Lily Phillips and filmmaker Josh Pieters teamed up to make a documentary titled, ‘I Slept with 100 Men in One Day.’
If the sexual revolution had a defining ethos, it was that sex was pleasurable and human and therefore unambiguously good.
Many of the ills of our present age flow from this philosophy because, of course, a necessary corollary to the ethos of sexual liberation and unlimited gratification was that no one ought judge another’s pursuit of sexual pleasure. If it feels good for them, who are you, or me, or any of us to sit in judgment? Indeed, contrary to the revealed truths that undergird Western ethics, as they were then known, it was the Abrahamic religions themselves and their oppressive dogmas that were inhuman.
Out was any idea that sex was an almost unspeakably intimate act. Gone was any understanding that sex ought to be consecrated and holy. And any notion that sex was a double-edged and possibly dangerous act was completely passé.
For a long time, it seemed that Western, post-Christian man had decided that those rules were all that one needed for the good life. As long as there was no coercion in a sexual relationship, there was nothing to judge or condemn except judgment and condemnation.
Despite six decades of strenuous insistence, however, this new philosophy was never very convincing outside the cafés and salons of the radicals. The evidence to the contrary has always been in our hearts.
Eros will always have some power over us, of course. The magnetic force of sensuality is known to all men and women who have reached adolescence. But, tragically for our era, regret and misery seem to be the ever-present handmaidens to libertinism — handmaidens that could never be fully explained away as the vestiges, penumbras, and emanations of the old Judeo-Christian patriarchy. Though many were loath to admit it — and, indeed, refused to — the shadow of the old sexual ethic has been inescapable.
Which brings me to Lily Phillips.
Phillips is an “OnlyFans creator.” For the uninitiated, that means that she is something of a home-brew pornographic social-media influencer who publishes her “content” on the website OnlyFans.com, which is practically the YouTube of porn. Phillips is a pretty, British 23-year-old, who teamed up with filmmaker Josh Pieters to make a documentary film titled, “I Slept with 100 Men in One Day.”
The title doesn’t leave very much to the imagination.
In October, Phillips rented an Airbnb in a tony neighborhood in London and spread the word about her stunt on TikTok, inviting her “fans” to pay her a visit on the appointed day. Pieters’s film — which has now been released and purports to document the organization, logistics, and aftermath of the stunt — is a grim and horrifying artifact of our modern world.
In a video clip, posted by Pieters on Twitter, of the moments immediately following Phillips’s completion of her marathon, the regret in her eyes is palpable and heartbreaking.
“It’s not for the weak girls, if I’m honest,” Phillips tells Pieters as she attempts to grin and hold back tears. “It was hard. I don’t know if I’d recommend it.”
“It’s just a different feeling. I don’t know how to explain it,” Phillips continues, her voice trailing off.
“It’s not like just having sex with someone?” Pieters tries to offer.
“Yeah, yeah. Just one in, one out. . . . It’s intense.”
“More intense than you thought it might?”
“Definitely,” Phillips responds as she breaks down in tears.
Pieters’s clip has racked up 183 million views in three days, which is — I think — a dim silver lining to this horror show because it reveals that we still have the capacity for shock. For revulsion. And, yes, for compassion.
In other clips from the documentary floating around Twitter, Phillips is seen explaining to Pieters, while strolling down bucolic London streets, how “before I had sex, I was never much of a slut.”
I actually wanted to wait until marriage at one point. I just used to think it was a real special thing. As soon as I actually did it, I kinda realized that it wasn’t special.
In another, Phillips relates her parents’ concern that she might never find a boyfriend. “But,” Phillips ventures, “there’s so many guys in the world” that surely “one poor bastard’s got to marry me.”
Phillips tries to make light of the situation in her declarations. But anyone can see that she’s laughing only to keep from weeping. It’s hard to watch. Self-loathing is the deepest form of hate, and anyone can see that Lily Phillips hates what she has done to herself, because what she has done to herself is soul-crushing, soul-killing.
Indeed, Lily Phillips is so far gone that she has promised to top her feat by bedding 1,000 men in one day this January, which at least according to some sources would be a world record.
With the psalmist, we should pray for her as we pray for ourselves and our fallen world — a world so subsumed by evil that it’s impossible to see a way forward without God’s grace.
O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.
There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.
For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. . .
Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me.
Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation.