Re: Support RMS

[Ali Reza Hayati <arh@gnu.org>]

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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.

-- 
Ali Reza Hayati (https://alirezahayati.com)
Libre culture activist and privacy advocate
PGP: 88A5 BDB7 E07C 39D0 8132 6412 DCB8 F138 B865 1771


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