A young woman called Lily Phillips, known to certain users of the internet, has recently spoken about a cunning stunt she performed earlier this year. She had sex with 101 men in a single day. As I see it, there are three possible responses to this story. Or maybe four (phwoar!).
The first is to suggest that Ms Phillips’s behaviour is not entirely ladylike. Or, less pompously, that she is a slut and a whore and so on. This is the traditional response. It is, to almost all cultures known to history, common sense. Most of these cultures had, and have, stern penalties for such behaviour. The modern West gradually decided that exclusion from polite society was punishment enough, but it has become hard to say whether we still have a polite society from which to exclude people. This is not quite my response.
Moments after Lily Philips has slept with 100 men in a day… pic.twitter.com/VC3sPo7OCL
— Josh Pieters (@joshua_pieters) December 9, 2024
The second response is to employ the discourse of feminism, and ask whether her behaviour is good or bad for that noble cause. Sleeping with 101 men might be called good in that it debunks the sort of assumptions referred to above, which are rooted in the patriarchy’s fear of female sexuality, and exhibits a highly ‘sex-positive’ attitude. Or the same discourse might be used to portray the stunt as an utterly misguided attempt at female empowerment. Julie Bindel has put forward a strong version of this argument, suggesting that Phillips is the deluded puppet of the misogynistic porn industry. Nor is this my response.
The third is to shake one’s head sadly at the young woman’s misunderstanding of the wonderful gift of sexual intimacy. This is roughly my response. But there’s a problem. It feels weaker than it should. It’s hard to muster the energy to move on from the sad head-shaking, mixed with some embarrassment and disgust, and say something to the point. Our culture has subtly hollowed out this sort of response – that sex is about love for an individual – implying that such concerns are tainted by the narrow traditionalism of response one.
So a fresh attempt must be made to state the fairly obvious. For it is fairly obvious to the vast majority of people that this isn’t how sex is meant to happen. But how shall we make this case? I suggest that we go back to basics and ask what sex is. It seems to me that it is two things, cohabiting as it were. It is the expression of the fullest intimacy with another person, through which loving commitment is signified. And it is the anarchic opposite of this: a physical desire detached from any such commitment.
Many people who consider themselves liberated and modern want to argue that the latter is the real face of sex, and the former a sort of frail veneer, or an optional application of sex. By the logic of liberation, Ms Phillips is a sort of truth-teller, daring to show us that there is no necessary link between sex and loving commitment. Sex is just sex.
But, if sex has a dual nature, Ms Phillips is evading its full reality (as are her 101 collaborators, one hastens to say). Promiscuity should be seen as a fear of sex, a fear of its ambiguity. The promiscuous person says: sex must be debunked, it’s just an animal function, no real intimacy is necessary to it. This comes from a fear of sex in the full sense.
Why such fear? Because sex in the full sense, of a serious relationship, involves difficulty and vulnerability; one is not in control of one’s destiny. Profound intimacy with another is not easily come by. One needs a dose of luck, and also of pluck – maturity, empathy and so on. Some people cannot bear this infringement on their autonomy, and noisily claim to be fulfilled in a shallower sense. It’s hardly surprising that their exploits get attention – we’re all susceptible to titillation. But it’s time to name them rightly: sex-cowards.
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