We as performers have rights to express ourselves and as long as everything is consensual and legal, then more power to everyone involved.

Part of the criticism Belle Knox, the Duke University Pornstar and Student, has attracted as focused on the fact that her first adult film she shot was for an infamously rough adult web site – Facial Abuse.

The overwhelming criticism I have received for my participation in this rough blowjob scene is incredibly revealing to me about the condemnation-happy state of “gotcha feminism.”

Although Knox has said she ultimately regretted shooting for the rough sex site in New York – it would be “the one choice” she’d take back if she could – she does not regret or condemn the impulses that led her to shoot the scene in the first place but more importantly she defends her choice as a Woman to be able to shoot such a scene.

In her XOJane column Knox writes:

We play around with roles and identities while we are working out issues that are long buried in our subconscious. I’m an ambitious young woman. I’m a student at Duke. I’m a slut who needs to be punished.

Can you guess which one of those is a role?

She goes on to identify a moment in her childhood where she believes the idea of submissiveness first presented itself whilst playing ‘house’ with a friend and unknowingly at the time being aroused “mentally and physically” by that experience.

I can’t explain why rough sex and pain arouses me; it just does.

“So getting spit on and degraded is feminism now?” – a quote from a post that Knox chooses to highlight in her column to which she responds:

Sure. 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.

It’s clear from the lengthy column that Knox’s view on sex is simple, its not overly complex yet for mainstream Society the ideas behind Knox’s arguments are still too difficult for them to try and understand.

Yes, a Google search reveals pictures of me in hard-core sexual experiences. No, that Google search is not me.

I would recommend reading Knox’s latest column over at XOJane.com, its a true insight into that path that led Knox in to the hardcore adult entertainment industry without all the noise about tuition fees and expensive education. It delves deeper than that into her sexual and personal development.