The Duke University Porn Star, Adolescentophilia, and Predatory Capitalism Connection

18 year old Belle Knox has been dubbed the 'Duke porn star' after making headlines last month when her sideline porn gig's cover was blown by a bunch of disproportionately male fellow university students.  They initially made their presence known to Knox on her personal Facebook account with a barrage of random friend requests but she acknowledges not making the real link to her moonlighting as a porn actress being the cause to the sudden surging interest in being her friend until someone in her class started following her alter-ego Twitter feed.

As the campus slut-shaming and fallout harassment escalated, no doubt mainly being caused by her 'adoring male fans' and after Knox's true identity was revealed against her will she choose to write about her experience in a xoJane piece that went viral.         

Knox's own words as to why she choice to pursue this 'career' (for the rest of us not cashing in on this 'career' choice it's otherwise known simply as just 'sex') was because she simply "couldn't afford $60,000 in tuition...I saw a way to graduate from...school free of debt..."

You mean instead of just working two or three part-time jobs and going to a community college, or without going to Seeking Arrangement, or earning a scholarship or taking out a loan, a girl can just prostitute herself out on film to put herself through university?  Get-out-of-here--no way?!   Guess Knox was spared the moral quandaries of most sugar babies when she enthusiastically embraced an industry that's currently shunning her for her lack of experience in it.

Knox elaborated further that being in porn was "something [I] absolutely love.  Because to be clear: My experience in porn has been nothing but supportive, exciting, thrilling and empowering."  Knox asserted in the tell-all tale, that it is the patriarchy that fears female sexuality.

However after also reading an article spotlighting the backlash against Knox's apparent self declared porn stardom it more so appears that she is selling her sex in patriarchal specific porn packaging back to the patriarchy she's supposedly out-crying with full intention to maximize her own profits.  It sounds like Knox's 'experience in porn' was really 'supportive' and 'empowering' when even after she stipulated that she did not want to have sex with someone over the age of 35 on set, she was still paired with a "veteran adult male performer she found "too old and disgusting," although she had approved the scene days before" and "cried" when presented with this older male talent.  Knox indicated that even though her boundaries had not been respected and that she did not know the advanced age of this adult male performer until the day of the shoot, she eventually further compromised her self-imposed boundaries by reneging on them and engaging in sex acts with an older man despite her obvious discomfort over the prospect.  And the footage is of course going to be featured on a "old man/young girl fetish site."

An 18 year old girl has a completely legitimate reason to NOT want to have sex with a man over the age of 35 and it's called adolescentophilia, in this instance.  There is absolutely no denying that throughout the porn industry, as well as thanks to the porn industry, that our culture has been slowly getting conditioned to accept adolescentophilia, especially hebephilia as normative venues to live out erotic fantasies on the adolescent and prepubescent female form.

A female presented in the context above is not only commonplace it also is a plastic ageless fantasy of a virgin-whore concept and there should be no question over the obvious pedophilia over and undertones in this image.  She literally is representational of an idea of a female form whose age could lie anywhere from four to twenty-four, her actual age, is generic.  Because ultimately, in a patriarchy, age is immaterial, it is only about accessible vagina for the preconceived male pleasure.  As virginal vagina is generally typically preferred by the human male in the patriarchal model and as corrupted innocence can get some people hot (or power-tripping), we've somehow allowed adolescentophilia/hebephilia to become permissible, even somehow understandable to the point of nonobservance when it comes to hyper-sexualization.  Hollywood has been notorious for 'age-swapping' actresses for parts 17 years away from their actual age for decades, this goes for older and younger actresses and the prospective roles they play.  

     

The mind of a pedophile and the types and reasons of how certain men become pedophiles should be common knowledge for all but it's not--why?--because supposedly 'sex sells'?  Because the mainly male powers that be can just keep churning out any old kind of imagery without maintaining any type of media literacy for the masses or accountability to the masses, all in the name of monetary profit, and endanger the quality of life for millions and millions of kids of all ages and genders?     

