Since the first headlines about the Duke University freshman making her way through college by making porn, we have learned many details about her life.
We’ve learned, for example, that being paid to have sex on camera is “freeing, it is empowering, it is wonderful, it is how the world should be.” We’ve learned she aspires to be a lawyer for women’s rights. And we’ve learned that she regards waitressing as more degrading than, say, being choked and slapped around in a skinflick.
Yet perhaps the most indecent detail in this tale is a tidbit about her university that has received almost no attention. It appears near the end of a profile that ran in The Chronicle — Duke’s student paper — which refers to her as “Lauren.” Here’s what it says:
“Lauren reached out to Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. Moneta affirmed that the University’s policy was to be supportive of all student identities.”
Note: He didn’t say “supportive of all students.” He said “supportive of all student identities.”
When this reporter e-mailed Moneta to ask if his words mean Duke really makes no judgment on a student who has become a porn actress, Moneta replied that federal law and Duke policy preclude him from talking about a student’s case. But he didn’t take issue with the Chronicle characterization.
Neither does the young woman. Her name is Miriam Weeks, and in a recent CNN interview with Piers Morgan, she affirmed that Duke had been “very supportive” of her.
This week she expanded on this on TMZ Live. Asked specifically if any Duke officials have a problem with what she’s doing, Weeks replied Duke’s administrators have been “firm” that what she’s doing is legal and “not breaking any rules,” and they are working with her to ensure she’s “safe” and can get her Duke education.
Some may remember Vice President Moneta from an earlier controversy on another campus. Before coming to Duke, he worked at Penn, where 20 years ago he played a lead role in the university’s unconscionable decision to prosecute a Jewish student with racial harassment because late one night he’d yelled “shut up, you water buffalo” at a group of mostly black students who had been making noise as he tried to study.
Now Moneta is at Duke, voice of a modern campus orthodoxy that recognizes only two questions about sex: Was it consensual? And, was it safe?
In practice, this means the universities have punted on any larger questions about human sexuality. Only the cops and docs can have anything to say. If it’s not rape and you’ve protected yourself against an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, who can object?
In the Miriam Weeks case, we see the flip side of this ethos. Because Duke’s support for whatever identity she chooses turns out to be not much different from the support offered by her porn agent.
Weeks herself is explicit about this support, as she made clear to Piers Morgan when she explained why she had come out to LA to shoot even more porn after her identity became known at Duke:
“The really cool thing about being out here is I’m surrounded by people in my industry,” she says. “So I’m surrounded by support. I’m surrounded by people who I can talk to about the stigma that I face every day. So that’s why I came out here . . . to have that support that you can’t find anywhere else.”
These supporters include John Steven, described by the Daily Mail as her agent. Steven told the paper Weeks’ parents were to blame for not providing her the money she needs for college. He, by contrast, is the white knight helping a gal achieve her dream of a Duke degree. “It’s a legitimate business I run,” he says.
Steven’s business, it helps to remember, is an agency called Matrix Models. According to its Web site, the firm’s “main focus is locating amateur models who have never taken their clothes off in front of a camera” and transforming them into “Hustler centerfolds and more.”
In other words, this man’s line of business is looking for innocence so he can debauch it on camera for profit. No doubt he’s figured out that however humiliating all this attention may be for others, especially Weeks’ mother and father, for him it’s free publicity he couldn’t buy.
As for the young Blue Devil making blue movies, the public arguments she advances for her career as “empowering” illustrate how well she has absorbed the language and logic — not to mention the aggressiveness — of the new order. Then again, we expect a certain naiveté from a 19-year-old on campus, even one caught up in something making her old beyond her years.
What we don’t expect are university officials adopting the same definition of support as the young lady’s porn agent.