Bonnie Blue makes £600,000 a month. Credit: @bonnie_blue_xox/Instagram
Doomscrolling through the timeline this week, my eye was caught by an arresting headline. “I WAS A PASTOR. NOW I MAKE BANK ON ONLYFANS AND HAVE NEVER FELT MORE FULFILLED” it blared. Clicking despite myself, I found the story of Nikole Mitchell; a “Pastor-turned-stripper and companion” and “top OnlyFans creator” who, I also learnt, posts teaser photos of herself on X getting “absolutely DEMOLISHED”.
The first half of Mitchell’s narrative related how she had been brought up in America’s Nineties sexual purity movement, taking the pledge and practising abstinence before becoming a stay-at-home mother of three. Living “a modest and devout life” with her husband in the Midwest, she became a pastor in her local evangelical church. The second half of the piece effectively described a conversion experience, in which our heroine saw a bright light on the road to Damascus and realised that her deepest, most authentic self was an insatiable bisexual slut. Renouncing every aspect of her former self, she duly moved to California and turned on the webcam.
“Instead of preaching from a pulpit, I take off my clothes and get down and dirty on OnlyFans. Instead of denying my sexuality, I embraced my sluthood. I am now the happiest, healthiest, and wealthiest I have ever been! There is finally congruence. There is integration. There is alignment.” There is no mention of what her children think about their mum’s presence on social media, delightedly detailing the stretchiness of various orifices.
“So what?” you might ask. Or as one man complained when I posted, only slightly facetiously, that this was the worst thing I’d ever read: “What is it about other people being happy that upsets you?”. In any case, Mitchell’s story certainly wasn’t the worst thing I have ever seen on X. That was earlier this year, when I had the misfortune to click on a link featuring OnlyFans performer Lily Phillips, and learnt for the first time about the concept of a “cumwalk”. In case you don’t already know, this involves walking about a town centre with what looks like glitter all over your face, except it’s not.
Phillips is the woman involved, quite literally, in a race to the bottom with fellow OnlyFans luminary Bonnie Blue about how many hundreds of men they can have sex with on film in one go. Confusingly, Blue and Phillips look almost identical and both have East Midlands accents. Initially this gives you a false sense of relief as you dismiss what you are seeing as a lunatic one off. But if it helps tell them apart, Phillips is the Derbyshire girl from the widely-circulated documentary last month, talking the director through her extensive collection of dildos and insertable traffic cones, before a team of assistants set up a marathon gangbang for the delectation of her subscribers. Blue, meanwhile, is the one from Nottingham who haunts various Freshers’ weeks, standing outside student union buildings with a felt-tipped placard saying “BONK ME FOR FREE LET ME FILM IT”.
Shown in the documentary weeping with exhaustion after fielding a 100-strong queue, afterwards an unbowed Phillips told the world she now had plans to hit the big 1K. Reportedly furious that her former friend had nicked her idea, Blue then rushed to climb sex-Everest first, eventually triumphantly announcing that she had just conquered 1007 men in 24 hours. Phillips has since declared she will be working up to the goal, a bit like doing the three peaks as a sponsored training run before Nepal. “What’s the point in just going straight to the thousand? Then you’re not going to profit off of it. If you do 300, then 500, then 1,000, it just makes a little more sense.”
Apart from that age old motive, Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire rivalry, what could explain what is happening here? Cancel culture brought us the concept of the “purity spiral”: as journalist Gavin Haynes told it, a process of “moral outbidding”, “when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation”. The result is a “moral feeding frenzy” as members vie with one another to demonstrate who is the purest. In contrast, the OnlyFans apparatus seems to be trapping some people in what you might call an impurity spiral. This time, though, the value without upper limit is anticipated male gooning — another modern concept, and apparently nothing whatsoever to do with being an Arsenal fan — and camgirls are outbidding each other with more and more extreme ways of producing it.
Obviously, there’s the money. A popular take is that these women are the ones in control of their sad sack subscribers, helplessly pinioned one-handed to the mouse button. Phillips is said to have made £2 million from OnlyFans. Blue is making £600,000 a month. Mitchell was making $100,000 a month in 2021 according to the New York Post, though some of that could be from her side hustle as an inspirational life coach (free gift: “7 tips to make a sh*t ton of money”, though weirdly she doesn’t mention her main income source).
The average OnlyFans income is pitiful, at around $150 a month, so you can see why there might be a cynical interest in capturing more attention. Still, Phillips, Blue and Mitchell seem sincere when they say they adore their work, the odd fit of exhausted crying aside. Watching the Phillips documentary and seeing her talk us through her massive collection of sex toys and props, I concluded that OnlyFans is a new kind of Panopticon. Thousands of naked camgirls are stuck in tiny rooms getting ever freakier, entranced by fantasies of themselves as desired by excitingly faceless men, irrespective of the grim reality of the drooling deadbeats actually watching online.
Though I could be wrong, Phillips seemed to me to be fascinated by how she thinks she appears to an imagined audience, carrying the erotic vision of it with her wherever she goes — and especially into stinking rented Airbnb bedrooms, crammed with expectant flesh-and-blood subscribers. They too were basically a kind of prop for the benefit of viewers elsewhere. “When I did 37 guys in a day, I genuinely can’t remember any of their faces” she tells the filmmaker. “If I don’t find someone attractive I struggle to look at them when I’m having sex with them.” “But you don’t struggle to have sex with them.” “No, no, no.”
