the memo.
In another place he also argues that it is not evident that Guiffre had sex with Minsky - she says she was directed to, but she does not say that she eventually did that, the lawyer did ask here where she went to do that and she answered this question but it is quite probable that she misunderstood the question (and instead answered the question where she was directed to do it) and there is a witness who says that Minsky turned her down. It is a fair argument for me.
If someone does a 100% legal thing according the information they know, and is not otherwise negligent, there is no crime they should be charged with. As it happens, in the US, statutory rape is the only one I'm aware of that does not follow this criterion; even manslaughter requires negligence (although I'm not making a point about that).
It's like benefitting from any other kind of traffic, isn't it? If you benefit from a money laundering scheme or a fraud, you'd be charged with complicity, even if you took a lot of care into not inquiring about the provenance of the money. At least, that's how it's be judged in my country (France, and I'm not a lawyer so don't quote me on that). I can't tell for other countries.
They are, for the most part, very minor crimes — things like parking violations.
And likewise from a moral perspective: Minsky did harm her. Regardless of his knowledge of the situation at the time, I would expect him (were he still alive) to apologize and do whatever he could to try and heal the pain he caused.
However, I do also think it would reflect much differently on his character if he knew all the details of the situation he was in vs. if he did not. That, from what I've seen, is still unclear.
Consequences and intent both matter.
So he did not harm her.
However, if it did, to be fair, you would have to seriously consider if it is reasonable to assume that person was ignorant. For example, if you know your friend is a drug dealer and he asks you to "drop off a bag at another house", you would get the book thrown at you even if you didn't know they were drugs in the bag.
If someone Minsky's age went out and started dating and having sex with high schoolers, he would go to jail. Period. Regardless of the exact social dynamics.
Remember that before making absolute statements about mental powers.
By the way, coerced sex (sometimes rape, sometimes assault, sometimes pimping, in some places prostitution) is illegal among adults too. You can keep it extra illegal for minors.
Minority should not be an absolute but treated as a high bar. (The younger, the higher.)
Unfortunately legislatives are black and white in most countries, and people accede to it.