On Belle Knox: Why America Is F***ed
Philosophic Pornography and Pornographic Philosophy in the new Age of “Enlightenment”
It’s been said that all Americans are Cartesians, even
though few of us ever actually read Descartes. What is meant by this is, like Descartes’ famous Cogito—I think therefore I am—we approach the world from a standpoint of radical doubt, extrapolating all experience from the subjective I.
This assertion was first made by the French Sociologist (for lack of a better term) Alexis de Tocqueville in his still unsurpassed 1840 study of American political and cultural life, Democracy in America Vol. 2. In the chapter, “On the Philosophic Method of the Americans,” he claims that our primary modus operandi is to reject preapproved systems, habits, and family, class or national prejudices to “call on the effort of [our] individual reason alone.” This mostly results from two things: being a nation founded by Philosophers; and the assumed Equality, in principle, of all our citizens. Although, granted, much has changed in the tempestuous years since this declaration, I still find it striking how fitting his observation remains for both our current class of skeptic chatterers, as well as the endemic anti-elitism/anti-authoritarianism of our general populace.
Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to a compilation of the Duke University pornstar Belle Knox’s finest pre-scene interview moments —which included some choice ones from the scenes, as well. I had already read a little about the situation, and knew that she was popping up all over the media landscape, but at that point, hadn’t really given it much thought. However, as I sat at my desk curiously listening to her reasons for choosing to participate in a scene for the website Facial Abuse, I had a somewhat startling revelation: America is fucked.
With my interest (among other things) piqued from the video, I googled her to find out more about the situation and found some articles she wrote for xoJane in which she elaborated on the rationale behind her choice. Apparently, besides being a way to “graduate from [her] dream school free of debt, doing something [she] absolutely loves,” she also chose to do pornography because, as an aspiring Human Rights lawyer for Women, especially Sex Workers, she can use it to get some on-the-job training, as well. Plus, like many American college Women today, Knox believes being Sex Positive is “empowering” because “a woman who transgresses the norm and takes ownership of her body . . . poses a threat to the deeply ingrained gender norms that polarize our society.”
While I found most of her argument to be pretty standard fare for the predominant brand of Feminism today, her situation really brought together a lot of different ideas about the state of our country that have been bouncing around in my head lately. But it wasn’t so much Knox’s actions that caused this epiphany in me as the language that she used to justify them.
In America today, the language of Philosophy is as
ubiquitous as the polluted air we breathe and Chinese tchotchkes that we over-consume, and likewise has become equally cheapened and soiled. Philosophy was once driven by the desire to distinguish between Law/Convention and Nature—a distinction resulting from the insight that every society that’s ever existed has had its own unique set of Laws or traditional way of doing things; its own values and beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad. Formerly, though, the Philosophers’ goal had always been to try to determine which of these differing beliefs are best: the most Just or most beneficial to society and individuals. Our founding document, The Declaration of Independence, is written in the language of Philosophy and even goes so far as to claim that the Truth has finally been discovered:
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all Men are created Equal, with certain inalienable Rights, and that Government derives its powers from the Consent of the governed.
And following our philosophical forefathers, this is the standpoint from which we American Cartesians have always approached things too—well, except religion.
As Tocqueville notes a few pages later in that same chapter, despite our reigning skepticism, we “accept the principal dogmas of the Christian religion without examination, [and] are obliged to receive in the same manner a great number of moral truths that flow from and depend on them.” Recently, however, this circumscription of once untouchable religious truth has succumbed to our philosophic method, finally enlightening the “Kingdom of Darkness” ruled by God, as well. But unlike the old Philosophers who searched for universal Truth that applied to all Human Beings, we now reserve this light only for our Kingdom. This can be demonstrated no better than by the language that Knox employs in her critique of American sexual mores and defense of her actions: Consent, Self-Ownership and Autonomy.
The majority of this philosophical language can be
traced back to the 17th century Englishman John Locke, whose name you may recognize if you happened to catch that beautiful abortion of a film remake, The Lone Ranger, last year. Locke was one of the greatest philosophic influences upon our Founding Fathers, and his Two Treaties of Government was practically plagiarized by Jefferson in our Declaration. His entire philosophy can pretty much be summed up in one quote: “The Liberty of Man, in Society, is to be under no other Legislative Power, but that established by Consent . . . and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another.” His ideas are usually described as Social Contract Theory, which proposes that all Human interactions are products of the Consent of the individuals involved and is perfectly illustrated by Knox’s justification that she “was not coerced or harmed in any way during the filming of the [facial abuse] scene,” therefore should not be judged “for enjoying something that is perfectly legal and consensual.”