Later, after making a bespoke “jerk off instruction” video for some bloke paying her to tell him to eat his own semen, she says “it’s kind of fun, you’re kind of like playing an acting role”. This would have felt like superfluous information, except that I felt it inadvertently got to the heart of the matter.
Back on X, my own mental prison of choice, I have certainly seen people posting at each other as if they were really talking to someone else entirely: a person in their head they are very angry with, or someone they want to impress. I may have even done it myself. And why wouldn’t it be this way? You can’t see or hear fellow users and most of them have made-up names anyway. People talk about the phenomenon of “audience capture”, but in my experience it’s rarely your actual audience that ends up consuming you. On X, the psychic projection results in lots of aimless snark, ranting and humblebragging. Translated into the world of livestreamed porn content, you get unexpected creativity with traffic cones instead.
People tend to treat OnlyFans as relatively benign in relation to obviously sinister outfits like Pornhub, but when it comes to worrying where porn culture will all end, it seems like it might carry its own special risks. We are told the erotic plasticity of women is far greater than the relatively fixed desires of men; meaning cultural and social factors are more likely to affect what they find arousing. Women make most of the content on OnlyFans, seamlessly moulding bodies and libidos to badly typed-out fetishes in order to wring higher order self-objectifying pleasure out of the process. Women performers outbid other women performers in increasingly extreme behaviour, locked into exciting rivalries to feel the most desired, to become the most monetised. And all with nobody else in the room.
In the old days, whatever other physical and mental risks they ran, porn performers were safely separated in time and space from their audience. Their gymnastics were trapped on the videotape like flies in amber. Nowadays they cumwalk among us, even as new jerkoff instructions ping into their phone from lecherous men with credit cards, identities and faces thrillingly vague. Maybe it’s true that I just don’t like people being happy, but it all seems a bit unhealthy to me. In an impurity spiral, as in the original version, there is apparently no upper limit to the crazy.
These women are unspeakably vile, and the men subscribing to them equally pathetic. When will the wests cultural degradation end?
Surely it’s better than asian rape gangs?
Like so many cultural extremes, this will burn itself out and the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction, which may be worse.
Whatever the reason that drives men and women to this (pick your flavour of broken-society cause), it’s the women who face a lifetime of social consequences.
It won’t. We’ve embedded a downward spiral in our culture, based on ‘it’s my choice’ and the removal of any bar for shame. When the automatic defence of any immoral behaviour is ‘you can’t judge me, if I’m not hurting anyone else then it’s my right’, the only way is down.
Isn’t that exactly the problem, though?
To be vile is to be morally bad, or wicked. But if you recognize no morality beyond the ‘if it feels good, do it’ variety (modified just slightly by the ‘if it pays well, what the hell’), then it is impossible to be vile …unless, of course, you’re doing something to which you don’t consent — consent being the new Ethical Standard.
‘Only Fans’ & Pornhub both insist on ‘consent’ (at least to the extent it can be nominally demonstrated) meaning the only Vileness in this pornified, brave, new world would be the responsibility of those ‘few’ who violate the consent mandate. (the one & only command scribbled on the digital tablets retrieved from the ‘new’ Mt. Sinai).
Everyone else gets a free pass and an annual charge on their credit card.
Unfortunately, we have gotten to a state where once any sexual shadow work was done with a professional sexual professional therapist in private to delineate old tropes, old beliefs and potential harmful messaging, including whatever is held by the body itself, is now in full view. It is a horror show actually, regardless of what others may call it. If ‘others’ seriously think that what these girls say is actual deep truth, and not pointing to some other underlying factors, unconscious one would say also, they are seriously deluded. To be able to ‘perform’ at this level, so to speak, one would have to be totally numb and bodily disconnected to the whole of oneself – if that’s the case, then these ‘performances’, and the men actually involved are having sex, and viewing essentially a spiritually ‘dead’ person. One could say, with no connection to body, mind and soul, an essentially ‘dead’ person is what you are dealing with. Being in ‘public’ and on the internet, one can never, ever irradicate or come back from this. Any actual full ‘adult’ could see this for what it actually is. I feel for these girls. The question should be what are they playing to and for? What is diametrically opposite to say ‘the divine’ – only one thing, the profane. Exactly what is on display here. Another question could also be, what ‘spirit’ of intention lies behind this? There is never one without the other.
It’s probably DEI’s fault, eh Kathleen?
Cun*t.
Tell me, do you actually first go to the trouble of working out exactly where the point is so that then you can be absolutely certain of missing it?
I don’t think she have been in the habit of blaming things on DEI. Maybe you should differentiate somewhat about those you think are your enemies.
Lol, Unherd’s most valuable commentator.
I mean – £600,000 a month does cover a lot of sins.
Depends, once you factor in the replacement sheets, medical treatment and a possible lifetime of therapy, might not add up to much
It’s an iceberg. At the top making loads of money are a few women with PR skills they could have used in other fields controlling their own content. Below the water line are the majority of content makers controlled by gangsters in an impoverished country, earning a pittance while losing any chance of forming happy relationships.
Yes, that the real issue. There are these high profile individuals making lots of money and getting lots of publicity and the real damage is done to thousands of ordinary people who live miserable lives below the PR radar.
There’s something incredibly creepy about Bonnie Blue’s eyes. They look so soulless.
Contact Lenses?
Think it is because the pupils are so small.
There are plentyphotographs of street prostitutes out there. Girls hooked on heroin and other substances. They have exactly the same look. It takes years for them to get back to “normality” , if they live that long. Same will happen with these women. Prostitution does that to women.
