E-Mail to a Friend: Are We Being Too Judgmental About the Duke Porn Star?

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@Belle_Knox is Duke freshman Women’s Studies major Miriam Weeks.

If nothing else, the controversy over Miriam Weeks, a/k/a “Belle Knox,” is proving the truth of Rule 5 (“Everybody Loves a Pretty Girl“), as the most popular posts here in recent days have been the ones about the Duke University freshman’s pornography career. And the second-most popular story Tuesday at the New York Daily News had this headline:

Duke University porn star
Belle Knox denies report that
her parents are heartbroken
The Duke University coed who turned to porn to pay tuition claimed Monday that her parents are not upset with her X-rated off-campus activities.
Miriam Weeks, 18, denied a report that her dad, an Army doctor, was heartbroken when he learned of her moonlighting gig upon returning from deployment in Afghanistan.
“My parents aren’t upset,” Weeks told the Daily News Monday in between filming scenes for an upcoming adult film.
“I want my family left out of it. If people criticize me that’s one thing, but leave my family alone,” Weeks said.
She said she was “really, really upset” over an online article Monday in The Daily Mail that identified her parents as Dr. Kevin and Harcharan Weeks, devout Catholics from Spokane, Wash.

Except, of course, that in earlier interviews conducted behind a pseudonym, she conveyed the idea that her parents’ inability (or unwillingness) to pay her tuition at prestigious Duke was responsible for her decision to do porn. In other words, her family was relevant, as long as Miriam Weeks could tell stories about them without anybody being able to fact-check her. However, once journalists started doing some actual reporting — rather than just acting as stenographers for the privileged prep-school graduate — suddenly her family is off-limits, because their version of the story doesn’t exactly match her version.

Considering that Miriam Weeks told Real Clear Education that she started watching porn when she was 11, maybe there is something about the story between her and her family worth examining, but I rather doubt her Catholic parents are overjoyed that their daughter was the No. 1 most-viewed video on PornHub Sunday. “Oh, look! Our daughter’s bisexual female co-star described Miriam as ‘quite the little freak.’ Isn’t it wonderful? Her teachers at Gonzaga Prep will be so proud.”

Controversy requires disagreement and conflict, and one friendly reader e-mailed to say I was “out of line” using the plain English word “whore” to describe Miriam Weeks. But why play word games? You can call her a “sex worker” or “adult entertainer,” and your preference for politically correct language doesn’t change the reality of what she does. So I sent my friend the following e-mail reply:

We can agree to disagree on porn and sluts. Remember: I’m a father of six, including two daughters. My oldest daughter graduated high school at 16, worked her way through community college and state university, and graduated summa cum laude, debt-free.
What we are being asked to believe in the case of Miriam Weeks, the youngest daughter of an affluent doctor — his reported income is $200,000 a year, and his home is valued at nearly $500,000 — is that it was so important for her to attend Duke (ranked #7 nationally) that she turned down a full scholarship to Vanderbilt (ranked #17) and, poor pitiful thing, she was practically compelled to do porn to pay the bills.
What originally irritated me about this (as with so many stories I report about) was the way the media handled the story, trying to tell us what to think, and just flat-out lying:

  • First, the Duke Chronicle and other outlets tried to pretend that “Lauren”/”Aurora” was still anonymous, when (a) evidently everybody on campus at Duke had known for weeks that her name is Miriam Weeks and that her porn name is “Belle Knox”; and (b) anybody with Google could find this out.
  • Second, tasteful euphemism was deployed to disguise what Miriam Weeks actually gets paid for — e.g., sucking c**k on camera — and we were told that her career was “empowering,” so that Belle Knox was presented as a sort of feminist hero role-model. Would you want that message conveyed to your daughters? I think not.
  • Third, the media tried to sneak a sort of clever reversal of morality past us, telling us that while (a) there was nothing shameful about an 18-year-old girl getting paid for sucking c**k on camera, on the other hand (b) there is something deeply shameful about disapproving of Miriam Weeks’s choice of careers.

