‘Sex should mean something’: the story of the woman who slept with 1000 men in a single day

“For years we have been fighting to protect our children from the kind of degrading, violent sex that exists freely on their social media feeds. Now this documentary risks taking us a step back by glamorising, even normalising the things young people tell me are frightening.”

These were the harrowing words of Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel De Souza, about Channel 4’s latest documentary which was released this week, provoking a storm of online controversy. Entitled ‘1000 men and me: the Bonnie Blue story’, the documentary follows the story of one of the most controversial figures on the internet, pornographic actress Bonnie Blue.

Blue has risen to fame through a ruthless pursuit of bizarre and extreme sex stunts which she markets and sells through the pornographic platform OnlyFans, (or at least she used to, until her activity became so extreme that even they kicked her off their site).

An expert in provoking outrage, she deliberately chooses the wackiest and most challenging sex scenes to drive attention to her platform, thereby pushing up her profits.

Whilst advertising cannot be pursued in conventional means, Bonnie Blue has mastered the art of provocative social media clips and has appeared on podcasts and morning TV to speak of her exploits. She herself admits that the more she provokes, and the more outrage she causes, the more people seek her out.

Just like Donald Trump has mastered the art of politics in a post-truth age through courting controversy and attention, Bonnie Blue has risen to prominence with the same playbook.

And at one level it works. If money is the barometer of success, she, if reports are to be believed, has made herself very wealthy, earning somewhere from £600,000 to nearly £2 million a month. If fame is what she seeks, then headlines in conventional newspapers, an interview on This Morning, now a documentary on Channel 4, and a litany of appearances across the ‘new media’ circuit of podcasts and Youtubers has turned her more or less into a household name.

It may be unconventional, but undoubtedly it has been successful (on a certain ‘definition of success’!).

Yet beyond acknowledging the ‘unconventional’, it seems that society has little else to say with confidence.

To watch her being interviewed on This Morning is to see two presenters clearly uneasy with her chosen line of ‘work’ but unable to say much more than that it’s not something they’d choose for themselves.

One YouTube clip doing the rounds this week featured LBC presenter James O’Brien, who was obviously dismayed about the attention Blue receives and the reasons for why, but who was unable to give any clear moral reason other than ‘because’. Indeed, he even talks about his worries that he’s being prudish by condemning Blue for engaging in a 12-hr orgy with more than 1000 men.

But for all that Bonnie Blue’s story is shocking, it is revealing. For it has not occurred within a vacuum. For all that she might be a clever marketer, with a sixth sense for what sells, she is also a visible demonstration of contemporary society’s sexual ethic pushed to its logical conclusion.

Sex has been reduced to a leisure activity. A pleasurable experience that means little beyond the physical sensations it evokes.

Sexual limits have been reduced to mere consent. As long as all parties involved have given their consent (and are actually deemed capable of giving consent) then go ahead.

On this, one cannot fault Bonnie Blue. She openly speaks of how she gains pleasure from what she does. “This is what I enjoy. I always say this is what I want. This is not for everybody.”

Likewise, all who participate in her stunts have to give formal written consent and are made fully aware what their participation involves. She passes the two ethical barometers – pleasure and consent.

Furthermore, those who engage in her exploits must follow strict rules concerning sexual health. She employs security guards and a wider team who coordinate and oversee her ‘films’. Her line is simple: all sex she participates in is wanted, pleasurable, deliberate, safe, and consensual.

And yet as the interviews show, there is a clear unease with her activity. Confusion about who she is and why she is doing what she is doing. How can they explain it? Perhaps she is vulnerable or exploited? A victim of a past trauma? Maybe she is unwell?

But by her own words, Bonnie Blue defies such easy explanation.

‘I’m not traumatised. I come from a beautiful family. I genuinely love my life, and I’m super grateful for it.’ Or, as one commentator put it: “Bonnie does not see herself as a victim, so who am I to call her one?”

So where does that leave us?

Much of the online criticism focuses on the harm to others. And there is a great deal of validity to these points.

Baroness Bertin, who is heading up the Independent Pornography Taskforce, argued “She has become extremely successful; she is an adult and it is consensual, so it may not be harming her, but it has potentially harmful effects on people who think that this is a normal way to behave”.

Others have asked what does Bonnie Blue’s success say to young girls and women? What does gaining fame and wealth in such a way reveal about how society values women? Through both the ‘content’ she produces and the way she speaks of herself and other women, is Bonnie Blue simply reducing women to mere objects to be exploited for male pleasure?