The small pupils on heroin users are a direct metabolic consequence of heroin use, not some spiritual side-effect of the general lifestyle.
Personally I find the whole thing and everyone involved repulsive.
But these young women are adults and apparently doing this willingly in return for large amounts of money, so I’m not going to try to stop them.
The way things are now, in a few years time one of them will be on Strictly and the other on I’m a Celebrity.
Indeed, however distasteful the behaviour, if you make a point of demanding agency for women you will find it more difficult to criticise those who take it further than you are comfortable with. Arguing for ‘Feminism, but…’ opens up a whole debate about who decides the scope of the ‘but’.
Hence the question:
“Does my but look big in this?”
It isn’t just women it is men too and all the other no limits freaks who want to be dogs, slaves, babies, gender benders etc…
Don’t agree. It is perfectly normal, healthy and reasonable that we should think that people can do whatever they like, if with consenting adults.
I think that people should be able to do what they like while at same time that they should not smoke, take drugs and that women should prioritise children over their career or income but also accept that others can do all those things and I will tolerate it.
Well said. I think Ms. Stock and a lot of other feminists are having difficulty coming to terms with the law of unintended consequences as it comes to the feminist movement and equal rights. Surely no feminist who fought for women’s rights ever conceived of the likes of Ms. Phillips standing upon feminism and her equal right to do whatever, and whomever, she darn well pleases. Yet, the same principle of equal treatment before the law demands that we respect her rights and not diminish her agency by restricting her freedom of choice. I sympathize though I can’t do much about it. The law of unintended consequences, like the reaper, comes for us all.
Is this an argument for unlimited unconstrained awfulness by both and women?
I am very glad I am not young as and I grieve for my adult children and for my grandchildren
And asking the media why nobody tried to stop them!
You forgot Desert Island Discs
Although in a few years the meaning of “Strictly Ballroom” or “Strictly Come Dancing” may be different than what it is today.
Would any bloke be interested in an intimate relationship with a female who had humped 100 men in one day, let alone 1000? YUK!
I wouldn’t have thought that there was any intimacy involved, just a quick sexual thrill. With the guys at the front of the queue paying more than those behind.
The idea of freedom is that nobody should have the power to set the standards for everybody, and anybody given such power will probably abuse it in one way or another. Instead, we restrict the law to behaviors and actions that infringe upon the rights of others. Having a free society means treating people as adults with agency and expecting them to be responsible for their own choices. We can’t protect people from themselves and still have a free society. I say as long as they don’t infringe on anybody else’s rights or commit a criminal act, we don’t have much choice but to let it be. As a result, we have to put up with all kinds of nonsense in the public sphere. The solution is if you don’t like it and don’t agree with it, just ignore it and move on. I agree with Kathleen that it’s surely unhealthy and a bad choice that they’ll regret, but we’ve all made choices we regret, and part of maturity and experience is making mistakes and learning from them without blaming others (people forget that last part way too often). Ultimately it’s their choice so there’s not much we could, or should, do about it.
For someone who once declared himself “no fan of J.S. Mill” you make a case very reminiscent of old Johnny’s. I’m in fundamental agreement with you in principle. But part of one powerful idea of liberty is the freedom to dissent and criticize. That constitutes no meaningful infringement on the right of other adults to practice what they see fit, short of violating laws or causing real harm to others.
One may choose to ignore behavior and forms of livelihood one objects to, or to call it out. Stock is not outside women webcammer’s windows with a megaphone at night, she is writing an opinion piece that people may pay attention to or ignore.
As a blanket statement, I disagree with your claim that maturity and experience counsel us to mind our own business about everything, as if we are nations of one, or little islands unaffected by major currents in the society at large. Sometimes a concerned friend or family member can intervene or object to good purpose when someone seems to be on a bad road, like severe addiction to drugs (alcohol included), or gambling, or porn. Yes it will feel like an intrusion to them, and may cause (more of) a rift, but at times that can be a risk worth taking.
Another thing to consider is that some of the people involved in this are doing so under extreme duress, even coercion. What appears to be free expression often masks things as bad as human trafficking and debt slavery. And some of those involved will always be minors too, whether “sold” as such or not.
I’m in considerable sympathy with your brand of libertarianism overall, but I think we’ve developed too high a social tolerance for stimulation at any cost—especially when it pays. Individual and groups are at liberty to raise objections and warnings, whether they are warranted, or welcome, or taken seriously, or not.
Reading through the Beatitudes of Jesus recently (Matthew 5-7), I was struck afresh with the route to a blessed and fulfilled life he offers. He came preaching a totally different kind of Kingdom, one predicated on enslavement to God as opposed to the enslaving tyrannies of the corrupt human heart.
Love God! he commands. And love your neighbour! “Blessed are you when….”
We’ve thrown out God. We shouldn’t be surprised at the nth degree of perversion that is flooding in.
“God is dead. God help us!” warns Herr Nietzsche
The Church peddling a false Gospel will be held accountable.
The so-called Gospel of Prosperity is on the rise in many U.S. mega churches. A gross perversion of what Jesus taught.
Shame to normalise it by discussing and publicity about it.
This can’t be a route to a fulfilled (no pun intended) life, can it?
I’m a devout atheist but I certainly recognise the wisdom in the advice for how to live in the Bible, this way of life is so hollow, so pointless. It’s pathetic.
Personal point: just got my 6th grandson yesterday: now there’s fulfillment down that road.
It’s always interested me when avowed atheists finally get to a point where the filth or the depravity impacts them and they draw the line right there. The key point being that if everyone gets to draw their own lines, the lines become meaningless. There will always be something even more depraved eventually, without end.
