On Thu, 2021-04-01 at 11:51 +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: > I can personally vouch for the fact that RMS can be very difficult. > He > takes social awkwardness to new heights. He’s remarkably stubborn in > technical matters even when outside his domain of expertise and > completely wrong. He is not a fun house guest. His manners as a > dinner > guest are atrocious. He was by far the most logistically problematic > seminar speaker I have ever hosted. He takes umbrage at quite > innocuous colloquial phrasing, and is obstinate about his own > idiosyncratic interpretation of English semantics. He overshares, and > has great difficulty reading others' emotions. > > But he's not transphobic. That accusation is basically scurrilous. At > https://libreboot.org/news/rms.html is an impassioned but well > reasoned (at least in this regard) defense of RMS from a trans woman > he had a big public fight with. “If you actually tell Richard your > preferred pronouns, he’ll use them with you without hesitation. > Several of my friends are trans and also speak to Richard, mostly via > email. He respects their pronouns also.” > > Calling him ablist is similarly unfair. He was defending women’s > right > to terminate pregnancies when the fetus has a condition like trisomy > 21. Whatever your views are on the underlying political question, to > twist that as ablist is quite a stretch. > > RMS is not violent. > > He's weird with everyone, which do I think has, in general, a > disproportionate effect on women. As does his poor personal hygiene. > He had a mattress in his office at MIT because he was basically > living > there. That might give lots of people squicky feelings, but would > have > a disproportionate effect on women. He makes unwelcome sexual > overtures to women, but backs off when turned down (with perhaps > isolated exceptions decades ago). That's totally inappropriate > behaviour. He seems unable to sense when someone finds him repellent. > > Basically, he’s super creepy and unpleasant. He picks his feet and > eats it while delivering seminars. > > Nina Paley hosted him in her apartment in New York on a number of > occasions, and had a similar read. > > I'm not sure he'd be an ideal board member, but that’s a practical > rather than ethical consideration, and surely best left to the > judgement of the individual organization. > > What’s problematic to me about this whole “Cancel RMS” business is > the > lack of nuance. He’s clearly not neurotypical in a way that makes him > very difficult to deal with. He doesn’t make appropriate eye contact. > He’s strange in ways that I think, on average, affects women more > than > men. But should we bully or ostracise him for that? I think we should > try to develop coping strategies for both him and people who want or > need to deal with him. That’s actually supporting and accommodating > diversity. And it’s hard! We should seek ways to leverage his > strengths, which are considerable. Of course, that assumes lack of > malice, which I think is the case with RMS. He’s not malicious. He > really wants to connect, but he’s utterly unable to. He’s weird and > clueless. And he’s obsessed with software freedom. > > --Barak Pearlmutter <b...@debian.org> >
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