Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article contains multiple tweets where he doubles down and says even weirder stuff: > "No one asked for women programmers. We asked for women influencers and instead got 'independent women' in pants suits. Independence does not exist if you want a family. A woman should prioritize being a good mother and wife, not a coding machine. 'Mother/Wife' is a great job," How do literally multiple paragraphs of misogynisti…
I'm confused as to how you don't understand that it's a joke. None of those statements are literal. He does not believe those things. Nobody does. Those statements are jokes because they are absurd, unexpected and ironic. This is equivalent to somebody writing that "birds aren't real" and people laughing, and you getting upset because birds are real. The absurdity is the humor. Does that help explain it?
Going around saying "you idiot, don't you understand the 'use-mention distinction'?" could itself be considered kind of obtuse. In real life, it is not cut and dry. People muddy the water on purpose as a deniability tactic constantly.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio...]