Searching in vain for evidence of "abuse" or "sexual harassment"

Posted Apr 18, 2021 2:08 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
In reply to: Searching in vain for evidence of "abuse" or "sexual harassment" by mhw
Parent article: Kicking off the GNU Assembly

Thank you for this. YES. We people on the autistic spectrum seem "weird" sometimes for the neurotypicals.

The poor hygiene thing is a colorful anecdote/hearsay that demonstrates that perceived weirdness. Please do have in mind that here in Brasil, as a rule, people do SHOWER EVERY DAY. Maybe twice a day on hot days and/or on hotter venues. It's considered impolite and improper not to do so. Copious amounts of soap and shampoo. So, once it was told to me, personally, by a couple that supposedly hosted him during some event in Rio: "we offered him towels, soap and shampoo, he never showered and he smelled really bad."

So, I asked of them: "did you explain this to him, and said that it was a social imperative required, and a 'sine qua non' condition of his stay?" and they answered me "no, we just shoved the towel and shower stuff on his hands". I answered "do you know how stupid you were? When you are dealing with a foreign (and possibly autistic) person, you have to be open, explicit, and honest to the fullest extent. Next time you just say to him 'Hi, Richard, this is my home. We Brazilians have an ultra-high hygiene standard, and as a condition of your stay you'll have to shower every day before leaving the house, and this includes washing your hair thoroughly with shampoo and conditioner, and before going to bed. I know it may seem stupid and even unsanitary from your perspective, but this way you will eliminate a point of contention that many people around won't bring up directly with you but will certainly be commenting on when you're not around.' -- and lay out to him every single other rule for living, even temporarily, under your roof. This is not rocket science, it's even simpler than the alternative!"

The "abuse" and "sexual harassment" accusations might even come from the same kind of misunderstandings... things that could be dealt with easily. If people were to properly lower their guard, and stop relying on idiotic "social cues".

BEAR IN MIND that I am NOT AFFIRMING that RMS is a saint and that he was right on each and every case. We all can be abusive sometimes. But, given the gravity of the claims, I too would like to see SOME firm evidence that he acted (sistematically, no less!) in a way that could be described as "abusive" and "harassing", and both of those include "maliciously".

Searching in vain for evidence of "abuse" or "sexual harassment"

Posted Apr 18, 2021 8:27 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (2 responses)

> Please do have in mind that here in Brasil, as a rule, people do SHOWER EVERY DAY.

Please do have in mind that here in the USA, as a rule, people do shower every day. RMS knows this is a standard; if he doesn't follow it, it's because he chooses not to follow it.

> So, I asked of them: "did you explain this to him, and said that it was a social imperative required, and a 'sine qua non' condition of his stay?" and they answered me "no, we just shoved the towel and shower stuff on his hands". I answered "do you know how stupid you were?

Really? I'm pretty sure if I were kidnapped from Earth, and aliens shoved something into my hand, I would understand that to mean "use this". Certainly, if it confused me, and I shared a language, I would use it to try and figure what it was. They could be gifts or food, but it would be pretty obvious had RMS thought that. RMS is a genius; if he honestly didn't understand, it's probably because he didn't think about it, which shows he couldn't be bothered to think about what other people cared about.

> The "abuse" and "sexual harassment" accusations might even come from the same kind of misunderstandings... things that could be dealt with easily. If people were to properly lower their guard, and stop relying on idiotic "social cues".

People are screaming about how dare we, a group including a couple dozen GNU maintainers, complain about RMS's behavior. In 2006, less than a quarter of the CS students at MIT were female; you're telling me that a freshmen CS student, a stark minority at the time in MIT's CS department, should feel okay telling off a respected man in the department twice her age for hitting on her in a professional setting? I don't know how you think that RMS would have responded to that, but it doesn't look to me at all that said girl (17, 18 at oldest) would have got treated well by by the people who respected RMS.

https://twitter.com/quince/status/1172290838505738240?lan...

"When I got to MIT, upperclassmen told me that if I ever had to be in proximity to the professor discussed in this article, I should make sure I had a houseplant on me. "Broccoli in a pinch." One of those jokes-but-not-really that I laughed about at the time. Because RMS had some sort of pathological aversion to plants, apparently, and because it was common wisdom amongst us that he was incapable of interacting with a female student without being a creep about it. Like a lot of jokes, this joke served to transmit culture: 1) Interactions between RMS and teenage girl students are creepy, protect yourself. We care about you enough to tell you to protect yourself. ... For completeness, I got to MIT over 15 years ago. He's been a toxin in the water for a long, long time."

Female students at MIT have been warned about RMS's behavior for decades. I don't know how much explicit conversation RMS got about it, but if it's not RMS's fault, then it's the fault of everyone around him.

Re: Showering standards and communication

Posted Apr 18, 2021 15:37 UTC (Sun) by Nemo_bis (guest, #88187) [Link] (1 responses)

What's obvious for you might not be obvious for others. Asking a direct question avoids guesswork. Margarita Lacabe wrote:

> As described, he has phobias (his one, when I met him, was of having his head under water, which meant he seldom washed his hair.)[*]
> * We are told that in the 1990s Stallman developed a technique for washing his hair which felt safe, and since then he has washed his hair regularly.↑

https://stallmansupport.org/margarita-lacabe-my-relations...

Maybe that house did not provide the necessary equipment, and he didn't want to impose by asking for it. We know from the info package that he's very considerate about the risk of his requests being a burden:

> In some places, my hosts act as if my every wish were their command. By catering to my every whim, in effect they make me a tyrant over them, which is not a role I like. I start to worry that I might subject them to great burdens without even realizing.

https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/raw/master/fulltext/20111...

Re: Showering standards and communication

Posted Apr 18, 2021 15:42 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Does anybody see this conversation leading to any kind of useful conclusion? I would like to propose that this would be a good time to let it wind down.

Thank you.