Others warn that, whilst it might have brought Blue huge wealth and success, she is an abnormality, not the norm. Most who set up on the platform OnlyFans bring home only a tiny fraction of her profits. She might feel free, safe, and happy, but there is much evidence to suggest that a more typical experience is one of exploitation, fear, and degrading treatment.

And there will also be hundreds of thousands of young teenage boys for whom the mainstream infiltration of porn will cause serious damage.

Whether it is stumbling across porn through social media, hardcore videos shared on group chats, or simply seeing figures like Blue singing the praises of pornography, they will be taught to value and pursue a destructive and harmful understanding of sex for years and years to come, in turn harming many women and girls.

And yet, there continues to be a sense that there is more to say, that simply condemning such exploits based on harm to others is insufficient.

Channel 4’s Commissioning Editor Tim Hancock said as much when defending the documentary: “I believe it is Channel 4’s job to tell stories like this that are at the edge of modern morality”.

These are questions of morality. And yet it seems that our society’s moral resources are so depleted that all that can be said, swings between feelings of being uncomfortable, (an instinctive ‘ick’), and a more utilitarian condemnation of the behaviour as not bad in and of itself, but bad only in as much as it poses a risk to others.

But society is also wary of simply making moral judgements based on the ‘ick’. Our ‘icks’ can be wrong, perhaps we simply need to be educated and enlightened, people wonder. Hence the discomfort at being deemed prudish or puritanical.

And in a society that prioritises autonomous choice and self-actualisation, arguments based on harm to others often fall short. Who are you, after all, to tell me what to do with my body (or the others who want to participate)?

It was a similar story in the Commons debate over assisted suicide. Despite repeated warnings from charities, medical groups, and vulnerable individuals themselves, the collective wisdom of society was that choice and autonomy should trump the concerns of the most vulnerable.

So too with pornography. What does it matter that it systematically and relentlessly undermines and degrades the dignity of women and girls? What does it matter that violent and debased sexual behaviour is being normalised and glamourised by the profit-driven machine that is the pornographic industry? What does it matter that the sex education of children and young people will be through the porn shown on their screens. Porn is pleasurable and my pleasure is my highest good.

Bonnie Blue has not appeared in a vacuum.

No, she is the product of a hollowed-out society with a hollowed-out sexual ethic that lacks any substantive content and leaves little by which we can make sense of what is good and right and beautiful, and what is bad, wrong, and ugly.

After all, one commentator pointed out, “if Bonnie was somehow shut down there would be another one along soon enough. She’s a feature, not a bug, the inevitable product of an economy relentlessly geared to giving an audience what it most reliably pays for – to feel angry or horny, or both at once – and then endlessly pushing its luck.”

Some commentators are more honest than others on this: “At its core, the backlash against Bonnie might not be about consent, legality, or even extremity – it might be about something more intangible: a sense that sex should mean something… She isn’t a role model. She isn’t a cautionary tale. She’s a mirror, and it’s up to us what we choose to do with that uncomfortable reflection.” 

She might be the focus of attention, but she did not get there alone – what of the thousand-plus men who have been only too willing to engage in the stunts? What of the thousands more willing to pay money to make her activity a viable business model? What of a society that has been only too willing to endorse or at least turn a blind eye to pornography? What of a government, that despite knowing all the harms of porn, tolerates a business like OnlyFans, presumably because of the vast revenue it brings into the Treasury?

‘Sex should mean something’.

As Christians, we need not scrabble around for moral clarity. The Bible presents a rich picture in which sex finds a home in the loving, lifelong union of one man and one woman that is marriage.

This is no abstract truth, but a story written into the very fabric of reality, and the nature and purpose of our bodies. As O. Alan Noble puts it: “The grand design of God for human sexuality as part of marriage is embedded in Genesis and creation itself. Marriage itself is a living symbol for Christ’s relationship to his Church. There is a givenness to the nature of human sexuality that is a part of the beauty of God’s creation.”

This has been deemed stodgy, old fashioned, prudish and puritanical – yet do well-placed limits not bring great freedom and comfort? Without them are we not left scrabbling around in a moral wasteland, wondering which way is up and which way is down, never being sure of the ground we stand on, and seeing only confusion and damage wherever we look around us?

To place limits on sex has been taboo for a long while now, but does not the tale of Bonnie Blue instinctively leave us wanting some limits?

The question is not whether to have limits, but where to place them. And that question can only be answered if we go back to the deeper question – what is sex, what does it mean, and what is it for?

‘Sex should mean something’ after all.