Get ‘Empowered,’ Duke-Style!

Posted on | March 9, 2014 | 75 Comments

The expression on the face of Duke University freshman Women’s Studies major Miriam Weeks (“Belle Knox”) represents . . .

A. Her disappointment that the #4-ranked Blue Devils lost to Wake Forest by 10 points on Wednesday;
B. Her disgust over recent claims that Thomas Bagby, her fellow Duke freshman who told everybody on campus about her porn career, has his own $1,000-a-month porn habit;
C. Her indignation “that the same society that consumes me is also condemning me“;
or
D. Yeah, she’s getting boned on camera again.

This may be on the final exam. Getting boned on camera is an expression of “sexual autonomy,” Miriam Weeks told Piers Morgan, who agreed to interview her using her porn pseudonym. The dwindling audience of Morgan’s soon-to-be-cancelled CNN show might be surprised to learn that “autonomy” looks an awful lot like . . . getting boned on camera.

Inevitably, dimwit feminists have adopted Miriam Weeks as a cause cèlébre, with Ayesha Adamo at the progressive site AlterNet calling the Duke freshman “the hero I was waiting for”:

According to an interview clip of Belle on the Duke Chronicle Soundcloud page, even Knox’s father is still paying for his own medical school education over twenty years after the fact, which really says it all: that we’ve entered an era of multi-generational student debt, an era in which parents and children are both simultaneously paying for the education that their keen minds entitled them to, but that their empty wallets knew was out of the question. This is what we do to our best and brightest, who make the cut at top universities by virtue of their merits (and not by their wealth): we saddle them with the burden of overwhelming debt. Even with the help of financial aid packages that include both government aid and aid from the university itself, middle class students still need to cover tens of thousands of dollars in tuition costs on their own. . . .

(This is a false dilemma: College students must either take on massive debt, or work as porn stars. But not every university has $40,000-plus annual tuition, and it is only the snooty elitism of Miriam Weeks — who evidently thinks she is too good to attend a state university, and who turned down a full scholarship to Vanderbilt — that put her in the financial predicament by which she justifies her porn career.)

Knox asserts that, “If Duke had given me the proper financial resources, I wouldn’t have done porn.” Naturally, a statement like this has everybody who isn’t Belle claiming that surely she could have done something else, found some more “respectable” job if she’d wanted to. And sure enough, during high school, Knox had a “real job” in which she attempted the delicate balance of waiting tables while completing her schoolwork. She recounts the experience to the Duke Chronicle saying this . . .
“For people to tell me that doing porn and having sex, which I love, is more degrading than being a waitress and being somebody’s servant and picking up after somebody and being treated like a lesser, second-class citizen, that literally makes no sense. To be perfectly honest, I felt more degraded in a minimum wage, blue-collar, low paying, service job than I do doing porn.”
Degradation is in the eye of the beholder, and if you think that Belle’s accounts of being treated like a second-class servant are an exaggeration, then you probably don’t know many waitresses, nannies, maids, or personal assistants. . . .

(This is an outrageous insult to every service-industry worker in the country. My own daughter, by the way, graduated high school with honors when she was only 16 and, although she was recruited by several private liberal arts colleges, she attended community college and then a state university. She worked her way through school waiting tables at Pizza Hut and working at a daycare center, and graduated summa cum laude — debt-free. Oh, but Miriam Weeks is too good to wait tables, and Miriam Weeks is too good to attend a state college. Miriam Weeks is so much better than everybody else that she simply must attend Duke University . . . and get boned on camera to pay the bills.)

In my eyes, Belle Knox is already a hero simply for fearlessly bringing these types of issues into the spotlight for public discussion. Here she stands, with great strength and intelligence, owning her life and her story, saying all the things that no one wants to talk about in the face of such threatening adversity.

