Wow, seriously? For reals? How can anyone not read that Twitter account and see that it's parody? (In particular, it's a meanspirited parody of some of the ideas of third-wave feminism; that's why the Twitter account makes specific and frequent mention of "third-wave atheism." It even says so in the Twitter description.)
Well the blog post that sparked this whole nascent movement is called
How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy’s Club & Why It’s Time for a New Wave of Atheism and the author specifically states a link to the waves of feminism: "It’s time for a new wave of atheism, just like there were different waves of feminism." so that's not really the give away you suggest.
The difficulty is not recognising that the AtheismPlus twitter feed is a little over the top. The problem is that in the context of ubiquitous hyperbole we can't conclude from something being a little overblown, that it can't have been uttered in all seriousness.
Also when I wrote the comment you're quoting on, the account had made only a dozen or so tweets. Some of the ripsnorters came later and did indeed settle the matter for me as did some of the later edits to the bio.
So that's why I didn't get that it was a parody account as easily as you did. The clues you saw weren't there when I wrote what you're commenting on. As you can see from my
later post I did indeed come to the conclusion that it was a parody some time before you posted.
Folks....it's parody. It doesn't rise to the level of humor of the Landover Baptist Church Web site, and it's certainly nowhere near The Onion, but it's parody. It's not serious. Not a word of it.
Goodness knows there's not much humour there. The mickey taking has been subtle enough to brand it as a sneaky attack on the nascent atheism plus movement. Though now it appears to have revealed its a little more of its true nature.
It's a reaction against complaints that the skeptic and atheist community is misogynistic, which deliberately borrows language from Third Wave feminism to attack people who complain about misogyny in the atheist community.
Ah, no you've missed something here. That part of it is real. It all stems to
this blogpost from Jen McCreight of boobquake fame.
I happen to think it's poorly done; I do believe that the atheist and skeptic communities really do have a problem with misogyny. Obviously, the person or persons responsible for the Atheism+ Twitter feed disagree.
Maybe that's the case, maybe they just don't like women, maybe they have no grudge against women in general but have a problem with feminism. Maybe they have no problem with feminism in general but have a problem with a particular clique of feminists. And if the last were the case and that clique were to brand and questioning of their group as misogyny and insult and shun and disengage from rational argument with such "CHUDs" How many would be cowed into not pointing out the obvious non sequitur for fear of similar treatment themselves.
I have no argument with equal rights for all, though I hesitate to call myself a feminist as I'm not familiar enough with the in-crowd vocabulary to even understand the label. I've even begin to suspect that it means different things to different self described feminists.
I do think this critical thinking movement has a general problem with nastiness, arrogance and dismissive insulting attitudes. Phil Plait's "don't be a dick" talk sums that up. Misogyny overlaps with that nastiness but should not be subsumed by it. Misogyny has it's own special characteristics and the fight against it requires its own measures. However that doesn't mean that the fight is immune to its own brand of nastiness. It may be that this twitter account shares my own opinion that the fight against misogyny is just but objects to certain characteristics of those who openly disagree with Phil Plait's clarion call.
Of course passing off tweets of straw as coming from within a movement is pretty dickish itself so that's probably not the case yet I suggest it as food for thought.
