TikTokers have expressed a lot of sadness and concern over the ban of their social media platform in the United States, which is understandable. Many young individuals have turned being a successful ‘content creator’ into a genuine career path. The idea of prancing around on the internet is far more appealing than working tirelessly in the traditional job market, like their parents did.
If I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t be too anxious. Despite initially supporting the ban, Donald Trump has now embraced the power of social media to advance his political campaign and engage with younger voters, leading to a change in his stance.
For figures like Trump and Nigel Farage, TikTok serves as a useful tool to promote their messages, sidestepping the mainstream media and forming a close connection with the public, similar to other social media ‘influencers’.
Fundamentally, whether you’re flogging pants or policies, the mechanism is the same – and it works. No savvy politician is going to close down such an effective avenue of persuasion, and Trump is nothing if not savvy.
In any case, TikTok is not nearly as toxic as some platforms. If I were going to ban anything on the grounds that it has a seriously detrimental effect on society, it would be the revolting OnlyFans, the site which in essence is a portal for porn stars and has given us the likes of Bonnie Blue (real name Tia Billinger) who has claimed to have had sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours.
Put bluntly, OnlyFans culture is destroying women. The site’s boss, mother-of-two Keily Blair, a former solicitor who studied law and politics at Oxford Brookes University, no doubt disagrees. She is at pains to paint her pay-per-view site as an exalted feminist platform, where ’empowered’, independent, sex-positive women can make a living on their own terms.
This, of course, is utter poppycock. It’s another form of prostitution, and Ms Blair is just a very well-heeled pimp.
Under this guise, the site has attracted many users who perhaps might not otherwise have turned to sex work as an option, lured by the idea that it offers a ‘safe’, controlled environment in which to operate. This has added to the notion, already popularised by the total absence of censorship around online porn, that working in the sex entertainment industry is a normal way to make a living.
Bonnie Blue (real name Tia Billinger) has claimed to have had sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours
It perpetuates the mistaken notion of the ‘happy hooker’, the woman who sells her body not because she has to but because she wants to, because that is the only way she can satisfy her desire to please men, which is insatiable. OnlyFans, with its lucrative monetisation model and slick PR, glosses over the grim realities of such choices, the often violent and humiliating encounters that women find themselves enduring, the physical risks, the health implications and the long-term psychological effects. It also encourages more and more extreme behaviour in the pursuit of ‘fans’. Suddenly, it’s not enough just to do the usual stuff: it has to be ‘extra’.
Just think about Bonnie Blue’s most recent stunt: one body, 1,000 men, over 12 hours, each vying for their ounce of flesh. Horrendous.
Afterwards, she posted several videos on social media, each extolling the ‘positive effects’ of multiple bodily fluids on her complexion, another detailing ‘the aftermath’ (bruises on her legs, sore wrists, a bite-mark on her inner thigh), others showing the queues of men waiting in their boxers and socks.
One, a jobless security guard called Ali Walker, described the scene. ‘There were around 30 or 40 guys around her at any one time all taking turns. She was surrounded by guys.’ Photographs show a large leather ottoman in the middle of a large room, discarded condoms and used tissues scattered all around. Again, her narrative is that she’s just a girl who wants to ‘pleasure’ as many men as possible – indeed, having reached her goal of 1,000, she then extended her favours to another 57 ‘to thank them’ for waiting.
Bonnie posted several videos on social media following the ‘marathon’, each extolling the ‘positive effects’ of multiple bodily fluids on her complexion
Meanwhile, her ‘rival’, Lily Phillips, who last year went viral after appearing tearful and shaky having performed a similar stunt of sleeping with 100 men in 24 hours – an experience she described as ‘not for the weak girls’ – is planning to go one further.
Pipped to 1,000 notches on her bedpost by Blue, she has issued her own ‘backdoor challenge’, in which she will attempt anal intercourse with as many partners as possible during the course of a single day. Quite apart from the serious medical risks of attempting such a stunt, there is no universe in which such an endeavour could be described as remotely pleasurable, even for the most accomplished masochist.
And yet both these women present themselves as unable to resist the urge, as though compelled to act out of sexual desire. Again, this is poppycock: they are simply pandering to a male (porn) fantasy that all women are secretly desperate for ‘a good seeing to’.
Some people – and one imagines certainly the men who participate in such events – see criticism of their actions as unfair. It’s a free country, their body, their choice; and so on. But their actions, and the perceptions they create, have real-world consequences for other women that are undeniable.
Women such as the Beast of Avignon rape victim Gisele Pelicot, for example, but also the victims of the paedophile grooming gangs in Rotherham and Oxford.
If we genuinely care about protecting women from toxic masculinity, SARAH VINE writes, we must start by examining aspects of our own toxic femininity
In the latter cases, a key factor in the exploitation of young working-class white girls by men of mostly Pakistani origin was the notion that non-Muslim Anglo-Saxon women are all, not to put too fine a point on it, ‘whores’. This is a widespread misconception in certain cultures, and a common theme of Islamist propaganda.
During the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, for example, the horrific sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against young women at the Nova music festival stemmed, no doubt, from the fact that they were told – and, indeed, believed – that violating non-Muslim women was an act of heroism that in no way diminished them in the eyes of their families or communities.
A similar twisted reasoning was used in part by grooming/rape gangs to justify their actions, which, let us not forget, included torture, murder, humiliation and almost inconceivable levels of cruelty and depravity.
As Judge Gerald Clifton, who sentenced members of the Rochdale ‘grooming gang’ said at the time: ‘All of you treated them [the victims] as though they were worthless and beyond respect. I believe that one of the factors that led to that was they were not of your community or religion.’
Such prejudice cannot and should not be tolerated. But here’s the thing. When dealing with cultural and religious bigots of limited intelligence and moral fibre such as the men who committed these appalling crimes, having women such as Blue and Phillips pulling sick stunts doesn’t exactly make it any easier to disabuse them of these notions.
It’s an awkward but undeniable truth that the existence of OnlyFans and the way its ‘content creators’ pander to the objectification of Western women as fundamentally immoral is highly toxic. It puts the safety of ordinary girls and women at risk, and allows bad men, from Gisele Pelicot’s husband and his accomplices to those who branded a young girl with the letter ‘M’ for Mohammed, to justify their behaviour. And yet society seems to treat the whole thing as some giant joke, just another freak show for the internet age.
Blue has been interviewed on countless podcasts and in the media; she’s even made it onto the ITV’s This Morning sofa with Cat Deeley; Phillips’ documentary about sleeping with 100 men, made in collaboration with the YouTuber Josh Pieters, has received more than 8.5 million views. The tagline: ‘I would do it for free’.
We can’t have it both ways. If we genuinely care about protecting women from toxic masculinity, we must start by examining aspects of our own toxic femininity, of which the likes of Blue, Phillips, their many imitators and, of course, OnlyFans’ woman boss, who runs the whole sorry show, are a glaring example.
