Is Everything Feminist ‘Empowerment’ Now? Or Is @Belle_Knox a Sociopath?

Posted on | March 21, 2014 | 68 Comments

“Ever since I was a child, I’ve had some masochistic tendencies. When I was a young girl and my friend and I would play house, I would ask her to lock me in her dog cage. . . . It was exciting. It was different.
“I can’t explain why rough sex and pain arouses me; it just does.”
— Miriam Weeks (a/k/a “Belle Knox”)

Let’s talk about rationalization, OK?

Rationalization is a psychological defense mechanism by which the ego defends itself against criticism, either external criticism from others, or against internal criticism from the superego (conscience). We do not need to resort to rationalization to explain or justify success. Praiseworthy deeds require no defense. Rationalization is necessary only to excuse failure or to evade shame for our wrongful actions.

“I started watching porn when I was maybe 11, and it was something I was always very ashamed about, but I really enjoyed watching it.”
— Miriam Weeks (a/k/a “Belle Knox”)

The true motives or reasons for our “perceived controversial behaviors” (thank you, Wikipedia) are ultimately irrational. If our conduct were governed by logic and prudence, we would not have gone “all-in” on that pair of jacks. Rationalization is what occurs after we lose that stupid bet and then try to tell ourselves that our bad decision made perfect sense, rather than being a crazy emotional urge.

Over the past five weeks, Duke University freshman Miriam Weeks has offered the world an increasingly elaborate series of rationalizations to justify her bad decisions, exploiting feminism as a defense mechanism to garner sympathy as a victim of “slut-shaming” while basking in admiration as a sort of “pro-sex” heroine.

Only the mindless incoherence of feminism — the tendency to rally around any woman who invokes the sisterhood and portrays herself as a victim of patriarchy — could explain the uncritical acceptance of the shifting and often contradictory rationalizations by which Miriam Weeks has excused and justified her career as teen porn starlet “Belle Knox.”

“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. . . .
“Why is that we have to adhere to the ascribed gender roles of the patriarchy?”
— Miriam Weeks (a/k/a “Belle Knox”)

In February, using the pseudonym “Lauren” in her interview with the Duke Chronicle and in other venues, she said it was about the money: Her parents couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay the tuition at Duke and therefore, she was more or less compelled to do porn out of dire financial need.

That story never really made sense, because Weeks also said she had turned down a full scholarship to Vanderbilt. If she knew there were financial problems with her family, wouldn’t she have accepted the Vandy scholarship instead? Well, kids make irresponsible decisions all the time, but the misguided attempt by Weeks to “un-out” herself — getting the Chronicle and other publications to play along with the charade that her actual identity was not already widely known — clearly had an ulterior motive, to deflect attention from her family, so that her rationalization could not be fact-checked.

“I’m very passionate about feminism and LGBTQ rights. . . .
“Listen, patriarchy is telling women what to do with their bodies. . . . I think that when people condemn pornography, they’re really just following this societal construct of what sex is, based on religion, based on patriarchy, and so many societal forces.”
— Miriam Weeks (a/k/a “Belle Knox”)

Unfortunately for Weeks, journalistic curiosity overwhelmed political correctness, and reporters for the Daily Mail revealed that (a) her father is a physician whose annual income they estimated at $200,00 a year, (b) her family lives in a house worth nearly $500,000, and (c) Miriam and her two older siblings attended Gonzaga Prep, a prestigious private Jesuit school with an annual tuition of $11,000. Whatever the difficulties of paying Duke’s tuition might be, Miriam Weeks could not plead poverty. She is definitely not “the 99 percent.”

So the focus of her narrative shifted, slightly but perceptibly. Even in her first interviews, with the paradoxical claim that she was not ashamed of doing porn, despite her insistence on hiding behind pseudonyms, Weeks had claimed porn was “empowering,” although asserting that she wouldn’t have done it if not for the need to get tuition money. Once her family’s affluent background was exposed, however, the financial rationalization faded into the background and “empowerment” took center stage. Critics of her porn career as “Belle Knox,” she asserted, were really just threatened by her feminist “sexual autonomy.”

