[…] The one thing I never learned, however, was how to get along with women in dating.
There is absolutely no reason to give such a person so much room for all of his unqualified opinions.
For example, in this interview with Richard Poynder, Stallman says:
[…] The one thing I never learned, however, was how to get along with women in dating.
In Free as in Freedom by Sam Williams, we read:
[…] He was not going to try it, considering himself incapable of dancing, but a friend pointed out, “You don’t know you can’t if you haven’t tried.” To his amazement, he was good at it and enjoyed it. What started as an experiment became another passion alongside hacking and studying; also, occasionally, a way to meet women, though it didn’t lead to a date during his college career.
[…]
I know this, because a few moments after listening to Stallman rhapsodize about naeng myun, I feel his laser-beam eyes singeing the top of my right shoulder. “There is the most exquisite woman sitting just behind you,” Stallman says. I turn to look, catching a glimpse of a woman’s back. The woman is young, somewhere in her mid-20s, and is wearing a white sequined dress. She and her male lunch companion are in the final stages of paying the check. When both get up from the table to leave the restaurant, I can tell without looking, because Stallman’s eyes suddenly dim in intensity. “Oh, no,” he says. “They’re gone. And to think, I’ll probably never even get to see her again.” After a brief sigh, Stallman recovers.
The moment gives me a chance to discuss Stallman’s reputation vis-a-vis the fairer sex. The reputation is a bit contradictory at times. A number of hackers report Stallman’s predilection for greeting females with a kiss on the back of the hand. A May 26, 2000 Salon.com article, meanwhile, portrays Stallman as a bit of a hacker lothario. Documenting the free software-free love connection, reporter Annalee Newitz presents Stallman as rejecting traditional family values, telling her, “I believe in love, but not monogamy.”
Stallman lets his menu drop a little when I bring this up. “Well, most men seem to want sex and seem to have a rather contemptuous attitude towards women,” he says. “Even women they’re involved with. I can’t understand it at all.”[…]
For the first time all morning, Stallman smiles. I bring up the hand kissing. “Yes, I do do that,” Stallman says. “I’ve found it’s a way of offering some affection that a lot of women will enjoy. It’s a chance to give some affection and to be appreciated for it.” Affection is a thread that runs clear through Richard Stallman’s life, and he is painfully candid about it when questions arise. “There really hasn’t been much affection in my life, except in my mind,” he says. Still, the discussion quickly grows awkward. After a few oneword replies, Stallman finally lifts up his menu, cutting off the inquiry. “Would you like some shu mai?” he asks.
Yet he is obsessed with this topic, and with telling the world what he likes and what he does not like. Why care about what such a loony thinks?
And I don’t reject people who suffer from a high IQ, to quote Nils M. Holm. Stallman, though, is just an annoying and boring weirdo. Especially since he is not as important as many think he is (I also reject those who rejected him for his views, obviously, since these people were just a bunch of crazy SJWs.)
To give an example for his sex-crazed mind, one quote from 2003 or so reads:
As usual, the term “child” is used as a form of deception, since it includes teenagers of an age at which a large fraction of people are sexually active nowadays.
People we would not normally call children. The law would also prohibit “encouraging a (so-called) child to take part in sexual activity.” I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.) It is unnatural for humans to abstain from sex past puberty, and while I wouldn’t try to pressure anyone to participate, I certainly encourage everyone to do so.
He supposes quite a lot here. First, he thinks that he knows that some are “ready” earlier – no idea how he comes to such a view and conclusion. Secondly, it is of no importance what he thinks people should do. Especially since he is such a weird guy, it seems even creepier.
I encourage chastity and celibacy instead. People act as if the loose morality in this regard is so great and “progressive,” though then one could ask why is one in four women taking anti-depressants? Or why do we not see only “happy” people around us? To quote from some Catholic guy’s webpage:
Young people, you have become laboratory rats in a failed social experiment.
