An open letter to the signatories of the open letter about Stallman

On 23 March, a number of organizations and individuals signed an open letter asking to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions. It also asks the FLOSS community to boycott the Free Software Foundation.

Dear signatories,

I am very sad about the letter, and it doesn’t have much to do with Stallman. It has to do with the letter and only with the letter. If I hadn’t met some of you personally, I would have dismissed it and moved on. But since I know and respect many of you, I’m just sad.

I know Stallman can be a difficult person. I have attended three talks by him—in fact I helped organize one of them—and I have talked to people who made a huge effort to make such an important guest feel at home, and were then outraged by behaviour they perceived as rude and ungrateful. I am also aware that Stallman is a hardliner. All software should be free and that’s it. No negotiation.

When I first saw the open letter, my reaction was “things are more serious than I thought”. When I actually read it, I was taken aback by the characterizations. Misogynist, ableist, transphobic, having repugnant ideas and dangerous ideology, and demonstrating intolerance, bigotry and hate. Wow! Things are really more serious than I thought. I became curious to learn what Stallman had done to deserve these, so I turned to your appendix. At this point I was shocked and awed.

I was shocked and awed because you present zero evidence of Stallman being misogynist, ableist, transphobic, intolerant, hateful, or of his ideas being repugnant and dangerous. (See the Appendix below for an extensive commentary.) I’m not saying Stallman isn’t any of these things—maybe he is, I don’t know—but that you have provided zero evidence.

But the most important thing is that, even if Stallman is these things, your letter still violates every code of conduct I can think of. Here is an example from Django:

Be respectful. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. Members of the Django community should be respectful when dealing with other members as well as with people outside the Django community.

I see prominent Django people signing that letter. What is the point in having a code of conduct if we are going to violate it in a manner that sets such a bad example for our community?

Finally, what purpose does that letter serve other than divide the community and magnify whatever bitter feelings exist?

Please revoke your support for that letter. And please explain to me what the problem is with Stallman.

Regards,

Antonis

Appendix

Marvin Minsky

First of all, I read Stallman’s email concerning the accusations against Marvin Minsky.

• He doesn’t actually say that the victim was willing — on the contrary, he seems to agree that she was being coerced.
• What he is saying is that there is no evidence she was being coerced by Minsky. She was being coerced by Epstein, who sent her to Minsky, and it’s likely — according to Stallman— that she had been instructed by her coercer to present herself to Minsky as entirely willing.
• Therefore, he concludes, Minsky may have done something wrong, but the word “assault” doesn’t seem to be correct—it inflates the accusation.

Stallman makes all this so abundantly clear that I am at a loss at how people are interpreting “the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself as entirely willing” as a statement that she was willing or that she was not being coerced.

Another interesting thing from that thread is the definition of rape. Apparently in the Virgin islands, if you are 23 and have sex with a 17-year-old, you are raping her (or him). This makes me wonder whether Charlie Chaplin would have been a rapist in the Virgin islands. To answer this question, because it isn’t entirely clear what the law means by “17 years old” (i.e. on which exact moment you stop being 16 and start being 17—is it the time of your birth on your birthday anniversary? Is it midnight of 31 December?), we’d need to check the law and his wives’ birthdays and the dates of his first sexual act with each of them to find out. Absurd? That’s what Stallman says: “I think it is morally absurd to define “rape” in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”

“I was shocked”, writes Selam G. at this point of her story. The appendix to the open letter finds Stallman’s email “especially chilling”. Since nothing in what Stallman says appears to be remotely shocking or chilling to me—on the contrary, I see someone who likes to be careful in his choice of words—I conclude that this must not be an isolated incident. Maybe this exchange becomes shocking or chilling when you add it to a context of other things Stallman has done in the past.

So let me read on.

Cody Wilson

Stallman’s views on the Cody Wilson case echo his views on the Marvin Minsky case. I happen to agree with them. I can imagine someone could disagree but I don’t see, beyond it being healthy disagreement, how it could be deduced that Stallman defends rape or child trafficking, and it doesn’t seem that these views of him could suffice in creating this outrage. No, surely something else is going on here. Let’s read on.

