Thank you to Gaby Hinsliff for the article on Bonnie Blue and the Channel 4 documentary about her (Moral outrage over Bonnie Blue’s porn empire misses the point: this is hardcore economics, 5 August). I was only vaguely aware of her until this week when, recovering from surgery, I decided to binge-watch Bake Off: The Professionals – something light and fluffy.
Yet each time I open the Channel 4 app, I am confronted by Bonnie Blue’s picture and the promotion of her extreme sexual behaviour. There is no attempt from the broadcaster to be subtle with the adult content. I complained, and received the following reply: “Many thanks for your feedback. The image and programme title are suitable for all audiences and have been complied in accordance with the Ofcom broadcasting code.”
It is very concerning if the Ofcom code approves the promotion of this story of a woman selling her body for sex orgies to barely legal young men as “suitable for all audiences”, with no concern for the ability of the audience to process this highly complex and disturbing subject matter. I am also very concerned for the younger generations and their expectations of relationships.
Louise Riches
London
• The uproar over the documentary 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story reveals a deeper cultural paradox. Bonnie Blue is not what feminism wants, but is she what a certain strand of feminism has produced? A kind of Frankenstein’s monster born not of misogyny, but of a hyper-individualistic, sex-positive ethos untethered from collective ethical critique.
We are witnessing the culmination of a pseudo-feminist narrative that valorises personal sexual agency above almost all else, while bracketing the social meanings and consequences of that expression. In this logic, any questioning of “empowerment” becomes suspect, even as the spectacle becomes indistinguishable from the patriarchal pornographies it once sought to subvert.
If we are to protect future generations from degrading and dehumanising content, we must reckon honestly with the ideologies and cultural mores that have allowed such extremes to flourish.
Rev Simon Jones
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
• Gaby Hinsliff discusses the battle to control “barely legal” porn. Surely the bigger picture should be to win the war to get porn off the internet altogether. Have we as a society become so deadened that we accept online porn as a normalised thing?
Alan Gent
Cheadle, Greater Manchester
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