“When I agreed to film that rough sex scene, I knew what was in store for me. . . . I realize that the visual of me with [semen on my face] at the end was nothing compared to the close-ups the site provided of my skin revealing scars from my most vulnerable past when I was a cutter. . . .
“Does my admission that I cut when I was a teenager suddenly make me the porn stereotype of a ‘depressed, crazy girl’? I would say it’s the exact opposite. I have nothing to hide.”
— Miriam Weeks (a/k/a “Belle Knox”)

Let’s run the check list: Intelligent, superficially charming, manipulative, deceitful, narcissistic, remorseless, lacking empathy for others, impulsive, with an appetite for risky behavior . . .

Can you say “sociopath,” boys and girls?

Let the psychologists examine the case study and decide for themselves. My larger point is that there is something profoundly weird about Miriam Weeks, and she is exploiting feminism — relying on the idea that women should always be “supportive” and non-judgmental of each other — to divert attention from her pathological symptoms. Skip forward to the 11:30 mark in this XOJane video interview:

“I think [I would like to see] more stories about the
process of, you know, coming out, or coming to terms with
being gay. . . . I was home for break in October, before
this whole porn thing happened, and I was in the car with
my dad. . . . We were just driving and I said to my dad,
I was like, ‘Dad, I like girls.’ And he was just like,
‘I know, sweetie. I’ve known for a long time.’ . . .
I was shocked. . . . I was like, ‘Was it the half-naked
pictures, posters of girls in my room?’ And he said,
‘No, it’s because you have sex with women.’
He knew somehow, I don’t know. . . . And then,
there’s like an awkward silence, and then
he goes, ‘Well, do you want to go to the
bikini espresso bar down the street?
We probably don’t have the same taste in women,
but I think you’d like it.’ And I just, like, laughed.”

WHOA! “Bikini espresso bar”? Yeah, apparently such a thing exists in Spokane, and I guess feminists will insist that it’s almost as “empowering” as getting boned on video, but what kind of fatherly reaction is that? His daughter tells him she’s bisexual, he says he knows she has had sex with women, and the daughter brushes this off as, “He knew somehow”? Then dear old Dad compares their “taste in women” and offers his college freshman daughter a visit to the bikini espresso bar?

Let’s run another check-list: She started watching porn when she was 11 or 12, engaged in “cutting” when she was a young teen, and now she’s a bisexual porn star who is “aroused” by sadomasochism.

“And then there’s like an awkward silence . . .”

“The only porn I watch is blowjob porn. It is the only thing I can get off to, is watching a girl get her face f**ked . . . That’s hot. I can’t watch normal sex and get off to it. I have to watch blowjob porn. I don’t know why.”
— Miriam Weeks (a/k/a “Belle Knox”)

Miriam Weeks is a twisted tangle of psychosexual pathology, and if her feminist enablers would stop engaging in ideologically motivated gestures to show how “supportive” they are of her “sexual autonomy,” maybe they could provide some long overdue examination of the etiology of deviance in our hypersexualized youth culture.

Stop trying to sell me this ridiculous porn “empowerment” nonsense. Trust me — I know crazy when I see it.

 

 

PREVIOUSLY:

• March 20: Also, @Belle_Knox Is a Psycho
• March 19: On ‘The View,’ @Belle_Knox Says ‘Most People’ Start Watching Porn at Age 12
• March 16: Is Duke ‘Supportive’ of Teen Porn?
• March 12: E-Mail to a Friend: Are We Being Too Judgmental About the Duke Porn Star?
• March 11: ‘This Is a Tragedy in the Family’: @Belle_Knox’s Horrible Disgrace
• March 9: Get ‘Empowered,’ Duke-Style!
• March 7: Now @PiersMorgan Interviews Duke Porn Star @Belle_Knox a/k/a Miriam Weeks
• Feb. 27: Special Snowflake™ @Belle_Knox and Make-Believe Feminist ‘Empowerment’
• Feb. 25: If Porn Is Not Shameful, Why Doesn’t Miriam Weeks Use Her Real Name?

 

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