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Comment by sascha_sl | Hacker News Reader

I'm baffled it took a twitter critical mass of people for this to happen. Stallman has been detrimental to the image of the FSF for years.

Someone you have to explain the concept of coercive consent to (in recent "entirely willing" comments, and whenever he argues for pedophilia) should not be in a position of power. Then again it seems like nobody managed to do so even now.

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I just read an interview with him in which he renounced his belief that adult-child sexual relationships aren’t necessarily harmful. As for the concept of coercive consent, his point was that if you have sex with someone who’s being coerced, but you aren’t aware of the coercion, you haven’t committed sexual assault. The blame rests entirely on the person doing the coercion. Of course, if you suspect that a potential sexual partner is being coerced into having sex with you, you should refuse (and, ideally, try to help them). But if they don’t seem to be in any distress, you can’t be blamed if it turns out that they were actually being coerced.

It took a mass of people who just ignored the "presented herself as" part, and don't want to listen to an explanation.

Was bound to happen sooner or later, he was never much of a political correctness guy.

Intent matters. What do you think was the intent behind these comments?

The intent was that before we collectively declare the dead man a rapist and pedophile, let us at least make a minimal effort to find out what really happened.

Making the one hypothetical you express the most favourable for the accused is not a neutral action.

If I consider one of the options the most probable, should I be afraid to express it because someone will judge me just like you did and I will lose my job? Yes, I think it's not only a neutral action, but a positive one, because you value seeking the truth more than social conformity.

By the way, the sad joke here is that Minsky was not even accused of anything. What we know by now is that Epstein asked the girl and a witness says he refused:

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/

Good source, definitely not one of the most biased things you could be pulling out.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pajamas_Media

He didn't need to have the concept of "coercive consent" explained. It's the other party than needs some basics explained. Many people would refuse sex with a prostitute, and even more if they suspected the person was a forced sex worker. Therefore it's not unreasonable to think Epstein required his slaves to pretend willful behavior and fake consent. How efficient it was? We will never know as the alleged "rapist" is dead. The problem here is that you can't even consider his innocence as you will get punished by a collective hysteria.

Is it possible he thought the girl was genuinely interested in the famous professor? Maybe. But even considering this possibility is now deemed a crime by Twitter activists and you will be punished for articulating it by losing your job.

Stallman was right though.

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