MAP Forum

Dear Bonnie,

How are you? How are you really? I mean that sincerely and with genuine concern - from an older, wiser (and retired) sex worker to a young woman who is new to the game. At 50, I'm old enough to be your mum, so here's some motherly advice.
Your extraordinary plan to have sex with hundreds of 'barely legal' teenage boys at Schoolies - the Australian equivalent of Spring Break or Freshers' Week - has gone global. The whole world is talking about what you intend to do with dozens of young men at the Meriton apartments on the Gold Coast.

You have - I would guess deliberately - caused public hysteria. You are infamous and will be known for this forever. We may not know your real name (you seem to be very cagey about that) but we know your face and we all have an opinion about your story.
By now you will be aware you have upset a lot of people, particularly parents but also survivors of sexual abuse, including the brave activist Harrison James, whom I admire tremendously. Harrison, who was abused by his stepmother as a young teen, has voiced serious concerns that what you are doing - while legal - is ethically and morally wrong, and influenced by the destructive, mind-warping 'teen porn' trend.

Harrison, whose criticism you have dismissed, has raised what I consider to be valid concerns that while the young men you have sex with may be 'legal', they also may not be sufficiently mature or in the right state of mind to consent to being filmed participating in group sex on camera - footage that you alone will profit from and that will stay on the internet forever.
I appreciate you have said every single man will be breathalysed, but you and I both know kids take drugs on Schoolies and you can't detect them with a breathalyser.
So controversial is your proposed orgy that a Change.org petition calling for you, a British citizen, to be deported from Australia has amassed almost 18,000 signatures.

You have said that critics who oppose what you are doing are middle-aged, over the hill, boring Karens who are judgmental when it comes to sex work.
Well, before we address whether or not that's a valid response, let me tell you a little bit about me, Bonnie. Settle in - it's quite a story.
I have made a career out of being controversial, and I was doing it when you were still at school.

I'm a journalist by trade but, after finding myself in a career rut, I began moonlighting as the high-class escort Samantha X. Secrets like that don't stay secret forever, especially in my industry, so in 2014 I decided to 'out' myself as Samantha in an exclusive TV interview. To say I caused a stir would be an understatement. That decision, I'll admit, was a publicity move for my memoir (it became a bestseller), so I'm in no position to judge you for using the media for self-promotion.

But the difference between you and I, Bonnie, is that, for me, sex work was always work. While I flirted with the press, I never turned my actual labour - the sex itself - into a media circus. And that's because I've always believed, even before I became an escort, that sex workers deserved to be taken seriously.
Before OnlyFans turned us into celebrities, women in our industry had to fight to be heard, to have rights when it comes to health, safety and freedom from discrimination.

I've never met you, Bonnie, and I have absolutely nothing against you, really. You're beautiful, well-spoken and undeniably a businesswoman. You are a 25-year-old content creator working in what we both know is an oversaturated market. It's a world I don't know much about, but I appreciate it can be challenging - even brutal - a times.
The money is there. Young women can make millions, but most make less than the average wage. You need to be popular, and that means you need to be different, original and even infamous. But you know that already - you aren't stupid.
But to use 18-year-old boys to achieve that infamy? I'm sorry, it's too far for me.

You knew your very public callout to school leavers would hit the front pages, drive up your subscribers and cause outcry. You saw dollar signs.
Part of me admired your hustle. Then another part of me remembered the prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain responsible for planning, prioritising and making good decisions - is one of the last parts of the brain to fully develop in teenagers.
Simply put, teenage boys are stupid and don't know what the hell they're doing.

I may be 50 and past it (thank God), and I hate to be a woman siding against another a woman, but Bonnie, I urge you to think very, very carefully about this before you fly down to Schoolies.
Forget what the law says: boys don't become men until they're 25. We know this because they do dumb things. They drive too fast, they jump off roofs, they do ridiculous and reckless stunts to impress their mates.

Some of them may even have sex on camera for the world to see – forever. And years down the track, when they have a corporate job or are about to marry the woman of their dreams, they will remember what they did with you on camera and they'll feel sick to their stomach. And the worst part is, they can't do anything about it - because you own the copyright and they signed a release form when they were 18.
What if they can't live with themselves? What if the fear of their secret being discovered - by their colleagues, parents or girlfriend - becomes too much? I've known men kill themselves over less.

I want to paint a picture of an 18-year-old Australian male: They've just finished their HSC exams, they're old enough to vote and enrol in the military. But many of them also still have acne and haven't been to university yet. They find farts funny and drink too much. They are susceptible to peer pressure. They may still be virgins.

Legally speaking, I'm sure you've covered all your bases. You're checking IDs twice, using consent and model-release forms, enforcing a breathalyser. But in my opinion, what you're doing is a huge abuse of power. And I have an issue with that.
Bonnie, I may be loud and proud about my past in the sex industry. But a decade on - older and wiser - do I have regrets? You bet I do. Would I do it all again? It depends what day of the week you ask me.

But here's the thing - if I can have regrets about my past as a 50-year-old woman, so can young men. Men aren't that different to us. I've sat with them as they've wept about being sexually abused as children. I even know men who were taken advantage of as teenagers by older women - the sort of 'fantasy' that fills search results on websites like PornHub. It has affected them for life.
Bonnie, I don't judge you for your job. How could I? Our profession is as old as time. Men and women can be incredibly lonely, and we both know our job is about intimacy and connection more than sex.

Adults make adult choices. Consent is an important word. It's not a quickly typed-up contract thrown into the sweaty hands of a shy 18-year-old boy who, for all you know, has never slept with a woman before.
There's no shortage of grown-up men willing to have sex with you on camera, Bonnie. Leave the boys alone.