DURHAM, N.C. — Belle Knox, “outed” porn star, Duke University freshman and blooming media darling, has penned a new piece for XoJane.com defending her dual affiliation as a feminist and sexual submissive.
“In Defense of Kink: My First Role as the Duke Porn Star Was on a Rough Sex Website, And No, That Doesn’t Make Me a Bad Feminist,” was published earlier this week in response to backlash the 18-year-old received upon the revelation that she shot her first adult scene with a notorious rough sex site, FacialAbuse.com.
While Knox ultimately regretted working with the small, New York-based studio, she refuses to renounce the impulses that led her there in the first place.
Knox writes, “Whatever choice a woman is making and she is the one deciding to do — reclaiming the agency behind the decision to do, even if it is a degrading sexual act — is absolutely feminism. To me, feminism is about women not being shamed but rather being empowered.
“You can dress up your critical essays of me saying that I deserve to be disowned by my parents and kicked out of school however you like, but all of these hit pieces are about one spectacularly anti-feminist notion: SHAME.”
Between the paragraphs, Knox periodically inserts photos of herself, some jarringly innocent-looking, none lurid, but some suggestive, such as one where she is wearing a gold lock around her neck. Taken with the other candid shots presented, we see Knox as a flushed out person — a panorama that includes, but is not limited too, a somewhat aberrant sexuality.
Throughout the piece, she elaborates on her particular brand of sex-positive feminism and refutes particular (sometimes scathing) critiques she has received since a classmate at Duke publicly outed her as a part-time porn star.
Instead of trying to find a plausible origin for her kink-slanted fantasies, she instead uses her energy and digital ink to extol the safeness and saneness of the formal BDSM community, which uses delineated consent and safe words to thicken the line between abuse and fantasy.
Meanwhile, amid death threats and peer-hostility — ok, and a few strip club appearances — Knox has returned to Duke to complete her studies.
“Maybe getting a facial sounds completely degrading to you — and that’s perfectly fine — but to me, it gets me off. And the fact that it gets me off does not mean it has to hold me back.”
To read the full article on XoJane.com, click here.
