A Blue Light On The Dark Continent: Feminism, Freud, Greer & Bonnie Blue:
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“The sexual life of adult women is a ‘dark continent’ for psychology”, said Sigmund Freud in his 1926 book Lay Analysis. I would add that human sexual life generally is a shadowy territory which despite decades of research largely remains beneath the veil of consciousness. This lack of knowledge, alongside a lack of wisdom, and a lack of sacredness renders human sexuality vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation.
Over the past few days, I’ve noticed that Bonnie Blue, the adult content creator and pornographic film actress seems to be everywhere. If it’s not her arrest in Bali, it is her so-called ‘rage-bait’ tactics on social media, or her relentless drive to achieve ever more extreme sexual stunts. The reason she has popped up on my social feed is no doubt due to various astrologers’ offering an analysis of her natal chart. Though it can sometimes feel a bit like prying in someone’s underwear drawer, if astrologers accept that our interpretations are subjectively influenced, as well as tuning into the collective tides, we may add something to the conversation. This post is not an analysis of Bonnie Blue’s astrology chart however I will add that in the next post.
Bonnie Blue is a woman who is exposing the grittier underbelly of human sexual behaviour, her own, the men who pay her, and the mysterious machine that oils the wheels of the pornography industry. Depending on your personal views, Bonnie’s story is also a disturbing or enlightening comment on the hazards of social media. When Freud made his observation about female sexuality in 1926, we lived in a very different world. Stag movies, or ‘blue movies’ were in their infancy and were relatively unattainable to all but the wealthiest procurers of erotica. The first known pornographic movies came out of South America sometime in the first decade of the 20th century, before spreading to Germany and the rest of Europe. It is interesting to ponder on whether Freud himself would have occasion to view such material, though given his public dislike for what he considered the degeneration of modern culture it is perhaps unlikely.
I believe that collectively we would benefit from bringing to light this ‘dark continent’ that Freud speaks of in relation to female sexuality, and the systems that exploit it. An enquiry into the deeper mechanics of what drives the commodification of female sexuality, as well as the motivations of the women themselves, though previously explored is worthy of deeper enquiry. More than that, opening our eyes to the corrosive nature of the porn industry in general, though many may want to sweep it under the social comfort blanket, is necessary. Bonnie Blue, in a highly confrontational way rips the scab off the festering wound of female exploitation and objectification. The sex industry, and as it happens the film industry more generally, is a hotbed of abuse which regardless of whether we entertain it or not continues to seep through the cracks of our civilised day-time lives.
As an individual woman Tia Billinger (aka Bonnie Blue) is a bit of a riddle. On the face of it she appears quite simple, insisting there’s no point in thinking too deeply or reading too much into things. Her personal landscape spreads into territories that have until recently been navigated by an underground, dark web-like crew of nameless faceless purveyors of human flesh and the skin trade. What was once hidden in the darkest recesses of human activity is brought into the endless light of social media where anyone with a computer or phone can access the wild frontier… a frontier that has in recent years moved much closer to home. It is precisely this blue light of our electronic devices that highlights our human vices, calling into question not only our morality but confronts us with the desacralization of modern culture.
According to Bonnie she feels no shame about her line of work, she sees herself as an educational figure or community worker, educating men in what women want; ironically this is the same question posed by Freud – “What do women want?”. Bonnie declares that by making vast amounts of money and supporting her family and the lifestyle she wants, she has taken control of her life. The controlling factors involved however are not immediately visible and are well concealed in the vaults of her psyche, the collective unconscious and I suggest in the astral planes of existence. If demonic syphoning and incubus like forces exist, Bonnie Blue is the current sacrifice on their altar; if MK Ultra continues this is MK Super Ultra made possible through addiction to technology on a global scale.
Yet curiously Bonnie seems impervious and oblivious to insidious forces and there is even a child-like naivety to her. She does not pretend to understand what she does not know; in the Channel 4 Documentary, 1000 Men and Me: the Story of Bonnie Blue, Bonnie asks what the word ‘lascivious’ means, and who the ‘Sirens’ were. The slippers of Bonnie Blue, which she wears in the rented homes everywhere she goes in the world (as seen in the C4 documentary), are for me a poignant symbol of the inner child who knows how to comfort herself even in the jaws of the beast; they represent an innocent part of her that is still soft, still intact and may yet lead her home… there’s no place like home.
On the other hand, she appears to be a master manipulator, intuitively tuning into what the men she serves want: the right look, comment, and tone to win them over so that they give their ‘load’ to her, as well as their cash. A few of the clips I have seen (not the pornographic ones but the enticing, marketing ones) are chilling, tapping directly into taboo.
