So many white nerds would rather kill their platforms than share them with minoritised people.

We should have been the next major social media space, but we sabotaged ourselves instead.

Look, football hooliganism is a problem and Tel Aviv fans behaved badly.

I think we can still all see that mobs specifically seeking to beat up Jews is not an appropriate response.

National origin is also not a valid reason to attack people in the street.

Says a US citizen who would prefer not to get beat up for the crimes of the country I was born in.

Multiple witnesses have claimed that mobs of men in Amsterdam were assaulting people they took to be Jewish. A Briton reported being asked if he was Jewish and punched in the face.

This is extremely fucking alarming.

Look can we please CW us pol?

We all agree that chasing people off of here is often bad, right? Think about who you might be chasing off.

I don't need your pithy pictures of flags. "If trans people are safe with you" or whatever the fuck, then give some of your fucking money to a trans BIPoC's fundraiser and then also share the link for that fundraiser.

Do something real or quit taking up space.

Comfort the fearful
Visit the lonely
Sit with people grieving
Be gentle with each other

As we reel, take a moment to be gentle
All we have is each other and love.

(And soon also the means of production which are fucking getting seized, by us together as comrades.)

The Labour Party has sent all its members an email from Wes Streeting:

"That’s why, this week, the Prime Minister and I launched the biggest conversation about the future of the NHS since it was founded, and I’m asking you to have your say.

"It only takes a few minutes to share your views. Just visit www.change.nhs.uk or open up your NHS app"

Perhaps we can all let him know what we think of Labour efforts to deny care to trans people, including both trans kids and adults under the age of 26.

They don't need a national survey to know people are waiting a long time for hip replacements. (They are and its a disgrace.) This is a political ask and it should get a political response about not only under resourcing but also politically.motivated care denial and discrimination.

#trans

@onepict your points were super interesting and a helpful frame. Ive made yet another post https://lgbt.io/@celesteh/113336561602037409

The reason Stallman has an eclectic collection of opinions that completely ignore cultural taboos and power relationships is because free software used to be part of the free culture movement.

Free culture thinkers felt like taboos limited freedom and that human happiness should trump Christian social mores. Stallman was attempting to be a Jeremy Bentham like figure, maximising human happiness and potential.

He was trying to start from that and build a logically consistent system where anything that doesn't hurt a living human is basically fine. There are obvious problems with this when it intersects with, say human remains, sexuality, children, etc. The larger movement also had systemic problems with failing at intersectionality. Stallman shares these problems.

There's a fair amount of overlap between free culture and anarchism. Stallman aside, many people involved in the movement did take feminist and anti racist critiques. As time has carried on, the FC movement has largely been subsumed. The thing where Open Source Software was a defanged way to donate labour to rich corporations was not an isolated incident. The commons have been enclosed. Free culture is not what it was.

Stallman has resisted changes. He did not join OSS. He did not listen to feminists. His obstinacy has helped and hindered his cause. It has materially contributed to cis hetero patriarchy in free software. He has also contributed to some resistance against corporate enclosure - but far less effectively than he could have if he listened to feminists and antiracists.

Indeed, I do not support Stallman's continued role at FSF. He should retire.

But he does have a context. The parts of the discourse now that are exhausting and off putting are the parts where culture did *not* change. Its important to recognise some of free culture's victories which include a bunch of stuff about relationships and bodily autonomy. People into polyamory now dont owe anything to Stallman in particular, let's be clear. But that movement, his contemporaries - the world changed for the better.

As Stallman leaves free software, we should be conscious of which parts of his mission are retained. I would argue we should embrace an intersectional approach to the free culture ideal and not just move to a buttoned down, professionalised monofocous on software. The larger freedom is not peripheral, but should remain a core part of the project.

Seeing USians defending their bespoke measurement systems as more useful or logical is the fucking weirdest shit.

@onepict I'm trans, so I have lived experience of unwelcome attention from like 7th grade until I transitioned.

I wasn't intending to say that it was fine to ignore power imbalances or that middle aged people should feel entitled to hassle young adults, but rather to acknowledge that this does happen to femme people over and under the age of consent.

Just to be extra clear, I wrote to the FSF a few years ago to demand Stallman be sacked. They did sack him, but then gave him his job back which I still feel was a grave error. I am not on his side, but I don't think this report is on my side.

The troubling parts of Stallman's statements on age of consent are primarily in his conclusions, not in his arguments.

Indeed, his arguments are extremely dated and now unpopular, but this was very much an active discourse 30 years ago, which is probably when he first started posting them.

The age of consent today is 16 in the UK, but 18 in the US, which is actually quite high. What's more is that culturally, UK teens enjoy a gradual emancipation, where as US 17 year olds really are treated entirely as children (unless they get caught up in the criminal justice system) and are infantilised in a way that is especially harmful to queer teens.

RMS makes the very reasonable point that teens deserve some measure of privacy and bodily autonomy and then concludes therefore it's fine if a 50 year old man "flirts" with a 15 year old girl and generally carries on making her uncomfortable until he hears a clear "no". (This is not fine. Good argument. Terrible conclusion.)

It's also not fine if a 50 year old "flirts" with an 18 year old, but at least she's more likely to have some experience defending herself from unwanted attention, because, let's be clear, the inappropriate behaviour very much does start by 15. Because cishet men can get away with it.

In practice, the way the law has been applied in the US creates problems for queer youth. For a teen with homophobic parents, a queer relationship between an 18 or 19 year old and a 17 year old can be criminally prosecuted. Creepy cishet adults are not deterred by the law or norms, but many queer adults do not want to interact with minors at all because the law does apply to us. When I was a youth, this dynamic was tremendously isolating, but I hope the internet and some societal improvement has made this better. Isolated teens are more vulnerable to predation, not less. Some laws that nominally protect teens seem to be actually intended to enable harms.

LGBT activists in the UK fought to for an equal age of consent for queer and straight-passing relationships, which they won in 2000, when it was finally lowered to 16.

There is a real argument to be made about whether the US should copy the British model of laws, norms and expectations around teenagers. This discussion should be lead by teenagers and queer people.

Not by RMS! Because he also writes as the champion of creepy middle aged men! He lumps the real struggles of teens in with the minor inconveniences of frustrated perverts. This is gross and wildly unhelpful. Frustratingly, the report on his many misdeeds also copies this error. Again, RMS and his ilk (and those who follow his logic) cannot and should not lead this discourse.