My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation. Christine, yes, no thanks.https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/994010501460865025 …
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Furthermore it was a somewhat appalling welcome/training on how to navigate MIT which, as an idealistic teenager, I thought ("meritocracy") would be free from such base stressors. (Though it probably counts as one of those practicable "broken step" insights that get handed down.)
This was actually, now that I think about it, the moment that I stopped feeling that there must be some qualification you could get to where people would let you alone to just be a thinking woman — seeing women need to fend for themselves this way even at the professor level.
