Biggus Titus of Oxford University

Just a reminder that not everyone on the internet is who they say they are.

The threads on these boards often attract posters which imply that they are an older female (when there are male posters under neutral names who are perfectly welcome) with lots of life experience, but who then proceed to speak as though theyve never lived in the normal world as a female does. Often they’ll claim some scenario where they have insider knowledge about that workplace or type of environment, or safeguarding etc etc but then spout the most huge amount of nonsense. Usually they are “feminist”.

If OF is really a female academic in Oxford who is acquainted with Matt, I’ll eat my hat!

End of public service announcement.

That was why I though Mr Menno's insightful question as to sexual motivation was important, and that being too 'respectful' to go there was a mistake.

The comment about childish language is really interesting, esp. re. the nuance issue, BlueLegume.

I'd not thought of it quite this way before, but there's so much of it - "be kind!" "this is this and that is that!" and, of course, the endless hyperbole about "hate" (which really is the language of the playground when applied so unthinkingly to women discussing their rights). There's a childishness to the thinking, too - it's so simplistic - right/wrong, black/white, good/evil etc.

And then when you see all that layered over what are, fundamentally, irreconcilable inconsistencies in what's being said, at least without careful analysis and argument (which we never get), it really does expose it as cod-science / magical thinking / crowd mentality.

These are all features of OF's posts.

I really am getting more direct in my frustration at these things, because I've been resisting saying it this clearly for a while but am going to now: I don't believe for a second that they're an academic.

Yes, you can get "stupid" academics, and certainly very stupid politicians, where you see this kind of superficial engagement with a complex issue - but there's usually a particular, recognisable flavour to the stupidity that means you can at least see how they got whatever position it is they're in - it's mitigated by reductive political conviction, or canny rhetoric, or a clear capacity for meaningful analysis in other contexts that is just not being engaged here.

OF's posts just don't seem to have that. They come across as very immature - sometimes quite childish - in style and in thought. I honestly do think it's likeliest that they're a late teen / young adult.

ETA on reading Legume's last - yes, you can see how marketing has influenced the whole thing, too, in the simplicity of the mantras.

But if anyone does dare to comment in a space where comment is possible as Tanya de Grunwald did on Linkedin - even in the mildest terms - he deletes that.

I'd simply like to ask him 'do you think your students feel comfortable with you wearing pornified fake breasts on display?'. I'd like him to answer that question. Plus biochemistry faculty and the St Hilda's governing board. What a waste of space they all are.

The authoritarian abuse of power is pretty clear.

It is, as a PP has said, the University prioritising abuser over victims.

I think the past 30 years has seen so much organised funding and research into the transgender movement history will look back and hopefully unpick the Harry Benjamin to WPATH legacy and hopefully expose it for what it is. Fetish dressed up to push boundaries under the woke and ‘be kind’ mantra. Big pharmaceutical companies know they are getting customers for life and the use of language as ‘affirming care’ has seen responsibility for safeguarding be blown out of all proportion.

I do think the young women who have been directed down this route have been let down by every adult and health care provider they have encountered.

The social engineering of this movement is horrific. Every institution captured with TRAs writing policies and contributing to school curricula. Quite frankly we have been marched all over.

Every time Oxfordfeminist posts I'm reminded of the aunt Lydia's who enabled Gilead

He feels comfortable (or quite possibly, more than comfortable), everyone else does not. There's a power differential too. It's sexual harassment.

There is such a lack of logic. I'm wondering why my taxpayers money goes towards the research being done there when they're so fucking stupid.

Well you're othering all the students who have safeguarding instincts and don't want to participate in this man's fetish. Which is going to be a much bigger number than the 1 that is the man wearing enormous fake breasts.

I guess what we are asking is how far are we expected to push our boundaries to accommodate others desire to identify as another sex/race/non binary etc.

It seems if we do not keep moving our own boundaries then we will be seen as not ‘be kind’ people. It is such a dreadful play on the use of language.

The rate we are going everyone in the workplace will identify as someone with a protected characteristic and HR will be in a worse pickle than they already are with all the DEI stuff.

@DeanElderberry I agree. This whole gender is a social construct is a mantra for them.

I think what is sad is that the young women who are opting out of womanhood and undergoing double mastectomies are given child like language such as ‘top surgery’ to describe the mutilation.

Where will this all stop? People identifying as disabled using the same language as the trans movement have? People removing limbs because they ‘feel’ like they shouldn’t have a leg for example?

I am aware of the guy who did this as part of his fetish but I can see outside of the fetish world anxious young people being brainwashed to believe they should only have one leg.

