To say that Miriam Weeks has been “criticized” for her work as a porn star is an understatement. On a post she wrote on XOJane.com shortly after she was outed by a fellow classmate, in which she reveals for the first time her stage name (“Belle Knox”) she described the vitriol and hate that spewed forth on Twitter, characterized by her subheading: “I’ve never been told to die in quite so many ways.”
Weeks goes on to list a few choice tweets:
- You should slit your wrists and die, you stupid —
- We are going to throw garbage at her every f— day!!! let’s do it GREEK FRAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- The school should either expel her, or we will take matters into our own hands and make this f— up suffer. cheers!
- F— YOU!!!! IF I SEE U WALKING ON CAMPUS I WILL KICK YOU IN THE FACE!
Is it wild speculation that some of these haters on Twitter have perhaps watched pornography themselves? It’s likely, because as Weeks writes, the U.S. porn industry is roughly $13 billion strong, and all that money must come from somewhere.
Weeks writes: “We are scorned by the very same people that encourage us to be sexual (“come on, baby,” “you know you want to,” “you’re so hot”) — and, in, my case, the hypocritical society that watches me behind a computer screen.”
It’s not so surprising, then, given this crazy double standard, this perfect example of a terribly outsized double standard, that there is a corollary in the criminal law involving sex offenses. Other sex workers like prostitutes, for example, have historically not been treated very well when it comes to the criminal law, and increasingly as a society we are seeing more and more people being punished for all sorts of behavior related to sex.
And the best even the U.S. Supreme Court can do is pronounce, in an attempt to define pornography, “I know it when I see it.”
Prosecutors prosecute and judges judge and folks write messages of hate on Twitter, but porn somehow remains a billion-dollar industry. Wonder why that is.