I for one, am so far to one side of the spectrum that I thought open and proud homosexuality was where I drew the line. Now we have a proud homosexual author drawing lines. And the best goes on.
I should correct you then; I haven’t “finally got to the point….”. There is no conflict between believing there is wise guidance in religious tomes and recognising the fantasy of supernatural beings.
My view for a very long time has been that they are social control devices. Take for example the seven sins; they are not sins against a fantasy character, they are sins against yourself – live life with them and you will be miserable.
If only such wisdom had been communicated on its own merits rather than bundled up in these tales we might be in a better place now. The trouble is that as the supernatural stories unravel, so can be lost the wisdom, the baby being thrown out with the bathwater.
Are you sure the supernatural stories are unraveling, Phil?
Keeping one eye particularly on the prophetic books of that great Judeo-Christian tome and one eye on the world, I see a remarkable correlation unfolding.
Whereas you see social control I find a pathway into true liberty of soul, the only real antidote to the increasingly enslaving social controls the world is unwittingly – but alas, willingly – succumbing to.
Instead of paddling only in the shallows of that ancient wisdom, leave the baby in the bathwater and take a dive deep into that great ocean of liberating Wisdom and find life in all its fullness!
Sadly, many will see Jesus only when it is too late to grasp the lifebelt of salvation he has thrown out to every individual.
Sky-fairies are. Get over it!
The matters of fulfillment, wisdom, antidotes to enslavement (though in this respect religion, I’d argue, is part of the problem), etc. are separate matters to those of believing in the supernatural.
I am an atheist because I don’t believe in unfounded magic creatures for which not one iota of hard evidence can be presented.
You think supernatural beings don’t exist??
No, he does not believe that supernatural beings exist. Your attempt to straw man is pathetic.
Even believers draw their own lines, under the guidance of the God of their own understanding. Unless they are textual literalists practicing a highly external brand of faith, focused on rules and rituals first and last. Even then, life presents situations that are not spelled out in black and white.
Yes, This can’t be a route to a fulfilled…life. Aristotle argued that happiness, or eudaimonia, is the ultimate purpose of human existence. It’s achieved by living a virtuous life, exercising reason, and developing a moral character. Decadently, copulating with 1000+ men and performing on Onlyfans will not lead to lasting happiness or fulfilment. Perhaps Kathleen could explore the subject of happiness and its relation to morality in a future article.
I doubt any of these young ladies have read Aristotle.
They wouldn’t need to, if parents and schools were informed by Aristotelian ethics. Similarly, you don’t have to have read the New Testament to be guided by Christian principles.
I hope so. She picking around the edges and examining the gutters of morality without facing it head on. We’re in a pretty odd cultural moment where nihilism and radical cynicism are far more mainstream and likely to get “likes” than anything openly moral in scope. Even this conservative-leaning (but varied) readership contains many chimers-in who seem to want Stock to pipe down about any behavior she’s not forced to participate in herself. I personally hope she will take a more wide-ranging, nuanced look at our trivial and hedonistic zeitgeist, perhaps in a book.
She is picking around the edges and examining the gutters of morality without facing it head on.
Yes. I do wonder whether KS is holding back on moral criticism of Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillip’s activities out of a misplaced feminist respect for other women’s choices. Interestingly, other feminists – like Julie Bindel and comedian Katherine Ryan – have railed against the degeneracy of the men involved (exploited?) in these stunts while not whispering a word of criticism of either of the women.
Congratulations on the 6th grandson! Always a remarkable occasion!
But I am puzzled by your use of the phrase, ‘devout atheist’…meaning, I presume that you are deeply, even religiously committed to a belief in… the absence of belief?
Doesn’t that seem the least bit oxymoronic? I strongly believe that there is nothing of meaning to believe (save, perhaps, the belief in nothing)?
When you tell us that you are scrupulously faithful to the conviction that there is no God, no Absolute, no Heaven, no Hell…and the world simply a small, cramped lobby between infinite stretches of non-existence: a meaningless place in which everything is permitted and nothing any better or any worse than anything else… AND YET… you also, simultaneously celebrate the birth of a 6th grandson??? How do you reconcile such a shattering collision between meaning and non-meaning…especially when, quite obviously, you find (rightfully so) tremendous meaning in the birth of your grandchild, telling us ‘there’s fulfillment down that road’? (And indeed there is!)
Why is that?
How is it that the curl of that child’s tiny hand about your finger…the first time he focuses his vision upon you, his grandfather, blood of his blood… his very first smile, the first time (and every time) he calls you and says, ‘Grandpa, read me a story’… how is it that these things can lift your soul to a place you cannot describe …. and yet you tell us it all means nothing?
Mark Helprin, in his novel, ‘Soldier of the Great War’ puts it thusly: ““As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.”
Besides, what would Pascal say?
Thank you!
My use of “devout” was just to be deliberately contrary, a way to express the thoroughness of my atheism.
I’m afraid my opinions go even further than normal atheism, and it is consistent with my joy at the little guys arrival.
You see, I believe the concepts of “life” and “consciousness” are unsound. We are no more than a very, very, very complex arrangement of ordinary matter. The propensity of certain molecules to self-copy leads unbroken to cellular biology, thence to multi-cellular cooperation and then seamlessly to us. The length of time, and the natural, unavoidable processes of evolutionary selection of success makes all of this normal. We’re not even a single being, a human being is composed to a very high percentage of creatures that are not part of the human genome but engage in a mutually advantageous cooperation – this body that I weigh on scales now & then is, to a substantial extent, not even human!
