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Comment by FactolSarin | Hacker News Reader

I agree that based on this single email alone, it would be shocking for someone to be forced out. On the other hand, apparently RMS has had a long history of making women feel uncomfortable around him, and not taking "no" for an answer. I feel like this is probably something that's been building for a time, and this letter might have just been the straw that broke the camel's back. It wasn't that bad in and of itself, but it's just the latest thing.

Most of the people around the campus probably don't think of him as "RMS, open source evangelist," they think of him as "RMS, that creepy guy who keeps hitting on people even after they ask him to stop." In that context, this letter can be read in a much worse light.

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>On the other hand, apparently RMS has had a long history of making women feel uncomfortable around him, and not taking "no" for an answer.

I had friends meet Stallman in some conference, and they told me he could make everybody (not just women) "feel uncomfortable around him" in some ways (but nothing an adult shouldn't be able to handle).

Now, if this is about attacking women (physically, or sexually, etc) that would be something else, and would need to be addressed on its own, not using his Epstein comments, and distorting them at that.

Even so, "Not taking "no" for an answer" seems to imply something close to rape or sexual assault -- wheres "making uncomfortable" seems to imply some inconvenience at most.

If he took his willy out, or touched some woman's privates, it shouldn't be called merely "making uncomfortable".

"Making Uncomfortable", at least to my understanding, falls more on the "whistles the Popeye theme incessantly", "smells", "shouts Eureka when he has an idea", "swears a lot", "is totally blunt about weight gains", "looks you dead in the eyes for minutes" etc, realm -- not fire-able offenses outside of a customer facing / corporate environment.

>"RMS, that creepy guy who keeps hitting on people even after they ask him to stop."

Like, asking some person out or something? There's a line there in how we went about it. Many a relationships and happy marriages have started from a person who insisted (even if they were told to stop or "it will never happen between us") - and that's for both men hitting on women, women hitting on men, gays hitting on gays, and lesbians hitting on lesbians. Humans are complicated that way. Some cases persisted for months of years, but eventually the other side agreed and they lived happily ever after (I know several cases).

Of course if he was a jerk about it that's different. There's a line between "asked me out several times even though I said no every time", and "he raised his voice/threatened/followed me out/etc".

(Note that myself can't help (mild aspie) but overanalyze the situation logically, YMMV. Probably you could already tell from the balanced parentheses in prose).

> he could make everybody (not just women) "feel uncomfortable around him" in some ways

I had a colleague tell he won't invite X (a local celebrity with a lot of similarity in character with RMS) to our team because he "always feels like a fool when X is around".

Beyond this, there's also a question of who are you really selecting for when you, by negation, prefer people who'll consciously weigh their every interaction with other humans, being keenly aware of hierarchy of relations at the same time, and careful that any deviation from that would be undocumented? Who would be interested in making social structure adhere to these types of personalities? Who would throw anger tantrums if denied all this, and be willing to bring hellfire on others based on, effectively, nothing?

I'm not completely sure about the answer, but that description sits well on a spectrum of anti-social and is the only lens through which all this makes sense to me.

There is that quote in the hit piece , part 2:[0]

> “When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him.

> I felt bad for him and also uncomfortable and manipulated. I did not like being put in that position — suddenly responsible for an “important” man. What had I done to get into this situation? I decided I could not be responsible for his living or dying, and would have to accept him killing himself. I declined further contact.

> He was not a man of his word or he’d be long dead.”

> —Betsy S., Bachelor’s in Management Science, ’85

I suspect that he was kidding, but who knows?

0) https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...

That's definitely not the case.

Most people on campus think of RMS as a socially awkward crusader for free software. He has a reputation for pushing himself into positions where he's not wanted (e.g. handing out protest fliers at industry talks where MIT wants to maintain good relations, or responding to otherwise unrelated email threads where someone mentions proprietary software).

He had awkward posters on his door, but I've never heard of RMS hitting on people after they've asked him to stop. There's a big gap between "feel uncomfortable" and what you describe.

> and not taking "no" for an answer.

Citation needed for everything after the "apparently"; but in particular - even the gossip I've read suggests he took No as an answer just fine.

The stories on HN over the last week have generally been him asking women out in a bizarre way and then accepting a quite predictable "no". And even then most of the stories are poorly sourced.

I didn't mean "not taking no for an answer" in the sense that he'd get mad or force himself. I mean in the sense that people would tell him they weren't interested, and he'd just keep hitting on them.

If you set "making someone uncomfortable" as the bar for ousting people or even criminal charges, it's clear that this can only lead to trouble. There's a reason that the law against insults considers only the impression of a third party. The "victim" feeling insulted is not enough.

I mean, if someone was constantly making me feel uncomfortable at my job, and hitting on me even after I'd ask them to stop, I'd tell my boss and would quit if it wasn't dealt with. If enough people complained and/or quit, that person would eventually be let go. That's just life.

In that case, an impartial third party would probably consider that harassment, regardless of your feelings. And it can be harassment even if they didn't intend to harass you/did it unknowingly.

However, you _feeling_ uncomfortable is not enough. If you feel uncomfortable with people eating meat around you, that's your problem and not harassment, because eating meat is reasonable in our society.

I've met Stallman once. I'm a man, and he made me uncomfortable. Can we just stop saying that he was making women uncomfortable but instead say that he was making people uncomfortable because of his lack of social awareness (probably caused by his autism) and acknowledge that it is not a crime?

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