“Threatening adversity”? My 21-year-old Army son has been through basic training, infantry training, airborne training and Special Forces selection, aspiring to obtain the coveted Green Beret so that he might have the honor of facing our nation’s enemies in armed combat. Does Ayesha Adamo expect me to admire a Duke freshman as a “hero” — overcoming “threatening adversity” — for doing porn to pay her elite university tuition? A hero is, by definition, someone who exemplifies virtues that we wish to encourage others to emulate. If hiring out her vagina for commercial display makes Miriam Weeks a “hero,” doesn’t that term imply that we wish more 18-year-old girls would do the same?

Behold the bankruptcy of our intellectual class, who will celebrate even the most despicable depravity, if it can be used as an excuse to lecture us, to display their alleged superiority to normal people who consider pornography inherently shameful.

Is it any wonder that no one at Duke University — no student, no professor, no administrator — seems capable of articulating a coherent argument against pornographic “empowerment”? Why would anyone pay money to be taught by these people?

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Education, Feminism, Intellectuals, Sex

Comments

75 Responses to “Get ‘Empowered,’ Duke-Style!”

badanov
March 9th, 2014 @ 1:31 pm

What does she say to her grandkids at 60, if she has them?

I didn’t really think the pr0n thing through?
RKae
March 9th, 2014 @ 1:31 pm

A $1,000 a month porn habit?

I’ll bet he’d be surprised if he ever went to Google images, typed in “nude chicks,” and saw the eleventy-ba-jillion pictures that show up for free. Heck, if you forget to put up your filters, you can type in the most innocuous of words and just about the first thing that shows up is a nude chick with the item in question.
RKae
March 9th, 2014 @ 1:32 pm

Try to imagine the world those grand kids will live in!

Her porn will look absolutely Victorian to them!
rmnixondeceased
March 9th, 2014 @ 1:41 pm

Does she not know a dental hygienist? Her lower teeth are stained yellow and disgusting …
pabarge
March 9th, 2014 @ 1:44 pm

Ayesha Adamo? Did someone say Ayesha Adamo? Well, then:
http://ayeshaadamo.com/wp-content/themes/ayesha/resize.php?get_image=%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F12%2FSurgeryF.jpg&w=1024&noimage=1

not exactly porn quality.
concern00
March 9th, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

Surely lesbian porn would be more empowering. And is it me, or has the left’s list of heroes started looking like a comprehensive list of sexual offenders and deviants?
#PiersMorgan and #BellaKnox: This is very wrong… | Batshit Crazy News
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:00 pm

[…] TOM: Getting empowered Duke Style […]
#BellaKnox, #LaurenA, and #MiriamWeeks #Rule5 #DukePorn Post #NSFW Update: Is Bella Knox the love child of Sandra Fluke and the Democrat Party? | Batshit Crazy News
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:02 pm

[…] TOM: Getting empowered Duke Style […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:04 pm

Let’s hope she doesn’t have kids.

Some things are just very wrong…
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:05 pm

How is that even possible? $1000 a month?
Zohydro
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:11 pm

A paid subscription to facialabuse. com is only $29.95 a month!
K-Bob
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:21 pm

Can’t take her seriously if she wont do the interview while being boned on camera.
K-Bob
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:28 pm

I did a search the other day with various terms to get at data on the mix between conservatives and liberals in the states, and the statehouses. No matter how I framed my search, the same five or six pr0n images kept showing up.

It’s a form of “Google Bombing.” But worse, some folks out there have been working overtime to get a lot of really disgusting images to show up on image search. I usually keep safe-search off because it’s hard to find stuff on Google anymore. But soon we’ll have no choice.
jenny2
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:33 pm

Duke victim studies staff unable to articulate an argument against porn empowerment? This the same staff/admin who loved denigrating the innocent Duke Lacrosse Team in 2006 and promoted sex week.
Kirby McCain
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:36 pm