At the point of highest complexity the mechanisms of sensory perception and interpretation, attributes with serious evolutionary advantages, develop to the point where an impulse to explain what is perceived is so strong that we even have a tendency to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. That’s where Gods come in.
My delight at my little guy is simply my instinctive reaction to the most successful evolutionary impulse of all – shared largely by every successful organism in the World – to reproduce. If I didn’t have that instinct, I wouldn’t do it, and my lack of interest would not be passed on.
Each to their own, of course.
And atheist or believer….the ‘delight in the little guy…or girl’ is a constant. (grandkids being a whole lot more fun and a whole lot less work than the kids required to generate those same grandkids!)
I disagree with the atheist perspective, of course. And again I would point to the ‘delight’ in that little guy as proof of something more… just as I would point to the existence (our understanding) of love, beauty, and the undying sense of transcendence experienced occasionally by all of us and elicited by countless scenes, events, occurrences which move us in a way otherwise inexplicable… as indications of the Absolute.
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” C.S. Lewis.
Needless to say, i do not find the incredible (and seamless???) leap you make from inanimate matter to animate & conscious matter at all compelling…but you already know that.
As for what is and is not normal…heck what we are, where we are, who we are, and when we are: all of that is as ‘normal’…as the God who set it all in motion.
I leave you with anothr Helprin quote:
“Reason excludes faith,” Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. “It’s deliberately limited. It won’t function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can’t do it absolutely. That’s because you can’t do anything absolutely by reason. That’s because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don’t think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that.”
Best wishes!
I agree with most of what you say but I’m not sure how just procreating gives us fulfilment? Maybe I’m just missing something. Maybe it’s because you are then part of something bigger and outside of yourself? Something that will continue once we are gone? It’s strange though to look for fulfilment through others.
The point which she doesn’t make here is that Phillips and her ilk are just the extreme end of a toxic economy of attention, dopamine and degeneracy that is consuming an ever greater proportion of the population. This is what we do now. A well ordered society would attempt to put an end to it.
Climb the F…. Off your horse and explain why it is you have the “god given” right to decry these sluts as the extreme end of a toxic economy. This is yet another case of if you do not like it, don’t watch.
‘Don’t watch’ means detaching ourselves from much of mainstream media.
If anyone had any decency they’d know this was not normal and not participate.
Don’t panic, CF. Xaven didn’t claim to have a god-given right. He merely wrote his opinion. As to your point (if you don’t like something, just ignore it), well, you wouldn’t adopt that attitude in raising your kids, would you? Or if you sure someone being beaten up on the street? These women are corrupting themselves and a lot of other people too.
Is she not a female version of Andrew Tate? Does she not validate the views of some Muslims that the West is degenerate? Is not the whole reason for the rise of Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s is rejection of Western Culture because women have the choice of the fathers of their children?
The driving force for Muslim Fundamentalism is the emancipation of women – read S Qutb and Khomeini .
“The driving force for Muslim Fundamentalism is the emancipation of women” … golly, here was me thing that emancipation meant “The act of setting free from the power of another, from slavery, subjection, dependence, or controlling influence; also, the state of being thus set free; the act or process of emancipation, or the state thereby achieved; liberation.”
Perhaps that’s why there are thousands of ‘sex-slaves’ held by Muslim men and that, here in the UK, the ‘Rape Gangs’ have been running riot for 20 years? Need a citation? Just read any UK newspaper.
No. The anything goes culture ends with the destruction of social bonds and norms, and we all pay the price, whether it’s a shoplifting or a knife crime epidemic. Wake up and defend the good.
Never watch it just hear other people’s responses to what they have seen and it still breaks my heart
Freud postulated a “death impulse” – a drive in every organism to destroy itself. Perhaps he was right.
DUMBED DOWN
Completely agree
Men exchange resources for sex. Women exchange sex for resources. The internet simply allows young women to scale up their natural behaviour. It’s just a new slant on something that’s existed for ever.
This is far from normal. If you think this is ‘normal’ for women, then you clearly think all women are sluts. I think it puts a mirror back to you actually.
If he is attracted to her a man will marry a woman who doesn’t have a job or a penny to her name. How many women would marry a man with no money and no job?
The vast majority of women want a man who can provide for her and her children… they want the provision of resources.
The vast majority of men want a woman who is attractive and sexually available.
Denying the exchange of resources for sex may make women feel better about their motives but they are just denying reality.
THEIR children usually need resources.
It is not unusual for them men and women both to want children and raise them together.
He didn’t suggest it was normal behaviour.Just natural behaviour , which has gone on for years as usual but was less obvious… you are inserting words.
When we reject God’s provision of what is good and not good. We hand over our image-bearing nature to other things, other idols, like money, power, sex, success and other people. The idols that we give power to, whether physical or not , rob us of our nature.
Limbic capitalism.
She’s trying to make a lot of money and isn’t squeamish about how she does it. Any other protestations (by her) about why she does it are deceitful bunkum.
Dear Kathleen,
you need a holiday, sans devices.
Given the amount of orgasm envy she reveals, perhaps she might take a few devices with her.
You are disgusting. “Orgasm envy” my ass.
How misogynistic.
This seems to be true – but I’m not sure this is what is going on if they are responding to requests and performing for an audience.
I’m not sure what is happening is that mysterious. Women like money (most people do) and some seem willing to involve themselves in a kind of quasi prostitution to get it. And it would be fairly easy to construct a utilitarian argument that it is a good thing.
