There was no reason for him to resign in the first place. All he said was that he wasn't going to believe an accusation against a friend without evidence.
That's not all that he wrote. He made very specific speculations about what happened by way of making excuses for Minsky: https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com] . Take Vice's spin with a grain of salt, but Stallman wrote a lot more about it than simply that he refused too believe accusations against his friend without evidence.
Vice is about as believable as Gawker. Thanks for playing, and better luck next time.
-jcr
This Reddit post I quoted in/.'s original coverage is still the most concise explanation I've seen (and yes, it reinforces how Vice and Gawker and Daily Beast and other such outlets are trash):
Good summary from reddit [reddit.com] (since Vice is not a credible source):
Context: In a recently unsealed deposition a woman testified that, at the age of 17, Epstein told her to have sex with Marvin Minsky. Minsky was a founder of the MIT Media Lab and pioneer in A.I. who died in 2016. Stallman argued on a mailing list (in response to a statement from a protest organizer accusing Minsky of sexual assault) that, while he condemned Epstein, Minsky likely did not know she was being coerced:
We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.
Some SJW responded by writing a Medium post called "Remove Richard Stallman [archive.is]". Media outlets like Vice [archive.is] and The Daily Beast [archive.is] then lied and misquoted Stallman as saying that the woman was likely "entirely willing" and as "defending Epstein". He has now been pressured to resign from MIT [stallman.org]
Furthermore the deposition doesn't say she had sex with Minsky, only that Epstein told her to do so, and according to physicist Greg Benford she propositioned Minsky and he turned her down [archive.is]:
I know; I was there. Minsky turned her down. Told me about it. She saw us talking and didn’t approach me.
This seems like a complete validation of the distinction Stallman was making. If what Minsky knew doesn't matter, if there's no difference between "Minsky sexually assaulted a woman" and "Epstein told a 17-year-old to have sex with Minsky without his knowledge or consent", then why did he turn her down?
How is that a good explanation? You, and that reddit comment, start getting things wrong in the first sentence. Giuffre testified that Ghislaine Maxwell -- not Jeffrey Epstein -- directed her to have sex with Minsky (and with many others).
If Minsky accepted the offer of sex with Giuffre, and as you point out he may not have, the crime would not hinge on whether she acted like she was willing or not. It would hinge on whether she was younger than 18, and he was older than (as I read the laws) 23. There is a further aspect of moral culpability, beyond any criminal liability.
But that is not what Stallman argued, except as a third-string argument. He argued that it would have been fine for Minsky to have sex with her because she was willing, until someone pointed out that it still would have been (statutory) rape. Then Stallman argued that "sexual assault" and even "rape" should not include having sex with someone who is legally too young to consent. Only after that was also batted down did Stallman argue that the deposition was ambiguous about whether Giuffre had sex with Minsky.
So Stallman's first two arguments, which he presumably thought were the strongest or most relevant ones, were essentially arguments against the idea of statutory rape. Or maybe he was merely arguing that we should be okay with people accepting offers of sex from 17-year-old strangers who are attached to creepy old men who might be seeking blackmail material, because it's totally normal for a 17-year-old to make unsolicited sexual advances to a 70-ish computer scientist.
Whatever Stallman was actually arguing seems quite bad enough, even without relying on the idea that Minsky did anything wrong.
If I read the quotes from Ray above, it seems to me that you're interpreting the words of Stallman. He believes that if there is no physical force, the word assault is not appropriate. And he seems to ignore the possibility of using the word rape as short for statutory rape, which is typically how people generally interpret the word rape. Happened to me too, before it was explained to me that the legal definition includes using the word rape for those cases, no matter how much the younger party really wante
Maybe you should read the PDF instead of "quotes from Ray".
Stallman objected not only to the word "assaulting", but to the phrase "sexual assault", essentially on the basis that it's not specific enough for him (pages 16-17 of the PDF), and on the theory that "[t]he word 'assaulting' presumes that he applied force or violence". That's a legitimate criticism of the announcement he quoted, but emphatically is not legitimate for the phrase "sexual assault". Stallman objects to that phrase anyway because it i
186,000 Miles per Second. It's not just a good idea. IT'S THE LAW.