Oh, but Miriam Weeks is too good to wait tables, and Miriam Weeks is too good to attend a state college.
But she’s not too good to take it up the ass on camera. The hero someone has been waiting for?!?!?! I remember my mother telling me, “You never outgrow your upbringing.” Well, mom and dad behold what you have wrought. While this immoral slut points her finger at Duke as perhaps a cause of her notorious sexcapade, it is her parents who have raised this woman to be a whore.
Norman Invasion
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:44 pm

even Knox’s father is still paying for his own medical school education over twenty years after the fact

Yeah, there’s a really good reason for that. You see, student loans have very small interest rates, far less than even inflation (I believe it’s around 2% on the student loans, & inflation (real, not just the purposefully low CPI nonsense) is well over 8%), so you’re generally better off paying as little as possible & letting Your Friends At the Federal Reserve make your debt worth less every year.

Unless you’re an idiot journalism major, in which case you’d be better off using your leftover loan money to buy a home trepanning kit & get down to business.
Kirby McCain
March 9th, 2014 @ 2:49 pm

But what do her student loans have to do with right here, right now. She’s not paying on those loans.
Destory2000YearsOfCulture
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:02 pm

As someone who waited tables, and worked minimum wage blue collar jobs through high school and college, I couldn’t agree more with her assessment of that kind of work. If I had the right physicality and constitution, I would have gladly chosen stripping, porn, or even drug trafficking over the service industry, which truth be told, is completely degrading, no matter if you’re a servant for the rich, which I was, and often wanted to throw a steaming bowl of soup all over them, or the common people who eat at Applebee’s, and are cheap, have no class, and no brains. What Knox really brings to light is that college tuition should be 100% subsidized by the state like it is throughout Europe, and the upward mobility carrot shouldn’t be used to create debt slaves to big banks, and the government. Conservatives claim they hate porn, and women socially degrading themselves, but in this day and age both are the result of the high costs of education. And don’t even hand me that crap that she should have attended some pissant state school when she had the opportunity for one of the Southern Ivy’s. You tell me which one employers are going to notice first on a resume, and sets you up with better business contacts, even if you are a woman’s studies major.
robertstacymccain
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:26 pm

Dear Troll:
You are commenting via a Romanian spam proxy server at IP 109.163.234.5, using a fake pseudonym and a fake e-mail address. So I just wanted to mention that up front.

What you are telling us is that you (a) do not believe in the dignity of labor, and (b) think yourself too good to be “humiliated” by serving others.

Fuck you and fuck your imaginary superiority.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:32 pm

Unless your parents are throwing money at you (or you are a Saudi prince on a full stipend), what college kid spends that on porn? Think of all the spring break trips and beer that could buy? I am not buying that figure.
Non-Serviam
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:50 pm

Oh, boy! I’m using a proxy! And? Hey, if you guys didn’t drop the hammer over every opinion you disagree with, I wouldn’t have to resort to that. Even Breitbart gives a little leeway. Over here anyone that doesnt agree with your rigid socially conservative views is immediately banned, so you only have yourself to blame.

A)Yes, I don’t believe in the dignity of labor. I had my parents try to sell me on that jazz a long time ago, and realized from my very first job at Mickey D’s that I was getting the shaft, and being exploited by my superiors, who quite frankly, I didn’t respect enough to serve, and mainly because they showed no respect to their subordinates.

B)Yes, again! There is not a single human being on this planet worth serving, most of all the “masses”.

Fuck you, and your “salt of the earth” bullshit, and your dignity of labor. That’s a massive con, along with the “protestant work ethic” that tries to sell us on the concept that our own degradation, exploitation, and obedience to bad authority is a virtue.

Kudo’s to Ms. Knox for telling it like it is, and pissing, or should I say cumming, in the face of sexist assholes who would prefer she shut up, know her place, and follow their rules.
pabarge
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

wow, how did you change your user id just like that? Is it that easy? And why would you want to do that?
pabarge
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:54 pm

Seen any lesbians lately? Ugh. Who’s going to pay for that?
pabarge
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:55 pm

Oh, I don’t know … I find them rather endearing. All that airbrush stuff can be mind-numbing.
WarEagle82
March 9th, 2014 @ 3:58 pm

This is truly amazing. Miriam Weeks seems to appear in scenes where she is wearing next-to-nothing and is hand-cuffed behind her back and those scenes are somehow “empowering” for her and all women. Somebody really needs to ask her to explain that in detail.