Laws about rape

The appendix continues with this:

He regularly and repeatedly makes comments about “the dishonest law that labels sex with adolescents as ‘rape’ even if they are willing.” He compares United States law to Sudanese law in saying that “US laws that define ‘rape’ to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies)” and that “both laws falsify the meaning of ‘rape.’”

I haven’t followed the links. I don’t need to see these statements in context, because I don’t see any problem with them. He isn’t defending sex with adolescents, even if they’re willing—all he’s saying is that it isn’t rape.

While I can imagine someone could disagree with these views, such disagreement could hardly cause this outrage. Something else must be going on. Let’s read on.

Sex with adolescents

“I wish an attractive woman had ‘abused’ me that way when I was 14,” writes Stallman referring to a case where a 25-year-old woman seduced a 14-year-old boy and was jailed because of this “abusing”.

Contrary to the previous cases concerning rape and assault, this one isn’t clear to me. His arguments seem thoughtful and honest. I can’t recall clearly how it was when I was 14. It’s almost certain that I was fantasizing similar “abusing” to be happening to me. Whether I would have liked my fantasies to become reality, or whether this would have been good for me, I don’t know. I can imagine that this issue could be the subject of many hours of interesting exchanges over beers. It doesn’t seem bad to me that Stallman expressed these thoughts. And it’s certainly not enough to cause this outrage. Something else must be going on. Let’s read on.

Child pornography

“Making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos,” writes Stallman referring to child pornography. He continues: “To criminalize possession of copies of anything published — no matter what it is — is oppressive, and leads to many other forms of tyranny.”

This is a bold argument, and I can think of counter-arguments. It would have been interesting to hold this discussion with him. What is certain is that he does not defend child pornography. He clearly considers it a crime. He also doesn’t express any desire to possess such photos—he’s mentioning the story in the context of someone who was sentenced to prison for having a cartoon depicting a fictional child in some sort of sexual situation (I happen to possess a copy of Megas Anatolikos, maybe I should also go to prison?)

It’s freedom of information he is concerned with here.

Whether we agree or disagree with him on possessing child pornography photos (I think I disagree with him), this isn’t enough to cause this outrage. Something else must be going on. Let’s read on.

Pedophilia

This one deserves the full text of what Stallman wrote:

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.

I admit this one is a problem. His second, well-thought paragraph, actually cancels the first one; because how can you distinguish between willing and imposed participation? And, anyway, the stories I’ve heard through victims all seem to point to a strong case that pedophilia does hurt children.

Is this enough to cause this outrage? Hardly. Given that all previous cases seem to be the carefully reasoned thoughts of an intelligent person, my automatic response to this statement is curiosity: why do you say this?

Five years later, he wrote this:

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.

Through personal conversations in recent years, I’ve learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per 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.

OK. He’s coming to my words. I still don’t have the answer to my question: what was he thinking in the first place?

Still, I appreciate the fact that he questions everything. He doesn’t accept anything as given just because people say so.

This incident is something which could annoy people. But such outrage? Making people call him “dangerous”? I don’t think it explains it. Let’s read on.

Down syndrome

“When a fetus has Down’s syndrome, you should abort it and try again,” says the Appendix said Stallman. I think most obstetricians I went to with my wife when she was pregnant would have said the same. In fact, I read in Wikipedia that 92% of such pregnancies in Europe and 75% in the U.S. are aborted. Therefore Stallman appears simply to agree with mainstream opinion here.

As to Stallman likening having a child with Down’s syndrome to having a pet, here is exactly what he said while advocating abortion of fetuses with Down’s syndrome:

If you’d like to love and care for a pet that doesn’t have normal human mental capacity, don’t create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot. It will appreciate your love, and it will never feel bad for being less capable than normal humans.

I don’t understand what’s the problem with that statement.

Singular pronouns

“There are various ways to express gender neutrality in third-person singular pronouns in English; you do not have to use ‘they.’”

and

“‘They’ is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.”

According to the Appendix, these statements are transphobic. I fail to understand why.