What is absent in the quote above is the sense that we should have any moral values other than happiness (or at least pleasure) and the freedom to pursue it. Without such values it’s not that easy to construct a critique of either the female or male behaviour involved. What do we have to set against the values of money and celebrity? Shame? Self respect? In 2025?
Now you’re on to something. What separates happiness, pleasure, and joy—and where do they intersect? That’s not just rhetorical. I think you and other astute commenters might have an insightful answer to that. Also, Jefferson was wise to quote John Locke concerning the pursuit of happiness; it’s forever changeable or elusive for us mortals. Happiness is too often equated for sheer ease and enjoyment, when too much of that actually tends to lead to world weariness, a breakdown in body and spirit. (Or so I’ve heard).
How many more men would monetize their bodies if they could as often as women can—meaning that people will pay to look or touch—and at the same hourly rate? Especially with such rampant nihilism and widespread cynicism about the bare notion of a meaningful life.
Well that’s the handy thing about utilitarianism: you can use it construct a justification for whatever you like.
I remember some advice my grandmother gave me a long time ago. Look this happens in the world but that doesn’t mean I have to watch a documentary on it.
Keep your mind clean. Don’t watch sick things. Don’t advertise them on Unherd.
I had no idea people still used the word ‘bonk’.
It’s certainly an improvement on saying ‘sex’ for example.
I criticise Unherd a lot for looking the other way, avoiding what is going on.
But this is different. It is a few individuals almost certainly with deep mental problems.
Don’t extrapolate as if this is normal. These women are not normal. Don’t give them attention.
You can’t just take any freak story from the internet and spin a story from it.
You demean yourself writing this. And you demean and devalue the women you are writing about.
(Why have my comments gone into Unherd limbo? I am making a perfectly valid point)
The men too, including the goons.
I’m not sure it IS valid. Your second paragraph is not remotely plausible.
Despite this I’ve seen it which means your comment is no longer in Unherd limbo.
Kathleen et al
Have you ever read the work of RJ Unwin? His Sex and Culture and various reviews on line – worth googling
Reads like a repeat of a similar article some months back. No new inforation or viewpoint really.
I vaguely remember Only fans were on the verge of banning porn band then did a quick volte face. I assumed it was because about 99pc of it’s business was porn.
Tumblr did the same thing. “No more porn – um, oh wait, just kidding.” People want what they want.
I reached the second paragraph of this and put it away.
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body.”
What is the real purpose of these gamy articles that keep appearing on this Journal? I am beginning to wonder. No doubt they get generate a good number of clicks, even as we moralise with such sociological sadness at it all.
The tantalizing title, the seductive picture, the extended catalogue of indecencies, the prurient gaze, the salacious, not to say lascivious detail, the pornographic anecdotes at barely second hand.
All while we flatter ourselves that we stand, serenely detached and analytical – no doubt. Like those good men at the stoning of the Woman Caught In Adultery.
What is our business here?
“Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
There is perhaps a prurience in reading about these people but it is illustrative to those of us who do not know this world first hand what our fellow humans are up to. It does not bode well for society.
Don’t know how long you’ve been a subscriber but this is a frequent topic of Ms. Stock. She cares about the welfare of women and she writes often about women’s issues and the exploitation of women by the porn industry. She’s also one of Unherd’s better writers. Further, this is an issue one rarely explored by other media. If anything, this issue is under-reported in general, which is kind of the point of Unherd, to explore issues that nobody else will touch. I definitely don’t think this is Unherd stooping to clickbait.
Kathleen Stock may want to protect herself from the sordid details of the subcultures she can’t seem to look away from of late. More often at least. She sounds like a lesbian prude—I mean a prude who happens to be gay. I’m with her, from the straight male bloc. It’s predictable and easy to accuse the squeamish and disgusted, like me and Dr. Stock, of being titillated by that which we recoil from. That’s often true of those who play the prude, though not according to a simple formula of repulsion equals attraction. But some of this stuff has a train wreck or horror-fascination quality to it. Look away Kathleen!
Or steel yourself and look deeper. But I think your talents and smarts are best directed elsewhere. Just like the sad pleasure seekers
youwe pity and worry about. Maybe leave the dungeon grunt work to another chronicler. Still, I’d welcome a more comprehensive investigation into why we’re amusing and diddling ourselves into ruin. With a little of that fancy academic-style data and citation.Why on earth would you write about this?
Society is automatically disbelieving about the “happy, self determining” heroin addict or alcoholic and instead, quite rightly, focuses on the harm the person inflicts on self and others. But when it comes to equally desperate and degrading sex practices we are forced (because of the sex positive cult) to suspend disbelief to such an extent that someone is not subject to ridicule for positing that Nikole Mitchel is happy.
Some of the organisations that work with trafficked women and girls or street prostitutes should invite these women in for coffee! They might then see what they are actually doing to themselves. I took a group of female university students who thought they could sell sex to pay off debts to such an organisation in my home town. All reconsidered their choice of debt repayment.
Alcoholism and heroin addiction can’t make you rich.
Though generally people don’t make large amounts of money by being a heroin addict.
I wonder if her three children are ‘happy’ growing up without their Mum? And perhaps knowing the life she lives is why she left them. Pure hedonism. It’s all very last days of Rome stuff fed by an internet culture that thrives on and monetises discontent. I am worried too that this example of womanhood amply demonstrates the rapists trope ‘she was asking for it.’ These women and the men exemplify the depravity that results from a society that has no limits.
