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Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 12:32 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151)
In reply to: Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF by pv
Parent article: Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

It was indeed an honest question. Mostly, because I wasn't sure those cards were specifically geared towards women. I, too like good books, good food, something you could describe exotic music and dancing. Neither of which I would connect immediately with a romantic or erotic context.

I dare say no one goes to conferences specifically to be hit on by anyone. Nevertheless romantic couplings can and do occur on occasion. As with all social gatherings, especially involving alcohol.


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Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 12:52 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Sure, meet a woman at a conference, get to know her, talk about it like adults -- that's one thing. Handing over these pre-printed cards to women you just met?

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 12:58 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Mostly, because I wasn't sure those cards were specifically geared towards women.

I'm not a woman and I have nothing whatsoever against good food etc., but if Richard Stallman handed me such a card at a conference I would feel extremely creeped out.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 15:09 UTC (Wed) by pv (guest, #112619) [Link] (9 responses)

In hindsight the tone of my previous comment was more confrontational than I intended, so I want to start by apologizing for that.

I'll assume that you mean well, and will try to respond in kind. This is a topic both pretty important and pretty touchy, but I will try my best not to get carried away into an unfriendly manner of speech.

Firstly: some people, regardless of gender, are not comfortable being hit on by strangers and it's their utmost right. If you allow people to bumble around making others uncomfortable, those others will not be coming back even though they're not the ones at fault here. This is a major mechanism through which women, specifically, can feel repelled from events dominated by men with underdeveloped social skills. (Which is not remotely limited to FOSS events, sadly.)

Secondly: if someone lacks the social awareness to recognize the specific contexts where romantic approaches are acceptable, that's okay; but they remain responsible for their actions all the same. If someone can't judge whether a specific context is appropriate, then it's on them to refrain entirely for the duration of that context. And when told explicitly that a specific context is broadly inappropriate, like RMS was, working around the letter of the rule is a major red flag: it shows that he both values his right to seek "pleasure" above the comfort of others, and demonstrates willful disregard for feedback that his actions have negative side-effects for other people. That alone probably should have gotten RMS banned from those events, to be honest.

Thirdly: even in an appropriate context, romance is something that develops as a chemistry between the individualities of two (or more) people. Handing out to strangers cards mass-printed before you even met them signals that you don't care about their individuality, and they're just an interchangeable target to you. And some people will be fine with that, for sure, but others will perceive it as extremely gross. If you lack a way of telling which kind of person you're dealing with, but still go ahead with the card, it implies that you are fine making an interchangeable target out of them by default with no thought and/or care toward their feelings about it. That's a creepy behavior.

Fourthly: let's not disregard the added context that the approach in question comes from someone who does not care enough about the comfort of others to do them the courtesy of personal hygiene.

What all of the above adds up to is: despite it not being the intention, RMS's cards signal that he does not think of the recipients as fellow humans beings, but only as potential objects of (his) pleasure. That's deeply not okay.

Ultimately, and more broadly, failure to understand how your behaviors make others uncomfortable is not an excuse for those behaviors. The fact RMS got away with it for decades is the elephant-in-the-room problem here.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 15:19 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (8 responses)

Wow, that's one of the most instructive responses I've ever seen on LWN.

I'd just like to add: other comments suggest RMS is autistic/aspie. Autistic people have difficulty intuiting social rules -- but for that reason, when the rules are explained to them, they follow the rules totally. RMS, when told those cards are inappropriate at a conference (and I'm very sure someone somewhere told him exactly why, in terms similar to what you said), hands them out across the road. That's not autism. That's entitlement. And worse.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 18:46 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Side comment, I don't agree all of them follow the rules when provided, but I agree it is the majority. I don't have any numbers but these are more experiences, and not as the one "providing rules" which is presumably sensitive.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 18, 2019 21:39 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

And that must be the stupidest comment on this page.

So you think someone can explain to Greta Thunberg the reasons for most people's inaction on climate change, and then she'll "follow along totally"? She won't. Her unusual actions are because she looks at what people are doing and it makes no sense to her, not because she's waiting for you to explain to her the normal way to behave.

I'm not commenting on whether Richard has this or any kind of syndrome. But I do know that you can't just tell him "stop being direct" or "don't ask women on dates" and expect your words to change him.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 19, 2019 3:12 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

> I do know that you can't just tell him "stop being direct" or "don't ask women on dates" and expect your words to change him.

