N.C. Harrison asks outraged critics of Duke University porn star Miriam Weeks to avoid rushing to judgment.
Miriam Weeks is a young woman with soft, melted chocolate eyes, an aquiline nose and a mouth made for smiles, shy or otherwise, and kisses. I am who I am and make no apologies for noticing this right off the starting line. She is also a freshman at Duke University, a prestigious (for reasons historical) but often troubled institution perched amid the hills and valleys of beautiful North Carolina. She majors in women’s studies and sociology there, with dreams of becoming an attorney specializing in civil rights and the rights of women. Miss Weeks is also Belle Knox, a brand new starlet in the adult film circus. This is, predictably, the facet of her life which has Duke’s campus, and the internet at large, buzzing like a stick-battered hornet nest.
I read Miss Weeks’ second article on xojane a few days ago and have been mulling over my response to it ever since. I knew I wanted to write about it from the very beginning but did not know exactly in which direction my thoughts would take me. I must mention that I couldn’t be called a fan of her work, or anything, and thus have no stake in Miss Weeks or her career. I didn’t know her from Adam’s housecat until my mother sent me a link to her essays with a wry comment that upper middle class college students can engage in Girardian sacrifice with a savagery to shame any tribe of barbarians. I am a straight, red-blooded male and a good looking, scantily clad lady makes me as happy as it would any similar person—especially if she’s Katy Perry or circa 1964 Julie Newmar—but depictions of the truly explicit tend to make me uncomfortable.
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However, it does not make me as uncomfortable as the response to Miss Weeks from her classmates after another student, one Thomas Bagley, outed her as Belle Knox. The flood of Facebook friend requests from eager young lads was not all that surprising. Most guys live by the Special Air Service motto, anyway—who dares wins—and with or without knowledge of Miss Weeks’ career choice she is, as I mentioned before, the owner of a rather head-turning face and figure. I would have probably tried to get to know such a gal sitting next to me in political science 101 myself, back during my undergraduate days, especially if she seemed smart, funny or particularly passionate about some issue.
Sex workers, as a marginalized and harassed population, should surely count. The list of murdered sex workers in any given year, after all, stretches roughly the length of my not inconsiderable leg.
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Other responses on a variety of message boards were less understandable. One suggested that she commit suicide by slitting her wrists. Another chap, perhaps a fan of rudimentary, chimp level prop comedy, proposed throwing refuse at her. The more straightforward among her ostensibly thoughtful classmates (doesn’t earning a degree take some degree of thought?) just wanted to kick her in the face. She reported these threats to the police but, sadly, these protectors of the public good couldn’t find it within themselves to engage in a more than cursory investigation to find and punish these miscreants for making terroristic threats.
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I find myself obligated in this situation to say some things which seem rather obvious. Suicide is not the solution–not for you, oh student of Duke, nor for anyone who is annoying you. Garbage goes in the can, not on the pretty coed whose career choices you disagree with. Kicking someone in the face is never appropriate unless you are competing in a sanctioned match under kickboxing rules. I don’t feel like I should have to say these kinds of things to college students. I learned this in kindergarten. The number one rule on Mrs. B’s board involved not physically or mentally harassing your fellow students. That could get your clothespin moved from the happy face to the frown, on her public column of record, quicker than anything else. Justice, in Mrs. B’s class, was swift, fair and without mercy. I think I’m a better person because of it.
The number one rule on Mrs. B’s board involved not physically or mentally harassing your fellow students.
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I’m not writing here about the wider political implications of pornography, whether it is harmful or not, or whether Miss Weeks is a good feminist (or even good person) due to her involvement with that world. I’m not a sociologist and don’t feel comfortable in stepping outside of my area of rather limited expertise and drawing conclusions which may be so far off that they might as well come from the land of Hyrule. Other writers have discussed the generalities of the situation with more or (usually) less adroit analysis. Father Dwight Longnecker, on Patheos, was predictably moralistic and superior. Miss Week’s fellow adult actress Stoya, for The New York Times, took the side of her compatriot. Most mainstream news sources just tried to be as salacious and titillating as possible. Journalistic business as usual. Playboy, with the offbeat humor which has made it the interview destination of presidents and the great literary lions of the day since its inception, simply mentioned that it should perhaps be a comfort that one of the supposed coeds, in videos dedicated to such material, was actually on the level.
I don’t have much else to say. I try to live by Philippians 2:12-13, that one should work out his or her own fate with serious contemplation and reverence, and this prevents me from taking a deeply judgmental stance regarding other humans, at least insofar as they are not hurting others, as does Matthew 7:1, wherein Rabbi Yeshua reminds His talmidim to not judge lest they come under judgment. I am also reminded of His words in the parable of the sheep and the goats, that whatever is done to the “least of these” shall also be done to Him. Sex workers, as a marginalized and harassed population, should surely count. The list of murdered sex workers in any given year, after all, stretches roughly the length of my not inconsiderable leg. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong about this, but I’m certainly not indifferent. Even if I’m not fully right, and I never feel like I am, I do know that it’s better than wanting to kick somebody in the face. It shouldn’t take a missile scientist to know that, but apparently it’s harder than I thought. Maybe a porn star can teach us?
Photo–Flickr/Pumpkincat12
I think Freud was more right than most psychologists want to acknowledge. Sex, as a formative and driving force, is essential and fundamental to the human psyche; it is put upon by so many social restrictions and mores, that it finds its expression in obscure and unnatural ways. It will not be ignored, despite society’s best efforts to keep it under marital, heterosexual sheets. Kudos to the porn star who rebels against such futile nonsense as society’s Puritanical obsessions! Veritas nudus!
I think she is an intelligent woman and the way in which she sticks up for herself is admirable.
Julie Newmar is STILL beautiful.
Always has been and always will be.
By way of correction, Stoya’s article was for the New York Times and it was a Kate Dries article for Jezebel commenting on her other article that I referenced.
Updated!
Thank you kindly.