Is Lily Phillips pushing the boundaries of female sexual freedom – or just publicly self-harming?
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The premise of the stunt was as simple as it was brutal: Lily Phillips, a 23-year-old British OnlyFans “model” was going to have sex with 101 men in one day. Each man – having expressed interest in participating in the stunt – would have 5 minutes with Lily in the bedroom of an AirBnB in a smart area of London.
The event and its aftermath was covered by a YouTube documentary by the British YouTuber Josh Pieters (at the time of writing, it had been viewed almost 4m times in 7 days).
The immediate reaction
Before we even start to address what (if anything) the project tells us about society at large, I’ll prepare the ground by clearing out the initial, instinctive reflexes.
- First of all: ICK! This was not a classy move, girlfriend. In fact, I find this a disgusting and degrading spectacle. I didn’t need to hear the cameraman gagging at the smell when he walked into the bedroom-slash-scene-of-the-crime after Lily had completed her challenge to understand that this was a classless undertaking on the part of all those involved. What kind of woman does this kind of thing? What kind of man participates in it? What kind of people want to work for Lily and aid and abet this kind of public debauchery? Actually, I’d rather not know.
- The sexual health risk. Were all those guys properly tested for STIs beforehand? Judging from the last-minute improvisation (“Yeah, bring a friend!”) and the completely ramshackle organisation of the stunt, I guess not. Statistically speaking, at least one of them had to be carrying some kind of nasty which might now have been passed on to Lily as well as the other men that came after him (pun not intended). One can only hope that antibiotics will be enough to get rid of it.
- Lily’s lack of knowledge on the sexual safety and hygiene front. She was unaware that you can contract HIV from unprotected oral sex. This would be a shocking admission from any modern 23-year-old, let alone a sex worker who is about to perform the sex act with 101 men in the space of 24 hours. Even my own limited sex ed back in 1990s East Yorkshire managed to communicate this fact to me, so I have no idea how it has escaped the notice of a very sex-interested adult female who grew up in the UK in a more enlightened and informed era.
- Speaking of safety…Won’t “getting run through” by 101 men in 24 hours (as Lily herself elegantly puts it) cause Lily serious, even irreparable damage “downstairs”? Christ, I’m crossing my legs defensively just thinking about it.
- The language we commonly use around sex fails when trying to discuss Lily’s actions. “Stunt”, “event”, “feat” and “challenge” are the words I think best describe it. In particular, the oft-used phrase “to sleep with” to describe one of the many sex acts performed that day feels woefully inadequate. I briefly wondered whether to file this article under “Language & Culture”, but then decided for the more amorphous and neutral-sounding “Bits & Bobs” (again – no pun intended). Call me a prude, but I just don’t think that screwing 101 men for publicity can be called “culture”- unless it’s meant in the bacterial sense.
- What must her parents and friends think? Apparently, some of her dad’s friends subscribe to her OnlyFans platform. Imagine the conversations at the pub…
- Does the owner of that AirBnB know what their apartment was being used for? If I was them, I’d be horrified. I’d also be very unhappy as a neighbour at all the strange men suddenly tramping through the (now revolving) front door. Totally inconsiderate.
- And finally – RU OK, hun? I can’t help but wonder if what this girl needs most right now is a hug and the number of a good therapist.
Well, the last one is only an assumption; a direct consequence of being unable to imagine in my wildest dreams (or, frankly, nightmares) wanting to a) do something like this, and b) put it out there for all the world to see.
It’s just not normal. And when things are not normal, we worry.
Lily Phillips is a free woman in a free country
But what is normal? Should we really be judging anyone that behaves in an extreme way in which we can’t imagine behaving ourselves? Shouldn’t we just live and let live and resist the urge to comment and judge? At least that’s what good liberals used to do.
Lily insists that this was a fantasy of hers and she is a fully grown adult capable of choosing for herself, so I have no other choice than to take her word for it. I will also assume that she’s basically mentally healthy and acting in line with her own needs, desires – and business objectives. Let’s not forget that this feat is going to raise her profile to the stratosphere and rake in piles of cash from subscriptions. As Helen Lewis correctly points out in The Atlantic, in today’s attention economy, “extremity sells”.
So, now I’ve got all my instinctive reflexes out of the way and decided to think of Lily as a healthy and autonomous adult, I’m free to ponder the larger meaning of all of this. Because, when this many people are talking about it, at least some of the chatter must go beyond the simple lust for scandal and indicate that it’s touching on some sensitive points worthy of examination.
