Re: Support RMS

[Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net>]

Ali,

I agree with your concerns here, and I have seen many unfair accusations.

However, we must be sure not to dismiss other concerns. In Deb's recent
reply, she didn't repeat any of the unfair exaggerated accusations. We
can grapple with the more subtle nuanced issues without assuming all
critics are the most extreme ones. Even people who signed the Open
Letter (which I saw as grossly unreasonable in some regards) are not all
people who would have written the language exactly that way (which is
one of the problems with open letters, people feel pressured to sign to
signal general agreement and there's not much room to express nuance or
a mix of agreement and disagreement).

On 2021-04-15 10:00 a.m., Ali Reza Hayati wrote:
> Do you guys follow football? I mean the real football, not Amerikkkan
> one. There's a club in Spain named Barcelona. They have a player in
> their team named Leo Messi. I think many of you know him.
> 
> Messi is believed to be one of the best football players in the history.
> During time, some people accused Messi of sexual assault and harassment.
> They even went to court for it and sued Messi. It turned out that all of
> them were only doing this for money, hoping that Leo Messi gives them
> some ransom.
> 
> There's another player named Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is almost as
> same as Messi. He is again believed to be one of the bests in the
> history. He also was accused of sexual harassment and assault. Again,
> some people went to court and sued him, etc.
> 
> Some of the accusers never went to court but they tell very interesting
> stories on how they were assaulted. There were no proof and the teams
> (Barcelona and Real Madrid) never responded.
> 
> I can't tell if those players who have a reputation of good behavior and
> charity and social work were really offenders or not, but I can tell one
> thing. Barca and Madrid didn't let go of their best players because of
> some unproven accusations.
> 
> I remember Leo Messi once attacked a journalist physically because he
> was very angry but again, he made up to that, apologized, and never
> repeated such behavior because he was aware of how it can affect people.
> Again, we didn't see any effort to ban Messi from playing football
> completely because that mistake.
> 
> I'm a football fan. I'm a fan of Manchester United, neither of those
> teams I mentioned but I never ever campaigned to throw out Messi and
> Ronaldo for unproven accusations.
> 
> I did not expect those teams to simply fire probably the best player of
> their history because some people said so.
> 
> Do you get my analogy here? I hear stories about an autistic person
> named RMS that he has assaulted women, harassed them, or sexually abused
> them. When I go and read the stories, I see what Stallman did was to
> "upset" some people. Not harassment, not assault, but upset.
> 
> Stallman shouted at some people or interrupted them while speaking. He
> hit on women or asked them out and insisted on that, which made them
> uncomfortable. If he was doing to me, I would be upset too, but I
> wouldn't ever accuse him of assault or harassment. I wouldn't expect FSF
> to fire its probably most valuable player that is known for his charity,
> effort for equality, justice, women's rights, etc.
> 
> Why people expect FSF to fire its probably best player in history? I
> don't understand that.
> 
> What people explain is not sexual harassment. He was an unpleasant
> person, maybe, to some people but he didn't do anything to harass them.
> 
> Let me give you another example. There's a different between patting
> some child on the butt and pedophilia. Now a pedophile most-probably
> does pat children on the butt but are all people who do that pedophiles?
> Hell no.
> 
> Please don't accuse people of what they didn't do because they made you
> uncomfortable or were unpleasant. If someone shouts at you, defend
> yourself or if the act of shouting makes you psychologically hurt,
> please be very very careful when you come out of your home because you
> may experience it almost every time.
> 
> If someone hitting on you makes you uncomfortable, ask them not to do
> that or ask security to help you but don't accuse that person of
> harassment because looking at someone or being weird is not harassment.
> And again, please be careful when you come out of your house because you
> may experience it every day.
> 
> If someone interrupts you, ask them not to do that or argue back but
> don't accuse that person of harassment because they didn't harass you
> with that. Harassment is different. And please be careful when you come
> out of your house because people may interrupt you every day.
> 
> Stop with accusing people of things when they didn't do that.
> 
> Also, please don't accuse me of sexual harassment because I wrote this
> note. I don't even know any of you and I did not harass you. Disagreeing
> with you is not harassment. Sending email messages is not assault.
> 
> I had to clarify that because as far as I've seen you people, the next
> open letter would've been for me. Don't start arh-open-letter please.
> And yes, I'm mocking some people.
> 
> 
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