Duke Porn Star and the Porn Industry: Empowering or Degrading?

This Time article argues that the libertarian feminist Duke porn star, Belle Knox, is not as empowered as she claims. I think the author dismisses her claims as teenage naivete prematurely without providing depth to the larger question of whether or not sex work, especially in the contemporary pornography industry, can empower women. This question raises larger issues about what empowerment for women means and prompts the limits to autonomous self-expression.

When people discuss pornography as empowerment, they are stipulating that it combats the patriarchal thought that women -- especially white women -- are pure and should be pure, and that sex acts pollute her as a fallen woman, or a slut. This social control of women's sexuality indicates power relations more than it signifies some simplified process of our culture determining its own sexual norms in an absence of oppressive structures. One must simply see who labels whom and how this justifies systematic discrimination and even violence. For two examples: (1) systematic discrimination limiting economic freedom: this Victorian-era ideal reinforces that women should remain in the private sphere as homemakers and thus remain financially dependent on her breadwinner husband in the public sphere  and (2) violence: justifying sexual assault if she dressed in a certain way and is perceived to commonly engage in casual sex, you know she wants sex with anyone as women are seen as either pure or totally depraved. In this line of thinking, pornography thus empowers women by embracing female sexuality and sexual pleasures in a symbolic, political effort to elevate their status and destroy this frame. In a sense, this thinking asserts that pornography dismantles patriarchal influence on women's sexuality.

However, due to its constant, reaffirming images of objectification, subordination, and abuse of women, the porn industry relegates women to be objects for heterosexual male pleasure -- not autonomous agents expressing their sexual desires. Furthermore, it likely influences how people practice sex and could perpetuate violence against women, for as Gloria Steinem pontificates "Pornography is the instruction. Rape is the practice, battered women are the practice, and battered children are the practice." Thus, as a paradigm of run-of-the-mill pornography, I argue that Belle Knox's work does not empower her or women generally. She acts in videos that normalize and eroticize male dominance and female submission, such as a man ejaculating on her face. Furthermore, despite her arguments for sexual autonomy and self-expression, she discusses only three perceived options: go to college and be saddled with extreme debt from student loans, go to college and work in the sex industry to pay off the debt, or not go to college. This implies a sense of unwillingness and pressure to perform sex work. It does not suggest that she pursues the job as an autonomous act of self-expression.

Nevertheless, I hesitate to assert that recording sex acts and publicizing the footage necessitates degradation, even if one does it for pay. Is there a way for one to perform a sex act that embraces women's sexuality and shows female pleasure in a way that establishes them as agentic and capable of subjective experiences? Furthermore, if the porn actress chooses to eroticize submission or abuse, does this combat the social control of women's sexuality? I am inclined argue that this sexual expression is informed by the patriarchy and reinforces it, as no decision is made in a vacuum; however, this obviously limits how one defines genuine autonomy and self-expression.