#CocksNotGlocks: Students Protest Gun/Sex Toy Double Standard

Austin: the one part of Texas that liberals can get down with. It seems like just last week that the University of Texas at Austin was in our headlines, because it was — the school’s chapter of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority made probably the creepiest recruitment video we’ve ever seen. But now they’re in the news for something significantly cooler.

Students at UT Austin held a protest of the campus’s new gun rules this past week. According to the Texas Tribune, Texas passed campus carry legislation in 2015, to be implemented starting in the 2016-2017 school year. Students are now allowed to carry guns in their backpacks on college campuses. Disallowed, however, are “obscene” writings, visual images, and performances.

That’s where the Cocks Not Glocks movement comes in. In a Facebook event that has since gone viral, with over 10,000 people listed as “going,” the members of Cocks Not Glocks encourage students to strap “gigantic swinging dildos to [their] backpacks in protest of campus carry.”

UT Austin alumna and event organizer Jessica Jin writes in the description:

“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.”

While the UT rules don’t specifically ban dildos, and university spokesman J.B. Bird told the Texas Tribune that the students’ protest is “protected political speech,” it does seem kind of bizarre that guns are specifically protected while “obscenity” (with its famously broad definition) is forbidden.

The Cocks Not Glocks protests were widely covered on Twitter, with users tweeting under the hashtag #CocksNotGlocks. Twitter devoted a Moments page to the protests. Here are some of our favorite tweets related to the protests:

What do you think? Do guns deserve more rights than dildos? Let us know in the comments below or @WhatsTrending on Twitter!