ly BDFL with this kind of a conflict of
interest. Many of us who have a career on the Internet live in the shade of
one tree or another...

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SexyCyborg
I'm not at all surprised by this. I'm not a BDSM enthusiast, but in my
personal life I wear clothes and have body mods that while legal and socially
acceptable in my country, many Westerners find outrageous and deeply
offensive. I have always complied with the standards and dress code of any
business event I attend. It's simply what I wear in my personal time.

It's been a huge obstacle to getting recognition when dealing with Western
tech media. Even when I don't appear at all with the project, simply the off-
camera creator's appearance being offensive has been sufficient excuse for
exclusion. I have no doubt that BDSM enthusiasts, or Furries, or many others
face similar issues even when they check all aspects of their lifestyle at the
door and it has no bearing on their projects.

As part of a knee-jerk reaction to community problems with sexism, parts of
tech are now deeply, deeply conservative and judgmental about anything even
vaguely sexual.

You can very easily have permanent damage done to your career prospects by
appearing or acting in some way different from what they feel is the norm.
Once that's done, there's no appeasement or washing away the stain- you might
as well embrace your eccentricity and resign yourself to whatever fringe niche
will have you.

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tptacek
This article is written from one side of a complicated conflict.

It's the perspective of the ousted Drupal member that his beliefs are entirely
packaged up in the BDSM subculture that he takes part in, and that to have a
problem with his beliefs is to persecute his BDSM subculture.

It's the perspective of the other Drupal members who ousted him that his
beliefs are not in fact cabined in that subculture, but in fact bleed out of
it into his interactions with the broader world. They cite evidence.

Since the beliefs that we're talking about could be broadly and probably
inaccurate