why liberal feminists can't make sense of bonnie blue
The word you are looking for is algorithmic coercion, not choice.
Content warning: This story mentions pornography and other sexual acts. Please refrain from reading this essay if you are distressed by these topics.
I love watching commentary content on YouTube. As a journalist who likes to deep-dive into internet cultural phenomena, I find it a great way to keep track of microtrends and behavioural shifts without increasing my daily screen time (which is already 8 hours a day, by the way). From D’Angelo Wallace to Brett Cooper, I watch creators from across the political and social spectrum. In the past three weeks or so, my YouTube algorithm has been filled with a certain infamous internet figure — OnlyFans creator Bonnie Blue.
As you know, I generally cover a wide range of topics that answer my favourite question: “What are women doing on the internet and what is the internet doing to them?” But I have never written or expressed my views on OnlyFans creators and the porn industry in general. Surprising, considering that it is a fundamental aspect of digital girlhood.
The reason is quite embarrassing. I don’t know what to say about them. I am not a conservative. I don’t think the porn industry is bad because it dismantles the family unit or because lust is one of the seven deadly sins. I also am not a choice feminist. I don’t agree with the take that feminism is all about empowering women’s choices and, as such, OnlyFans creators are empowered feminists. I am also not someone who believes that sex is inherently violence towards women. I think all these arguments have certain merits but don’t really capture the discomfort we have towards the recent developments in the OnlyFans economy is pushing towards.
The first time I felt this discomfort was in December 2024, when I watched the Josh Pieters documentary “I Slept With 100 Men in One Day”, documenting the 24-hour duration when OnlyFans creator Lily Philips had intercourse with 101 strangers. In the documentary, Lily says that she is training her way up to sleeping with 1000 men in a day. But Tia Bilingher, also known as Bonnie Blue, has already done that.
In January 2025, the British creator broke the news that she slept with 1,057 men in 12 hours, breaking the record previously held by adult film star Lisa Sparks, who in 2004 slept with 919 men in one day. Later that year, she was banned from OnlyFans after announcing and later cancelling an event where she would be tied inside a glass box and would have sex with 2000 men.
On the first anniversary of her record-breaking achievement, she held her “breeding mission”, where she intended to break the record for the number of creampies without any specified time period. In this challenge, she had unprotected sex with 400 men. “We had no time-frame for the day, I just wanted a world record amount of creampies,” Bonnie told The Tab at the time.
A few weeks ago, she announced that she is pregnant by “one of the 400” and is now making headlines for her ticketed baby shower where men could golden shower (urinating on someone for sexual pleasure) on her. “Pregnancy is a big fetish for a lot of people. Who knows, I might be pregnant only once. So I am gonna make the most of it,” she said in an interview with LBC. “See, now I am uncomfortable,” the host tells her. I am too. Not to kink shame anyone, but the act of urinating on a pregnant woman, or anyone for that matter, for pleasure makes me uncomfortable.
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Firstly, to explain why I am uncomfortable, I will have to borrow from the work of radical feminist and thinker Andrea Dworkin. In her 1981 work Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Dworkin argued that pornography’s primary cultural function isn't to provide pleasure, but to construct a world where female subordination is viewed as a natural sexual script. For Dworkin, the industry was a form of political conditioning that taught the world to view a woman’s body as a public commodity.
The popular phrase often used by radical feminists out of context, “All sex is rape”, is attributed to Dworkin. She never said those exact words. In her “Dworkinaissance,” Kate Bugos breaks down this misunderstanding:
The truth behind this last statement is a prime example of how her work has been wilfully misunderstood. The original quote is ‘Violation is a synonym for intercourse’. In the passage where it appears, Dworkin discusses the patriarchal cultural idea that the vagina is ‘made for’ penetration: that is its purpose. To be penetrated, possibly impregnated, and to give birth. She says that this mindset implies to woman that she is ‘defined by how she is made, that hole, which is synonymous with entry; and intercourse, the act fundamental to existence, has consequences to her being that may be intrinsic, not socially imposed.’ She is speaking about the way that cultural ideas and biology are so intertwined, and I think she has a point. The burdens of sex overwhelmingly lie on women: the risk of unwanted pregnancy especially, as well as a higher likelihood of experiencing pain and discomfort during sex. The burden of contraception and protection against STIs is often placed on women, as well as the burden of clear and informed consent. It is the difference between fucking and being fucked. This isn’t to say that Dworkin’s assessment is entirely correct, there’s a lot I disagree with, but it’s undeniable that the vulnerability of having something, or someone, inside of you, has certain implications both within sex and within society at large. The survival of the human race being dependent on women consenting to this penetration, this violation of privacy and bodily integrity, makes it central to the way societies view women. The personal remains political, and to try to disentangle what happens behind bedroom doors from what happens beyond them is a naive and sisyphean task.
What would Dworkin make of a "breeding mission" or a ticketed baby shower? She would likely see it not as a radical breakthrough of sexual freedom, but as the absolute, tragic triumph of the pornographic imagination.
Secondly, let’s also take a moment to examine the semantics here — setting a “world-record” on creampies, breeding “mission,” sex “challenge,” and so on. This is the language of hustle culture. Blue, we have all been asked to all along, is a hard worker who pushes herself to do the maximum she can. So while my discomfort with baby showers being turned into golden showers doesn’t stem from puritanical piety, I can’t sit back and accept it as an extreme manifestation of sexual liberation. It is a manifestation of the attention economy.
As a creator, Blue is closer to Mr Beast than she is to your average OnlyFans creator.
Some of Mr Beast’s latest video titles are:
Bonnie Blue uses the Mr Beast blueprint of shock-driven long-form video that gets clicks by inciting curiosity and sustains them by optimising the video shot by shot to maximise watch time.
The discomfort we feel when watching a pregnant woman turn a baby shower into a ticketed fetish event isn’t an outbreak of puritanical piety. It is the horror of watching the hard-won language of bodily autonomy get completely hollowed out and weaponised. It is the horror of watching a platform convince a creator that the ultimate form of female empowerment is hyper-optimised self-objectification, all while wearing the sharp smile of a self-made entrepreneur who enjoys doing her job. I am sorry, you just can’t convince me that non-step vaginal penetration for 12 hours is enjoyable.
Lastly, Bonnie Blue doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The algorithm didn’t just dump Bonnie Blue onto my feed because she uploaded a video; it fed her to me because the entire YouTube commentary universe jumped to capitalise on the outrage she generated. From progressives analysing the dynamics of her sexual labour to conservatives using her as proof of societal decay, commentary channels across the political spectrum have turned Bonnie Blue into the ultimate lightning rod for views.
When OnlyFans first became popular, liberal feminists said that it was a wonderful platform for women to safely monetise their bodies. No more sketchy bosses or being in unsafe environments. To fully take back the economy of sex work and to be empowered through it. And while some of us stayed sceptical, tons of women around the world embraced this narrative.
The market is now flooded with creators; you can no longer make a living just by being a normal, attractive person posting regular photos. The internet moves fast, and people get bored easily. To stay relevant, creators face intense pressure to do crazier, more shocking things than the person next to them. If you don't escalate the shock value, your views drop, your income disappears, and the internet forgets about you.
Here is where we ask the question: Is Bonnie Blue really exercising her choice and autonomy when she decides to use her body to do shocking sexual stunts? Isn’t the platform and the male audience who keep her relevant and pay her bills making that choice for her?