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Scholar by Day, Porn Star by Night.

It is funny to see how much double standards can affect the life of people. Not just double standards between male and female. But elite college institutes set double standards all the time. For instance, person A is a student from lower-middle class America, has straight A’s and graduated valedictorian with a 4.0 GPA. Person B is from an upper class family with over five generations of alumni at the ivy league of choice and has around a 3.8 GPA. Person B will most definitely get into the Ivy over person A because of double standards. It doesn’t stop there, take for instance a female freshman at duke, by the name of Miriam Weeks, who is facing loads of double standards on her choice of paying her tuition at Duke University by participating in the all too known world of porn. Yes, you read that correctly, porn. While some people at Duke, especially students, find it a disgrace to the image of the school, other may find it a bit empowering. Here is a freshman student who wanted to further her education. Yes, it seems a bit of a push saying she had no other choice, since of course, she did. She could have waited tables, or gogo danced (jokes of course), but yes there were other options. However, none of those options paid as well as Porn. Miriam, or should we call her by her pseudonym Belle Knox, had already paid her first year at Duke in full just by doing porn alone. What many people do not know is the backstory behind why Porn has helped her in many ways. And how it is helping her get through the death threats, constant bullying, and Duke’s harsh but evident double standard. Many people have said what must have gone wrong for her to choose a lifestyle like this. I have to agree, it did go wrong a bit for her to feel that this was the only option. In many interviews “Belle Knox” stated that she just felt comfortable and empowered by doing porn. Nothing could have gone wrong for her to choose that lifestyle. Until recently it came out that she self-harmed during high school! She has visible scaring on her thighs and shin, her scarring from cutting left her with this word for life: FAT, all because of an ex boyfriend. Now the fact that her self-harming was a result of her ex boyfriend just sounds like a sob story. That will be the most unpopular opinion anyone can have but for someone who continuously preaches about how much she loves herself and her body, and is empowered by porn, come on, you do not stay with an abusive ex if you are a feminist. At least I don’t know any feminist who would. While I am still on her side that if she chooses to do porn and is not ashamed of it, more power to you. But do not advocate being a feminist when you felt sad and decided self-harming was ok. Especially since she does not reflect on it too much, she tends to ignore it in conversations even though the scars are very visible on her legs. A true feminist would point them out herself and say something along the lines of “this made me who I am today and I am stronger and more powerful because it” at least that’s what I’ve heard from multiple stars to this date. I guess just proving a point to the world that porn isn’t bad and Duke is bad for their reaction is all she is trying to do, not point out her other flaws in life. Whether or not I agree with her life choices, I do find it disturbing that Duke students are going so far with the threats. While Belle Knox and Miriam Weeks are the same person, Miriam got the grades to get herself into Duke, so she deserves to be there just as much as any other student. Yes she is controversial, and she definitely makes a statement when she speaks, not always good ones at that, but what she chooses to do for a means of income is her business, not the schools or the student body. But allowing students to bully and threaten her, does that make the school look any better? Then again, Duke is very well known for their double standards. Considering they had a few memebers of a lacrosse team that raped a girl but because they are undefeated, only received a warning to not to do it again. But hey, since winning lacrosse games benefits the schools image to prospective students, no one will stop them for raping girls. Just keep winning Duke men’s lacrosse, bleed white, blue and maybe some red after you rape girls too! Many of Belle Knox’s quotes can be a bit fuzzy especially when she is trying to defend herself. “We must question why sex workers are so brutally stigmatized. Why do we exclude them from jobs, education, and from mainstream society?” or “My entire life, I have, along with millions of other girls, been told that sex is a degrading and shameful act.… The most striking view I was indoctrinated with was that sex is something women ‘have,’ but that they shouldn’t ‘give it away’ too soon — as though there’s only so much sex in any one woman and sex is something she does for a man that necessarily losing something of herself, and so she should be really careful who she ‘gives’ it to.” And even more: “Why does the thought of a woman having sexual experiences scare us to much? The answer is simple. Patriarchy fears female sexually. [Emphasis in original.] It terrifies us to even fathom that a woman could take ownership of her body. We deem to keep women in a place where they are subjected to male sexuality.… The threat I pose to patriarchy is enormous.” It is clear she has absorbed a lot in her Women’s Studies courses. She is, in fact, a women’s study major. One minute men are “innocent actors on the receiving end” of female sexuality, the next they are oppressive patriarchs bending women o their will. One-minute sex workers are the happiest people on the planet, then next they are victims of everyday violence. By the way, I wouldn’t call working in a pornography movie “giving sex away” but I would sure call it “selling it.” First, it is not “patriarchy” that Weeks is threatening with her “liberated” sexuality. It is monogamy and the general social order. All human societies are built around some form of marriage. The pairing off between men and women for the sake of family formation and child rearing is something even the most primitive societies honor and protect. (Having babies is ultimately what sex leads to, in case anybody hasn’t told her.) The forms of marriage can differ. Many primitive societies practice polygamy, a system where a man is allowed to take more than one wife. Societies that practice hunting-and-gathering — the original human economy that lasted 5 million years — are almost uniformly monogamous. Those societies that have advanced beyond the tribal stage to become “civilizations” have, with the one exception of Islam, also returned to monogamy. Realistically here, the story of the hometown tramp is as old as history, we have the infamous book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathanial Hawthorne, which may I add Miss. Weeks so effortlessly referenced in an article she wrote for xojane.com, “My name is Belle Knox, and I wear my Scarlet Letter with pride.” While I still feel as if porn wasn’t the best option, I hate to say this but she truly is empowering with her words. Her articles are eloquently written and even prove a point. While she may be a porn star, she still has her life figured out, much more than some students I know at my own university. She knows her major, her future plans, and will not graduate with any debt. That is the kind of student who should be attending an elite university like Duke, but if Duke can not accept her, I am sure other universities will. She got into school based on credentials, not her or her parents income. Something not many Duke students can actually say.

Works Cited
Kingkade, Tyler. "Porn Star Belle Knox: Every Day Is 'Like A Nightmare'" The

Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.

O'Connor, Tim, and Irving Dejohn. "Duke Porn Star Belle Knox Will Return to

School despite Death Threats." NY Daily News. New York Daily News, 19

Mar. 2014. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.

"Porn Star Belle Knox Has First Year at Duke Paid For, Wishes Blue Devils Well in

NCAAs." Fox News. FOX News Network, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.

Weeks, Miriam. " xoJane." XoJanecom RSS. Xojane.com, 21 Feb. 2014. Web. 30

Mar. 2014.

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