Jey McCreight



Jey McCreight is an atheist and feminist activist and blogger. They are known as the instigator of two crossovers between atheism and feminism: "Boobquake" and Atheism Plus.

Their blog, Blag Hag, was originally available at blaghag.com, but they joined Freethought Blogs in September 2011. Due to their prolonged involvement with the controversy over sexism in the atheist and skeptical movements (since Elevatorgate), they are loathed by various MRAs and have become one of the focal points of anti-Freethought Blogs hate.

Boobquake
In early 2010, there came news reports that an Iranian Islamic cleric, had blamed earthquakes on God's wrath because of women who dressed immodestly and advised "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes" and Iranians should "adapt their lives to Islam's moral codes" to avoid being "buried under the rubble." . The day that this was reported, McCreight comically encouraged their readers (via Facebook) to dress "in your immodest clothing to represent Boobquake," which they referred to as a scientific experiment. The actual event took place on April 26, with McCreight carefully avoiding hateful, anti-Islamic, or anti-Iranian messages.

The center of the event (the "epicenter") was at Purdue University, with participants dressed in appropriate attire and carrying signs saying things like "Cleavage for Science," "Amnesty," and "God hates boobs," Unsurprisingly, there were more "spectators" than participants.

The good
An estimated 200,000 people participated in Boobquake. Some women even went topless in New York, where it was legal to do so. Official Blag Hag attire (sadly, this no longer includes Boobquake attire) can be purchased from McCreight's Zazzle store, the proceeds of which go to the Red Cross for earthquake recovery and the James Randi Educational Foundation.

True to the, um, scientific nature of the event, McCreight ran a rigorous statistical analysis of seismic activity during Boobquake and figured out that world-wide incidence of earthquakes on April 26 was actually below average. Conclusion: boobs stop earthquakes!

The bad
Imagine any event where feminists flash cleavage (e.g. SlutWalk), take a wild guess what the Slymepit would do, and your presuppositions would be right. They did exactly what we knew they would do. (This episode provides inductive support for the proposition that if We at Rational Wiki attribute X to Slymepitters, it is true that all Slymepitters are X. Hence, arguments of the form "A member of Rational Wiki criticized a member of the Slymepit on grounds P; therefore, P is probably true and the Slymepitter deserves such condemnation" are deductively valid.) Internet trolls swarmed into attack mode, and McCreight received a large amount of sex propositions from creepy simpletons who interpreted the statement "I don't appreciate having my choice of clothes blamed for natural disasters by some fanatical idiot" as meaning, "I'm a grade-A nymphomaniac and want YOU to have sex with me!" Let the universal principle be perfectly clear: They shouldn't have asked them for sex.

Feminist responses
The event received quite a bit of positive support from Iranian expatriates who are seeking to improve the condition of women in Iran, such as (of the International Committee Against Executions and Stoning) and Maryam Namazie (of Iran Solidarity), both of whom are members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. They focused on how the event was a demonstration for the dignity of Muslim women.

Others however, did not agree. Golbarg Bashi, another Iranian expatriate and feminist, argued that the event objectified women and was a "post-feminist" spectacle that gave encouragement to anti-Iranian and anti-Islamic elements, and thus detracted from the Iranians' own attempts to improve women's positions in their society.

Bashi created a counter-event called "Brainquake," making a statement focusing on how the event was gaining attention because there were boobs involved, rather than because it was actually doing anything:

This sort of rhetoric was not really anything new — the feminist movement has been roiled by "identity politics" since the 1960s as women who were not white and/or middle class work to get their perspectives heard — but it did give people a way to criticize Boobquake without explicitly saying, "Those women shouldn't have flashed their cleavage." Boobquake might be defended against this criticism as follows:


 * If nothing else, it drew attention to the continued mistreatment of women in Iran.
 * While this was started as a response to a specific statement by a specific Muslim cleric, it is not specifically anti-Islamic as it also applies to similar comments from Christian clergy blaming natural disasters on homosexuality.

Some commentators, such as Iranian-American writer asked "why not both?" in response to the conflict between Boobquake and Brainquake.

Elevatorgate and Atheism+
In response to the large amount of frank sexism they received from members of the atheist community (thanks, guys) they started the Atheism+ forum to be a place to discuss issues of sex, gender, race, and disability within an atheist framework. Needless to say, they caught endless amounts of hell from the usual suspects for this one too.

Attack by Roosh
In response to McCreight's criticism of Roosh V's article, The Relationship Between Femininity & Education, Roosh remarked:

For the record, despite Roosh saying a thing fifty times to try to get his point across, Jey McCreight looks like a normal human being.