TL;DR: A viral social media thread captured images of Sex Matters director and staunch anti-trans lobbyist Helen Joyce reading erotic fan fiction about teenage Harry Potter characters on a train. The organisation admitted Joyce was on the train and reads fan-fiction, claiming it was for research purposes.
The anti-trans lobbyist Helen Joyce has responded to a viral X thread which allegedly shows her reading NSFW Harry Potter fan fiction. The fiction is tagged as “Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley”, “Mildly Dubious Consent” and “Kidnapping” on the site it's hosted on - Trans Writes
In a statement responding to the photo, Sex Matters said, "Helen was travelling with colleagues on the train last night and all were working", adding that in her work on anti-trans lobbying, "Helen has done a great deal of research on how young people – especially girls – develop trans identities" including the "role of fan-fic" in this - Sex Matters
The organisation confirmed in a press statement that Joyce had been reading explicit fan fiction based on JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series of books - PinkNews
What do we know about the viral X thread's allegations?
The thread, posted by the account @dschw89, which has now been made private, alleges that:
- Joyce, after reading "fanfic porn", Whatsapps a group titled "Sex Matters Staff".
- She was travelling with two other Sex Matters staff members.
- The pornographic story pictured contains explicit wording about Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy having sex. Both those characters are below the UK age of consent during the majority of the series.
- The author found the wording seen on Joyce's screen on Fanfiction.net and compared their photo with screenshots from the site showing the same wording.
QueerAF has seen the photos and thread in full but has not been able to verify the allegations.
Helen Joyce has written, and spoken about reading erotic fan fiction before
By Sex Matters' own admission, Joyce has written about erotic fan-fiction for The Economist and her own newsletter, and spoken about it on a number of podcasts.
In these articles, she claims that a 'rise' of women enjoying and writing same-sex fan fiction about canonically straight characters is leading them to have fantasies that drive them to change their gender.
Of course, women consuming male-on-male erotica is far from a new phenomenon and has roots in many cultures, like the genre of “boys love” in which manga comics, film, literature, internet forums and TV series depict androgynous boys as being gay together - Vice
A book based on research into the topic found women watch male same-sex porn for a number of reasons, including not being re-traumatised by previous sexual assaults and, most commonly, flipping the "male gaze" prevalent in porn. Most opposite sex porn is made for straight male viewing - The Sunday Times, South Africa
Analysis: If an LGBTQIA+ person was caught reading erotic fan fiction on a train, let alone about kids, the media response would have been very different
The media response to this story was, rightly, initially sceptical. We must be careful when we see reports on unverified images in an age of generative AI and Photoshop. However, the statement from Sex Matters confirming Joyce was indeed travelling with colleagues and researching erotic fan fiction changed this.
The Daily Mail is happy to blow up a lovely queer kids' book for featuring a person wearing leather or frame a trans person complaining about being denied healthcare as an aggressor instead of the victim.
If you apply the same lens to this story, we should have seen headlines across the media about a leading, popular media pundit reading "minor" tagged porn in a public space. It would have been the kind of story that LGBTQIA+ people and organisations face every week, ending livelihoods, careers and businesses.
But we didn’t. Instead, Joyce was left to claim it was all perfectly acceptable behaviour in the name of research - no matter that kids might have been exposed to the content on her screen in a public space.
The hypocrisy is evident. And the irony of the erotic content being a JK Rowling-based story? Well, that’s too much to unpack here.
What happens on campus in further and higher education is often a sign of what's to come in society.
That's usually a theory that I draw a great deal of hope from. But in the current climate, that mood music is more complex.
But as Maisy Neale sets out ahead of National Student Pride 2024, the wider political clampdown on LGBTQIA+ people in the UK is impacting campus life.
Still, while a few academics with fringe anti-gender views try to push prejudiced views onto campus through the guise of 'academic freedom', students are pushing back.
This undervalued section of the UK voter base is politically aware and prepared to take action to secure their futures.
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