Is Lily Phillips, the young woman who slept with 101 men in 24 hours and now plans to do the same with 1,000, a vulnerable victim of exploitation? Or is she a free agent, making her own choices about her body and what to do with it?

I don’t think the answer to this is remotely complicated. Sure, it is possible to claim that unless Phillips describes herself as a victim, she cannot be one. It’s possible to claim that if feminists fought for a woman’s right to make her own choices, they cannot criticise this one. It’s possible to claim that anyone expressing pity for Phillips is judgemental, “whorephobic”, a dried-up old prude. It’s possible to claim all of these things, but none of that changes what we can all see right in front of us.  

As Julie Bindel has written, “no woman has a fantasy to end up with the type of injuries that will occur from such extreme activities”. One does not have to have any particular expertise in trauma, sexual abuse or disassociation to recognise self-harming behaviour. While false consciousness can be a tricky area for feminists — how close is the protective “you don’t want this really” to the patriarchal “you don’t know your own mind and have no desires of your own”? — there are times when the damage is much too obvious to leave any room for doubt. I cannot look at clips of Phillips in the immediate aftermath of what she “consented” to and think “yes, that woman is fine”. To be able to do so would take some effort. Indeed, I think you’d have to train yourself. 

What worries me in the case of Phillips — and far more broadly, in some branches of feminism and leftist politics as a whole — is that this training has begun to be seen as a virtue. Closing off feelings of compassion has become a way of managing the disconnect between #BeKind, right-side-of-history sloganeering and the abject cruelties of “progressive” industries: the sex trade, commercial surrogacy, “gender-affirming” care. Can’t cope with the cognitive dissonance that comes from witnessing pain caused by your side’s definition of freedom? Then learn not to see it. Learn not to feel. Teach yourself to regard this very feeling as a mark of moral immaturity. 

As I’ve been exploring in my book (Un)kind, there’s an area of “progressive” thought which prides itself on not feeling pity or compassion for any victim of sexual, medical or reproductive exploitation about whom it can be said “but it was a choice”. Even though this flies in the face of what feminists (and others) have long argued about the nature of power and coercion, there are certain choices — frequently ones relating to the bodies of women or children — which get placed in some magical, depoliticised zone. Thereafter anyone who might have a natural, human reaction to another person hurting themselves — at least for “liberatory” reasons — can be dismissed as the possessor of an unsophisticated, lower-order moral sensibility. To their “progressive” betters, feeling sad for the likes of Lily Phillips is all a bit knee-jerk, a bit vulgar, a bit “won’t somebody please think of the children” conservative. 

If you want to demonstrate your superior moral instincts, you must develop the capacity to switch your empathy on and off — off when it comes to the boring, obvious stuff (say, women who are selling their babies or demanding to have their breasts cut off), and on for the more “exciting”, challenging subjects (say, terrorists or sexual abusers threatened by the “carceral state”). Why clutch your pearls over migrant women in mega-brothels when you can be out there demanding restorative justice for rapists? 

It matters to know that some actions are wrong, coercive, abusive, even if the individual who is at the heart of them makes no complaint

There is something deeply inhumane about this. It matters to tune into that instant awareness that another person is in pain, even if that person is denying it. It matters to know that some actions are wrong, coercive, abusive, even if the individual who is at the heart of them makes no complaint. I am not saying that “responding” is the be all and end all. The excuses other people make to ignore another person’s suffering can often be the same ones the sufferer herself makes in order to cope with her pain. When no other exit seems possible, “I chose this — I wanted it” can seem like the only way of maintaining dignity. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to buy it, though it does make challenging it fraught.

Thinking about Lily Phillips has also set me thinking about the actor Elliot Page. You may notice that I don’t use Page’s “old” name – the “dead name” — as that would be deemed unkind and dehumanising, not least by those currently cheering on Page’s supposed transition to living his best life as a man. I don’t think I’m alone in looking at Page and seeing someone in tremendous pain, with a history of abuse, taking it out on a body that was never, ever to blame. I hesitate to write more because, well, it’s done now. The same can be said when I see images of teenage females who have had “top surgery” or women who claim to be perfectly happy to indulge the abuse fantasies of male partners or actresses who’ve starved themselves to next to nothing. What’s there to say? It’s done now. They’re even smiling. Why take from these women the stories that they need in order to believe this was what they wanted, and that there was never any other way? Likewise, why say anything about Lily Phillips? Why not let her get on with the 1,000 man challenge and if it appals you, don’t think about it? 

Because this is how we learn to approve atrocities. Even if we cannot save individuals, it’s essential that we remain sensitive to unspoken pain. It’s a pre-requisite to creating the world in which “choices” which are no choices at all never have to be made. Silence isn’t virtuous, even if it has been repackaged as respecting the autonomy of others. We know what’s before our own eyes. We mustn’t ever learn not to see it.