Sarah MeiVerified account

Spoiler alert: no. And in fact, people often use their "my life was ruined" story to gain EVEN MORE advantages than they had before said life was "ruined."

I've been thinking about this tweet from @_danilo a lot. "Moral fashions," as people like Paul Graham like to call them, are a fiction.https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/1174151932681818112 …

The idea of "moral fashion" is that we can't hold people responsible for wrong stuff they did in the past, when said wrong stuff was "more acceptable." This fiction is promulgated by people who KNOW they've done wrong things in the past.

But as @_danilo so aptly puts it, "wrong shit was always wrong." And what, exactly, is wrong shit? I think of it as the general category of "using a position of power to extract personal gain from an individual or group in a lower-power position."

There is more to it than that, of course - all the actually illegal stuff. But I'm talking about the so-called "gray area" of legal but not moral activities. The kind of stuff Stallman engaged in.

It was always wrong stare leeringly at a strange woman's chest or put your hand on her knee under a table. The only thing that has changed recently is the victims' ability to demand consequences and justice.

So, in thinking about Stallman's 30 years of shitty behavior, when his victims could not demand consequences - Can we hold him accountable? YES. Should we? YES. Is his life 'ruined' by this accountability? NO. Would it matter if it was? NO.

Or, as the reddit crowd likes to say, "play stupid games, win stupid prizes." https://twitter.com/MarySueSays/status/1174858107484172290 …

Worried that you might be doing things now that are currently acceptable, but won’t be at some time in the future? Here’s how you fix it: listen to people from the lower-power groups. Listen to women. Listen to black & brown people. Listen to Muslims. Listen to disabled people.

Don’t talk, at first - listen. Hear what they’re telling you about the things that upset them. And then stop doing those things. Really. That’s it.

Do this continuously, not just once. When Paul Graham sees “shifting moral fashions,” he’s really seeing marginalized groups telling us things about their experience. Things that we really should have known.