I would agree that the severity of RMS's remarks regarding Epstein/Minsky is lower than the press is making it out to be. But Stallman's bad behavior stretches back decades, and this oddly-shaped, not-entirely-correct straw happened to finally break the camel's back. Good riddance.
I'm talking about there being options other than either "giving him a pass" or "off with his head."
After almost 30 years of people giving him a pass and trying to make him understand, I am glad that he is getting some reckoning. His views are abhorrent and he gives no indication he is willing to change them.
[1] - https://fossforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/RMSleisure....
The text is: sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance tender embraces unusual sense of humor [contact details]
There is perfectly benign interpretation of this expressing the things from which he derives pleasure. The most plausible and available interpretation of "pleasure card" is a dad joke level word play on "business card", especially when considering his role in de-commercializing software.
Talking to women isn't a crime. If he didn't take no for an answer or asked women out in inappropriate circumstances, that's a problem; but we have no accounts of him doing that. All we have here is an Nth hand story [3] in which he supposedly left a conference with a woman (singular, you made it plural.) and then gave her his card. If we choose to imagine there was romantic intent, a) there's no suggestion he coerced her into leaving and b) he took pains to respect the conference's CoC. Even this extremely reaching accusation has zero implication that he disrespected an individual's volition. Sage Sharp's indictment that he "skirted around the conference's CoC" is bizarre unless the real intent is that men like Stallman should be closeted heterosexuals.
There are numerous aspects to all this hand wringing about his cards and interest in meeting women that one has to choose to view through a prurient lens to make it sexual. Even then, it's only problematic to a puritanical world view in which it's wrong for people to be sexual beings and individuals are dispossessed of their self-determination.
[1] https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch14.html [2] http://ju.outofmemory.cn/entry/119457 [3] https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1173637158181072900
This just happened. Let's check in with him in six months, and see if he's still breathing. If his experience is like many of the shitty men whose misbehavior has been unmasked as part of the MeToo movement, I'm sure he'll end up back on his feet at some point, whether he deserves to or not.
Is it OK to treat men poorly?
Why single out women for special treatment?
Because college is where women are driven out of computer science, by behavior from professors and peers. If you want to talk about fields where men are driven out (and they do exist: primary school teaching and nursing come to mind) go to a thread about those. But either way, derailing this discussion doesn't help.
A lot of people take that for granted based on anecdotes, but actual data is elusive.
Some things we should expect to see if this theory is correct:
* CS student gender ratios close to 50:50 at admission
* A relatively large change in CS student gender ratios between admission and graduation, compared to other majors
* A relatively high rate of "misbehavior" (e.g. sexual harassment) in CS programs and/or the tech industry, compared to other fields
From what I can tell, though, we don't observe any of those.
> If you want to talk about fields where men are driven out (and they do exist: primary school teaching and nursing come to mind)
The same questions could be raised about those: why are we so sure they're being "driven out" at the college level?
Here's a paper investigating the causes of gender imbalance among primary school teachers: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ysu1515846...
The men interviewed for the paper disagreed that discrimination, social barriers, stereotypes, or other forms of injustice play a role. ("I don’t feel that there is any injustice… men who want to teach, are able to. It’s not like we’re being held down.")
It also points out that a greater number of men than women choose to go into primary education during college, which is the opposite of what we'd expect if they were being driven out by professors and peers.
Citation needed. What kind of behavior? What exactly did he do?
"The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution,
"prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest
and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these
acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."
RMS on June 28th, 2003 https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
"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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party
" There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do
not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue. "
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013) https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(Pedophilia