CW: discussion of shitty views regarding sexual assault from Stallman and other contemporary vaguely-left academics
I remember finding his blog back in college while doing a paper on copyright laws and alternatives for a POLSCI class, and it was like "Buy gas from Citgo to support Venezuela" and "Boycott Caterpillar for selling bulldozers that Israel uses for ethnic cleansing" and "Here's an article by a pro-rape academic who thinks sexual assault should be decriminalized." Like he was generally saying and supporting good things, and then just brings up vile libertarian-grade shit about age of consent laws and how sexual assault "isn't really that bad" or some shit.
The even worse thing is that back then that seemed like a fairly popular position among vaguely-left academia, that the trauma of sexual assault came more from social views about it than the act itself; I remember my anthropology professor talking about that shit too, literally doing moral relativism shit about societies where pederasty or sexual assault was normalized. I feel like I bring it up a lot, but back then there was a lot of these predatory chauvinist libertines that just sort of fell into the left by default because they didn't like the moralizing of theocrats on the right, and if there was one good thing to come from the reactionary culture war crystalizing around things like Gamergate it's that it drew clear lines against shit like that and forced them to either fuck off or reform.
That is the backbone of anthropology. Cultural relativism. When they are doing field work they can not apply their own cultural values on others. It can lead to them tolerating some awful stuff, but it is not their place to judge or change other cultures. However, it should never be used as an argument for what Stallman said in his blog.
I'd call it more the paradox of anthropology. You quickly fall into a infinite epistemological knot with these things - you'll always be using "your own" tools to answer every question you could possible ask about them, about you, about the very questions you're asking, about your tools themselves, etc. Here is a good essay on the ongoing debate if you're interested.
CW: discussion of shitty views regarding sexual assault from Stallman and other contemporary vaguely-left academics
I remember finding his blog back in college while doing a paper on copyright laws and alternatives for a POLSCI class, and it was like "Buy gas from Citgo to support Venezuela" and "Boycott Caterpillar for selling bulldozers that Israel uses for ethnic cleansing" and "Here's an article by a pro-rape academic who thinks sexual assault should be decriminalized." Like he was generally saying and supporting good things, and then just brings up vile libertarian-grade shit about age of consent laws and how sexual assault "isn't really that bad" or some shit.
The even worse thing is that back then that seemed like a fairly popular position among vaguely-left academia, that the trauma of sexual assault came more from social views about it than the act itself; I remember my anthropology professor talking about that shit too, literally doing moral relativism shit about societies where pederasty or sexual assault was normalized. I feel like I bring it up a lot, but back then there was a lot of these predatory chauvinist libertines that just sort of fell into the left by default because they didn't like the moralizing of theocrats on the right, and if there was one good thing to come from the reactionary culture war crystalizing around things like Gamergate it's that it drew clear lines against shit like that and forced them to either fuck off or reform.
That is the backbone of anthropology. Cultural relativism. When they are doing field work they can not apply their own cultural values on others. It can lead to them tolerating some awful stuff, but it is not their place to judge or change other cultures. However, it should never be used as an argument for what Stallman said in his blog.
I'd call it more the paradox of anthropology. You quickly fall into a infinite epistemological knot with these things - you'll always be using "your own" tools to answer every question you could possible ask about them, about you, about the very questions you're asking, about your tools themselves, etc. Here is a good essay on the ongoing debate if you're interested.