An Austin woman has come up with a rather innovative way to protest a new “campus carry” law that will allow Texans to carry concealed weapons on campuses: what if gun control advocates were to show up on the University of Texas at Austin carrying not guns, but … dildos?
Naturally, she’s calling it #CocksNotGlocks.
As Jessica Jin, the woman behind the proposed protest, explained on the Facebook page she set up for the event,
“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO.'”
Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.
She’s got a point: As the Washington Post has noted, for every “justified homicide” carried out with a gun — that is, for every time someone kills someone with a gun in an act of legitimate self-defense — there are 34 gun homicides, 78 gun suicides, and 2 people killed accidentally with guns.
Predictably, gun enthusiasts have responded to Jin’s protest — which isn’t even scheduled until the law takes effect next August — with the sort of behavior that suggests once again that they are the absolute last people in the world who should ever be entrusted with guns.
And that includes this guy:
The gun enthusiasts have been flooding Jin and her Facebook page with threats, angry rants, and an assortment of obscene pictures. Some of their, er, wisdom:
You can find more along these lines in Raw Storys post on the protest.
This guy, meanwhile, has been posting offensive pic after offensive pic. A few of the more palatable:
The threats have been worrying enough to Jin that she’s contacted the local police.
Just as worryingly, one self-described “Anarchist, Atheist, Asshole” by the name of Christopher Cantwell has decided to doxx her, posting her address and phone number on his blog and informing his readers that “I can confirm the number is working. I called her, and she called me back and left a voicemail with her name.”
Because why not give angry gun owners what amounts to a map to her home?
If Cantwell’s name sounds familiar, that’s because we’ve met him before: I wrote about last year when I discovered him on Twitter telling numerous people to go kill themselves in assorted inventive ways.
Oh, and did I mention he wrote not one, not two, but nine articles for A Voice for Men last year? And that AVFM’s Paul Elam and Dean Esmay responded to my post about his Twitter “activism” … by telling me to kill myself? Ah, memories!
Happily, gun control supporters have rallied around Jin and her protest, posting supportive comments and repurposed gun fetishist propaganda with dildos taking the place of guns.
So far, more than 4000 people on Facebook say they will be attending the protest, and there’s talk about getting a sex toy company to sponsor the event.
H/T — Thanks to Jennifer Graham and Snork Maiden for pointing me to this story.
@EJ(TOO)
Cheers for that, I love all that sort of stuff. Reminds me of my criminology days. I could go on about this subject for ages. Don’t worry though, I’ll restrain myself!
I’m familiar with that analysis. There are also studies that suggest violent and sexual offending is less affected by such factors than the more ‘rational’ acquisitive offending. (To oversimplify, people will engage in punch ups in front of the police but won’t risk shoplifting)
When I refer to Moscow Criterion I’m talking in relation to individual deterrence. As you point out, other factors are at play generally but in a specific encounter risk to assailant becomes more important.
This is something self defence relies on. Some people use the wolverine analogy. A bear can defeat a wolverine but may incur an injury in the process, so bears tend to leave wolverines alone.
Similarly a determined attacker can probably overcome you, but if there’s a risk (attackers generally being selfish) an attacker who’s not out specifically to get you will wait for an easier target.
That’s why we teach that if there’s a choice between being a hard target and looking like a hard target, the latter is the better option.
It’s as important, if not more important, to teach that in self defence training. Knowing all the practical techniques is great, but it’s better if you don’t have to use them.
What factors deter attackers is quite fascinating. Some are obvious like confidence, head up, eye contact etc. Others less so. Wearing dark clothing and (for men) looking East Asian! Seriously.
I felt the same way when I visited the US for the first time in the mid-1990s – I half expected to be shot at within minutes of stepping off the plane. But for the entire three months I was there I don’t think I even so much as saw a gun, much less heard one actually being used.
But what I discovered very quickly is that my American friends had similar qualms about visiting Europe – only in their case their concern was about being blown up by terrorists (this was pre-Oklahoma, never mind 9/11). In both cases, of course, the chances were vanishingly small – indeed, the woman who refused to visit Belfast for ancestry-tracing reasons was being particularly irrational because US tourists are just about the last people the IRA would have been targeting. Instead, she went to Paris – during a particularly virulent Algerian terrorist campaign. (She escaped unscathed, thankfully, but the odds were always massively in her favour.)
@ Wetherby
It’s funny how bad humans are at assessing risk. A friend of mine was concerned about moving to London on account of “The bombs”. This is a woman whose favourite holiday destination is Tel Aviv.
Mind you, one of the many annoying thongs about the film ‘Taken’, apart from it being a rubbish remake of Commando, is that it suggests going to Europe is on a par with back packing through Somalia.
