Ashley James: ‘Bonnie Blue Is Reinforcing Toxic Masculinity. That’s Not Going To Help Our Daughters’

My issue with Bonnie is not that she has decided to go on to OnlyFans, or that she has decided to have sex with lots of different people, because who are any of us to judge. The issue I have with her —and, based on the comments and feedback I received after our This Morning interview, the issue many people have with her— is that she has become a sort of poster girl for incel culture by reinforcing a patriarchal standard and expectation that guys need loads of sex, and if women don't please them, it is within a man’s rights to look elsewhere.

At a time when violence against women and girls has been declared a national emergency, and women are being killed all around the world, the likes of Andrew Tate and other ‘manosphere’ influences are having a profound effect on young men. A recent UN study reported that a woman is killed every 10 minutes by a man that she knows and loves. To put out messaging that men should be allowed to have sex at their whim is, I think, incredibly dangerous.

Her words obviously impact young boys— who I feel are already being indoctrinated with dangerous messaging— but also young girls, because how boys treat them is already a huge concern, but hearing this will also affect their own self-esteem and ideas of what a woman should do for a man. I remember as a teenager being so obsessed with the idea of guys liking me or wanting to please them, and that's so ingrained in our culture and language. If I wore too much makeup, my teacher would say, ‘Boys don't like girls who wear too much makeup, Ashley,’ or, ‘Boys don't like loud girls, Ashley.’ Even in my 20s, I was being told that I was too opinionated or too feminist or too ambitious to find a nice man. It's constant. We are always being reinforced that the most important thing is for guys to like us. That messaging has always been there, but now it's even more extreme. Bonnie Blue’s entire platform is playing into this idea that women exist to please men, which only serves to take us backwards in terms of women’s sexual liberation.

I take it personally that Bonnie often takes aim at middle aged women. I'm a new mum now and it’s simply a fact that as you mature, relationships change, and sex and intimacy shifts. We all go into relationships not wanting the excitement or the physical side of your relationship to change, but it’s inevitable if you're recovering from childbirth, or pregnant, or you're waking up all hours of the night and you've got this constant mental load.

Bonnie Blue is reinforcing this message that if men go out and provide while the women stay at home, the women owe them sex, and it's so dismissive of how much women contribute. The patriarchy already doesn't recognize domestic labour, and women, ultimately, even in the most equal relationships, traditionally do the majority of this work. Usually, a man is only able to go out and provide financially if there’s a woman is staying at home and looking after the kids and the home. She often says that men need sex while women, especially older women, have lower sex drives, despite the fact that this has been scientifically proven to be false. She spreads traditionally outdated and antiquated views on how the men are out earning money, when, in lots of our cases, women are the breadwinners. She has turned herself into a patriarchal fantasy and plays into the Madonna-whore complex, all for the sake of turning a profit.

There is also, clearly, a double-standard at play when we talk about Bonnie Blue. Granted, if Bonnie Blue were a man, people would still be outraged about a 25-year-old being with 18-year-old girls and using horrific terminology, like declaring that they ‘love taking virginities’ and describing it as ‘babysitting for adults’, a phrase Bonnie used on Lottie Moss’s podcast, and there would still be outrage about the issue of consent. But why aren't we as disgusted by the fact that boys and men are queuing up? They are equally as responsible as she can only exist because there is an appetite for her. If a man released his address and announced he would be attending Freshers’ Week, I wonder how many girls would turn up for that.

So yes, I believe what she is doing is predatory, and at 18 years old in many ways you are still a child, whether the law dictates you can consent or not. They say the brain doesn't fully develop until you're 25— granted, I still think she's very young— but I also wonder why it is only Bonnie Blue that is getting the shame, and not the men and boys who are supporting her and queuing up?

She had previously been appearing on podcasts like GK Barry’s Saving Grace and Lottie Moss’s Dream On, both of which have a majority teenage or early twenties target audience. A lot of parents who watched the This Morning interview have kids that age and weren't aware of her, and now they can actually have that conversation with their children. Of course, it will elevate her, but maybe parents should be talking about her. It's never a bad idea to make people aware of what their teens might be consuming.

Our Daughters’

She continues to say that she's educating young men, but educating them to do what? She’s not teaching people about respect, or consensual relationships, or even female pleasure. She's not educating anyone on the female anatomy or on the importance of self-love in relationships. She’s not breaking down taboos of male double standards, she’s just showing boys that if they want, they can shag whoever they want. And if their partner doesn't give them sex, then they have a right to cheat.

On This Morning she said, ‘I'm educating because porn is really rough and it's not consensual.’ And whilst I agree that porn, traditionally, is a false portrayal of sex— it focuses on male pleasure and dehumanizes women while also fetishizing young girls, or to use Bonnie’s terms, ‘barely legal’ girls— I don't think she's responsible for the ethics of the porn industry. However, she does have the ability to push for positive change. Bonnie Blue is young. I said ignorant things at 25 but I also wasn't trying to influence a whole generation of young boys.

The difficult thing is, outrage does work. Even if you look at Katie Hopkins a decade ago, being insulting and offensive does make you famous because we live in a society where it's all about clicks, and if people are outraged, they will comment. Bonnie Blue wants to capitalise on that outrage. Even in our This Morning interview she wanted me to provoke her more, saying ‘Women like you…’ and ‘All the Karens sitting at home…’ She has a winning formula, but it's saddening that that's what it takes these days to achieve fame and notoriety.

So, where do we go from there? Because, unless the way the internet or social media or OnlyFans operates is changed, there is no solution. There definitely needs to be more in place to protect what type of content young people are seeing. On her Instagram page, there are interviews of her talking about sleeping with dads and sons, even though of course incest is illegal.

Meanwhile, lots of women, especially plus sized or Black women, can't even show body positive content in their underwear because it's deemed inappropriate. Why aren't social media platforms doing more? Why isn't the government doing more? Andrew Tate has been de-platformed on lots of social media, but it’s almost too little, too late.

My message to her would be, just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's right, and we should all be trying to make the world better and not worse. Like many women, I experienced a lot of slut shaming when I was younger, and any woman reinforcing that toxic, masculine culture, is not going to help our teenage daughters.