University of Texas students protesting the state’s new gun law—which allows anyone over 21 with a state-issued handgun license to carry a concealed gun on public school campuses—are using sex toys to make their point.
TV Reed, a WSU professor of English and American Studies who has studied culture in protest movements, said that while the protest effort “will be ridiculed by some,” it’s important to remember that “now-revered figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King were also ridiculed for their symbolic protests.” And the approach is creating an easy entry point for students to get involved, he said.
“The protest is already successful because the amusing, theatrical plan has drawn far more attention to the issue of open carry than any letter to the editor or more conventional demonstration ever would,” Reed said.