Sex Work 101
There are diminishing returns to shock value. Humans have a particular way of experiencing and processing the scale of a situation. A person of color working as a sex worker could easily see 120 clients in a single month. There are thousands of young women in similar or identical situations. Many of these people don’t have adequate access to medical care or shelter and are forced to work without legal protections. Some are even victimized by the authorities. Each year, a number of them are murdered, even though one is too many. In places where there are no safeguards for these women, it is a system of triple exploitation. In ascending order of magnitude: they are at the mercy of their clientele, their pimps, and the state at large. The last of these abusers is by far the most cruel. The silence regarding their condition is deafening.
Enter Lily Phillips, a white British middle-class girl in her early twenties. For anyone living under a rock, Lily recently had sex with 101 men in a single day. Filmmakers documenting her life asked Lily about the recent encounter in October, and she started to bawl. News of the post-marathon breakdown sparked outrage. Suddenly, everyone on the internet had an opinion. Pundits at The Spectator UK clutched their pearls and called for the regulation and termination of OnlyFans.com. In their view, Phillips is a victim worthy of sympathy.
Lily Phillips had the sexual marathon as paid content on her OnlyFans site. She is now worth millions. If things keep going, the publicity could put her into the 10–20$ million club by the end of 2025. She’s likely incorporated. Her business has a staff of 8 or 9 people in her employ (web publicists, photographers, etc.). Sleeping with 101 men isn’t even a world record. She’s just young, very white, attractive, and (by Britain’s standards) not the kind of person that would gravitate toward that industry. It’s a stunt, and judging by her profits, it’s worked beyond her expectations. In three months, it’s likely that Lily Phillips will have made more operating profit from her OnlyFans than The Spectator UK makes all year (about 3 million USD).
In January, Lily plans to have sex with 1,000 men in 24 hours. Fine. Lily maintains she’s a model, and not a prostitute. Fine. Lily told the media her parents are proud of her. Fine. Lily can do anything she wants and believe anything she wants. There are other people who rely on sex work for survival and who suffer abuse at the hands of a system that barely sees them as people.
All things considered, Lily Phillips doesn’t deserve sympathy or even a second thought.