By tapping into what is taboo, Bonnie Blue is also exposing it in plain sight so that it becomes difficult to turn away and pretend we don’t see it. And yet, most, if not all the hatred is directed at Bonnie herself while attention is diverted from the men that participate and the architecture behind the veil that allows it all to play out. While the public point the finger of shame and blame at Bonnie, she points it right back; she rejects allegations of corrupting youths (whom she says she likes “barely legal”) turning the accusations back at society by declaring that sending young men to war is far more corrupting.
Bonnie insists that she has no history of trauma, was not abused at any time in her life, comes from a good family, had a happy childhood, and is loved by her parents. In interviews she is confident, unphased, and articulate, appearing much older than her 26 years. This precociousness has been a character trait throughout her life; a friend from school says that Tia was always popular with older boys and girls as well as her own cohort… and that she always wore a lot of makeup. It is in these small details that the staged persona of Bonnie Blue begins to unravel.
Raised by her stepfather whom she says she loves; Bonnie never knew her biological father. Her stepfather, who she considers her real father, was until recently a rail line welder from Derbyshire; he fully supports her career and is now on Bonnie’s payroll. Tia/Bonnie’s mother, Sara Billinger, a hairdresser by trade also supports her daughter’s career choice even though she was shocked at first. Now she is “just happy if Tia is happy”; Tia says she is happy and is doing what she loves which includes having sex with more than 1,000 men within twelve hours and recording it. Although a huge sway of criticism, abuse and even death threats have been hurled at Bonnie, a few lone voices have raised concerns about the men, many of whom were apparently married, and were willing to line up and have sex with a woman they had never met, safely obscured and unidentifiable by the balaclavas they wore.
Listening to Bonnie speak about her ideals which she considers are feminist at their core, and trying to get my head around her extreme sexual behaviour is a riddle. Beyond the individual woman, Bonnie Blue is a product of our collective culture and shines a light on the dark continent, and like the dark continent itself, we know very little about it and therefore much is projected upon it. Is Bonnie an extremely unwell woman who is being destroyed by her own psychosis facilitated by the channels of culture that permits this public execution. Or as Bonnie says, is she a woman doing what she loves and earning a significant amount of money for doing it, while at the same time exploding myths around female sexuality and taking back control from the pimps who have profited from female exploitation.
With thoughts of exploitation, power, abuse, corruption and feminism, I find myself thinking about another public figure and feminist who disrobed for an underground magazine in the 1970s. Germaine Greer, born 1939 (the year Sigmund Freud died), is an Australian born feminist and academic best known for her seminal work The Female Eunuch. She was and remains a powerful voice who challenges traditional views of gender. As editor of Suck magazine, the first European Sex paper, which she co-founded in 1969 (a year after “the summer of love”), Greer along with her coworkers and allies sought to promote sexual liberation and equality through art and literature.
Offering an alternative to commercial pornography, Suck sought to decommercialise sex and encouraged open discussion and participation, particularly from women. The publication was considered an experiment in radical feminism designed to help women escape the “female eunuch” condition of shame and powerlessness about their own bodies and desires. The essence of this objective can, if one tunes one’s ear to a slightly different frequency, be heard in the words of Bonnie Blue. Having been banned from her highest earning forum “Only Fans”, for breaching the site’s ethos, Bonnie, like many feminists before her, challenges ideas about obscenity and ownership of the female body.
The reason Greer resigned from Suck was because while it had been agreed that nude photographs of all the editors would be published in a film festival brochure, only Greer’s photo appeared in the magazine itself. The image was unflattering and slightly ridiculous. This breach of trust and the controversy that ensued led to Greer’s resignation. Greer felt that the other editors had exploited her, and from what I can gather I tend to agree. Not only that but it also feels as though this was a deliberate act of sabotage with intent to humiliate Greer. Humiliation of women in pornographic and non-pornographic circles has increased dramatically in the last few decades.
By refusing to feel shame (at least on the face of it) Bonnie Blue is dismantling the intentional humiliation of women particularly in the pornography industry. Bonnie’s overt ownership of her career is a direct backlash to movements like “MeToo “which despite being instrumental in exposing institutional misogyny and rape culture, may also be said to reinforce ideas that women are victims. And while this may be true these are some of the contradictions, we must wrestle when navigating the dark continent. You see, it is not the sexuality of women themselves that is necessarily dark, this is a hangover from hundreds of years of what James Hillman says is “vile projections upon the female body”, it is rather to peer behind the projected screen to understand the psychic operating system.
Of course, the differences between Bonnie Blue’s philosophy (which many say is pure contrivance), and the ethos of Greer and Suck, are plentiful. But to draw attention to the places where their views do overlap interests me. An essential difference between Bonnie’s philosophy and Greer through Suck is that while Bonnie appears to objectify herself to the extreme, Suck actively discourages objectification of women; Bonnie’s content is exclusively for the male gaze, while Suck was aimed at both men and women.
