HN user
Has he objected? If he is voicing his opinion on his blog, but the policy for GNU (which he runs) is otherwise progressive, then it feels like he is separating his personal opinions from how he operates a professional venue.
Using "she" and "he" would be hurtful in reference to a non-binary individual. Non-binary are more common than you think.
"they" is useful when you don't know someone's pronouns, and it's better to form a habit of using "they" for everyone (not just non-trans imo), than to accidentally use the wrong gendered pronoun, which may trigger their dysphoria more strongly.
I'm not getting the notion from this policy that it is intended to get individuals to deliberately use the wrong pronoun, because they're uncomfortable with using the correct pronoun for them. But, if you think it is ambiguous, then it could certainly be reworded.
According to messages on their Github, they theorize that Russian speaking individuals are less likely to fear for their careers, as a consequence of signing that letter, even if they otherwise support it.
From what I know, this is how HN has always operated. There have been several threads to discuss the situation with Stallman, people have voiced their opinions, and these are probably seen as a rehash of those.
There hasn't been much information in these new stories which we didn't already know about him / the situation. FWIW I didn't flag them.
It looks like the media + detractors still don't understand the Streissand Effect. The petition for RMS is accelerating, the one against was ahead a few days ago.
The more they speak, the more unreasonable they act by shouting to fire all the board members, the more they shout to shut down the FSF, the more they focus on him having wrong opinions, the more unreasonable they make themselves look.
To be fair, I can imagine these being the people who voted against him being reinstated, so they've just ended up consolidating his control over the FSF.
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/20/is-the-traditional-aclu-...
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/02/14/the-aclu-would-not-...
Indeed, Weimar Germany had on statute what we would today call hate-speech laws, and Nazi propagandists like Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher were prosecuted for their vicious libels of Jews. In turn, they used the attention to promote their cause and pose as martyrs.
I recommend reading these articles on free speech.
While your idea has some merit, there is a distinction to be made between writing a book about completely fictional scenarios involving sex with minors, and advocating sex with minors (telling people that it is fine in a piece of advocacy like on a blog).
People sometimes get these two confused, but they're not the same thing.
Someone can easily construct a fantasy world where doing that might be fine / unharmful (or in scenarios where it is harmful, it is clear to the reader that it is bad to act on), yet believe it is harmful in reality.
Between the covers of a book is another universe. In a way, imagine someone is transported to another planet which resembles your own.
There is also indeed the distinction between advocating for something and doing it. To pick a less charged example, I advocate for the legalization of most drugs (although, it doesn't mean I would support irresponsible use, much like how I wouldn't support drink driving). This doesn't necessarily mean I am secretly consuming cocaine, heroin, LSD, and all manner of other illicit drugs.
Another thing is that there is a difference between someone giving their opinions on the matter, and actively inciting someone to do it. If someone specifically instructs the reader to go out and do it, that is clearly very bad. But, I've never heard of such a thing happening, and if it did, it is more likely to be an internet troll. It is too damaging of an act.
I am of the opinion that text + anything which is digitally created is fine. Nothing which goes back to a specific abuse, although there are occasions where the victim of child abuse will chronicle their abuse in text, and I think they should be free to do so. There is also the case in Canada where someone did a retelling of an old story (IIRC Hansel and Gretel) which was more faithful to the original.
In practice, I imagine it would be quite ruinous to publish books which cover such themes under your own name, and it would be advised to use some sort of pen name.
It's been a while, but the "child porn" post links to Rick's blog post. Rick made a blog post calling to legalize child porn, and it went over about as well as you'd expect.
He later explained why he called for that. The law is being used against things it shouldn't be. Like historical war photos, cartoons, a mother recording her child's unusual behavior (a sign of abuse) to submit as evidence to the police and getting charged for it, teenagers sexting, and so on.
The argument was never that child porn was good, but that we're going down a really dark path of censorship, and that we'd be better off doing away with that law, if this is what it means doing.
It isn't that child porn is good, but that censorship is worse, and dangerous to the fabric of society. If a former politician like Rick can be misunderstood and taken out of context like that, I can imagine it being even more hazardous for RMS.
I think some people have a very naive view of consenting to sex.
The idea is they ask someone whether they want to do it, they say yes, and they do it. And they don't really see the harm there. Everyone's happy, right?
But, children lack the knowledge to understand what it is they are asking. Children might also agree to things they shouldn't because they want attention, even if it is bad for them, and hurts them.