While I am a social conservative, I am not a prude, nor am I ignorant of the ways of the world. Remember, I used to be a Democrat, and in my hedonistic hellbound youth, I worked briefly as a strip-club DJ and dated a few dancers. However, as a DJ, it was my job to remind patrons of the club’s “touch-and-go” rule:

“Gentlemen, all of our lovely Kelly’s Girls are here for your viewing pleasure, but let me call your attention to the large man beside the door. Say hello to Bruno. You can look all you want, but if you decide to touch, our friend Bruno is in charge of enforcing our touch-and-go policy here at Kelly’s and, trust me, you don’t want to argue with Bruno. All right, now, guys, put your hands together for the beautiful Shondra, coming up on the main stage!”

Dancers are not hookers, in other words. There is a difference between being nude — live on stage, or posing on camera — and getting paid to have sex. The admiration of beauty is one thing, and hired fornication is another. Perhaps many people, whether they generally approve of porn or not, don’t see the real distinction between the two, but it is important to keep it in mind.
Would I approve of my daughter posing in Playboy? No, of course not. But merely posing nude would not be as so objectionably sinful and morally corrupting as being paid to have sex on camera (or off-camera, for that matter).
If you would disapprove of your daughter or sister doing porn — as I think most men would — isn’t it in some sense hypocritical to say that it’s OK for other women and girls to do it? Let’s grant that there have always been prostitutes in the world, and some women are going to do it, no matter how much anyone may disapprove. But what the enthusiastic admirers of Miriam Weeks are trying to tell us is that we do not have the right to disapprove, that anyone who disapproves is somehow less “enlightened” than those who approve of porn, so that in effect we are being bullied into the “enlightened” view that there is nothing wrong with an 18-year-old girl getting paid to do bisexual three-ways on camera.
And hey, what about the bondage-and-rape scenes Miriam Weeks was doing? Are you telling me that having this petite, innocent-looking teenager enact the sadistic rape fantasies of perverts is harmless? Is it really “empowering” to send a message to weirdos that young girls enjoy having sex imposed on them violently? Excuse my skepticism.
The story of Miriam Weeks isn’t really about Miriam Weeks. I have no personal animosity toward her. How could I? I don’t even know her. And I wish her no harm. No, this is a story about the elite intelligentsia and their enlightened friends in the liberal media trying to tell us what to think, trying to impose their nihilistic amoral secularism on allegedly benighted Americans who, in Our President’s memorable phrase, are clinging to their guns and Bibles. But I’d rather my daughter go to a state college and maintain her dignity, than to have her go to some elite university and become an “empowered” feminist whore.
Ultimately, I believe, dignity and honor are more valuable than any prestigious credential. And I hope most Americans agree.
Respectfully yours,
— RSM

The elite are free to enjoy their prestige, but they have no right to tell us how to think. We are still free to disagree with them. We are doomed, if we lose our liberty to call sin by its right name.

 


 

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115 comments

  1. The lovely Miss Weeks said:

    I want my family left out of it. If people criticize me that’s one thing, but leave my family alone,

    That’s just it: they can’t be! If she was really smart enough to get into Duke, she ought to have known that. If you get publicly identified as a porn star, at that young an age, it will refer back to your parents.

  2. Our esteemed host concluded:

    The elite are free to enjoy their prestige, but they have no right to tell us how to think. We are still free to disagree with them.

    But that’s just it: the leftist elites certainly do think that they have the right to tell us how to think, to act, and to behave. For the left, it is not enough that we do not violate other people’s rights; we must, we must! approve of other people’s lifestyles and values — assuming that we aren’t referring to conservative lifestyles or Christian values — we must rewrite the law and reform the culture to approve of and codify the things the left find OK, rather than adhere to thousands of years of the morality which enabled the human race to survive and to thrive, and we must never, ever, think harshly of other people’s choices, unless, of course, their choices are traditional or ones of which the left disapprove.

    The great truth of American politics is that the left are pro-choice concerning exactly one thing; on every other choice, Your Must Comply.

