Andrea Garcia-Vargas writes about the Duke University porn star at PolicyMic —

Guess what I was just doing? I was watching porn on my laptop — just like 40 million other Americans do every year. I watched this particular video for about 12 to 13 minutes, which, according to Pornhub, is just a little over the 10 minutes, 39 seconds that was the average porn viewing time for American porn watchers in 2013. (Incidentally, the U.S. has the longest porn viewing time average of any country in the world.)

In the video a young woman was having rough sex with a slightly older man. The couple were in a bedroom and they were both wearing sneakers.

And I’d like to state for the record that I enjoyed all 12 to 13 minutes of it.

For me, porn can be anything from a stress-buster to an aphrodisiac to an outlet for comic relief. (Let’s face it, some of these videos have ridiculous plot lines.)

I should probably note that the video in question happens to star an actress who is also a student at Duke University. We know this because the freshman was recently “outed” by a fraternity member, exposing her side career to the rest of the Duke student body and a vicious online backlash.

Probably because it involved porn (gasp!), everyone from the New York Daily News to CNN to the Daily Beast seems to have covered the story, unfortunately making the woman at its center — referred to by the pseudonym “Lauren” — a topic of widespread discussion.

Perhaps most troubling were these comments posted on CollegiateACB, which ranged from the explicitly sexist to the overtly misogynistic, with a healthy dose of slut-shaming thrown in for good measure:

Apparently there’s a common perception that a woman who acts in porn must not respect herself. How interesting — and how terribly incorrect. To all those shaming Lauren online, I’ve got to ask: Have you ever watched porn? Have you ever enjoyed watching a sex scene on film or perused through supermarket racks of Penthouse, Hustler or Playboy? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you’re probably a huge hypocrite.

Keep reading at PolicyMic…