Bonum Certa Men Certa

A 3-Year Campaign to Coerce/Intimidate Us Into Censorship: Targeting My Wife

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 29, 2024,
updated May 30, 2024

Young female doctor isolated on white background

YOU can easily tell a longstanding campaign of defamation has gone awry when a notorious "serial defamer" (a term that was adopted by others after he had done this for well over a decade), who ludicrously presents himself as a defender of women (while joking about programming for "sexual favours"), openly attacks and/or threatens women. Not only attacking the wife but also my mother. He and his fellow flunkies just bring girlfriends to Debian as if that's going to improve the image of diversity inside the project...

These aren't protectors of women. This is just plain protectionism.

As a bit of background, anyone who stands in the way of 'secure' boot seems to have become a target for defamation from this serial defamer. He has repeatedly done this to me for over a decade. Has inversion of narratives become an art form? This past week several people contacted me to say that they too had become targets of his serial defamation. There's clearly a trend here.

But this post is not about me or other guys but is instead focused on the one who's 'deadnaming' my wife as if to extend the threats to her parents. These mobsters have no notion of boundaries. Having failed to irritate me, they then picked on my wife, my mother, and even invoked the name of my wife's parents.

At one point she had suffered enough and decided it was time for her to respond. Not knowing the viciousness of the cancel mob 'firsthand', she should have known that when she responds to the abuse against her, then it's triggered as an excuse to attack her some more and blackmail her. It becomes a nasty, misogynistic attack that extends to mothers, grandmothers and whatever. No boundaries! So we're talking about the work of grotesque misogynists who find commonality in their apparent hatred of women.

Can of original Guinness

To make matters worse, the serial defamer pushed this agenda some more, trying to scare women, as usual. Well, he knew my wife did not like him and he knew she did not like getting those letters (after I had told him in IRC to stop this harassment) so he sent her several E-mails (neither of us ever responded; we always ignored his threats), including nastygrams with a very old surname. He sent people to her door too. Yes, sending some dodgy person to serve her in person without identifying, trying to mortify women because being creepy is "funny", apparently. What healthy-minded person fancies creeping out real women who aren't even doing anything to provoke or deserve it? A person whom people would never romantically want in the first place? A person who seeks professional mental help and cannot tell the difference between singular and plural?

In my view, it is a form of overt sexism. Also, in my personal opinion or interpretation (based on other observations too), any pretence of caring about women is limited to women who blindly serve/obey men, i.e. women who are deeply subjugated and talked about like sex objects. Those are the sorts of creeps who tend to drive people away from the community. It is creeps like these that become a deterrent/obstacle to women's participation in Free software.

Today is the last part of this short series (except the summary) and I just want to show the sorts of E-mail messages that he started sending my wife last year. Who gave him her E-mail address?

Anyway, he kept sending mail even though she never responded. This would escalate over time, despite her not engaging in any way at all.

The first message was sent in October:


Hey Roy, Rianne:
In https://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-techrights-031023.html#tOct%2003%2003:52:25, you admit that elusive_woman could be people other than me. As I'm sure you're aware, in order to successfully defend a defamation suit in England, it is necessary for you to demonstrate the truth of the claims. Asserting that I have engaged in criminal acts is defamation per se, meaning that damage is assumed rather than needing to be demonstrated. I have determined that claims you have both made have been read by individuals within England, and they understood these claims to refer to me. This satisfies all the criteria required to succeed in a defamation claim:
1) You asserted a factual claim that I have committed crimes (ie, defamation per se) 2) This assertion was read by someone in England 3) They understood that the claim referred to me
In order to defend against such a claim, you would be required to demonstrate that the claim was substantially true. Since you admit that you are aware the statements you rely on for this claim could have been made by someone else (and, in fact, *were* made by someone else, since the elusive_woman persona is not and never has been me), you have admitted that you cannot demonstrate the truth of this claim. Given the per se nature of the defamation, failure to prove the claims were true would result in you being liable for damages.
I would urge you to consult with an appropriately qualified lawyer. I would also request that you remove the articles from both techrights.org and tuxmachines.org making defamatory claims against me, replace them with an apology, and contact everyone who you have repeated these claims to and inform them that they were unfounded. If you confirm that you have done so by 23:59 UTC on Friday the 6th of October 2023 I will consider the matter closed and will not engage in any further action.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew Garrett

Days later he sent this:


Hey Roy, Rianne,
Given that you've admitted that you believe some of the abuse that Rianne has received (and I want to emphasise that this abuse is 100% unacceptable and I understand why Rianne would feel incredibly offended and hurt by it - there is no universe in which this behaviour is acceptable) was from someone other than me, I would once again ask you to consider whether you have evidence of the truth of any of the crimes you are acusing me of. As I said before, if you remove the articles accusing me of criminal behaviour and replace them with an apology, and contact anyone you have made these accusations towards and inform them that you were mistaken, and do so by 23:59 on Friday the 6th of October, I will take no further action.
Yours,
Matthew Garrett

What he says does not contain any evidence and he is basically giving both an ultimatum and threat unless censorship is immediately exercised. We'll elaborate on this some other time.

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