Teenagers might be better off but they're hormone propelled and may make mistakes they really shouldn't. There are power imbalances too where someone feels they should do something they really don't want to do.
To be clear, I'm not for criminalizing sex where a small age gap is involved. Throwing teenagers in prison for having sex with each other is counter-productive and harmful. There are better ways to tackle that. The same applies to sexting.
But, the burden which would have to be met for an adult to be involved is so high, so risky, and so convoluted that it isn't worth it in practice. Can a judge really make the right call all the time there? Is it worth it?
By the way, he has never tweeted his theoretical support for statutory rape. I don't think he even has a twitter account. He made some comments on an obscure personal blog over a couple of decades. Someone went out of their way to dig it out after he appeared in the news.
To be fair, he was only re-appointed for a short while before he was cancelled. We don't even know what his plans are.
I don't really think he is as "irredeemable" as people make him out to be. He could rebrand like Linus, and do less of the things which appear to irritate people. He could run more controversial things through someone else before publishing it.
They've already made their point that what he said / did wasn't acceptable two years ago.
I don't think it makes sense to view producing such content as so frightening.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190602191056/https://cphpost.d... > Cartoons and drawings depicting paedophilia do not encourage people to commit child sex offences in real life, a report by experts who treat sexual problems concludes.
The report, carried out by Sexologisk Klinik, which is a part of Rigshospitalet, was ordered by the former justice minister, Lars Barfod (Konservative), after the Socialdemokraterne, then in opposition, demanded a ban on drawings and animations of children being sexually abused.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.h... > The findings support the theory that potential sexual offenders use child pornography as a substitute for sex crimes against children. While the authors do not approve of the use of real children in the production or distribution of child pornography, they say that artificially produced materials might serve a purpose.
I presume we're talking about the time he worked as her campaign manager?
If he was placed into a role which brought him into direct contact with vulnerable individuals, that would be very reckless, as sadistic offenders are commonly referred to as high risk in the scientific literature.
I'd like to imagine someone wouldn't risk doing that while on bail (the alternative is very terrifying), and perhaps, he would not, but it would still be very reckless.
Thank you for your post, I got a bit confused as some comments are insinuating the father was the moderator, and others insinuated the husband was.
I'll stand by my points about the husband (as it feels like people are trying to punish him by association + trying to shame him for his personal interests), although I wish Reddit had E2EE or some feature, so that no employee (no matter whether it's publicly known they're dodgy or not) can read someone's private messages. And if there isn't a strong audit trail, there should be one. There shouldn't be one super role with access to everything either.
A stable job can help to keep someone out of trouble. Someone who feels completely hopeless, and that everyone is against them, might just decide to take the step to committing a terrible crime.
The risk of any particular person with such interests committing a crime is very low, and it usually takes additional factors to push that up. I don't see enough things to give me reason to believe he would, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here.
If it does turn out she turned a blind eye to her father's abuses, then as far as I'm concerned, she is complicit, and shouldn't have the role at all.
Well, there are a lot of people who want positions of power, like working as a judge, or having a high position in the government. Undoubtedly, some will turn out to be pedophiles, and / or abusers.
We likely hear a lot of places like Churches, hospitals, and schools, because historically people were pretty quiet about what went on there, and now all these horrible historic revelations are coming out one after another.
I can imagine access to children being a factor too, although actual pedophiles have an instinctual emotional closeness with children which might influence them towards those positions. If any are in those positions and see this, I really hope you don't do anything to anyone there.
The highest frequency of abuse actually happens in none of those places but at home. It is usually a family member who does it. Sometimes, it may even involve drugs, rather than a sexual interest. I'm not very fond of the War on Drugs, as it destroys lives, but I really hope people use drugs responsibly, when / if they do. And we may need better mental health services to reduce the perceived need to rely on alcohol / drugs.
From what I know, pedophilia is a spectrum, which goes from very weak (insignificant and easy to ignore for most intents and purposes) to the exclusive type. There are some sub-types, like ones who are only interested in infants, rather than older children. Pedophiles aren't synonymous with abusers. Many don't abuse.
What are the tweets which her boyfriend posted? If it's just about his fantasies, I'm not really concerned about that, so long as he isn't committing crimes himself, or encouraging others to do so. It can be an outlet for such predilections. Shaming someone for them doesn't make them magically go away. And I can imagine him being the only one willing to marry her with her association with her father.
Do you mean literal torture? Ouch, sadistic ones are scary.
