https://github.com/rms-open-letter/rms-open-letter.github.io
RMS has a history of mistreating women and making them feel uncomfortable, unsafe, and unwelcome. For incidents relating to RMS and MIT, please see 0.
RMS’s views on rape and child sex laws were publicly discussed in the Fall of 2019, when Selam G wrote about them.1 Especially chilling is when Stallman addresses the accusations that Marvin Minsky sexually assaulted one of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking victims (Virginia Giuffre) by saying “but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.”2 RMS decries that this is not “sexual assault” because “‘assaulting’ presumes that he applied force or violence” while the report being discussed “says no such thing. Only that they had sex.”3 Rather than discussing this further, let’s instead focus on his personal web site, where he also shares his views on minors being "entirely willing."4 (Note: While several news reports misrepresented Stallman's position while discussing allegations against Minsky, Stallman has previously expressed opinions that were consistent with the inaccurate portrayal.)
He regularly and repeatedly makes comments about “the dishonest law that labels sex with adolescents as 'rape' even if they are willing."5 He compares United States law to Sudanese law in saying that “US laws that define 'rape' to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies)” and that “both laws falsify the meaning of ‘rape.’”6
Of a woman having sex with a minor, he said “I wish an attractive woman had 'abused' me that way when I was 14.”7 He directly addressed child pornography by saying that “making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.”8 He defended pedophilia, in general, in saying that “there is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.”9 (Note: RMS apologized for this comment on 14 September, 2019.Citation. Edit made: 24 March, 2021 - 08:50 EDT.)
In 2015 and 2016 RMS made three posts on his website about Down’s syndrome. He recommended that, should someone find out they are pregnant and the child tests positive for Down’s syndrome “the right course of action for the woman is to terminate the pregnancy.”11 He referred to people deciding to “carry fetuses with Down’s syndrome to term” as “perverse” and said that there is “nothing virtuous” in “[increasing] the number of people that have Down’s syndrome.”12 He also said that “when a fetus has Down's syndrome, you should abort it and try again.”13 On at least one occasion RMS likened having a child with Down’s syndrome to having a pet.14 (Note: Link 14 added 25 March, 2021 - 11:33 EDT.)
RMS has spent years on a campaign against using people’s correct pronouns. This is poorly disguised transphobia. In the original publication of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, he said “there are various ways to express gender neutrality in third-person singular pronouns in English; you do not have to use 'they.'”15 This text has since been updated, but is still transphobic.16 The main page on his web site includes the statement that “‘They’ is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.”17