  3. There are layers of stupidity in this story, exemplifying that a high IQ score is no proxy for wisdom or common sense. Her porn career “secret” became public knowledge at Duke because Miriam decided to confide in a guy, one of her fellow freshman. As anyone with common sense could have predicted, the boy immediately blabbed this news to everybody at a fraternity pledge party, and soon the word was all over campus.

    At that stage, however, this was just stuff being talked about at Duke-focused Internet sites. Then she tried to “un-out” herself by giving an interview to the Duke Chronicle using the pseudonym “Lauren,” and shopping her story around to other media venues, who agreed to play along with this make-believe game that her actual identity was still a secret.

    Again, predictably (from a common-sense view), curiosity and controversy ultimately led to reporters pursuing the truth, including the fact that her father was a reasonably affluent doctor, which contradicted her “poor pitiful me” excuse.

  4. Excellent arguments. Don’t be surprised if I blatantly steal these arguments for my next American Spectator column.

  7. Of course, there’s another aspect to this that doesn’t seem to get mentioned. Yes, Miss Weeks was outed by another student who apparently has a major porn fetish, but this story might, might! have remained a campus one only, basically a whispering campaign on campus, if Miss Weeks had not decided to come out and defend herself in public.

    There are dozens of amateur and girlfriend revenge sites out there, with all sorts of young coeds pictured in various stages of undress and carnal activities, and some of those girls doubtlessly get recognized and talked about and shamed, but their stories almost never go national, because they have the good sense — something they didn’t show when their boyfriends pulled out the camera — to try to let it fade away and die. Miss Weeks apparently didn’t have that good sense, and so, here she is, lamenting the publicity she caused!

  9. a high IQ score is no proxy for wisdom or common sense
    Exacty right Stacy. As I sadly know from personal experience. Looking back over my disreputable life, my 165 IQ sure didn’t stop me from very stupid choices, choices I pointed out to Kirby on another thread yesterday. It’s not just bad choices regarding porn or sexual sins that can corrupt a life and make one a social pariah. A high IQ is not an inoculation against stupidity.

  11. It’s an inescapable problem: all of the rest of our lives are shaped by the choices we have taken in the past. My choice to major in political science means, among other things, that I can never get a job as an engineer. People at 15 and 16 and 17 take the decision to drop out of high school, which immediately limits their options for the next half a century. People at 16 and 18 take decisions to copulate with some particular person, on some odd date, and those decisions effect not only with whom they might form other relationships, but could result in an unplanned but life-long obligation.

  12. Of course, had you not decided, when you were 59 years old, to cover for Messrs Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean, you’d have finished out your two terms!

    I denounce you for those choices!

  16. “Would you want that message conveyed to your daughters?”

    Another irony of the left (and there are oh so many). Of course they don’t want this message coveyed to their daughters, a course they don’t want their daughters involved in porn, of course they don’t want their sons being introduced to Dan Savage’s love.

    It always ok, unless it’s their own children. Ever made the mistake of accidentally calling a liberal homosexual? They seem terribly offended at that. Oh what fun!

  18. This post does contain a tip suitable for future use. If you happen to be a consumer of porn on the internet and your significant other becomes angry with you and demands that you stop, the safest reply is no, because you are doing your part to empower the women performing in the porn.

    Let me know how that works out for you.

  19. I’ve seen many, many! efforts by our oh-so-tolerant friends on the left to try to insult conservatives by implying that the conservative was homosexual.

  21. Speaking of “consumers,” a commenter on an earlier post remarked that the Miriam Weeks controversy has probably caused a lot of recovering porn addicts to fall off the wagon. The idea that pornography has no victims would be news to the many thousands of people who have suffered wrecked marriages and lost jobs as a result of their porn habits. For that matter, there are probably many people in prison for child pornography who didn’t realize they had any tendency toward pedophilia until they got hooked on Internet porn and, in search of new taboos to satisfy their jaded appetites, discovered illegal desires lurking inside their porn-influenced minds.

