1 post tagged “chinese-wedding-gown”

As I was researching a followup to my previous post  and reading all your comments, as well as comments from reddit I can't help but notice what seems to be a distractingly large number of comments aimed at the very conservative Chinese outfit that I am wearing in my profile picture.  Some of you might know I lived in China for a few years and that my wife is Chinese.  So I choose to celebrate her culture in the traditional manner, despite the fact I am not particularly traditional myself.

Now, if you know me at all you'd know I care little for what I consider surface matters (Socrates is my favorite Philosopher).  I find it confusing that so many people seem to think it's important, and I'm actually insulted that some people seem to be comparing my picture to some controversial pictures used in a recent RoR conference (you can google for "Matt Aimonetti code like a porn star" but you might get stuff that's not work safe.)  I think there is a big difference based on the fact I could understand how some women, particularly in a male dominate industry like IT, could feel assaulted by the mentioned presentation, while I find it impossible to understand how someone could be rationally likewise disturbed by my picture.  I guess some people have very thin skins, or are highly distractable.

However it's seems to be sapping conversation about the topics I am writing about and draining time from people who jump up to defend me, when they could be using that time to write something useful.  I imagine some of them are probably tiring of the strange controversy as well.  I am here to talk about Perl, about Perl Programming, about the future of our shared ecosystem of practices, about where out community is going.  Not about cultural practices and intolerance. 

Thoughts on the matter appreciated.