Hundreds of University of Texas students carried sex toys around campus Wednesday as part of a “Cocks Not Glocks” protest against a state law allowing guns on college campuses.
Event organizers said nearly 5,000 dildos have already been distributed in the last five days, according to The Guardian.
{mosads}”This protest, in essence, is meant to fight absurdity with absurdity. Although this entire protest started out as a lighthearted joke, it really developed into a powerful social commentary,” the vice president of Students Against Campus Carry at UT, Ana Lopez, told The Hill.
“We want to extend Cocks Not Glocks to campuses all around the U.S., so students are able to fight dangerous legislative measures in a newsworthy, unique, and sensational fashion,” she added.
This Campus Carry movement was a brainchild of a University of Texas alum and is meant ridicule the school rules that ban public display of sex toys in a classroom.
“Adding more weapons to an already condensed area of the city will only lead to more gun violence in the area. That’s just statistics,” said the organizer of the event, Elyse Avina.
“Incorporation of dildos into the protest is also a feminist push-back against the majority white male, conservative legislature,” she added.
“We have crazy laws here but this is by far the craziest, that you can’t bring a dildo on to campus legally but you can bring your gun. We’re just trying to fight absurdity with absurdity,” student Rosie Zander said.
“We wanted something fun that people could really engage in. Because it’s hard to get involved in the political process at our age, people our age don’t tend to vote or get involved, and this is so easy. Strap a dildo on and you’re showing the Texas legislature this is not a decision we wanted.”
It was part of the Campus (Dildo) Carry movement, started last year by a University of Texas alum aiming to ridicule Texas’s gun culture and as well as school rules that ban public display of sex toys, The Guardian said.
The protest comes a day after a federal judge declined to halt the state’s “campus carry” law. The law, which went into effect Aug. 1, allows students with permits to have concealed weapons on campus.
Three University of Texas professors had filed a lawsuit arguing that presence of guns would limit classroom discussions on sensitive topics.
However, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that “incidental impact” on free speech does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement following the decision that the law simply extends the right to bear arms that is already widely granted to most law-abiding Texans.
“There is simply no legal justification to deny licensed, law-abiding citizens on campus the same measure of personal protection they are entitled to elsewhere in Texas,” he said.