Lawyer and CEO of OnlyFans Keily Blair, who says her feminism informs how she carries out her job, argues the site empowers women by offering them an ‘inclusive, safe, and innovative platform’
The CEO of OnlyFans has insisted the site is feminist, as stars such as Lily Phillips and Bonnie Blue continue to spark controversy.
OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair, who previously worked as a partner in a London-based law firm, views the adult content-friendly platform as empowering and believes it helps give women more choices.
Irish technology executive Keily was born in Dublin but moved to England to study law and politics at Oxford Brookes University. She qualified as a solicitor in 2007 and went on to forge a career as a cybersecurity and privacy expert.
As the first recipient of the Inspirational Women in Law Awards in 2016, Keily has long been outspoken about the challenges facing women in the workplace, including balancing careers with motherhood.
“I am a feminist,” Blair told an audience at the women-led Trouble Club in August. “My feminism helps to inform why I do this job.”
The mother of two has made this a focus in her approach to running OnlyFans, and reiterated the importance of “choice” upon her appointment as CEO in July 2023.
After taking over the position from Amrapali ‘Ami’ Gan, Keily, who previously worked as the platform’s chief strategy and operations officer, issued the following statement: “‘OnlyFans only succeeds when creators succeed. It is our mission to make OnlyFans the platform of choice for a diverse range of creators and fans across the world.
”I will continue to put our creators at the heart of every business decision and will provide them with an inclusive, safe, and innovative platform to connect with their fans and monetise their content.”
In a recent interview, as per the Mail Online, Keily argued: “I fundamentally believe that people should be able to make choices about what they do. I think as a society, and particularly women, we’ve had a lot of people telling us what we can do, with our bodies, with our jobs, with our money, with our lives. I’ve no interest in that.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with Fortune, Keily, who has previously been turned down by a bank due to her connection with OnlyFans, expressed how safety was her top priority when it came to running the platform. She explained: “Everyone assumes it’s sexy content. Some of it is sexy content, and we’re very happy with that; we’re an inclusive platform, and we’re that way for a reason.
“We believe it’s very important for adult content creators to have a safe space, to be able to monetise, and to be able to do that alongside other content creators.”
This comes as OnlyFans faces intense scrutiny for facilitating extreme content, including Lily Phillips’ recent 100 men in one day stunt, which many felt highlighted the pressures creators now face to make content with shock factor.
The 23-year-old star, whose stunt was followed in the YouTube documentary I Slept With 100 Men in One Day, will take things a step further this month by sleeping with 1000 men in just one day.
When she spoke about her motives for the stunt, she explained: “Guys are always going to sexualise me, so I may as well try to make a profit off it.”
With fears over safeguarding, many are now calling for the platform to be banned altogether.
Another creator, Bonnie Blue, has also recently attracted controversy over her stunts, which primarily involve sleeping with “barely legal 18-year-olds”. On an episode of GK Barry’s Saving Grace podcast, 25-year-old Bonnie bragged of her love of “taking virginities”, declaring that some young students will queue up “for eight hours on end” in the hopes of bedding her.
However, a number of listeners were left unimpressed by these boasts, believing that Bonnie’s behaviour would be viewed quite differently if the genders had been reversed.
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