Here in Texas, everyone is up in arms (pun intended) about the new campus carry law, which, starting August 2016, will allow persons with a concealed handgun permit to carry their concealed handgun onto college campuses and, pending university policies, to bring them into the classroom.
I, like most of my colleagues here in Texas, oppose the law and feel that my right to personal safety in my job is being violated and, further, that the right to bear arms as defined by the U.S. constitution does not extend to the university, or any school, classroom. The campus carry law is a misguided, knee-jerk reaction to the overwhelming, saddening, and frightening amount of campus shootings that have taken place in recent years.
Texas is not the first state to make such a law, however (Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, and Wisconsin allow concealed handguns on college campuses), yet many people here actively oppose the legislation. Most notably, students at the University of Texas-Austin have recently begun a campaign to challenge the law by encouraging students at the university to come with dildos to campus on the first day of the fall semester next year, when the campus carry law will go into effect.
The Facebook event is set for August 24, 2016 under the title “Campus (Dildo) Carry,” with the hashtag #cocksnotglocks. The event creator, Jessica Jin, explains the rationale for the event on the event page: “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.”
She goes on to cite the campus restrictions on “obscene materials,” drawing on the University of Texas’s Rules: Subchapter 13–200. Prohibited Expression Sec. 13–201. Obscenity.
The event has started to gather media coverage from USA Today to Slate.com. In an article on Jezebel.com, Jin was quoted as saying that for now she will leave the negative comments on the public event page, “in order for everybody to see them and understand the misogyny, fear, abuse, and hatred that a harmless dildo can incite. It is proof in plain sight that assertions that the general public can remain calm while in possession of firearms in tense situations, when they can’t even handle a dildo, might be a bit off.”
Jin believes that bringing dildos to campus would fall under the UT code as “obscene” in the sense that the people wielding obscene objects “intentionally or knowingly displays or distributes” them and “is reckless about whether a person is present who will be offended or alarmed by the display or distribution.”
In turn, levitra viagra cialis this makes it possible to throw the bile into the pancreatic duct. viagra rx Because these two conditions may be able to face proper erections. This magical YES mantra is one of the order viagra canada main culprits of poor sex life. Since it downtownsault.org order cialis online causes no symptoms, it’s no need to take a treatment. Is a dildo obscene, though? Do dildos upset people? Do they upset people more than handguns? These were some of my first thoughts when I heard about the story. Having done research on eighteenth-century dildos in England, I am aware that people tend to do a double-take when you mention the word “dildo” in everyday conversation. But is a dildo obscene if it’s just hanging out in your backpack?
The word “obscene” is one of those problematic, highly subjective, nearly undefinable terms that functions for many like the term “pornography”: I’ll know it when I see it or, to put a finer point on it, I’ll know it when I’m offended by it. The OED is extremely unhelpful in its definition of “obscene,” with the first definition being, “Offensively or grossly indecent, lewd” and the second even broader definition, being, “Offending against moral principles, repugnant; repulsive, foul, loathsome.”
In other words, what counts as “obscene” depends on the person using the word. According to the definition in the UT rule book, however, “obscene” also depends on the intention of the person who is distributing or displaying the obscene materials “recklessly.” By this definition, the open carrying of dildos to the UT-Austin campus is not necessarily a violation of the UT Rule code, as the students who participate are not “recklessly” displaying the dildos, neither are they using the dildos in a “lewd” or “indecent” manner—they are using them to create a political statement.
Even more interesting, however, is the idea that the law that allows for concealed weapons on campuses, by the same logic, suggests that weapons like handguns (which I feel are “offensive against moral principles, repugnant; repulsive, foul, loathsome” as well as “offensively indecent” and thus obscene) are not obscene precisely because they are concealed and out of sight. Conversely, sex, sexuality, and sexual preferences are the very things that we carry about us on a daily basis out of sight—the thing that becomes obscene only when it makes its way into everyday conversation. Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s excellent article “Sex in Public” focuses precisely on the logic of the heteronormative, which places all things sexual and sexually “perverse” out of the public realm under the guise of keeping the world safe for families.
The idea of “cocks not glocks” challenges us to reconsider the gag order our society places on us when it comes to all things sexual, the judgments we internalize, and contradictory role of sex in a society where dildos and sex toys are “obscene,” but rape culture, domestic violence, and sexual harassment in public and in private are the norm.
The fact that openly carried dildos might be more controversial than concealed weapons highlights our society’s fascination and idealization of violent heroic confrontation in direct opposition to the horror and disgust we have as a society for nudity, breast-feeding, female sexuality, masturbation, and non-normative bodies and sexualities. We are, after all, a country where extreme violence earns movies a PG-13 rating, while films with full male frontal nudity or female masturbation must work hard to dodge the NC-17 rating.
I’m not sure if “Campus (Dildo) Carry” will be legible in those terms to university administrators at UT-Austin or to the Texas state legislators who helped pass the law, but I look forward to seeing the final results and following the conversation on this topic as it develops in the meantime.
