CORRECTED! Don't Bring a Dildo To an Anti-Gun Fight?
Texas gun-control advocates to protest open CONCEALED carry on college campuses by brandishing unregistered phalluses.
CORRECTION: Thanks to Jon Lech, who noted that the Texas "campus carry" law discussed does not allow open carry of guns on public college campuses. Rather, it allows for the concealed carry of weapons.
The annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), which brings together thousands of English and literature professors and grad students, is taking place this weekend in Austin, Texas.
MLA is among the most-politicized academic organizations, routinely pushing for resolutions on all sorts of issues. Last year, for instance, members of the group pushed for a boycott of Israeli universities because of their government's treatment of Palestinians. The resolutions for and against any action were ultimately shelved for consideration until 2017, which would might give members a chance to repeal the group's 2002 resolution declaring, "the MLA condemn boycotts and blacklists against scholars or students on the basis of nationality, ethnic origins, and religious background as unfair, divisive, and inconsistent with academic freedom." For a list of resolutions the group has passed over the years, go here.
Because the Texas legislature passed a law last year allowing the open carry the concealed carrying of guns on public-college campuses in the Lone Star State beginning in 2017, a group of protesters attending the MLA convention are planning a protest involving an object that they say is still illegal to brandish on the state's campuses: Dildos.
From Scott Jaschik's account at Inside Higher Ed:
"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," [explains the Facebook page of the group Campus (DILDO) Carry]. (This is based on a university regulation barring conduct that would violate state law on obscenity.)
Jessica Jin, who graduated from UT last year, said via email that idea came from her outrage over Friday's shootings at two universities. "I was sitting in traffic yesterday listening to a discussion on public radio about the morning's school shootings. I felt a lot of frustration at those who were still trying to explain away, or make excuses for, this repeated pattern of violence and said to myself, 'Man, these people are such dildos.' I couldn't believe that people could still sit there and defend their own personal gun ownership while watching families mourn the loss of their children."
She said she then did some research and discovered that "it is indeed against UT policy to wave dildos around campus," and that, after that, "I just couldn't help myself."
Update: Given that the gun law in question involves concealed carrying of guns and not open carrying, the dildo protest seems a bit unsymmetrical, especially since the law covering display of sex toys is linked to public obscenity, not possession per se. It's easy to imagine campus left-wingers taking great offense if, say, a fraternity ordered pledges to strap dildos and walk around campus during pledge week. Having said that, I would defend unto something short of death anybody's right to conceal-carry just about anything they want on campuses or off.
The dildo protest will be joined by a more-sedate one, featuring MLA attendees who
will gather at one of the convention hotels for a rally. Then they will march to the Texas Capitol, and instead of carrying weapons, they will carry books. When they reach the statehouse, they will use books to build "a symbolic gun exclusion zone," and standing in that structure, they will read texts that they have discussed in their classes and that they believe need to be taught in gun-free zones.
This protest will be headlined by Roland Greene, the current president of the MLA, who told Inside Higher Ed's Jaschik:
"What book of any force in the culture should we be reading in the presence of guns?" he said. "Our members are in the business of provoking discussion. Learning to give voice to an unpopular opinion, to challenge a consensus and to disagree constructively and respectfully is an essential part of education. We believe that guns discourage that kind of learning."
The "campus carry" law specifically allows colleges to carve out gun-free zones on their campuses, so it's unlikely that Texas professors will be faced with heavily (or rather, openly) armed students in classrooms or office hours.
Greene and other critics of open-carry laws might take the time to drive north a few hours to Dallas and visit with the members of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which is named after the Black Panther activist who famously engineered an open-carry demonstration in Sacramento, California during the 1960s. The leader of the group, Charles Goodson, makes the case for "armed self-defense as it relates to the situation with black people here in America when it comes to dealing with police departments." In the video below, his voice is joined by that of historian Thaddeus Russell, who notes, "One of the great untold stories about the civil rights movement was that it required violent resistance from blacks to be effective."
Which isn't to say anything directly about whether it's a good or bad thing to allow law-abiding citizens the right to carry on college campuses (non-law-abiding citizens, of course, have always carried wherever they want). But the politics of guns and gun control are much more varied and interesting than most MLA members probably understand.
Watch now:
In 2005, I reported from the MLA convention, which was held in Washington, D.C. that year and was chock full of interesting ideas, people, and panels. Read my dispatches here, here, and here.
