Cocks Not Glocks

This actually happened at UT Austin. Hundreds of students showed up with oversized rubber dildos strapped to their bodies to protest the campus carry law—you know, the Texas law that lets anyone 21 and older carry a loaded gun on campus and basically everywhere else. They decided the only way to fight absurdity was with more absurdity.

Rosie Zander, a history student involved in the protest, put it plainly. Getting young people to care about politics through normal channels is impossible, so you do something that can’t be ignored. You strap an enormous dildo to your body. You walk around with it visible. You make people feel that visceral wrongness about seeing something like that in public. That’s exactly what the law does, except it’s a gun and people actually die from it.

Jessica Jin, who helped organize it, was blunt about the aim. She wanted every student carrying one of those oversized rubber cocks to actually feel what campus carry means. The strangeness of moving through a public space with something that huge and out of place. The looks. The discomfort. The sense that something is deeply wrong. Then carry it anyway, openly, without shame, and let that sink in. Let yourself feel what it’s like when it’s a weapon.

I can’t stop thinking about how perfectly pointed the whole thing is. The lawmakers passed this law and probably expected quiet acceptance. Instead they got hundreds of students walking around campus with enormous dildos. It’s the funniest and darkest political protest I’ve heard of in years. Maybe both at the same time. At least there’s no way to miss what they’re saying.