Islam will arrive with its powerful correction just as the post Christian freedom for all debauchery West bottoms out. This culture it seems cannot correct itself. We will have to depend on the Muslims for that. ♂️♂️
I just wonder how much of their income is going to the HMRC. And if they are attracting blokes, at Uni, what future employers will think if they see them on film. Never a good look if applying for a high end job. I also hope these women have private health insurance for the day they find they have several STDs and are HIV +. It will happen…
I really shouldn’t have tried to read this during breakfast.
That said, I believe the author has a point: Our culture has abandoned the time-tested anchor of marriage, family, community. Now we are drifting in whatever direction the wind pushes us. Where will we finally run aground? Who knows?
My God.
This phenomenon seems to be little more than the old-fashioned ‘village bike’, but being monetised and projected to the whole ‘global village’ and, potentially, the livestock too. There must be a huge demand for this type of hole-filling theatre, which is why I don’t purchase used computer peripherals. Sloppy one-hundreds anybody? Scroll on…
If you don’t want porn, get back to Church. Simple as that. A liberal culture without God will degenerate into porn and Andrew Tate misogyny. Feminism – devaluing motherhood and often maliciously secular and anti-Church – has been a major driver. It was telling that only Kelly Jay Keane /Posie Parker – was willing to engage with Mat Walsh and American conservatives….and yet in a stroke Trump has done more than all the European feminists put together. That is essentially because their position is incoherent
Where are the politicians in all this? They usually show up right bout now with their hands in the cookies jar ie “reasonable regulations”
Prurience unleashed. What is missing is any discussion of the banality of ordinary blokes who queue up for a piece of what is on offer, as recently revealed during the infamous case in southern France, rather than only dissecting the motive and personalities of the women. Some men’s MeToo perhaps?
Because that’s just not news. Nobody is in denial about the awfulness of some men (though I wouldn’t call them ordinary).
That some women might share in that awfulness, indeed exceed it, even lead it, is news. It runs completely contrary to the dominant narrative about men and women – indeed to the extent that some feminists (not KS) are turning somersaults to try and put the blame on men, and turn these women into victims.
Stock needs sometimes to ditch the ironic pose and talk seriously about trauma,
Self-harm, tragic abuse that stems from childhood victimization.
Her philosophy alas does not include categories of unconscious repetitions of
Trauma as she is a rationalist so this is not analyzed in terms of terror and denial of torture.
No she doesn’t.
“Still, Phillips, Blue and Mitchell seem sincere when they say they adore their work, the odd fit of exhausted crying aside.”
This might be true or not (probably not) but either way the one thing these girls absolutely cannot afford to do is admit that they do not enjoy the work. 90% of the attraction they generate is successfully creating the impression that even if there was no camera, no OnlyFans and no money, they’d be doing the same thing out of lust and passion alone. You’d have to be stupid to believe that, but you know what they say about men having enough blood to run a brain or an erection but not both at the same time.
More generally I found this article hilarious, as seems to be a regular experience when reading Prof Stock these days (has she thought of trying standup comedy?), but there’s one small insight missing from the above which is that all these women are only halfway through a journey that almost always ends with an internal moral revolt and a subsequent search for the virtue they once treated as worthless.
Personally I’ve always believed that a woman ought to be able to go nuts in the bedroom for a goodly portion of her life and as long as she gets through it without catching any diseases and hoses herself down at the end of it, she’s as good as any other woman as far as I’m concerned. However society stubbornly refuses to accept that, and women themselves are also quite strongly resistant to the idea even though it would theoretically increase their personal liberty and address one of the few remaining patriarchal social injustices, the one where men gain status from being studs but women lose status from being the female equivalent.
But I am 100% certain that Blue, Philips and the rest will in due course experience a spiritual conversion that will alter their behaviour permanently, and will in some figurative way seek to get their virginity back. Usually by their internal ethical pendulum swinging back as far in the opposite direction to where it is presently and almost certainly through some process of self-discovery that will apparently reveal that that they were in fact victims all along.
When that happens, I and most other men will be very glad that we were never part of their public displays or private online followings.
I don’t think people really think like that now, and probably never did. And young women now have their own insulting terms for a man who behaves this way. Womanising was disapproved of, just not as strongly as the female equivalent.
That said, for a man to sleep with a large number of women is an achievement of sorts (if not a very laudable one). For a woman to sleep with a large number of men is no achievement at all. And if the man achieves this feat by sleeping with prostitutes, no one thinks he’s a stud.
Also if a man ends up married to the woman every other man in the village has had, he can feel nothing but shame and insecurity. If a woman ends up with the man who has had every woman in the village, she will likely feel insecure, but she can feel that she got the man the other women wanted.
saying the magic word “patriarchy” doesn’t make this go away.
I was using the word patriarchal in the sense of using the language of the adversary to make the point on their terms. I agree with everything you say about the relative merits of promiscuity and how it affects each sex differently, I was only remarking that irrespective of whether the behaviour is desirable in itself, it is a liberty possessed by men that women, in general, do not.
The real reason women don’t regard promiscuity as an opportunity, of course, is that virtue, its opposite, is the thing they would rather possess (or at least the public perception of it). That’s why women don’t want and don’t ask for the opportunity to be promiscuous on the same terms as men.
Also your argument is somewhat inconsistent. “I don’t think people really think like that now, and probably never did” – but you follow this sentence later with an accurate description of the reasons such attitudes might nevertheless exist.
I clicked on this because i usually appreciate Kathleen Stock’s insights. I couldn’t get past the third paragraph. I honestly don’t know why Ms Stock is giving this disgusting depravity which will inevitably lead to disease and even death any air time.
