In my church we welcome misfits, Heathens, freaks and geeks, the ungodly and blaspheners, heretics and sinners. Thank heavens. They used to call me a lefty for that. Not so much these days.
I'm sad to see Richards neuro divergent geek friendly safe space invaded by fashionable popular people demanding he thinks like they think.
Saw enough of that soft of thing at school.
Grown ups eh?
@pre Are you talking about Richard Stallman? He doesn't claim to have Aspergers/autism, has never been diagnosed with it, and it wouldn't compel him to say sexist things if he did have it. https://dev.to/baweaver/the-myth-of-the-autistic-jerk-3kjl
@TheoEsc Yeah. He's far to old to have been diagnosed at school but there are many other types of neurodivergence anyway.
Not generally in favour of woke mobs hounding people out of their job for being freaky creepy misfit blasphemous sinners wherever they stand on the ASD spectrum.
I always did like and identify with the freaky weirdos though. Wonder how long till I'm too freaky and weird and socially awkward for the mob to stand me being employed.
@pre But it's not that he's socially awkward, it's that he constantly says sexist things and refuses to stop. https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
He says things? Oh my god. What a monster. Imagine. Saying things!
But it's not that he says things, it's that his crappy jokes and creepy social awkwardness are being wilfully misinterpreted as malevolent sexism to bully him out of his position at his organisation.
I keep hoping someone has a list of offenses better than that one to justify any of this, but no. It's always that same list of six things during a long 40 year career of speaking.
* They don't like that he thinks some young people are in fact capable of consent for underage sex. A reasonable view held in all those countries with lower age of consent than the US, including the UK, but apparently he's changed his mind on that anyway.
* They don't like some mildly sexist jokes from more than ten years ago, like the standard crappy trope joke about "a girl on the internet" or using the word "virgin" to describe new users.
* They don't like an offer of "Tender Embraces" on his business card, which is frankly shockingly mild. My Subgenius holy minister's card membership card offers unholy deflowering ceremonies.
* He was once sarcastic about birth-announcements spam on a dev-list.
* He forgot some women's contributions to Emacs. Probably coz they're just names on a screen and code is genderless and he doesn't actually care about gender.
* Like many women who abort Downs fetuses every year, he thinks it might be kinder to abort Downs fetuses. I'm from the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement myself. I reckon you should abort all fetuses whether they have Downs or not.
There's nothing here outside the realms of misconstrued jokes and reasonable differences.
He couldn't fit in with the square world, even at MIT, so he started his own organisation to avoid The Man and his copyright and other bullshit. He slept on supporters couches as an outcast nomad for most of his life and that's not enough for them. The squares are coming to force him out of even that.
To me, we already did this split once. If people want the corporate family-friendly pre-watershed suit-wearing prime-time version of an organisation for free software that doesn't keep banging on about unpopular things then there is an Open Source organisation for them.
But no, instead it's more self-righteous virtue-signalling bullying. Status-games and power-grabbing. It looks pretty obvious to me who is the victim here and who is the bully.
All this kind of mob action does is encourage the right in their belief that the left don't believe in free speech and that there's a cancel culture coming for them to get them sacked. I worry that the Right is right on that.
One day they will come to cancel me too because I believe in free speech. That people should be allowed to say controversial unpopular things. Apparently many people think this means I'm not a lefty any more. I'm sad about that too. I dunno how you build an inclusive social movement while also hounding and bullying anyone with a different view or who tells an off colour joke.
If they force him out of the FSF presumably his supporters will stop contributing to the FSF and instead donate to him personally or his new organisation. That's what everyone in /r/stallmanwasright is saying they'll do.
Can't imagine him getting a Patreon though, so dunno what that'll be.
I never did more than drop a coin in a bucket at a free FSF RMS event myself. Maybe I will do more if they force him out to start afresh.