I'm not surprised she hired her own father. People will do a lot of things, when their own family is involved. This isn't to defend the decision, but it isn't inherently irrational.
Is there anywhere where it would be appropriate for her father to work? A lack of stable employment could contribute towards him committing further crimes. Preferably, somewhere away from children?
I'm going to presume we mean literal torture here, and not rape being akin to torture.
Sadistic behavior is indeed a risk factor which puts someone at a heightened risk of re-offending over other child rapists (this isn't to say sadistic fantasy will lead to such crimes in someone who is more empathetic).
If the individual is psychopathic, there have been some recent breakthroughs which show it is possible to treat such individuals, but researchers call for more research in this area. A couple of programs look promising.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/opinion/when-junk-science... Not all sex offenders have the same risk factor (sex offense is a very vague term, and unfortunately, one people associate strongly with the worst kinds), and the risk factor for a lot of them is fairly low.
Courts are moving towards more individualized assessments of recidivism to determine what tier of risk they should assign someone to.
There are a few questions I would ask here in connection to this case:
Has he been taking any sort of drug?
Does he have any mental health issues?
Has he had any recent head injuries?
Does he have a brain tumor?
To be fair, he voiced most of his opinions on his personal blog, and not on the mailing list.
His personal blog is presumably a place which you would peruse, if you wanted to know what his personal views on things are, and it was so obscure that seemingly no one knew of it until someone really went digging.
Not only that, but he didn't even make these views with any particular frequency. One was made in 2006. Another six years later. So, a couple of comments he casually tossed out over decades, in a place where he would have expected few to ever see it.
To be clear, I don't agree with many of his opinions (some suggest he might have worded his opinions really, really badly, and might mean something else), although I agree with one original blog post he referenced, where child porn laws have become so stretched they're being applied in places they were never originally intended to be.
Like someone recording evidence to provide to the police of their children behaving in an overtly sexual manner which could be an indicator of abuse, arresting someone for a drawing which is a serious waste of police resources, the risk that someone can't reference historical images like the one from Vietnam, and so on.
On the mailing list, he responded in a literal fashion taking the premise that Minsky had been misled. Unfortunately, it was poorly worded. If he had simply said that, rather than going on about her "presenting herself", or the other utterances, then it wouldn't even be a story.
German Law is a bit more complicated than people give it credit for. While the police might not proactively go after cases involving some older minors, they will if the person files a complaint.
If a situation involves "exploitation" under the law, as most of Epstein's crimes would be considered to, then it is also automatically illegal.
They're removed from society to protect society from them. However, depriving someone of their liberty is a pretty extreme step to take, and not one which should be taken lightly.
A TS individual for instance may be annoying, however they aren't causing actual physical harm to other people, in the same sense that a murderer might be.
It would make for a far better world:
Older men chasing younger woman and replacing their previous wives? Completely unnecessary.
Child sex crimes? Someone can just morph into a child and hook up with someone with the same interest.
Unattractive but a good personality / similar interests? Not a problem.
Trans? Just morph into a woman / man.
I also have a dislike for punishing someone for the acts of someone else. If someone who commits a crime, just so happens to have a particular book, it doesn't mean all the owners of that particular book should be punished for their transgressions.
It's an unpleasant form of collective punishment. And it means that all of them have to suffer for something which has nothing to do with them.
As a response to your dead comment, not only do they not have feelings towards adults in any meaningful sense, other than making a friend, but they actually feel disgust and revulsion towards sexual settings involving adults. In a way, it is as if their sexual axis has been inverted, and instead of being disgusted by one, they're instead disgusted by the other.
It's also not a belief. The science has put it clearly that such people exist. Saying otherwise is to deny the science. Not only can the science measure someone's response to material, but even their neuronal response to it. It _is_ a spectrum, so there are types who aren't that bad off, and perhaps, even ones who are lightly touched by it. But, the idea that it is purely a form of deviance and twisting is flawed.
There are pieces of anecdotal science (studies on small samples of people who report it helping them not have to commit crime), a country level study on crime in the Czech Republic, and expert opinions from half a dozen experts which would suggest that at worst it is neutral and at best it reduces crime.
Most importantly, there has never been evidence that it causes crime. This property has largely been assumed, and has never been tested in such a fashion, despite a lot of people assuming it has been tested and produced such results. There is an exception where prisoners wanting to get early parole / better conditions play along with flawed studies.