Furthermore, she turned down a full scholarship to Vanderbilt a tuition and fees of $42K per year.

Vanderbilt University’s ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 17. Duke is ranked #7 on the same poll. (And even worse, neither Duke or Vandy actually have a football team to speak of!)

Is prostituting yourself to move up 10 places on some college ranking poll really worth doing what she is doing?

The girl got a free ride to Vandy, but she turned it down to charge for her rides so she could pay to go to Duke.

Which might impact her career prospects more? Going to Duke and doing porn, or taking a free ride at Vandy and NOT doing porn?

This is so stunningly wrong on so many levels that it is incomprehensible.

What kind of corrupt, deviant young female makes these kinds of mind-numbingly stupid, self-destructive choices?

Mommy and daddy must be so very proud of their “Special Slut-flake.”
robertstacymccain
March 9th, 2014 @ 4:03 pm

Thanks for sharing the secrets of your stunning success and enormous popularity, troll.
WarEagle82
March 9th, 2014 @ 4:03 pm

Seriously. This picture “empowers” women? Explain this to us all, Miriam.

http://scallywagandvagabond.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/belle5.jpg
WarEagle82
March 9th, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

“Moreover, Knox asserts that, ‘If Duke had given me the proper financial resources, I wouldn’t have done porn.’”

“I was offered scholarships at a lot of places. I was offered full tuition at Vanderbilt, for example, and was accepted into USC, Wellesley, Barnard, Pepperdine, some others.”

But, Vandy DID give Miriam that kind of money. And you turned it down. And instead chose to do porn when another top 20 school offered you a free ride. What does that say about Miriam Weeks?
robertstacymccain
March 9th, 2014 @ 4:11 pm

Our intelligentsia, such as it is, seems to lack the kind of curiosity that would lead them to investigate what pornographic “empowerment” entails. A teenage girl enacting the bondage-and-rape fantasies of sadistic perverts? “Empowering”!

Certainly, there must be feminists who believe otherwise, so why aren’t we hearing any criticism of “Belle Knox” from them? Cowardice, I suppose. Being a feminist means being part of an ideological herd of sheep, and if the leaders of the movement have decided — in the manner of the old “Central Committee” of the Soviet Communist Party — that feminism must be pro-pornography, women must either bleat their assent to the party line, or else timidly silence their consciences.
Kirby McCain
March 9th, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

Would you be surprised that a cheap whore is also a liar. Again I’d like to point out that she isn’t required to pay back student loans at this point. She’s doing this because she wants to. Going off to college was her ticket out of the house.
WarEagle82
March 9th, 2014 @ 4:39 pm

Well, you are completely correct on each point. Who knows if she really got a “free ride” at Vandy? But I can hardly believe that she got accepted to Duke and couldn’t get accepted anywhere else.

But there are certainly less self-destructive tickets “out of the house” than doing hard-core porn. And if she really just wants to do porn and get out of the house then why an expensive east coast college?

There is so much wrong with this picture that I just can’t wrap my mind around the levels of insane deviancy presented in this story.

I am wondering if the “Special Slut-flake” went home for spring break. That reunion with mommy and daddy would have been fairly interesting to watch.

I wonder if she gives discounts on lap dances to members of the immediate family?
Bob Belvedere
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:13 pm

Oh, so it’s empowering to make Barely Legal pron movies that are drooled over by pedophiles – who knew!
richard mcenroe
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:16 pm

It’s called Rule 34: whatever it is, there’s a porn of it.
Cube
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:17 pm

The troll is just another fool who has never known the satisfaction of a job well done. With that entitled arrogance, no responsible person will ever give it a chance at a menial job, let alone the opportunity to make a significant contribution. A virtual certainty this is a Obama voter who wanted free health care.

