Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked. Stallman goes on to argue about the definition of “sexual assault,” “rape,” and whether they apply to Minsky and Giuffre’s deposition statement that she was forced to have sex with him.
I'm sorry but Vice is doing some heavy editorialising here, and in my view outright lying. I'm just going to link the E-mail chain as compiled by stallmansupport.org and quote them here. Emphasis mine.
From: Richard Stallman
To: [A]
Cc: csail-related@mit.edu
Date: Wed Sep 11, 2019 1:03 AM
Subject: Re: [csail-related] Protest against MIT involvement with Epstein
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin
Minsky:
deceased AI “pioneer” Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting
one of Epstein’s victims [2])
The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault"
is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation:
taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as
Y, which is much worse than X.
The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference
reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein's harem.
(See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-traffickingisland-court-records-unsealed.)
Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
The word "assaulting" presumes that he applied force or violence, in
some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.
Only that they had sex.
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.
I've concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it
is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a
specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the
criticism.
--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
As we can see, Stallman never said the victims „were entirely willing” but that they were coerced into presenting themselves as such to Minksy. Nonetheless, Stallman was insensitive about this whole issue (being typically pedantic about specific word usage, as he tends to be) and shouldn't have tried defending Minsky in this E-mail at all. But we shouldn't be using fucking VICE of all things instead of the direct source.
If you want to sling shit at Stallman, you should direct your eyes to other matters (like his insensitivity), but he never defended Epstein.
In addition I'll link to E-mails as they were compiled by VICE, as those have also been presented by the article: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001
It seems to me that he is far too bothered by the terminology. "Sexual abuse" also works without an "assault" and it makes sense for a court to differentiate between the two. But I would expect a lawyer to get lost in the terminology, but I don't know why Stallmann is so interested in it.
I also don't know why he is like that around words, but I know of people who say it is extremely difficult to converse with him on any topic because he tends to devolve the conversation to this exact thing. Shit happened in one email chain I had with him.
If Stallman wants me to believe that he's naive enough to believe that victims of sex trafficking feigning consent is the same as consensual sex, I have to question all of his claims
That's a completely fine and valid point. By the way, I've read something more recent that's made Stallman undefendable now. It no longer matters to me that he didn't defend Epstein. Fuck me :sadness:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing
Yeah nah, there's only so much libertarian rhetoric I can take as a good faith arguments
I'm sorry but Vice is doing some heavy editorialising here, and in my view outright lying. I'm just going to link the E-mail chain as compiled by stallmansupport.org and quote them here. Emphasis mine.
https://stallmansupport.org/docs/csail-emails-reordered.pdf
As we can see, Stallman never said the victims „were entirely willing” but that they were coerced into presenting themselves as such to Minksy. Nonetheless, Stallman was insensitive about this whole issue (being typically pedantic about specific word usage, as he tends to be) and shouldn't have tried defending Minsky in this E-mail at all. But we shouldn't be using fucking VICE of all things instead of the direct source.
If you want to sling shit at Stallman, you should direct your eyes to other matters (like his insensitivity), but he never defended Epstein.
In addition I'll link to E-mails as they were compiled by VICE, as those have also been presented by the article: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001
It seems to me that he is far too bothered by the terminology. "Sexual abuse" also works without an "assault" and it makes sense for a court to differentiate between the two. But I would expect a lawyer to get lost in the terminology, but I don't know why Stallmann is so interested in it.
I also don't know why he is like that around words, but I know of people who say it is extremely difficult to converse with him on any topic because he tends to devolve the conversation to this exact thing. Shit happened in one email chain I had with him.
If Stallman wants me to believe that he's naive enough to believe that victims of sex trafficking feigning consent is the same as consensual sex, I have to question all of his claims
That's a completely fine and valid point. By the way, I've read something more recent that's made Stallman undefendable now. It no longer matters to me that he didn't defend Epstein. Fuck me :sadness:
https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/4336825