Just imagine what will be next when this stuff becomes old? I cringe to think what will eventually become the norm some day.
It’s the golden rule; if you don’t like it, nobody’s making you watch it or read about it.
Or comment upon it. That’s your choice.
Perhaps because some of us would like to know where our society is going, even if we’re not real happy about the result.
Societies that are unsuccessful at encouraging common shared identities, group solidarity, high levels of trust, family formation, strong institutions, sustaining principles, and the widespread adoption of tried and tested beliefs, will eventually break apart and eat themselves.
It is called decadence, and it is often seen in the late stages of a civilization’s decline and collapse. Buckle up.
One of the most glaring omission or maybe not important: one of them, the mother is the manager! LOLOL
Nothing else to add actually. It is all there for us.
whilst Gisèle Pelicot became a french heroine for standing up for women
these so called women Phillips and Blue are facilitating 1000’s of men into a rape culture and trying to enforce that women are just a thing to be used
We have a horrendously low conviction rate for sexual assault and rape .
Any man who engages with the sexual whims of these women are themselves doing so much damage to their own morality …..
There is a common path between Phillips / Blue and the rape gangs of Rotherham , Telford , Manchester , Rochdale and the other 30 ot more towns / cities .
OK, here’s your choice chaps. You can rent a girl who’ll indulge your every fantasy, and if you’re not getting VFM, try another one. Or, you can get married. In this case you provide her with a salary, a meal ticket for life, and a pension fund, and she might, now and again, consent to have sex. Think carefully, now.
‘No one knows what goes on behind closed doors’…. except now we do.
Are they in or out of the ‘closet’….except now, there are no closets.
We live in a society increasingly obsessed with ‘Privacy’ .. and yet, our browsers are filled to bursting with an infinity of websites which prosper on the endless destruction of every privacy. Click and you have a front row seat at whichever Circus you desire.
Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it.
It’s only a matter of how many people want to watch it, subscribe to it, or complain about it.
de Sade put it this way: ““To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men (and women) simply with a view to crowding hell.” The internet is simply the latest (and perhaps the fastest) way to get there.
And for those for whom there is no heaven, no hell….if everything is permissible and nothing either wrong or right… well then: ‘If that’s all there is to Love… then let’s keep dancing….let’s break out the booze…and have a ball”.
L Phillips is a very pretty young woman. I hope she gets into real acting when she retires from the adult work which sounds soon, given her revenue levels.
At 600,000 GBP per month, perhaps these women are making a reasonable choice for themselves and laughing all the way to the bank. 20 million GBP in 20 weeks and they are made for life several times over. They can then retire and enjoy themselves to their hearts content, especially if they then invest most of their money in an S&P 500 index fund. One might not approve but that’s neither here nor there as long as no laws are broken.
If you look at it in a Girardian way, you’re seeing a tragic case of Mimetic desire playing out between the two protagonists; trying to outdo the other. Like in the movie, “The Prestige”.
“Don’t like, don’t watch” is putting your head in the sand. You don’t just turn away from some things; you work to lessen or stop them.
“There is no mention of what her children think about their mum’s presence on social media…”
(?) How often do you mention what your children think of your presence on social media?
“…though weirdly she doesn’t mention her main income source.”
How routinely in your own conversations and articles have you found yourself mentioning your main income source?
“The average OnlyFans income is pitiful, at around $150 a month…”
What is the source of this statistic, please? Who’s in a position to gather such data accurately, and how does one go about accessing it? Kindly share.
I don’t know anything about CamGirls or OnlyFans, and after reading this article I also can’t figure out why their existence seems to bother you so much. This reads less like an exploration of social issues by a 21st century philosopher than the outraged tut-tutting of a scandalized 19th century bluestocking. ‘Extreme behaviour,’ ‘impurity spirals’ and craziness with ‘no upper limit’ may be legitimate enough social health concerns; but why do they become concerns serious enough for you to write about only when linked with sexual activity in particular; and why is the phenomenon of ‘drooling deadbeats’ an issue only in the same context? Are you quite sure the revulsion suffusing all these sarcastic turns of phrase and negative adjectives is inspired by ‘moral feeding frenzies’ and ‘cynical interest’ in ‘attention capture,’ and not by the scandalous ‘impurity’ of ‘sinister’ sex itself?
I wonder what number in line Trump and Gaetz were? Hegseth was probably too shitfaced to get into it.
Interesting but worrying.
The evolution of feminism is complete.
I understand the appeal, but I also suspect that the people engaged in this world are less fulfilled and less happy than they claim.
What IS the appeal? What sort of thrill do 1,000 men get out of lining up, all blokes together, in their underwear waiting their turn for 30 seconds of “sex” they have paid for already?
How the opportunities for men change! After my father died thirty years ago, aged in his 80s, we found beneath his bed copies of some sort of Pix magazine, each with a photo on the cover of a woman with big breasts, almost, but not quite, covered by clothing. I guess he got off on looking at them. Pretty tame by modern standards, but the attitude to women was the same as that displayed by the 1,000 men in the long long queue. I know because his fantasies played out in actual behaviour towards his wife, daughters, and co-workers.
It breaks my heart again and again that is the best they can find in living.
These women remind me of gay men in the late 1970s, who casting aside taboos against sexual expression merely erected, another set of taboos: against intimacy and relationships. But having been around strippers – as an observer, never as a customer – there was always a carapace of hardness and desensitization. I can only imagine when the psychological bill comes due what it will look like for these Only Fans women.