Sounds like you’ve got some great kids, RSM. Thanks for sticking up for those of us who believe the same as you.
Bob Belvedere
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:18 pm

I second Richard’s motion!
DumbFuckCon
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:35 pm

Pedophiles watch porn films with 18-23 year old women? LOL! Ok, then…..
Non-Serviam001
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:45 pm

Of course I’ve known the satisfaction of a job well done, dummy, but that didn’t involve waiting tables, packing groceries, or doing menial labor. Those were jobs I had to do to get by and I resented every second I had to be there. I’m also currently employed(though I wish most of management would get cancer), but if you expect to me argue in favor of the work ethic(which is bullshit, and reliant on belief in a God that doesnt exist, and even if he did, if he thinks toil for conglomerates is a virtue he’s not worth the worship or the obedience)or the dignity of labor(which is an even bigger steaming pile of bullshit, especially coming from right wingers for whom money and status is next Godliness) it’s not going to happen. And yes, of course I voted for free healthcare! Why should any person in a rich nation such as ours go without decent access to a doctor? Only a right wing sadist, unconsciously(or not)bent on exterminating those he deems undesirables, would be against that.
Rosalie
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:52 pm

It sounds as though you’re a very unhappy person. And you actually believe that healthcare is free? I believe you mentioned “bullshit.” Well, you pretty well described Obamacare.
Non-Serviam002
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:53 pm

Nice pic. For those not acquainted with the highs of BDSM, all I can say is you’re missing out on one life’s great pleasures. And of course it’s empowering if it’s by her choice. I had a girlfriend many years ago who was the victim of sexual abuse in a religious cult she grew up in, and her psychiatrist actually prescribed getting into ritualized BDSM as a way to take control back over her own sexuality. It worked too. We didnt last, but she’s a successful business woman now, married, and with a young daughter. All social conservatives can fixate on is that sex outside the marriage bed, or in alternative forms(even when it’s consensual)is immoral, which is nothing more than knee jerk, scared, stupidity.
RS
March 9th, 2014 @ 5:58 pm

Leftists/Progressives are intent upon celebrating the most pedestrian, if not self-destructive, behaviors as “heroism,” because in their world, there’s so little genuine achievement worth celebrating. Thus, we are told that Ms. Weeks is worthy of emulation, while those who believe in practicing self-sacrifice and control to achieve a goal are somehow deficient. The resident troll is a perfect example of such a mentality. S/he is entitled, you see, to whatever s/he wants without any effort expended to get it. Ms. Weeks is entitled to attend Duke regardless of whether she can afford it and it is only some dastardly conspiracy which prevents her from doing so.

As for our troll, it is obvious to me, s/he has never really worked at anything remotely difficult. Bluntly, his/her descriptions are caricatures of work, even that at minimum wage. If s/he indeed believes s/he experienced such things, my guess is his/her disillusionment resulted from his/her sense of entitlement on which s/he’s had a death grip since age 3 or so.
RS
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

It must be horrible for you to reach out into cyberspace and see that reality is not what you believe it to be there in your mother’s basement. Really, you should find another hobby, because you’re terminally inept at this one.
Non-Serviam003
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:13 pm

Um, no, I never once said I should have what I want without effort to get it, nor did Ms. Week’s. What pisses you off is that she found a way to pay for a high priced education, which shows some savvy, but disrupts your antiquated ideas about how women should act. If anything her actions show real ambition, and the ability to do what’s necessary to get what you want. How you equate that with “entitlement” is beyond me! It’s just so piss poor too! What are you even arguing? That she should settle for less, as not to upset your weak sensibilities and fragile reality? I’m arguing that she’s correct and that doing porn or stripping is no more degrading than being a waiter, or working for minimum wage, which in reality is disempowering, and worst of all, doesn’t pay well. Perhaps your attitude towards menial servitude is better than mine, and I’ll chock that up to your religious indoctrination, and a lack of critical thinking. I come from a very working class family, and in no way was I spoiled. My attitudes about being a low wage worker in America are based on real experience, and not your pissant platitudes, and bullshit about the work ethic. FUCK YOU, and your priggish, arrogant, judgments.
Non-Serviam003
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:21 pm

