Prominent transphobe caught reading child p.rn fanfic on a train

[El Pollo Diablo]

Helen Joyce was photographed reading a somewhat rapey Harry Potter fanfic sex scene between two schoolchildren in public, in large text, in between retweeting J K Rowling: https://twitter.com/dschw89/status/1762385444426104874
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1762 ... 04874.html

She's gone for the Pete Townshend defence:

received_702045755345627.jpeg (140.66 KiB) Viewed 721 times

[lpm]

Wow, what a creepy man. The usual misogyny of trying to police women, combined with a thrill of spying on them.

The issue of teenage girls reading and writing fan fiction erotica is a strange one. They appear to combine the comfort of familiar favourite characters with an apprehensiveness of their own sexual fantasies. Fanfic seems to be an outlet to experiment safely with their desires. Seems worthy of research.

Nothing much wrong with teenage girls writing this stuff - except they probably don't realised p.rn-addled adult men seek out internet postings and get off on it.

[Tristan]

Oh come on EPD, this is absolute nonsense and you know it. I don't think you're dumb enough to actually believe this. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of who Helen Joyce is and the work she does would know what's going on here.

What we have here is some bloke who manufacturing a "gotcha" because he doesn't like what a woman says. A story old as time.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Which part of what I've written is nonsense?

[Tristan]

You're clearly implying she's reading this for pleasure rather than as research. The use of "caught" in "caught reading child p.rn" demonstrates that. As I say, anyone who knows Helen Joyce and what she does would know that's so unlikely to be the case. It's a bad faith reading of the situation.

Feel free to clarify what you actually mean if that's not actually the case.

[El Pollo Diablo]

You're clearly implying she's reading this for pleasure rather than as research. The use of "caught" in "caught reading child p.rn" demonstrates that. As I say, anyone who knows Helen Joyce and what she does would know that's so unlikely to be the case. It's a bad faith reading of the situation.

Feel free to clarify what you actually mean if that's not actually the case.

Ah, okay, good - it's just an implication, so nothing I've written is inaccurate. Thanks for the clarification.

[Gfamily]

You're clearly implying she's reading this for pleasure rather than as research. The use of "caught" in "caught reading child p.rn" demonstrates that. As I say, anyone who knows Helen Joyce and what she does would know that's so unlikely to be the case. It's a bad faith reading of the situation.

Feel free to clarify what you actually mean if that's not actually the case.

Ah, okay, good - it's just an implication, so nothing I've written is inaccurate. Thanks for the clarification.

Now now, you know it's perfectly reasonable to research CP in a public area - just like it's perfectly reasonable to watch p.rn videos in the House of Commons.

[Tristan]

You're clearly implying she's reading this for pleasure rather than as research. The use of "caught" in "caught reading child p.rn" demonstrates that. As I say, anyone who knows Helen Joyce and what she does would know that's so unlikely to be the case. It's a bad faith reading of the situation.

Feel free to clarify what you actually mean if that's not actually the case.

Ah, okay, good - it's just an implication, so nothing I've written is inaccurate. Thanks for the clarification.

I've just realised something. I don't think I remember ever seeing you not watching child p.rn.

[lpm]

Now now, you know it's perfectly reasonable to research CP in a public area - just like it's perfectly reasonable to watch p.rn videos in the House of Commons.

It is unbelievably distasteful to call this CP. You clearly have no concept of how awful the CP situation is on the internet.

It is not child abuse when two 15 year olds have sex. When a 15 year old writes fanfic erotica she inevitably sets it in the teenage school world she knows. It does not become an issue - until adult paedophiles start to trawl the internet for the fanfic forums where adolescent girls meet to share and talk.

These teenage scribblings are notable for having no clue about sex, and in particular no clue about boys, their desires and anatomy. These girls are curious about what men want and how to please them, and the result is a strange exploration of male-male sexual encounters, full of p.rn tropes but empty of any realism. It is not new - it used to be Kirk/Spock slash fanfic. Now it is Malfoy/Potter slash fanfic.

Whether this fantasising about being a boy and having sex with another schoolboy leads to girls being gender confused seems valid to investigate. We have no idea how this global experiment of flooding adolescent brains with hard-core p.rnography is going to play out long term.

[El Pollo Diablo]

It's erotic literature, which most people would call p.rn, and it features characters under 16, who most people would accept were children, having sex. It's child p.rn. The fact that it features aspects of non-consent is even worse.

I've offered no opinion on whether Joyce's claims of doing it for research purposes are true or not, but reading it, with text large enough for someone else to read and identify what the story is, in a public place, as an identifiable person, is a f.cking stupid and vile thing to do. And if this was a trans woman reading the same material in the same place at the same time and claiming the same justification, they wouldn't be getting anywhere near the same benefit of the doubt.

[lpm]

I've offered no opinion on whether Joyce's claims of doing it for research purposes are true or not, but reading it, with text large enough for someone else to read and identify what the story is, in a public place, as an identifiable person, is a f.cking stupid and vile thing to do. And if this was a trans woman reading the same material in the same place at the same time and claiming the same justification, they wouldn't be getting anywhere near the same benefit of the doubt.

