Jessica Jin
The accomplished violinist, NCAA athlete and world-traveler can now add one more accomplishment to her resume—creator of the Campus (Dildo) Carry protest.
By Mac McCann, University of Texas at Austin
Photography by Marshall Tidrick, University of Texas at Austin
Last fall, Jessica Jin, 25, gained international attention for organizing a “Campus (DILDO) Carry” to protest guns in campus buildings, which, according to Facebook, will be attended by more than 10,000 people.
The first-generation American, who loves Thomas Paine’s writing but hates Edmund Burke’s, caught up with Study Breaks after she recently returned from a months-long “Great American Road Trip.” Here are some of the highlights:
The quotes have been condensed and edited for clarity.
“My parents didn’t figure it out until a month after because my dad was on business in China and my mom was also visiting family in China, so both of my parents were out of the country. I just left it up to fate to see if they would ask me about it. About three or four weeks later, my mom messaged me and said, ‘Jessica, are you famous now?’”
“What’s really funny is that one woman wrote a really long comment about how I must be doing this because I’m insecure, because I’m Asian and ‘Asian girls have small butts and are socially awkward.’”
“I don’t like it when people bring my race or my sex into this and try to use that against me, but it is also really awesome when they use it positively and they’re like, “Hey! This is a minority woman taking a stand against, for the most part, a bunch of white men.’”
“When I was at UT, I was on the rowing team and I have a Big XII championship ring. I also played water polo at UT and now play rugby. So, I do have an ass!”
“One college student reached out to me [about organizing an anti-campus carry event for her school] and she said, ‘I want to cover the lawns of my campus with clay pigeons’ [in response to an administrator claiming that unarmed students were ‘targets’]. I was like, ‘This is the best idea I’ve ever heard.’”
“Fighting absurdity with absurdity has a lot more longevity than a dildo stunt, so hopefully we can carry that on beyond this protest. If you can’t reason with them, then make fun of them.”
“I was born in Tennessee and raised in Texas, so I’ve been entrenched in gun culture my whole life. I love venison. I love it when people shoot deer and bring me deer jerky.”
“I considered, pretty seriously, getting a CHL [concealed handgun license]. I thought, ‘Hey maybe I should get a gun. I mean, I live in Texas. If people dumber than me are going to have guns, I might as well have guns too.’”
“I totally respect highly trained people with tactical experience, but I think letting any regular, fearful, untrained person carry around a weapon is [she hesitates] not exactly the best idea for society. Letting people think that that’s a normal thing is not cool either.”
“It’s suddenly part of my identity. I can’t help it anymore. I’m going to be known as ‘Dildo Girl’ until I do something more interesting.”
