You are quick to make these statements… but RMS founded this community, many of us have been members for decades – and we appreciate his humor, this is the first time in over two decades of St. Ignutius that anybody has ever complained… how is it possible that a FOSS conference this big, gets RMS to give a keynote and is surprised at it’s contents ?

Now I asked the question – do we need to be more open ? Should we be encouraging anybody in particular to join more than others ? Or do we stick to our proven ideal of meritocratic governance ? I stand by meritocracy – earn your place, no special favors, for anybody.
I also refused to accept or promote any kind of censorship of ideas – even ideas I don’t agree with, but I asked those who seemed to be complaining to say what bothers them – so we can engage in a conversation and promote better understanding, that is how I believe you solve problems.

Only one of them bothered to respond, her response was essentially one of “I’m sick of hearing the same jokes all the time”, none of her examples however were about women, in fact I could point out that at least one of them was about a certain subculture of men online !
But these jokes have a timeline I guess, not everybody was around when they started, so they don’t get them.

She censored my response saying “all you did was to try and convince me to change my mind”… well, I have to say, last time I checked, that was what a debate was supposed to be, but I really hadn’t been trying to anyway. I was trying to have a rational discussion about a perceived problem… to try and understand her side, and hopefully help her understand the other side, so that there can be a peaceful and happy collaboration.

Instead… she shut down the conversation the moment I dared to offer an alternative perspective on anything.

My final words to her, which she may or may not have bothered to read, is the same ones I offer you, and after that experience the totality of my willingness to engage:
While you are fighting against our rights to make a joke, we are fighting to defend your right to make false accusations against us in public.

You are talking to people who will never lay a charge of libel even if you are outright committing it because we are opposed to the idea of libel laws (and we realize that we wouldn’t have needed them in the first place if some idiot wasn’t dumb enough to give free speech and other human rights to non-human entities like corporations).

Sorry, but since we stand consistently in our views – I think we win. Chani Armitage in the same blog you quoted said something far more sexist than even your worst interpretation of Stallmans’ joke… and nobody batted an eye.
“When you have a bunch of men thinking about taking women’s virginity, I start to wonder how many will take it by force”…

Now that is insulting, sexist and outright wrong. You want real sexism to fight ? How about the fact that in South Africa raping a man is still not a recognized crime ?! Regardless of whether it’s done by me or women ! Most studies suggest that men are victims of rape as often as women, because rape is not about sex men get raped by both genders (while woman-on-woman rape is almost non-existent) and the severity of the actions during male rape is typically far wider and more traumatic.

But it’s not sexist for a woman to declare an irrational fear of being raped because somebody made a joke she didn’t get…

Well, I defend her right to make that sexist statement, a I defend my right to make any joke I want to. That’s the only value that actually makes sense here.

I stand by my definition of sexism as well, it’s just another form of discrimination: it’s judging a person based on something that was born rather than chosen. Such judgements are all equal – and equally wrong.
There is no point anymore to feminism, nor to black-empowerment or anything else. What there is a massive point to is a united movement to end all discrimination, against anybody, ever.

That is what I believe in, and what I understand Stallman to believe in. It’s not very politically correct sounding, but it’s the only thing that will actually make the world better, not worse in this regard.
And a key factor in that, is to realize that free speech comes first. There is no greater discrimination than censorship, it’s the discrimination against ideas or thoughts that are unpopular, and it’s single-handedly been responsible for more death and destruction in human history than any and every other kind of discrimination together.

Sorry, I can’t support your way of doing things.

I will finish this rant by quoting a female friend of mine who read this post and then said to me (I’m paraphrasing but I won’t modify any meaning, just get to the relevant part, she’ll read this so I can’t lie):
“I have absolutely no respect for lay ideas about sexism and feminism, but a lot of respect for academic ideas about them”.

In short, all these people crying sexism… don’t know what sexism is. It’s the outrage of the ignorant, and we have more important things to deal with.

It doesn’t seem that we’re as “open” as we could be. Why should only one-tenth the number of women decide to work in FLOSS as decide to work in IT in general (where people seem to agree that representation is low)?

If anything then, his cult of the virgin mary joke was a feminist statement ! He was mocking the chauvinism that is a prevalent aspect of Catholic history…

Too bad his “joke” went over the heads of the entire audience. Maybe he should consider removing that level of erudition from his routine, or supply explanatory materials in advance. Oddly, no one had trouble following Robert Lefkowitz’s keynote, which seemed a lot more erudite to me…

I think it’s interesting, and a bit peculiar, that—in spite of the fact that I was very clearly interested in having Mr. Stallman understand the sense that many of us in the audience came away with regarding his “joke”, to the point of writing a second email in order to make that absolutely clear—the word “women” doesn’t appear even a single time in either of his responses. What do you make of that?