According to Dr. Seto, those who commit crimes are largely antisocial individuals who were leaning and moving in that direction to begin with. And that they ultimately would have reached that conclusion.
At most, I might advise putting a content warning on a site or a piece that explains that it is a piece of fiction, and that it should be not be enacted. But, I've never seen actual evidence, only conjecture, that that it could be a problem. It's just not listed in actual psych profiles.
And while I will condemn someone acting out the crimes, condemning someone for consuming / producing a piece of media is going to feel like an adversarial attack on them (which fuels in-group bias, meeting up with like-minded people, distancing, and conspiracy theories), and it ultimately just deprives them of pleasure, without any real gain (and that is in the best case).
If someone does feel it is making them really likely to do something that they shouldn't, I would strongly advise that they don't read it, and I don't feel that a level-headed individual would just run all the way to doing a crime.
As for those reviews, I would have to know what they actually say. But, people say all sorts of things when they're "horny". And critics will critic.
I agree with your points, but the wording in the post is very vague. If they mean teens, they should say teens directly, rather than using the word "children" which is easy to misunderstand.
Some things which people write or draw are certainly repugnant, extremely repugnant, including some particular forms of hentai manga, and if someone were actually acting out the activities described within, then I would want them to go to prison for a very long time.
But, committing a terrible act, and writing about it from a fictional perspective are completely different things. I don't think people are so brainless as to blindly follow what is happening in a hentai manga.
Someone doesn't simply "become" the sort of person who would do that, just by consuming fictional material, and if they're using purely fictional material, it could be even argued they're actively avoiding it.
The actual risk factors for abuse (and not merely creating / consuming prohibited content) I know of are:
Some people have poor mental health. Being unable to express yourself and having to shut things in would not help. Luckily, we have many ways to improve someone's mental health. Mental health can also improve if someone has supportive friends. This could be considered the main factor.
There are people who look for substitutes for a partner and unscrupulously pick that.
Someone may be physically incapable of feeling anything to adults and only to children. A recent scientific paper said that some address their loneliness by creating dolls and talking to them to keep them company. Banning and prohibiting things might frustrate them, but it wouldn't actually solve anything, other than making it clear that they have nothing to lose.
I am sure there are other possible factors, but I don't think I have ever seen "I saw it in a book" mentioned as one. Even Dr. Seto, who is a leading expert in this area, believes that those who would abuse, are those who would have abused either way, irregardless of this content being available.
From what I know, it is getting appealed to a higher court, so yes and no. The verdict will be in sooner or later, and at that point, we will know. But, I'll also argue that this never should have gotten to a trial, it is appalling that the police think this is something someone should get charged for to begin with.
The other case is also going up for appeal, from what I've read, although I don't know how the higher court will respond to it.
the world has reached a point where it is broadly understood that written erotica is freedom of speech and trying to ban it or make it stop is pointless.
Unfortunately, this isn't entirely true, even today.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3a8nv3/canadian-author-charg... This is the most famous recent one.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-convicted-multiple-obscen... There is also a Texas Man, by the name of Thomas Arthur, who hosted far more disturbing things on his website who got convicted of obscenity.
He appears to have been trafficking in obscene drawings, however the text material is listed as charges as well.
Relevant: https://twitter.com/EstelMP/status/1369936040702730241
The new E-Privacy Directive (if it doesn't get watered down) might help with the cookie wall problem.
I will never cease to be baffled by what people are willing to put to print. These are some interesting questions.
If he's writing a book about some fantasy sex between some character and a child, I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to do that, so long as he's not selling those copies to children.
If he is a pedophile, getting someone to bottle up such a central part of themselves is bad for their mental health. And nothing good can possibly come from having poor mental health. Although, it is hard to tell if this is the case, or if it wasn't contributed by his dodgy pen pal.
The pen pal, and the whitewashing of him, if he is indeed a molester, is personally a far bigger problem to me (and one which is being a tad overlooked imo), than the sex scene, although at this point in this comment, I'm still trying to separate the man from the work.
I can see why people would dislike him writing YA works. If he is a pedophile, I imagine part of the reason he has become so popular, is that he is uniquely able to "feel" the same things the reader might towards their peers.
Someone trying to emulate that without that sort of touch would have a greater difficulty in doing so. However, it does appear as if he has pushed some boundaries, and there are serious questions to be had about when young people should start to be exposed to charged sexual settings like this. And what sort of shock scenes is really appropriate in there. He might even need an actual editor who can rein him in.
I am not familiar enough with his work to comment further on this.