That’s all. Evil people doing evil things.
For example, he apparently threatened a woman to kill himself if she did not want to go out with him and asked others to lay down topless on his mattress in his office (via Hacker News)
That’s just creepy stuff if true, and the quote above about not having intercourse after puberty being unnatural does not help him in the slightest. Especially since it’s nonsense, since there is no reason that anyone needs to copulate; there is no danger of dying by abstaining from it.
He initiated the terrible GNU project, producing rather awful software. (Not that other circles trying to, in their vulgar words, suck less are any better when it comes to such viewpoints.) This does not give him any credibility to talk about matters outside of his expertise (if he even has any.)
I think that the software world is home to many rather strange, often creepy guys; it’s also in IT that I stumbled upon most who see themselves as transgender. Yet, their egos are inflated because they think their software is so important, the “world” would stop if their bug-ridden code would vanish tomorrow … Just ridiculous. (Remember Sturgeon’s Law: ninety percent of everything is …)
His long list of what kind of music he likes is just embarrassingly self-absorbed; who cares what kind of low-grade music he likes? He even rejects Gregorian chant because of not being complex enough for him. Who cares? Worse, about religion, he writes:
I am an Atheist, for scientific reasons. The religious theory of the natural world (“It’s this way because a god decided to make it this way”) does not explain anything, it only replaces each question with another question – an unanswerable one. That makes it such a bad theory that it isn’t even wrong. ‘inks to Not%20Even%20Wrong on the pest that is Wikipedia.}
I also reject the idea that a god’s opinions would provide us with a moral compass. A god that would allow all the suffering we observe – most of it not the result of anyone’s free will – is clearly no guide to what anyone should do. It would be entitled to its opinion just like you or I, but its opinion would not be entitled to any special respect. Religion offers no moral short-cut. It is up to us to figure out what is right and what is wrong.
There is no religious theory of the natural world, and science does not answer any important questions regarding life and death. So he does not even get this right.
As to the second paragraph, yes, obviously, if God is an eternal being who will judge us, His opinion is way more important than yours. It just shows how self-obsessed this guy is. Further, God laid down how we ought to behave; the Christian believes that this world is fallen, and that the Fall is man’s fault.
His Grav-Mass nonsense is just childish and imbecilic, especially given that many of the great scientists weren’t atheists, Newton neither. Stallman has already demonstrated that he does not even know what religion is. So why take this dung seriously.
Therefore, even earthquakes, as awful as they are, are in a sense our own doing. Certainly, writing that a lot of suffering is not due to man’s free will is wrong, especially today, where, to give one example that is often ignored, fatherlessness is rampant and hurting children and society.
His whole obsession with copulation also shows that he does not understand we are living during a time of decay, as Spengler already observed. J. D. Unwin, in his Sex and Culture published in 1932, came to the conclusion that of the eighty-two or so cultures he studied, none was able to ward off societal degeneration once monogamy was replaced with promiscuity. After three generations, they collapsed and there were no exceptions. Just accept this, RMS. You aren’t that important.
While I am annoyed with those who, like Vox Day, constantly use a kind of “breeder rhetoric”, as Andy Nowicki called it, Stallman’s stance on children is even dumber, because he thinks not having them will help against global warming, meaning he buys into the propaganda.
(Also, the reason he has no children is that he is a creep who was unable to attract women – I don’t mean to make fun of it, but if you are a loser, like I am myself, at least accept it and move on instead of inventing reasons for why you are the way you are. Idiot.)
Just more of a waste of time … I wish I were dead already or had lived during another age. To quote, as almost always, Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
The majority of men have no right to give their opinion, but only to listen.
We should ask the majority of people not to be sincere, but mute.
Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question.
It is fine to demand that the imbecile respect arts, letters, philosophy, the sciences, but let him respect them in silence.
Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist’s opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession.
The great industrial trade fairs are the showcase of everything civilization does not require.