Is the sexual revolution truly benefitting women?

There’s a place where secular feminism and I hit an almighty fork in the road and are forced to walk down two different paths. That piece of road is sexual disenchantment. 

Let me break open what I mean by that phrase. The first thing to note is that I’m borrowing it; it belongs to American writer, Aaron Sibarium. It’s the idea that sex is (in itself) a pretty meaningless thing; you can give it meaning if you like – but that’s your call, your responsibility, your problem. In and of itself, sex is nothing more than an activity; a neutral, run-of-the-mill thing that we do. It need be no more meaningful than making someone a coffee, no more intimate than playing a board game with them, no more vulnerable than taking a stroll in their company. Like I say, sex is just a thing that we do in a sea of a thousand other things we do on any given day – it has nothing special, sacred or spiritual attached to it. It’s neutral. It’s benign. It’s disenchanted. 

Sexual disenchantment has been the price we’ve had to pay for all the progress that was made

Most social commentators believe that sexual disenchantment has the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s to thank for its existence. They’re probably (half) right. Those decades were defined by ‘free love’; the right to decide what we do and don’t do with our bodies, and breaking sexual activity out of its cage of shame and stigma. 

Those decades did so much good. But I can’t help but feel that sexual disenchantment has been the price we’ve had to pay for all the progress that was made. And I feel particularly sad about that today, because what started in the 1960s/70s hasn’t just snowballed; it’s caused an avalanche. Sexual disenchantment is the road that has led to two particularly depressing recent news stories. 

Multiple sexual partners in a day

In October 2024, OnlyFans star, Lily Phillips, challenged herself to have sex with 100 men in one day. And that’s exactly what she did. The day (and the ones leading up to it) were documented by filmmaker, Josh Pieters. In the documentary, you see men walking in and out of the Airbnb – some of them having flown in to have sex with Lily, and others just wandering in off the street. You meet Lily’s team, who seem to oscillate between networking with the men and dashing out to get Lily snacks and electrolytes to keep her going. And, of course, you meet Lily, a 23-year-old woman who is nervous at the beginning of the day and seemingly broken by the end of it.

They live in a world that tells them that their bodies are their most valuable asset

Taking it 900 steps further, earlier this year, Bonnie Blue – an OnlyFans colleague of Lily – had sex with 1,000 men in one day. In fact, she slept with 1,057. That makes her a world record holder. In an Instagram post, Bonnie thanked the “barely legal, the barely breathing and the husbands” for helping her to achieve such a goal. When asked how she was (physically) feeling once the day was done, she said: “I don’t need a wheelchair, I am fine. It just feels like I’ve had a heavy day in the bedroom, which is exactly what I’ve had” – a statement that is met by a round of applause from the video team. 

Surely, this isn’t OK? Tell me we’re not going to pretend that this is OK? This is sexual disenchantment and then some. This is the sexual revolution gone wild. 

Products of the world around them

The surprising thing is that I can’t bring myself to blame these women. At least, not entirely. An inner war is raging within me: I don’t want to take agency away from them, patronisingly stating that they had no part in the choices they made. Of course they did. But I also struggle to place the blame at their door when they live in a world that tells them that their bodies are their most valuable asset and that if they want to be empowered women, they have to give it away to the highest, lowest and every other bidder. Because sex is just a thing, right? And that means that they – their bodies, their minds, their hearts, their very selves – they’re just things, too. 

Everything that I know about the God who made and loves these two women rages against such a lie. In fact, the weirdest thing about sexual disenchantment is that we all know that it’s a lie; we don’t actually live according to its rules. If we did, these two instances wouldn’t have made headline news. Furthermore, if there is no unique understanding of sexual activity, there can be no unique understanding of sexual assault. Yet, both instinctively and legally, that is not how we perceive it.  

As a Christian feminist, this forces me to ask myself a deeply uncomfortable question: is the sexual revolution truly benefitting women in the way that we have been told that it is? Or is it time to make a societal U-turn and re-enchant sex once again?