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Richard Stallman (also known as RMS) is the founder of the Free Software Movement, author of EMACS, etc.

Incidents

  • For many years, Richard has been doing a schtick about "St. Ignutius" that involves Sexist humor. His performance of this shtick in July 2009 sparked the EMACS virgins joke incident.
  • The "St. Ignutius" routine mentioned above, has been performed relatively unchanged since the early 90s, as a commenter recounts on a blog post about the EMACS virgins joke. The commenter writes about seeing the routine when she was only 15, how RMS singled her out several times during that performance:
"He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.)"
  • Rather than handing out business cards, Richard has "pleasure cards" which describe his personal interests, including "tender embraces". He hands these out to people of any gender, but what may appear whimsical to men who receive them may seem creepy to women. A scan of one of these cards appears in the epilogue to Free as in Freedom.
  • In 1993 asked for birth announcements to be banned from emacs mailing list, unless they are announcements for seahorses, because then it would be the male that gives birth and therefore interesting. [1]
  • In a 2007 interview, doesn't seem to recall having worked with women in programming projects, despite the fact that a number contributed to GCC:

I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.


Further reading