That is a good reason to isolate him.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 19, 2019 21:05 UTC (Thu) by HenrikH (subscriber, #31152) [Link] (1 responses)

I have an autistic son so here are an anecdote: They do not blindly follow rules that are explained to them. It's just that they have a strong tendency to make up rules and follow those to the letter, my son for example can make up some rule all by himself (that can be completely illogical for the rest of us) and once that happens nothing in the world can change his mind of that rule, it's set in stone.

For things where he has no interest or haven't made up his mind you can tell him that "the rules for Y is X" and then he will follow those rules just like you wrote but this does not work if he already have invented an internal rule by himself or if the rule requires him to break something else that he likes to do or not to do.

So e.g he very much likes to play games and watch Youtube videos, there is no rule in the world that I could create that he would follow that in any way would prohibit him from playing games or watching videos when he wants to. Aka I cannot create a new rule that says that for every 10 videos you have to go outside for 10 minutes, even implying something like that would just make him mad.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 20, 2019 14:58 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

> I have an autistic son so here are an anecdote: They do not blindly follow rules that are explained to them. It's just that they have a strong tendency to make up rules and follow those to the letter, my son for example can make up some rule all by himself (that can be completely illogical for the rest of us) and once that happens nothing in the world can change his mind of that rule, it's set in stone.

As an actual aspie the rules I make up are very much modifiable, but I don't do so just because people say so. The replacements need to satisfy the internal need that led to the creation of the original rules, and those needs may well not be needs I understand. It was a very long time -- decades -- before I figured out the stuff I mention in this comment, but the needs and even many of the same coping mechanisms were present from about the age of five, and if you'd tried to take them away I would have been epically unhappy and quite unable to explain why. Autistics have very poor visibility into our own internal states. Equally, he'd probably be able to express this himself in a few decades. But this is my guess! :)

Of course, part of that need is for control of a chaotic world, and rules qua rules provide that control in and of themselves, as long as they are not rules imposed from outside: i.e. it is quite possible that a rule your son made up would be acceptable to him where *exactly the same rule* would not be acceptable coming from anyone else, because a key part of it was that the rule was not externally imposed!

> So e.g he very much likes to play games and watch Youtube videos, there is no rule in the world that I could create that he would follow that in any way would prohibit him from playing games or watching videos when he wants to. Aka I cannot create a new rule that says that for every 10 videos you have to go outside for 10 minutes, even implying something like that would just make him mad.

And there's a good reason for that. If this stuff serves the same purpose as reading and hacking does for me -- and I very much suspect it does, it feels exactly the same and I use gameplaying for the same purpose sometimes -- this is not *optional* or even exactly fun: it's an essential cooldown method, a way to shut out the chaotic outside world and restrict sensory input to something you control completely (even a youtube video -- you have control of pause and rewind, so it's a controlled sensory feed: and computer games are something you can redo without real-world consequences until you get it right, which might take *far* longer than for anyone else), until the chaos of your far-too-intense emotions recedes back to something no longer overwhelming. Ripping yourself out of that every ten videos or every half hour or whatever and hurling yourself back into the uncontrolled, glaring, noisy outside would feel very much like... well, I don't know what the world is like to people without sensory filtration problems. Being torn out of a classical music concert every half hour and having your head shut in a tin can that is repeatedly hammered by maddened giants, perhaps?

You might find he's happier if you suggest alternating with something else with similarly self-controlled content and sensory input. Reading? Music? I'm not sure: I am after all 40+ and thus out of touch with what the young do these days! But not other people and not outside and not uncontrolled input. :)

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 26, 2019 20:24 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link] (1 responses)

> other comments suggest RMS is autistic/aspie.

An ironic defence, given rms is a long-standing proponent of eugenics who agues allowing the disabled to live is a form of cruelty and likens the disabled to pets.

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 26, 2019 20:56 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

Umm...citation needed?? Searching the web turns up nothing like what you're talking about

Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF

Posted Sep 29, 2019 12:01 UTC (Sun) by immibis (guest, #105511) [Link]

FWIW, I am aspie and I have *no problem* understanding why this is inappropriate behaviour.


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