Richard Stallman, feminist ally
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In a 2007 interview with Spanish-language tech blog Todas, Richard Stallman said:
Where men exclude women, women are justified in resisting the exclusion. I will try to help, if it happens in a place where I have some influence, and I see the details of how it occurs.
Great! Perhaps he could start with acknowledging the female contributors to GCC, who he’s never noticed before, according to the same interview:
I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.
Then he could move on to the ongoing problem of dismissive, exclusionary, or humiliating treatment of women by presenters at technical conferences.
Oh wait, he’s already on that case. Never mind.
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I can see how offensive it is to be unnoticed because of your gender, despite contributions. I would be offended as well.
I’m glad someone emailed him regarding the “EMACS virgins” statement, which is not “crude”, but rather closer to “outright disgusting” to me. Simply taking a completely sexist statement and adding the word “EMACS” at the beginning. It’s disgusting without the EMACS and it’s disgusting WITH the EMACS.
I’m sorry to hear a person I highly appreciate said something this tasteless and refused to recognize that people’s feelings were hurt and that they were (rightfully) offended.
guh. Thanks RMS, for making an analogy “in fun” from those of us who share emacs with others to crusading rapists. “Get off my side” comes to mind; if this is what you mean by ‘ally’, I’d rather have you as an enemy.
you know, if he *hadn’t* clearly gone out of his way to specify *women* who’ve never used emacs, the ‘emacs virginity’ joke could be kind of subversive of [hetero-]sexist norms, because one of his [presumed male] audience members “taking [some presumed male Visual Studio user]’s emacs virginity” kinda says “introducing other men to emacs makes you gay, and them too”.
BUT, [of course there's a but] he explicitly specifies women. How fratboy-casual-rape can you get, RMS? wait don’t answer that
Errm… I don’t think Stallman has been involved in gcc development at all for years. Unless there were any female developers during the time he was actively involved, then his remark is probably accurate. Notice the choice of tense – he’s clearly referring to some time ago, not the past up to now. (Probably not the most useful question for the interviewer to ask, actually.)
May I commend to you http://mjg59.livejournal.com/113408.html?thread=1462016#t1466880