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" I started doing porn about four months ago in November in order to pay the tuition for Duke. In January a friend of mine found out I was doing porn and told basically everybody. It spread throughout the entire school and, and I chose to clear my name, so I spoke to the school newspaper, which went viral. The responses have been pretty negative. Some support from people, but a lot of it has been hate mail and death threats from frat guys. Like I&amp;#039;m embarrassing Duke, or I&amp;#039;m a whore. On the flip side, I&amp;#039;ve had a lot of women&amp;#039;s studies faculty talk to me and say they support me, and also the LGBTQ community. My plan is to keep speaking out, and keep being an activist, and bring attention to the stigma surrounding sex work. I also plan to graduate from Duke.   It&amp;#039;s still escalating. Yesterday an article came out that was horrible about my family. I shit you not, they interviewed some lady \u2014 my brother&amp;#039;s mother-in-law \u2014 and she played right into what they wanted, like &amp;quot;Yeah, her family was really devastated [when they found out she did porn],&amp;quot; and I don&amp;#039;t even know this lady. Basically, I keep having these ignorant people keep reigniting the flame. My mom called the lady screaming, because not only did she talk shit, but also shared some really personal information about our family that never should have been shared. For some reason she thought it&amp;#039;d be a good idea to mention that my dad just got back from Afghanistan.   After I was outed as a porn actress, I had moments when I wanted to transfer because I was really sick of the harassment, and I thought I could just get a normal education somewhere else. But Duke is my dream school and I&amp;#039;ve already spent almost a year here. And I think I&amp;#039;ve gotten used to it. I&amp;#039;m not going to let the haters at Duke keep me from getting an education. I started doing porn to pay for Duke, so if I leave, all my hard work would be a waste.   The biggest advice I&amp;#039;d give to other girls who are slut-shamed online is know that you&amp;#039;re not alone and know your worth. Because the tragedy of what&amp;#039;s happened to me is, when I tried reporting it to the police, I was met with very disparaging comments. Nobody wanted to take the bullying seriously, they said shouldn&amp;#039;t worry about it, even though I was literally being told to go die. So I had to be persistent and push them and say, &amp;quot;No, this upsets me. You need to investigate this.&amp;quot; I brought attention to this issue through articles I&amp;#039;ve written about [it].   Even if you think nobody&amp;#039;s going to listen to you, talk about the issue, and what&amp;#039;s happened to you. Do not be silent about it. Know you&amp;#039;re worth being safe and your safety and well-being is valuable \u2014 you need to advocate for that. It makes me sad that I even have to give this advice, and tell women that they need to advocate for themselves, because they shouldn&amp;#039;t have to. Law enforcement and school officials should take bullying seriously, but they don&amp;#039;t.   To be honest. I still don&amp;#039;t feel very safe [on campus]. I think that was always my biggest concern, people finding out I went to Duke, tracking me down and stalking me. Some people posted my whereabouts online. Frat guys saying they&amp;#039;re going to kill me or throw trash on me. I&amp;#039;m not going to be able to go out again for awhile, and when I do, I can really only go out safely in the daylight.   College campuses are very hostile to women, sexually \u2014 there&amp;#039;s a culture of victim blaming. There&amp;#039;s an incredibly high rate of sexual assault \u2014 one in three women are assaulted during their time in college, and Duke has a bad binge drinking culture, which exacerbates the problem. They&amp;#039;re socialized to think, &amp;quot;Get girls drunk at the pregame, and take them home later.&amp;quot; And I think this shows how hostile the environment is for women. People don&amp;#039;t want to admit we have a problem with rape culture on campus, and I get it. I love Duke and I know it&amp;#039;s a great school, but I think when you love your college and want to protect it you wind up ignoring some of the issues that plague it, which we need to talk about in order to actually get some change. And it can&amp;#039;t be in the dark anymore. Even though I know I&amp;#039;ve angered a lot of people at Duke by talking about this, these are issues I see affecting women every single day. If it took me possibly bringing negative attention to Duke, I&amp;#039;m okay with that.   I said recently in an interview that some of the girls at Duke hate me because their boyfriends watch my porn. Now all of the girls at Duke hate me for saying that. I&amp;#039;ve gotten a lot of hate from Duke women playing into the culture, calling me a slut. I&amp;#039;ve had a response from the anti-porn feminists at Duke. They almost wouldn&amp;#039;t let me join a feminist club because letting me in would look bad for their image. It&amp;#039;s funny, when they&amp;#039;re telling women what to do and what not to do with their bodies, anti-porn feminists are really reinforcing the patriarchy.   They say porn is degrading to me, they&amp;#039;re telling me what my narrative is. I&amp;#039;ve never felt degraded in porn. I feel degraded by them, these people telling me I&amp;#039;m stupid and na\u00EFve and not able to make decisions for myself. And by the people telling me to kill myself. On the bright side, I&amp;#039;ve had a lot of sex workers thank me and say they&amp;#039;re proud and happy with what I&amp;#039;m doing. A lot of porn companies reached out to me and told me they support me. They&amp;#039;re really happy they have an intelligent, assertive, bold girl who&amp;#039;s not afraid to talk about the stigma facing the industry.   *Not her real name.   RELATED: Duke Freshman&amp;#039;s Porn Star Double Life Exposed   Follow Anna on Twitter  Photo Credit: Teen Fidelity "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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