The reason Locke claims that we possess these Rights is because we have “a Property in our [own] person [and] this no Body has any Right to but [ourself],” or as Knox said in the interview, “It’s our Right and Liberty to do what we want with our bodies.” Of course, when Locke wrote this most people only applied it to Men. However, he was incredibly progressive for the 17th century in his assignation of gender roles, arguing against the traditional notion of “Paternal Power” for the more equitable “Parental Power.” He even insisted that Women have the Right to divorce and that “the Wife [is] in the full and free possession of what by Contract is her peculiar Right, and gives the Husband no more power over her Life, than she has over his.”
A century after Locke, Immanuel Kant in Germany expanded on his work, supplying the other major philosophical concept which Knox grounds her argument on, Autonomy: the freedom to do what one believes to be right, uncoerced or unrestricted by outside power or influence. This is the predominant problem that Knox seems to have with the gender norms she wishes to depose: they “seek to rob [Women] of their choice and of their autonomy” by restricting them to a finite number of conventionally preapproved roles or values. “That a woman could be intelligent, educated and CHOOSE to be a sex worker is almost unfathomable” in our current culture, she proclaims—but not, however, in the Kantian Kingdom of Ends that she plans to erect in its place.
A few years ago I wrote down a quote about us
Americans which sums this all up really well, but for whatever reason did not note from where it came: “In America, everyone talks from the standpoint point of the Universal and believes that what they believe can be and is valid in all situations or at least the correct way for ‘civilized’ people to act or portray themselves.” Basically, we all view ourselves as Kantian autonomous legislators, who, like Descartes, refuse to “allow our minds to be clouded by the worthless standards inherited from the past and from our teachers”—just like the good little children our philosophic fathers taught us to be. Well, at least we used to be…
Last year, I did an essay for Thought Catalog called “Sextremists Roadshow” about the radical Ukrainian Feminist protest group FEMEN. According to their website, their goal is “to provoke Patriarchy into open conflict by forcing it to disclose its aggressive antihuman nature to fully discredit it in the eyes of history” by means of staging topless protests around the world. Unsurprisingly, religion is one of their favorite targets. In May, I wrote about a protest the group held in France’s Catholic Notre Dame Cathedral celebrating the suicide of the extreme nationalist Historian Dominique Venner, comparing the event to another protest they held in support of Amina Tyler, a 19-year-old Tunisian woman who had posted two topless photos of herself on FEMEN’s Facebook page. While Tyler’s family held her in captivity, beat her, drugged her and subjected her to virginity tests, and conservative religious leaders in Tunisia called for her to be “stoned to death,” FEMEN staged an “International Topless Jihad Day,” calling on women to “bare breasts against Islamism” in front of Tunisian embassies throughout the world.
What had interested me most about these events was the response they received from Americans and others in the West paradoxically condemning FEMEN and upholding traditional culture in Tyler’s case, yet either remaining silent or actively supporting disrespect for it in Venner’s. This happened despite FEMEN’s protests being held to support a woman who posted the pictures—in which she scrawled “Fuck your morals” and “My body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honor” across her chest—to “make the voice of Tunisian women heard and protect them from suppression.” As a writer at Jezebel asked: “In what way is it appropriate to ‘rescue’ women by indulging in and re-circulating essentializing, stereotyped, and offensive depictions of their culture?”—entirely ignoring that FEMEN is an equal opportunity offender to all religions, and the fact that it happened to be Islam in this case was just incidental. To make a long story short, I found it ironic that American Women so eager to dispose of their own “oppressive” religious cultural trappings would at the same time defend and advocate the continuation of religion in another culture.
And this brings me back to my original point:
America is fucked—and also to our friendly critic, Monsieur Tocqueville.
One of the main reasons Tocqueville’s writing on America is so intriguing is because, as an outsider, he does not find it necessary to justify any of our peculiar practices out of a sense of national pride or cultural hubris, bringing fresh, unprejudiced eyes to our situation. This is no better exemplified than by another insight of his into America of which you may have heard: American Exceptionalism.