For all Bonnie’s claimed feminist principles people have commented on her overt women hating attitude. This is particularly virulent against working-class women who Bonnie views as lazy, and wives generally who according to Bonnie are “pathetic” when it comes to pleasing their husbands. It is therefore not surprising that most of the hate mail Bonnie receives comes from women. But this is yet another example of women hating women and the arguably socially engineered division between women.
In my previous studies of feminism what immediately occurred to me is just how splintered differing feminist theory is. Women are trained to hate and compete against other women. This is internalised misogyny cultivated at the hands of patriarchy. In fact, I see most feminist philosophy as a product of patriarchy, curtailed within, and subjected to an androcentric hegemony at the core of culture and its institutions. The language used and the history of knowledge upon which academia is founded and upheld has been, until recently, male- centred.
Feminism as a field of study and its practical application is one of the most complex, fragmented, divisory, and contentious areas of modern culture. This is reflective of the fragmented feminine psyche, and that I believe is where the crux of the matter lies; it is why female sexuality remains a dark continent. Bonnie Blue and Germaine Greer are worlds apart, and yet they are joined in an apparent common cause to liberate feminine power from the control of patriarchy.
Female sexuality, the female psyche, and the female body are dark; it is a body that has through the centuries been colonised, controlled, commodified, stolen from, abused, feared, rejected, debased, and treated with scorn and disgust. The fragmented female body is a physical expression of the fragmented feminine psyche, or soul, and the body of the Earth, a tearing asunder that has affected every living thing.
The fragmentation of the male psyche and the ability to split head, heart, and genitals and stand in a queue of a thousand men to have sex with a woman is a sobering testament to this. While the animal instinct in males to procreate and have sex is exploited in our current culture, the primal instinct to protect and provide for has diminished.
It is not possible to have a candid look at female sexuality without also considering economics. While I don’t believe that the only motivation for Bonnie’s career choice is money, it is nevertheless a significant driver. This seems to be the case with many if not most of the adult content creators on sites like “Only Fans”. Bonnie says she was not willing to spend her life in a minimum wage office job five days a week for the rest of her life. This aversion to hard boring work for minimum pay may also be at the root of the poverty experienced by the working-class women on benefits that Bonnie seems to abhor. Who can blame anybody for not wanting to work in jobs that seem little better than enforced slavery. Money, labour, the economic markets, the division of wealth, unpaid work, gender division, exploitation… these are all layers of the onion.
While prostitution may be the oldest profession in the book, we have fallen a long way from the days of the sacred sexual priestesses of the ancient world. Sex for financial security also exists subtly in marriages where the wife is dependent on her husband. In extreme forms we see women like Bonnie, willing to be penetrated by a thousand strangers in exchange for a monthly seven-figure income.
These deep strands of the feminine psyche flow in dark waters, but it is by traversing these waters that we chart the vast map of the dark continent. Disruptions in the mother-line going back hundreds if not thousands of years cut women off from the natural and sacred matrix of life. Instead, an increasingly artificial matrix has become the collective surrogate mother, and we all suffer as a result.
In Gnostic cosmology, the original mother, the divine feminine, Sophia, is said to have descended from the Pleroma to Earth so that through her unconditional love and compassion we may remember who we are. Reigniting the divine spark within reconnects us to the light of awakened consciousness so that we liberate ourselves from the bondage of the world.
Sophia does not judge; she has fallen farther than any of us ever could. In her fallen state she reminds us that however far we have fallen, there is a way home to the truth and sacredness of ourselves.
I don’t believe that Bonnie Blue is necessarily conscious of the questions she raises or what she reflects to us as a society. It’s easy to reject her, to hate her, but to ask what she represents and to turn the mirror inward is not so comfortable.
When I look at Tia’s chart, I see deep wounds to the soul. She herself would insist that’s not the case, and who am I to contradict her.
Is Bonnie Blue the fully degenerated and hollowed out woman who the world is quite literally f*cking to death, or is she the holy harlot, unaware of the archetypal role she plays, a red thread that weaves back through time to the Temples of Ishtar, Shamhat, Ashera, and all the way back to Sophia herself, shining a light in the darkest places of humanity so that we may be redeemed.
Whoever Bonnie Blue is, she was not created in a vacuum, she is an expression of the collective unconscious which like it or not we are being asked to face.
I end with verse from the Gnostic Text, The Thunder, Perfect Mind:
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am <the mother> and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in (due) time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.
Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.
You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,
and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me.
You who know me, be ignorant of me,
and those who have not known me, let them know me.
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.
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This Post Has One Comment
This was outstanding!
The Chris Williamson interview with Bonnie blue was utterly fascinating.
What an enigma.