Hell, even people in the United States overestimate how dangerous their own country is…
Certainly doesn’t help that with the tabloid-style news reporting that is so common – it can even make the least crime-ridden areas look like Gotham City, by constantly sensationalizing the most visceral events whether it is murders or robberies or traffic accidents. They spend so much time doing so that, eventually, people assume it is happening all the time on every street corner and back-alley (which explains why that imagery is ubiquitous in movies and TV shows that deal with the subject of crime).
Completely unrelated, but Cracked’s posted an excellent article about rape in the military if anybody wants to read it (TW for, well, rape in the military).
(Just avoid the comments. 30 minutes in and it’s already drowned in screaming MRAs, all frothing about how the eeevil feminists will hate Cracked for spreading awareness about man-on-man rape. Because they live in a parallel fucking dimension.)
@ SFHC
That was surprisingly well written and serious for a Cracked article, I was expecting “5 Insane Things You Won’t Believe About Rape In The Military” but it’s really well done.
Just to be nerdy military lawyer there’s an error about how the NJP procedure works but it doesn’t affect the gist of the article.
OT, but has anyone else heard that Playboy is getting rid nudity:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34511999
I don’t think this matters much in the grand scheme of things, I still wouldn’t touch that magazine with a barge pole. But I think there might be some ensuing man tears and rants about Hefner bowing to the ebil feminists.
Regarding that photos of the boys posing with assault rifles in a restaurant. If I was in that restaurant I’d be heading for the fire exit, no way could I feel safe with a couple of gun toting herbets standing around grinning like that.
I have heard about the playboy thing. It have nothing to do with feminism in any way of shape ; I hope the MRAs will understand that for once.
This has everything to do with feminism from an MRA viewpoint.
That is to say, it’s happening due to technology enabling social change which in turn makes previous modes of capitalism unprofitable; this creates new economic niches but destroys old ones and therefore makes the previously-dominant institutions now feel more vulnerable.
When MRAs say “feminism”, this is generally what they mean, it seems. Oh no, women are in the army. Oh no, people of colour are making movies and video games. Oh no, the internet is now majority-female. Oh no, marriage decline. Oh no, women in the workplace. Yep, all of it feminism.
Misspelling here: “The threats have been worrying enough to Jim that she’s contacted the local police.” I think her name is Jin right?
@sn0rkmaiden:
“Nipples don’t sell so well since the Internet made them free.”
(Gives “Free the Nipple” a completely different meaning.)
@Paradoxical Intention — If you want to read The Authority, stick with Warren Ellis’ run of it, AND FOR ALL THAT IS LOVING AND HOLY, DO NOT READ MARK MILLAR’S RUN BECAUSE HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
@EJ The are some studies showing that certain types of abusive people are deterred by stuff like a conviction for a relatively minor offense that stays on their records forever (though obviously rapists should get more than a slap on the wrist). There’s no evidence, in particular, that the possibility of a death sentence deters sexual abusers.
And make sure you read Warren Ellis’ run on Stormwatch first then read Planetary.
DO NOT READ MARK MILLAR BECAUSE HOLY FUCKING SHIT is one simple rule for living a serene life.
@matchstickuk — agreed so much. So, so much.
DO NOT READ MARK MILLAR READ WARREN ELLIS INSTEAD is also good life advice.
Well, we’ve got two competing penis substitutes here:
GUN
Empowers (white) men
Designed to murder
Acceptable. Good. Heroic.
Protected by law. Enshrined in the Constitution.
DILDO
Empowers women
Designed for pleasure
Symbol of moral degeneracy
Illegal in Texas until very recently. Still illegal in some parts of the South.
Yep. Just business as usual ’round these parts.
I think this protest is brilliant. There’s a connection between sexual frustration and stockpiling weapons, as evidenced by the profiles of mass shooters, who are overwhelmingly male loners completely devoid of empathy and struggling to connect with other humans. No, not every incel is sitting on a huge gun collection with plans to use it, but an awful lot of them dabble in eliminationist rhetoric and revenge fantasies against women. Society encourages men to react to deprivation with anger, violence, and destruction. It’s like the masculinity consolation prize: if you can’t have power over women, then achieve manhood by demonstrating your power over life.
sn0rkmaiden, I was surprised to learn that Playboy is still around. Thought it had died already.
Mark Millar, the comicbook writer who apparently hates his audience. :/
oops that should have had @Paradoxical Intention & @skiriki at the start… DOH
@Falconer — we’re so on the same page.
Millar’s run ruined The Authority to me, and considering how much I loved The Engineer, Midnighter, Apollo, Swift, etc, I regard this as a Very Bad Thing.
I really can’t get over that “one little thing” that happened. Any time I’m reminded of it, I taste vomit in my mouth.
Oh my god, I’m surprised no one’s done a Zardoz riff yet.
Curse you, Falconer. Now I can’t get that image out of my head.