Although he is credited as the originator of this concept, his formulation of it is quite different than the flattering use it’s been put to today by sycophantic politicians wishing to stroke the ego of potential supporters. Rather than some providential justification for Manifest Destiny or corporate imperialism, he claims we are exceptional simply because our situation is irreplicable. This occurs in a chapter in which he’s actually admonishing us for our lack of “aptitude and taste for the Sciences, Literature, and the Arts,” and for having too great a fondness for pursuing material wealth. He even goes so far as to assert that it is only our proximity to Europe and our commerce with their arts and ideas—as the language and concepts that I’ve discussed in this essay can attest—that prevents us from “falling back into barbarism.”
However, there is at least one exception for which we should be exceptionally proud: America is still the first and longest-standing nation ever founded by Philosophers—although lately we’ve done our best to dissociate ourselves from that tradition, as well. And I think this is why Ms. Knox awoke in me such a dire realization. Although we continue to talk about morality in the language of Philosophy—of how all Humans ought to act—we have, in reality, lost both the virtue and the will to be that “shining city upon a hill” which proponents of today’s grandiose American Exceptionalism arrogantly continue to claim us to be (although Europe really isn’t in any better shape today, either).
Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the foundation for our concept of Human Rights today, states, “Act so that the maxim of your action might be elevated by your will to be a universal law of Nature . . . [and] treat humanity always as an end and never as a mere means.” This is exactly what Knox is saying; this is what FEMEN is saying; this is what America used to say, but in our current condition, can no longer.
What does it say about our country when a young woman voted “most likely to become president” in high school sells her body on the internet because our toxic worship of money has caused college to become so prohibitively expensive this seems like a reasonable option? What does it say about our culture when the norm is paying $60,000 a year to attend a college which indoctrinates us with the nonsensical moral obfuscation that America now spews when faced with Human moral dilemmas? And what does it say about our citizenry when it is seen as acceptable to threaten bodily harm to someone simply because they disagree with her beliefs?
“Shooting pornography brings me unimaginable joy,”
Knox claims. “It is freeing, it is empowering, it is wonderful, it is how the world should be.” This is the exact role that Philosophy once played: It frees you from the accidental beliefs received from the particular culture you were thrown into during the lottery of birth, and empowers you by being exposed to the realm of possibility, beauty and Truth. Today, though, young Americans arrive at our universities with a contradictory and arrogantly presupposed knowledge of “Truth” which has turned Philosophy into a mere cultural prejudice, inhibiting the true philosophic quest before it even begins.
Knox complains that people are treating her like a “messed-up naïve little-girl,” but I can’t help but think, if anything, she is acting far too mature. If I’m being honest with myself about when I was 18-years-old, I will freely admit that I didn’t know shit then—other than the fact that the world was messed up and I wanted to do something to change it. So for this, I find it hard to fault Knox for her actions. Yet at the same time, I can’t help but view her like so many “ugly Americans” before her who imperiously lecture the world on how it should be without really understanding what they are even talking about.
The primary problem with both Knox and FEMEN’s approach is not necessarily that they are wrong, but as pointed out in that same Jezebel article, that it comes off as a dialogue between Master and Slave. If we Americans truly want to change the world, we should instead follow the example of Tocqueville’s friendly critique of us, rather than the disingenuous, faux humility we now proffer in the name of engendering equality. Despite Americans continuing to speak from the moral standpoint of how all Humans should act, when attempting a cross-cultural dialogue today, we pretend that what we believe is just our “Western values,” treating those on the other side of the conversation as children who can’t handle the “Truth.” This, however, does not mean that how we do things is unquestionably the best (although the way Feminists like Knox speak, it seems at least they believe that our “conventions” of Rights, Consent and Autonomy are absolute Truth). Ultimately, though, by engaging in our current intellectually dishonest way, we only further solidify both ourselves and other cultures in historical follies and arrogant assumptions.
The reason I believe America is fucked today is because this cultural equivocation about our “core values” has caused us to no longer know who we are or what the words we use to articulate our goals even mean. Like it or not, America continues to be the leader of the “Free World.” Though we’ve failed many times and mightily to live up to the ideals for which we stand, our philosophic method is still the best hope for a world that is truly Free and Just. It is only through the language of Philosophy—the language articulated in our Declaration of Independence—from which an honest, respectful and fruitful conversation between equal friends will ever grow.