It shouldn't be a big shock to you that child pornography plays a huge role in the development of a pedophile, it's sought after, horded, guarded, shared.  Even the FBI admitted in 2011 it was becoming an increasing menace.  Truly, the societal costs of pornography are staggering and it's even more so staggering how it's seemingly being ignored with silence instead being addressed with candid dialogue as to what rampant accessible porn's long-term effects may be.  The porn industry has actually started to flag due to being inundated with 'talent', that some porn stars have turned to 'escorting', prostituting themselves for 'bareback' (no condom need worn) services - that's a public health issue waiting to happen.  Chlamydia prevalence among young adults in the United States is already twice that among young adults in the Netherlands.

It could easily be argued that Creepshots, RATTERs, Revenge Porn, and Girls Gone Wild are all symptoms of unchecked filmed prostitution and hyper-sexualization of our youth.  The power play of which is disproportionately male, just as this more recent development of the 'Duke porn star' exhibits perfectly.  Knox admitted to essentially being forced to perform sex acts with someone that she didn't even want to have sex with, someone that disgusted her, and blaming it on contractual obligations for her overseen follow-through is absolute total horse-shit, because she's eighteen.  She has only been alive for 10 + 8 years, the human brain doesn't even fully develop until the age of 25 so why did she do something she didn't really want to do and kidded herself she was acting on female sexual empowerment?  Well, beyond Knox's very real lack of developed Moral and Intrapersonal Intelligence, she did it for...   

...the money.

Had higher education not had a high cost or even a tuition, had Knox not feared debt (like so many of us do), had America had a social support system embedded in our culture like the Swiss actually do with theirs and had Knox gotten paid to not only go to college but also got to partake in a Guaranteed $2,800 Monthly Income merely based on citizenship as they do now in Switzerland--would she still have had the need or desire to earn money in exchange for sex acts?  I think not, and I also think her argument of sex-work being "supportive, exciting, thrilling and empowering" is total bunk, especially when one of those experiences lead her to failing victim to an adolescentophilia act that made her cry on set when faced with the reality of her decision to have sex on film for money.  For if you take the work out of sex-work, all that's left is sex and sex should always be free.  Sex should not be a commodity or a ware to sell, and the only reason it is or is portrayed as being so is due to wealth inequality and the disenfranchised female in the patriarchal predatory capitalism model.    

Higher education should also always be free and should not be a commodity or ware to sell because there is honor in the quest for knowledge that triumphs price-tags.  It is the unyielding pursuit of knowledge that has lead us as a creature to fantastical insights to the workings of our universe and it should not be rendered off-limits because you don't have enough money to buy into a country club of education.  A parent's income should not determine the fate of their child in a freethinking society nor limit their child's ability to obtain an education, and that's not an Utopian statement when other countries are currently capable of such social experiments.    

So it seems fitting that a student of a university has brought this to our attentions and it is truly unfortunate that she has come this far in her short young life and sees no real value in nurturing her mind, because the real money's in allowing others to defile her body and compromise not just her physical boundaries, but her moral boundaries as well.

We should all be very sorry to Belle Knox that the crooked path before her has lead to her to no other recourse by which to claim fortune or fame and has even stupidly deluded herself that she is somehow a free agent despite an assortment of external factors that laid that path, sans gold bricks, before her to trod upon because we are all responsible for the virtual 'village' we've constructed to raise this child in, so she could not raise herself above it.  

(Seriously looks like she could still be in middle school).

Belle Knox, I hope the next person you sleep with isn't for money and that the next person you sleep with is because you at least find them attractive if not love them outright because that's true female sexual empowerment, as well as saying no and being listened to.  

And for Knox to so naively shrug off the very real discrimination facing her when she enters the 'traditional work force', when drug addicts and people that file bankruptcies are disqualified from job candidacy every day, is a jarring insight into a youth that's literally disconnected from reality. 

But who pulled her plug?