"Richard Stallman's problematic behavior, particularly with respect to his views on sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexualizing minors, are best explained by his (supposed) neurodivergence, and to call for his censure on this basis is discrimina...
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@drewdevault @SuperDicq The majority can be wrong yeah, it's just funny that you can't really chalk that particular thing up to neurodivergence. What else is the majority wrong about?
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William Pietrireplied to Esther Payne :bisexual_flag: last edited by
@onepict I don't blame him, but I also don't think I owed him more than he got. My reply to him was straightforward, with no invective about him and no assumptions about his motives. Try rewriting that paragraph to be about black people and see if you think that an opening like still deserves hugs from affected communities or the people who love them. Especially from a white guy who offers zero bio and zero explanation.
Depending on Drew's intent, I don't think he's wrong asking. But even assuming he's aiming to speak up about abuse, I think he's wrong to start that by opening with a studiously neutral take on a deeply harmful biased argument. There are reasons we don't casually repeat misinformation, abuse, and the like.
I also think both that behavior and his intolerance of honest reaction are going to harm even the best of the possible projects there, because it's going to bias the answers he gets significantly. Which makes me question either his intent or his competence in dealing with this stuff.
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@drewdevault honestly not much. IMO women have it way worse.
Most I can think of is one person insisted on calling me mentally ill when they learned I had autism. They got banned very quickly once it was clear it wasn't just an honest mistake (I.e. we tried explaining *why* you shouldn't do that). So I guess that's the step that helps most.
But that's just a thing that happened once. I wouldn't call it pervasive, at least not in the communities that I'm in. -
@sun @SuperDicq the majority are not wrong. It is wrong to kiss someone without their consent. It is wrong to violate someone's boundaries and violate their bodily autonomy.
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Ásthar (Elle/They) ⛤replied to Drew DeVault last edited by
@drewdevault As a neurodivergent person myself, you lost me in the first bit, so I'm going to ask: in which way does neurodivergence explain his harmful behaviours?
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Drew DeVaultreplied to Ásthar (Elle/They) ⛤ last edited by
@asthargf it doesn't, but I stated the argument at face value to avoid colouring the discussion
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Reply to this post if you're ND and want to help review the draft of this blog post
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@drewdevault
*if* we accept the predicate of your hypothetical that it is ableist to condemn behavior explainable by neurodivergence (which I don't and I doubt you do either). The answer to me is: be ableist. I don't like it, but it's ridiculous to imagine any other option in the physical world, and it's weird to treat the virtual world so differently.
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@drewdevault
Story time: a group of school friends I was with had a new guy, Adam, enter the class. We didn't want Adam to feel excluded, so we included him in our social events. Adam had narcissistic personality disorder, likely at least in part because of this, Adam was also a serial harasser of women. So what did we do?
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@drewdevault
We stopped inviting Adam. I wish we didn't have to stop inviting him, but our hands were tied. I'm not going to say it's something only he could change, because maybe he truly couldn't change that. Maybe it was ableist to exclude him. But the safety of my friends comes first. The hard part is figuring out when this case truly applies, and when it's just social norms or tribalism casting someone different as a threat.
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@drewdevault I doubt you'll be hurting for white male autistic ND people but if you need another I'd be happy to review. It might be worth actively seeking out ND people who fall into less represented subcategories, or who have more intersectionality going on than I do.
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@ttamttam may I quote this story in full? Attributed or anonymous?
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@ttamttam rough draft: https://paste.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/0c4ac016eef3088dccf538fce3ae8eb605270828
I paraphrased your story at the end so I would appreciate your feedback for sure
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@drewdevault
Executive summary: it's bullshit. Ostracise him already.Longer version: It's simply not true, and it's throwing neurodivergent people under the bus by painting us all as irredeemably sexist/misogynist.
It's also trying to make excuses for him ("look, the poor dear simply can't help it!") and is a short hop from "he's not really racist, he was just drunk/on strong medication."
If there were a clear and well-documented trail of records showing that neurodivergence is strongly associated with such attitudes and/or behaviours, there might be a case for it. I've yet to hear of such evidence, and I'd be deeply suspicious of the methodology used to gather it.
Being autistic hasn't caused me to be a sex-pest any more than getting drunk has ever suddenly made me racist.
No, RMS' problematic behaviour is his own responsibility, and to call for censure on this basis is the correct course of action.
Not just censure of him, but of everybody running interference for him. -
Drew DeVaultreplied to bram dingelstad :nb_flag: last edited by [email protected]
@bram I've quoted you in the draft
Please let me know if you're okay with how I've paraphrased you here
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@drewdevault sure, names in the story are already anon. I don't particularly care if people find out I posted that but let's keep it anon just in case.
I should mention that while it is my recollection that NPD was the diagnosis; my memory's not perfect and it might have been a different, but similar, diagnosis. There also were some other diagnoses involved which I omitted because I don't think they're relevant and we'd be entering doxxing territory. -
Esther Payne :bisexual_flag:replied to William Pietri last edited by
@williampietri I think you need to re-read what you just wrote.
Part of the reason Drew will have blocked you, is to protect others who have responded on that thread.
Given that I'm pretty sure the only reason Drews post ended up in your timeline was because of my boost, I'm seriously debating if I should be blocking you as well. I'm not yet.
So I'm going to go and have a cup of tea.
You're interested in community, I suggest you have a beverage of choice and have a think.
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Okay, I think the article is almost ready
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@drewdevault I have been using the word "neurosupremacy" for a while. I think it does a better job of capturing the extreme power imbalance and abusively oppressive nature of things than a simple -ism does. Similar terms seen: the Stimpunks Foundation uses the word "neurocentrism", and recently YouTuber ProudlyAutistic coined "neuroism". I think there's room for more than one term because there are subtle differences, but also I'd like to see some convergence.
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@joshsusser nice, thanks, this is good