Editor’s Note: This guest post is an Op-Ed submitted by Deborah Gentile (AKA Digi). She’s a fellow blogger, and friend of Victory Girls.
Disarming them.
Once upon a time in America, the university was a place where the young went to expand their minds. At the university, they were exposed to a world of ideas, and taught to test those ideas, by constructing and deconstructing arguments. Alas, today the art of critical thinking and debate has become as passe’ as the formerly ubiquitous LIVESTRONG bracelet. Today’s college students are better at reacting, than responding to ideas. Without intellectual prowess, they are forced to rely on animal instinct.
This past week, students at the University of Texas began a protest of the new campus carry policy. Concealed carry of handguns has been legal in Texas for more than two decades, but the new ruling allowing concealed carry in classrooms and on campus is too much for those who have been trained to react to every possible trigger, whether or not it is attached to a firearm.
Marketing student, Jessica Jin, came up with the idea for the “Cocks, not Glocks” event to protest the new policy. At the event, more than 4,500 sex toys were distributed. In her words, “it makes a lot of sense to equate a gun to a big dick, a traditional symbol of power.” Videos, of the event, show coeds brandishing outlier-sized dildos, as they shout the motto of the protest.
Being a woman of a different era, their choice of tactic strikes me as ironic. On the one-hand we constantly hear how campuses have become a hot beds for rape and sexual assault. We are bombarded by the anger of women who want to be recognized for their brains, instead of their bodies, yet over and over instead of using their dazzling intellect to vanquish their foes, they seem to always resort to some type of please look sexuality.
These desperate attempts at garnering attention, might be scintillating, if they hadn’t become such a predictably off-putting snooze-fest. It shouldn’t be a surprise, that for the generations whose cultural icons include women like the ever more boring Lena Dunham, indecency is often the first weapon chosen from their arsenal.
It was titillating in 1991, when PETA first disrupted an Oscar De La Renta’s fur show, with the “We’d rather go naked, than wear fur” protest. It was ironic when Russia’s FEMEN bared breasts to protest sexism, and sex tourism, but by the time the Code Pink, protested the RNC in campy vagina costumes, the tactic was already about as exciting as the morning after a one-night stand.
Maybe it was a good idea, poorly executed. Properly used, gender, sex and sexuality can be formidable weapons. Throughout all of time women have often disarmed men using only what they were born with, but as with the use of any weapon, a level of expertise is required.
But, don’t upset the cupcakes with logic and reason. Well-written.
TW
Irony and comprehension of their own folly is truly not their strong suite
Maybe a rogue gunman would be deterred by the fear of being knocked unconscious by a barrage of gigantic dildos.
Jessica Jin is promoting rape, and the University of Texas should be held legally responsible for allowing her to promote sexual assault on their campus.
I’ve read some of Gentile’s stuff before, and I’ve always loved it. This was an interesting write-up. I’d love to see a follow up on how universities are all so liberal, and very rarely encourage discourse from students that feel different.
Crazy double-ass standard. If a MAN wore a plastic vagina around his neck and organized a protest with the following slogan: “peace and pussies over concealed and carries” – the feminist uproar would be relentless. Free speech has gone haywire on campuses. Sometimes it’s free, sometimes it’s stifling, and sometimes it’s too dumb to be near as provocative as its undergraduates think.
Great essay from a great writer.
Future leaders of America. Enjoy the decline.
Nice post.
The stupidity of the protest was not lost on many. From the discrepancy between open and concealed carry to the difference between offensive and threatening, these folks have proven that college simply cannot educate those who won’t learn.
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