When I first heard Bonnie Blue was going to challenge herself to sleep with 1,000 men It left an awful taste in my mouth – and probably hers too – pun intended. Her ‘Bonkathon’ raised many eyebrows – and probably a few other things too. I will even admit that a more challenging event would’ve been to see if any of the thousand could even make her orgasm, which I guarantee would’ve taken a lot more men and a longer timeline. It must have been all business and no pleasure. But I’m not here to understand her reason or rationality when over a thousand men willingly participated. Nothing screams romance like signing a consent form and queuing to have sex with a stranger. Many people will wonder what kind of man would sign up to go to this event. Well, I deliver to you dear readers, a man that went, a one in one thousand. His name is Ali Walker, he’s 43 and is a former security guard. He graduated with an English literature degree from Kingston University and describes the event as ‘the only day he’d never forget.’
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like walking into a gym except everyone was naked and having sex with one woman. There were sometimes 50 guys around her at the same time. I was amazed and thought it was a whole different world.”It’s not odd to compare it to a gym, after all, it must be an intense workout to have sex with that many men for 12 hours. But it’s not just the imagery of 50 men surrounding a woman that shocks me. Ali told me that he did not need to sign a consent form and that he did not have an STI test.
“It’s assumed that if you are there that you give consent. You give ID at the entrance, everyone had to wear protection, but anyone could’ve easily gotten away with it. One guy tried to get on top of her and she asked if he had one on.” Ali also said that a lot of men could not ‘rise’ to the occasion. Since men need a poster telling them to talk to each other you can bet they’re not helping each other out in this department. Ali said that a woman known as a ‘Buffer’ provided hand jobs to people in the queue to help them get ready to go in. I can’t imagine that job being on indeed, but it seems even Bonnie needs a helping hand.
To keep a running total: no STI tests, no consent forms, and gang sex. I can’t help but think this type of event is harmful in more ways than one. Sociologist Doctor Jenny Thatcher says that Bonnie’s content creation, especially regarding gangbangs is “worrying” and may have long-term consequences.
“As a society, we are dealing with large-scale high-profile group rape cases. Of course, the adult content creators are consenting to my knowledge and there is no depiction of rape. It does make you question why there seems to be such a demand for this type of pornography at the moment. There has been much research to show that exposure to pornography especially amongst young men is significantly associated with more hostile sexism.”
I couldn’t help but feel enraged that Bonnie was pouring fuel into a sexist fire that had been burning long before my time and may still flicker long into future generations. It made me wonder how smaller adult content creators felt and if it had made their subscribers crave more extreme content. AntiJuls is a 25-year-old full-time adult content creator and has been in the industry for five years, she says threats are part of her life now.
“I’ve had multiple messages in the past of people threatening to find and harm me. Fortunately for me, it is usually just words and hopefully it stays like that.” Despite earning good money from her job Juls has had to make her boundaries clear to her fans, at over 120,000 followers, she says requests can be ‘extreme’.
“I do get some requests that make me uncomfortable, once I had a guy try to pay me to vomit on video and wanted to pay me for every pound that I lose. I have been asked a few times to make content with my sister, but I usually just block them.”
For some people, it’s not enough to exploit women but to harm them. Hiding behind a screen allows these men to hide their identity, it’s scarily similar to the way the men at the Bonnie Blue event were allowed to wear balaclavas. Juls says she is ‘lucky’ that most of her followers are respectful and that she is firm with her boundaries. She says that creators will do ‘crazy’ things to bring traffic to their pages.
“My first thought when I heard about Bonnie sleeping with 1000 men was, is she physically and mentally okay after something like this? There are also a lot of young girls who might see her success and think this might be the way for them too. Doing more extreme things can have a huge effect on your mental state.”
It seems it’s not just creators that are affected by these extreme sex stunts. Ali Walker also admitted the way he views women has been changed forever after attending the event.
“My relationship with women has been confusing. It makes me think, are all women secretly like this? Are they all sleeping around? It’s amplified my insecurities, it makes me think if she can have sex with any guy it makes me think any girl could have sex with any man.” Despite Ali attending the event, he admitted that he did not go through with having sex with Bonnie. He claims a fellow content creator let him skip the queue so he was straight into the room with Bonnie. He witnessed what he describes as ‘a swingers party on steroids.’ Ali said he got a form of stage fright, he had however previously messaged Lily Philips who told him he could be the first to have sex with her in Las Vegas. After being unable to get a plane there, Ali found Bonnie’s event and attended instead. sex and Relationship Coach, Gemma Nice says that men’s relationships with sex may change from attending the event.
“They may think a quick 45-second penetration means sex. Yes, it does but it usually takes men 2 – 7 minutes to climax. Some men may have come away from it not feeling satisfied and think they are not worthy of sex. Sex is supposed to be a sexual time to connect. It would affect their ability to perform for fear of not feeling good enough. This can have a damaging effect psychologically.” Ali described the men that took part as ‘low quality’ and it looked as though it was ‘anyone off the street’.
“The media is right, they are not high-quality men, they all wore masks as some had careers they could lose. The atmosphere was insane, you could hear a pin drop.” It’s no surprise us Brits love to queue, but my love for queueing ends the moment I’m asked for my boarding pass. The main motivator to take part in a ‘bonkathon’ is arguably for financial reasons. We are not strangers to the term ‘cost of living crisis’ in fact Dr Jenny Thatcher says it’s often an offer women can’t turn down.
Online subscription sites seem to many young women to present them with an opportunity to create sums of wealth that facilitate financial independence. Millennials and Gen Z are going to be some of the first generations in modern times to learn less than their parents. In pursuit of increasing the number of subscribers, they enter a slippery slope in which their contents become more graphic, hardcore, and shocking in its imagery.”
It’s easy to feel anger toward Bonnie Blue, but would we even know her name if it wasn’t for the men who pay for her content? Blue claims to earn over £600,000 a month from Only Fans whereas the average UK salary sits around £32,000. I would say sex sells, but I think it’s sexism that sells.
Ali Walker previously had over 170,000 followers on TikTok, and also created merchandise with the slogan ‘Just Jeet’ and yes I had to look that up – it means to have sex. His motivations were to get Bonnie to wear a hat with the slogan on it to help boost his sales. Although he did not have sex with her, he was arguably intending to profit from her.
I can’t help but feel as a society we have shielded men from shame and allowed the women who profit from the patriarchy to take all of the responsibility. Out of 1000 men, only one would talk to me openly about their experience. As a society, just like Bonnie, we are well and truly f****d.