What’s not reality, Sparky? That people on your side of the aisle have their head up their ass? I’m afraid it is. And of course, a “mom’s basement” zinger! That’s original! You cant handle this woman making her own choices and finding a way to pay for her education, because it upsets your fragile grip on things, and your extremely conformist views on how women should behave. Face facts, you fuckheads lost your grip on a woman’s sexual habits a long time ago, and they’re never going back to the kitchen or to worship at the alter of your cock, again. Get over it.
robertstacymccain
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:22 pm

One may observe that the troll’s disparagement of the dignity of labor is presented by the troll as a necessary correlate of atheism. That is to say, according to the troll, belief in the value of work — esteeming the virtues of industriousness and diligence — can only be justified by a religious adherence to Judeo-Christian values and that if one rejects a belief in God, then one perceives the dignity of labor as a “steaming pile of bullshit.”

In other words, an atheist values work only insofar as it enables them to satisfy purely selfish aims, to obtain wealth and social status; therefore low-paying or unglamorous jobs are to be scorned and, one may see as a necessary correlate of this view, there is no shame in being a welfare parasite, nor should we disdain the accumulation of wealth by dishonorable means, nor can an atheist holding such a contempt for the dignity of labor condemn the most vulgar ostentation and hedonism in the use of what a Christian would consider ill-gotten gains.

What the troll advocates is utter nihilism — a fanatical belief in the meaningless of existence.
Non-Serviam007
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:24 pm

Awww…really? No, like most American’s, I’m just an angry person, and I really believe that if you’re not angry about how things are going, then you’re probably sedated on strong drugs 24/7. These articles on Ms. Week’s are the most degrading, anti-woman, propaganda I have seen in quite some time. It’s ironic that you feel she should be ashamed for making porn, but you dont feel any shame yourself for demonizing this young woman, for nothing more than having a lot of sex. It’s pathetic, and another reason why Judeo/Christian ethics regarding sex need to be chipped away.
robertstacymccain
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:26 pm

Am I correct that all of the schools she cites are private schools? Do you see what I mean about her disdain for state universities? She has patrician aspirations which only an elite school could satisfy.
Rosalie
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:36 pm

I didn’t say that “she should be ashamed…”
You’re writing to the wrong person. However, since, we’re on the subject, it’s obvious that she has no shame. As far as your being an “angry person,” that’s just being a typical Liberal. Liberals are angry, unhappy people.
William_Teach
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:51 pm

Not that long ago Feminists were complaining that pornography was bad because it demeaned women, violating women’s dignity, the patriarchy, violence against women, and…well, you know. It’s hard to think and write in “Feminist”. Now these loons are embracing it.Till they assault it. It all depends on the situation. Leftists have pretty much no morals.

Oh, interestingly, Obama’s speech on Friday, which he just happened to make in the Miami area near where he was going on vacation, called for youths to take on lots of debt in the name of student loans. Maybe Obama wants more kids right out of high school to have to go into the porn industry?

Oh, and Belle Knox isn’t even that hot.
M. Thompson
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:53 pm

Lesbian porn is aimed mostly at straight men, and it supposedly sells even more of a fantasy..
William_Teach
March 9th, 2014 @ 6:55 pm

It will be interesting when she applies for a job in today’s market where HR does a web search on applicants.

Of course, since she’s taking “Women’s Studies”, her prospects are either with a wackadoodle far left interest group or ….. a career in the fast food/coffee service industry. But, hey, at least she won’t have all that debt!