Good for him. (Score:5, Informative)
There was no reason for him to resign in the first place. All he said was that he wasn't going to believe an accusation against a friend without evidence.
-jcr
Re: Good for him. (Score:3, Informative)
That's not all that he wrote. He made very specific speculations about what happened by way of making excuses for Minsky: https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com] . Take Vice's spin with a grain of salt, but Stallman wrote a lot more about it than simply that he refused too believe accusations against his friend without evidence.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Vice is about as believable as Gawker. Thanks for playing, and better luck next time.
-jcr
Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Vice is about as believable as Gawker. Thanks for playing, and better luck next time.
-jcr
This Reddit post I quoted in /.'s original coverage is still the most concise explanation I've seen (and yes, it reinforces how Vice and Gawker and Daily Beast and other such outlets are trash):
https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Good summary from reddit [reddit.com] (since Vice is not a credible source):
Context: In a recently unsealed deposition a woman testified that, at the age of 17, Epstein told her to have sex with Marvin Minsky. Minsky was a founder of the MIT Media Lab and pioneer in A.I. who died in 2016. Stallman argued on a mailing list (in response to a statement from a protest organizer accusing Minsky of sexual assault) that, while he condemned Epstein, Minsky likely did not know she was being coerced:
Some SJW responded by writing a Medium post called "Remove Richard Stallman [archive.is]". Media outlets like Vice [archive.is] and The Daily Beast [archive.is] then lied and misquoted Stallman as saying that the woman was likely "entirely willing" and as "defending Epstein". He has now been pressured to resign from MIT [stallman.org]
Furthermore the deposition doesn't say she had sex with Minsky, only that Epstein told her to do so, and according to physicist Greg Benford she propositioned Minsky and he turned her down [archive.is]:
This seems like a complete validation of the distinction Stallman was making. If what Minsky knew doesn't matter, if there's no difference between "Minsky sexually assaulted a woman" and "Epstein told a 17-year-old to have sex with Minsky without his knowledge or consent", then why did he turn her down?
Re:Summary (Score:3, Interesting)
How is that a good explanation? You, and that reddit comment, start getting things wrong in the first sentence. Giuffre testified that Ghislaine Maxwell -- not Jeffrey Epstein -- directed her to have sex with Minsky (and with many others).
If Minsky accepted the offer of sex with Giuffre, and as you point out he may not have, the crime would not hinge on whether she acted like she was willing or not. It would hinge on whether she was younger than 18, and he was older than (as I read the laws) 23. There is a further aspect of moral culpability, beyond any criminal liability.
But that is not what Stallman argued, except as a third-string argument. He argued that it would have been fine for Minsky to have sex with her because she was willing, until someone pointed out that it still would have been (statutory) rape. Then Stallman argued that "sexual assault" and even "rape" should not include having sex with someone who is legally too young to consent. Only after that was also batted down did Stallman argue that the deposition was ambiguous about whether Giuffre had sex with Minsky.
So Stallman's first two arguments, which he presumably thought were the strongest or most relevant ones, were essentially arguments against the idea of statutory rape. Or maybe he was merely arguing that we should be okay with people accepting offers of sex from 17-year-old strangers who are attached to creepy old men who might be seeking blackmail material, because it's totally normal for a 17-year-old to make unsolicited sexual advances to a 70-ish computer scientist.
Whatever Stallman was actually arguing seems quite bad enough, even without relying on the idea that Minsky did anything wrong.
Re: Summary (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe you should read the PDF instead of "quotes from Ray".
Stallman objected not only to the word "assaulting", but to the phrase "sexual assault", essentially on the basis that it's not specific enough for him (pages 16-17 of the PDF), and on the theory that "[t]he word 'assaulting' presumes that he applied force or violence". That's a legitimate criticism of the announcement he quoted, but emphatically is not legitimate for the phrase "sexual assault". Stallman objects to that phrase anyway because it i