Neither empowered nor a victim
There’s two points of view that have cropped up in the discourse that I want to dispense with right away.
Firstly, the notion that this act was in any way empowering for women. No, sorry, it’s not. Even though Phillips has done this as part of running her own business and earning her own money – which I’m generally all for – the means by which she is achieving this are so debased that it taints the entire purpose.
The second argument which I reject is the one brought by the veteran writer Julie Bindel, who sees the stunt as a kind of prostitution; the exploitation of a woman (= victim) by 101 men (=perpetrators). She even went so far as to demand that OnlyFans be shut down.
Let’s not get carried away, people. First of all, the act of having intercourse with 101 men in quick succession was not prostitution: Lily did not charge the men who participated for sex. Her income will come from the resulting publicity, which in turn will drive more users to her site to subscribe. To pass that off as prostitution is to stretch the definition. The term “sex work” seems more accurate: the work which she did that day and from which she hoped to (and will) earn money entailed sex. The content she creates is “porn”.
Furthermore, Lily is no victim. The men who came to have sex with her are no villains. They’re all gross from my point of view, but the poor, vulnerable woman vs. evil men narrative just doesn’t fit this situation. If anything, it feels regressive.
As I’ve said, all I see here are grown adults participating in consensual sex. The fact that it’s extreme and makes my stomach churn isn’t relevant.
Even watching Lily cry at the end of the film, unable to work out quite why she is so emotional, did not make me feel sorry for her or think she needed the protection of the long arm of the law. I thought that if she regrets this, it is her own fault and that she needs to have a good, long sit down (with a therapist if necessary) to work out her feelings and deal with them accordingly.
Yes, women can do this
As I’ve written elsewhere , modern women are sexually free. They should be allowed to sleep with as few or as many people as they wish without judgment. Their body, their choice, their risk, their consent.
Most modern legal systems do set limits on sexual activity to ensure that it is always consensual (which is why rape is a crime) and between adults (that’s why we have a minimum age).
Should it step in and place a limit on how many people one individual can have sex with within a single day? Or within a month? Or within a year?
No! It’s not for the state to stop fully grown adults doing stupid or extreme things with sex. By all means regulate the extent to which kids are exposed to these stunts, but adults should be left to do do their own thing and take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes.
I do not believe that the female body is created to do things like this. But, by the same token, nature did not intend humans to ski and yet millions of people do this every single year – some of them seriously injuring themselves or even killing themselves in the process. We do not prohibit skiing.
Whether it’s sex or skiing, adults in a liberal society should be free to choose what they do within the boundaries of the law. Even if what they elect to do makes the rest of us squirm or carries the risk of self-harm. That the internet has enabled and encouraged these kind of stunts does not change that.
Shifting boundaries are not a new phenomenon
While I reject the notion that it was empowering, what Lily has done is what many have done before her as society has changed and developed. She has transgressed the boundaries of what the majority hold to be acceptable behaviour and challenged us to rethink where those limits should be now.
Without drawing any direct comparisons to Lily’s tasteless stunt, it is simply true that this kind of transgression has been an essential part of bringing things into the mainstream that were at one time taboo. From equal rights for black people to gay rights to the vote for women – all of these steps forward required people to break rules, face opprobrium, ostracisation – even punishment. Now they are quite normal and we can’t imagine how they were ever frowned upon.
While I don’t think that 24-hour sex marathons are ever going to become a badge of normality, Lily has gone out and occupied the grey areas of what we, as a society, believe is acceptable sexual behaviour and said “look at me, here I am”. She’s reminded us how far women can take their sexual freedom if they want.
I don’t congratulate or admire her for doing that; I simply acknowledge this kind of multi-partner endurance sex as an extra item on the menu that I might not have thought about before. Which I’ll be politely declining forever, thank you very much.
The loneliness of notoriety
So now she’s out there. She’ll always be “that” woman who screwed 101 blokes in one day. And quite frankly, my greatest concern for Lily Phillips is that she will not be able to deal with the loneliness that comes from this kind of notoriety and apartness from societal norms.
There won’t be many others rushing out into that empty space to join her. This is not the first step in a larger movement towards the mainstream.
She didn’t seem either mature or emotionally stable enough to foresee the consequences of her action but now has no choice but to deal with them.
I honestly wish – and hope for – the best for her.
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Photo: ValuaVitaly at Envato Elements