Don't be ridiculous. The eavesdropping man couldn't read a word of what was on the phone. He listened to their conversation then got out his phone, zoomed in and took barely legible photos.

Even he couldn't read the words clearly on his zoomed in photos:

I hate that my camera is so bad but I swear this sentence says "he kept pumping"

He was upfront about his excitement at his own misogyny:

Also sorry about the spelling mistakes earlier, but I was excited.

[lpm]

It's erotic literature, which most people would call p.rn, and it features characters under 16, who most people would accept were children, having sex. It's child p.rn. The fact that it features aspects of non-consent is even worse.

That's great. You think the problem isn't adult men consuming non-consent p.rnography, "barely legal" p.rnography and unrealistic p.rn-trope p.rnography.

No, the problem is adolescent girls who are growing up surrounded by this hard-core material, who attempt to process it all by writing confused fanfic erotica, stories that betray their ignorance of real sex and highlight their absorption of p.rn-tropes.

This is what girls are writing. This is what they think sex is about. What they think their first boyfriend will want. Anal and pumping and non consent, bodily fluids over their faces and threesomes and bondage.

If you weren't so devoted to defending at every opportunity male rights to p.rnography, you'd be distressed by this insight into the thoughts of teenage girls.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Fascinating, this little trip down the yellow brick road that you're taking. I'm not the one defending consumption of p.rnography in public here, you are. I haven't given any opinion on adult men doing it in this thread (not sure if I've done it anywhere else tbh), because it's irrelevant to what's happened. This is about an adult woman reading p.rnographic writing, in public, about children having non-consensual sex. Whether it's for research or not for research, it's stupid and wrong.

But, anyway, let's inject a little bit of non-fiction to this creative writing session you're having.

Surveys have been done of AO3, and only around a fifth of AO3 users are under 18. The mean age is 25.1 years old. For writers of mature or explicit fanfiction, the average age is 26.6 and 27.4 years, and the proportion of under 18s providing the writing is 12.6% and 9.7% respectively. So there's a greater than 90% chance that this particular piece of explicit writing was written by an adult, not a girl. Which makes sense, not least because there are two former members of the former parish who are adults and who write on there too.

[Bewildered]

For what it’s worth the author of the thread linked in the OP didn’t like people describing it as cp. I’ll quote all three of their points at the end because they seem quite sensible to me and made a bit more sympathetic.

“This got more traction than I thought so I wanted to add a few thoughts:
1. Fascists will not be defeated by “gotchas” or by pointing out their hypocrisy (or by violence for that matter). Please engage in policy and be vocal wherever you can.
2. There’s nothing wrong with being a pervert in any way. I just hate hypocrisy. Also, maybe get a privacy screen, I mean come on.
3. Harry Potter fanfic is not the same as child p.rnography. It erodes the term and the seriousness of real life child abuse imo.”

But I have to say the rest wasn’t very convincing because to me at least the phone looked pretty far away and not easy to read at all and the text didn’t seem that large. Furthermore imo if you are reading text on a phone while on a train you should be entitled to privacy (images are a bit different mind) without worrying people might read it over your shoulder or photograph it.

[El Pollo Diablo]

I appreciate where they're coming from, but if someone illustrated the exact things described in the writing, it would be illegal (my understanding is that even drawings of children having sex is against the law, and even if they're aged 16-17 - happy to be corrected).

Personally, from an offence perspective, I don't really see much difference in the pictorial version or the written version, if they depict the same thing, and see no reason to distinguish how they're categorised.

[shpalman]

I appreciate where they're coming from, but if someone illustrated the exact things described in the writing, it would be illegal (my understanding is that even drawings of children having sex is against the law, and even if they're aged 16-17 - happy to be corrected).

Personally, from an offence perspective, I don't really see much difference in the pictorial version or the written version, if they depict the same thing, and see no reason to distinguish how they're categorised.

Ok so what if the things you just wrote in this post were pictures and not words.

Or someone were reading this over your shoulder and saw the words "children having sex" and took a photo.

[lpm]

You've made me go off and read these scribblings.

In the first it is consensual sex between Draco and Hermione, Malfoy/Granger in the slash jargon. There is nothing direct to show they are schoolchildren but presumably are (some of this stuff is set in the characters adult lives). It is underage by implication only and although Draco is being dominant it is not "somewhat rapey".

The second example surreptitiously recorded by the train creep was Harry Potter m.st.rbating alone to memories of Blaise. If my memory is correct Blaise Zabini was the Slytherin boy who was rich and self assured enough to be a bit contemptuous of Malfoy and his gang. Again, it is presumably Harry as an underage teenager.

Judging from the writing and subject matter I've no doubt this is teenager fanfic. Your stats on that fanfic site have no relevance unless split into fanfic universes. There are vast quantities of this stuff, from Captain Janeway/Commander Data slash fanfic to Mr Darcy/Black Panther slash fanfic. Inevitably the adult-teenage split will be very different by category.