  22. I owe a substantial amount to the fact that one foreign language was three hours per week at my university, while the one I’d taken in high school was five hours. I took the three hour language, majored in it for two degrees and met my wife of thirty years. God, indeed, has a sense of humor.

  23. Let us not discount the possibility her outrage is manufactured. Young and pretty girls doing on-line porn are a dime a dozen. If you want to stand out you need a hook and she now has one. Her manager has been quoted on other sites that her booking have been skyrocketing since this broke and despite her walking back some of her initial story he is continuing the “It’s all Mom and Dad’s fault, they had this coming.”

  24. If there is one thing which eliminated any curiosity about porn, it was the birth of my daughter. Realizing that every one of those “performers” had a father too, was enough to put the kibosh on any interest I may have had. Call it the Golden Rule of Dad: I wouldn’t want someone else gawking at my kid.

  25. Agreed. You have been doing a heckuva job exposing the pervert party’s attempts to define deviancy down and also many of the risks you describe above.

  26. Yes, we are being correctly judgmental. She thinks that spending exorbitant amounts of money on a useless degree (Women’s Studies, i.e. Professional Victimhood) and performing in porn is a good thing.

    I pity the man, or woman (these days, you can’t be sure), she decides to settle down with (if she ever does). Providing for someone who thinks the world should treat her as important no matter what she does. Otherwise, I see a house full of cats in her future.

  27. Let us not discount the possibility her outrage is manufactured.

    Oh, she’s hardly been coy, quiet, or secretive. This was pretty obviously as planned as Tracy Lord’s info “leaking” she was underage in her films. (Just as she turned 18, and had a film she owned the rights to. What _amazing_ coincidences.)

    I won’t judge Weeks for her career choices – but her excuses and rationale deserve utter scorn.

  28. So why do you allow Wombat to post what he does on your site? He, and his followers have railed against me because I think his soft porn has no place {nor purpose} on your site. I noticed that he linked to nudes of Ms. Weeks last week. I have 2 daughters in their very early 20’s. The thought of them doing porn, or having creepy men stare at half naked pics of them make me ill.

  29. Indeed. When you realize hardcore (see what I did there) pro-porn types have a set caricature in their minds of folks who disapprove of porn, you notice that she slams her parents and upbringing with just about every single hot button trait in that caricature. Without proof I call BS on her entire story.

  32. And I wasn’t explicit enough: the insult is that the person is the “bottom,” not the “top.” To be the top is not nearly as insulting.

  33. So why do you allow Wombat to post what he does on your site? He, and his followers have railed against me because I think his soft porn has no place {nor purpose} on your site. I noticed that he linked to nudes of Ms. Weeks last week. I have 2 daughters in their very early 20’s. The thought of them doing porn, or having creepy men stare at half naked pics of them make me ill.

  34. Great; Now I can feel better about watching 18 year old girls in bondage playing out rape fantasies because I’m helping Belle get through college despite her mean old Roman Catholic parents.

  36. The mental image of me in a G-string? Yeah, I’m sure there’s gonna be a Brain Bleach shortage.

  47. Never believe the words coming from either pimps or convicted perjurers. We hear the former here and you can read the latter here: http://hogewash.com/2014/03/12/brettkimberlin-admits-forgery/ where convicter domestic terrorist and perjurer Kimberlin, who has named our host as a defendant in two lawsuits, filed his response to a SHOW CAUSE order from the judge in the federal RICO case regarding the forged summons Kimberlin created and mailed to Twitchy in an attempt to deceive them into believing they were a defendant in the case (they were not in the caption of the complaint or first amended complaint.
    Both of these types cannot say more than a single sentence without telling a lie.

  49. If it sickens or upsets you, click to another article. It is your choice to view or not to view. I know Wombat is not holding a weapon to your head and forcing you to view Rule 5 posts.
    This is a marketplace of information. Shop accordingly from the products offered.

  50. Wait till you meet one that does secretly hope their children are homosexual, It’s disturbing on a new level.

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