Austin, meet UT graduate Jessica Jin. Jin is a certified violin instructor, a multi-disciplined athlete, and an accidental community organizer who is going balls-deep to stick it to the Texas Penal Code.
That’s because Jin and a team of dedicated organizers have been preparing since 2015 for the August 1st implementation of Senate Bill 11, which legalized campus-carry of handguns at the University of Texas. At the time this legislation was going up for a vote, Jessica Jin was reportedly listening to news coverage of yet another mass shooting.
Frustrated with the implications of UT’s campus-carry law, she turned – as so many before her have – to Facebook. She had no idea that this was just the tip (of the iceberg.) On her locally-famed Facebook page, Cocks Not Glocks, the event description explains:
The State of Texas has decided that it is not at all obnoxious to allow deadly concealed weapons in classrooms, however it DOES have strict rules about free sexual expression, to protect your innocence. You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class.
Heaven forbid the penis.
Starting on the first day of Long Session classes on August 24, 2016, we are strapping gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks in protest of campus carry.
Jin’s Cocks Not Glocks Facebook event quickly morphed into a wildly popular anti-campus-carry protest with thousands planning to attend. The Cocks Not Glocks mantle has even been taken up by a website to facilitate protests against similar legislative challenges on other campuses.
However, not everyone is riding this hobby horse. After launching the page last year, Jin and other organizers allegedly received threats from other students, and the comments in the discussion page stand testament to that.
Though proponents of campus-carry are very vocal on the CNG event page, if numbers are anything to go by, the opponents of campus-carry are in the majority. The Students for Concealed Carry Facebook page only had 39 likes as of this publication, while at least 13,400 people were interested in joining the upcoming Cocks not Glocks Facebook event.
That’s over a third of UT’s roughly 40,000-deep undergraduate student body ready to let it all hang out.
This brings us to Ana Lopez, seen below handing out dildos to protesters at Spiderhouse cafe. Lopez is a UT sophomore, Cocks Not Glocks organizer, as well as the co-founder and current vice-president of UT’s Students Against Campus Carry.
Lopez told Austin.com that when she received her acceptance letter to UT a few years ago she was so excited that at the time she didn’t even consider the possibility of legislation like SB 11 having a direct impact on her life. However, when it comes to campus carry, Lopez emphatically stated, “I’m terrified.”
With CNG founder Jessica Jin pursuing a career in San Francisco, Lopez is the Austin face of Cocks Not Glocks. As such, she has been hard at work distributing over 3,400 donated dildos to savvy student protesters leading up to the event. Dildonors include Dreamers, Smile Makers, Shane’s World, and even a special set of 100 hand-crafted dildos from a local sculptor.
Here’s a few samples of the goods on offer:
Though Lopez appreciates the hilarious novelty of thousands of bobbing cocks, she doesn’t want protesters to lose sight of the end-goal; eventual repeal of SB 11 and better publicity regarding the normalization of gun culture in a society which continues to vilify sex culture.
Read CNG Founder Jessica Jin’s statement from a recent Cocks Not Glocks press release regarding the necessity of speaking out against SB11:
This is an obscene violation of the values of higher education, and is an inadequate, rotten, and lazy answer to the safety concerns of our community. By blanketing our university in illegal but harmless phallic toys, our goal is to bring attention to the absurdity of the priorities of the State of Texas: violence over pleasure, fear over facts, and blind compliance over critical thinking.
To that end, Lopez has organized numerous pre-protest rallies on the UT campus’ West Mall, at Spiderhouse coffee, and even at the ACL Live taping of Donald Trump’s Sean Hannity interview to get the donated materials into people’s hands, while still conveying the gravity of the event.
Here is Ana discussing the value of also using non-anatomical phalli for the protest, such as “The Frenchman.”
The Cocks Not Glocks event organizers welcome student and local protesters to the afternoon-long event.
At noon, protesters will meet at the base of the UT Tower. From noon to 2 p.m. there will be a number of guest speakers, such as Austin state house candidate Gina Hinojosa and Nicole Golden with Moms Demand Action. At 2 p.m., a Daily Show Correspondent is even scheduled to cover the event. Following that, the protest will draw to a close with a march to the Texas State Capitol Building.
However, Lopez told Austin.com that this is “just the beginning.”
Though Cocks Not Glocks is officially a one-day event, she and other students plan to carry their dildos of civil disobedience throughout the semester. Lopez further explained that:
As long as people are carrying handguns, we will be carrying dildos.
Get involved through the Cocks Not Glocks Facebook event page, and take the Penal Code into your own hands.
(Note: For any concerned parents out there, rest assured that the Cocks Not Glocks organizers have received free-speech exemption from the obscenity clause of the Texas Penal Code by the Student Legal Services Department and the Dean of UT.)
Featured Image – Swedish visitor with ‘The Frenchman’ by Neysa Joseph-Orr, with permission.
(H/T – observer.com)
(H/T – chron.com)
