Duke University’s student porn actress has been in the news a lot this week. In a recent column, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post offered some sobering thoughts on the subject.

What the Duke porn-star student shows us about our degraded culture

To read about the Duke University freshman turned adult-film star is to feel nostalgic for the bygone age of dormitory parietals that barred the opposite sex from visiting the rooms of well-brought-up young ladies.

Of course, such rules are an outmoded relic. Yet their demise exposes a truth about college students. They may no longer be minors but they remain more chrysalis than butterfly, not yet fully formed adults. No matter how smart, no matter how elite their college, their judgment is impaired — and not just when they’re drinking. They try on identities like so many discarded outfits before a big frat party.

Read Belle Knox, the freshman’s nom de porn, on her decision to pay tuition bills by performing in adult films, and you see the vulnerability underlying the faux-feminist, hear-me-roar bravado about rejecting slut-shaming:

“My experience in porn has been nothing but supportive, exciting, thrilling, and empowering,” Knox — she chose the last name in a weird homage to Amanda Knox, the college student accused of murdering her roommate in Italy — wrote on the Web site xojane.com. “For me, shooting pornography brings me unimaginable joy. . . . It is my artistic outlet: my love, my happiness, my home.”

Methinks the freshman doth protest too much. This is a young woman so insecure that when she first started receiving Facebook friend requests from random male classmates, she was “a bit flattered to be honest (maybe I actually am pretty and nice and not awkward, I thought).” Sally Field, this girl needs to talk to you…

These are not your father’s Playboys. Letting a man ejaculate on your face is not empowering under anyone’s definition of the term. It’s debasing.