I used to work in education and left at the peak of young girls deciding to identify as boys. They were all incredibly vulnerable and seemed frightened of growing up. They should have been left to naturally grow up but instead they went from anxiety medication to endocrinologist appointments to blockers to testosterone incredibly fast. Many of them with parents able to get and pay for private referrals.

@Kucinghitam 's insights about race-based abuse are also a very useful comparison. I hope OF comes back and tells us again why the abuser is more important than the victim.

I thought @SecretSquirrelLoo's post yesterday at 21:13 was a useful insight. The are effectively members of a closed and controlling religion, and their self-worth depends on not challenging it. See their shock and bafflement when we don't treat the 'phobic' accusation as an automatic shut-down, and their conviction that 'gender' has always been a single, definable, unchanging thing people have. It's all cod theology.

Just watched an an old episode of 9 out of 10 cats does countdown wth JC wearing a similar set of fake boobs for comedic purposes. The all male panels laughed but also found it quite disturbing which as peers they could strongly verbalise.
How are young people meant to cope with this? Why are we normalising this shit?

Oh you are back @oxfordfeminist.

There are two questions I would love you to answer.

Why did students wearing sombreros on a piss up get into trouble, or wearing blackface yet Matt can don (pun intended) giant prosthetic breasts and that is just him being 'comfortable in his skin'?

If a student came to you and she felt uncomfortable with the giant prosthetic tits, would you accept that, or would you try and help her understand why the giant prosthetic tits on a bearded man are just part of life's rich tapestry?

Imagine that student is me. Small frame but massive norks. This is pre Bravissimo. I started every single day literally grappling with my giant tits. No bras that fitted. I wore giant shirts that made me took like a tank. If I wore anything even vaguely fitted, I was guaranteed to attract unwanted male attention. They affected every aspect of my life until better bras became available and I got old enough to care a bit less.

Being faced by a man in comedy breasts during a tutorial would have absolutely broken me. Would I be safe coming to you?

@oxfordfeminist I do think answering the question posed about blackface warrants an answer. Equally anyone presenting themselves with cultural misappropriation surely would not and should not be tolerated - anywhere.

I am very open to you explaining how we would be discussing Matt Rattley presenting as another race. I think we would be very cautious about using the word nuance.

@oxfordfeminist

You are not showing yourself, or your university, in a good light. Other people here will have degrees from Oxford or Cambridge. We don't have to 'think' what 'people at Oxford might be like'.

The least you could do is to stop ignoring the straightforward questions that posters on here have repeatedly asked. If you are unable to answer, because you don't know the answers or perhaps haven't reached a coherent position, then some research would be helpful. The Break it down for me threads might be a good place to start.

What if I feel comfortable in a bikini? Can I wear that, and only that, to work? What if I want to go topless, with just a thong? Can I wear a t-shirt saying, "Suck my dick you cunty students." Is that OK? Why not? Do you agree that there are some expectations around acceptable workwear, even in an organisation with no dress code?

I second the calls for OF to model the nuance we lack by breaking down the difference between blackface and what's happening here, with particular reference to the concept of "othering" through reductive and parodic representation.

Speaking of, I'm also interested in her definition of parody. She doesn't see it in the post above, and clearly doesn't see it in this individual's presentation, either... Another golden opportunity to explain a subtle distinction?

As a rule, parodies do aim to sound silly.

They're a good way to signal disagreement, yes, but they do so by exaggerating key characteristics of the original.

It was fairly recognisable to me what those were in the above: above all, tone and rather enjoyably unconscious irony.

There was a man (trans-identifying) who made himself 'feel comfortable'* by rolling around in used nappies. Unfortunately for him he wasn't an Oxford academic so to jail he's gone.

*despite being witnessed with his pants down while making himself comfy the judge apparently bought that it wasn't sexual.

I find the repeated assertion that this lecturer feels comfortable wearing his enormous falsies vastly amusing.

Nobody could find those things comfortable. It must be torture wearing them for any length of time. Sweaty and horrible. Also heavy; they probably play hell with the balance of his vertebrae and give him backache. Come summer having them on will (we can hope) become seriously painful.

But maybe masochism is the point?

I was brought up in very religious evangelical Christian circles and there’s something so recognizable about the way Oxford feminist and her ilk talk that makes me feel vomity. It’s the self-abnegating obedience, the claiming of righteousness through feminine compliance, the complacent repeating of the right words, the cloak of kind phrases, the self-satisfied refusal to engage one’s own brain, the smug deference to male authority and ‘comfort’. Ugh. I’m off to shower.