Biggus Titus of Oxford University

Wow, what a stella collection, I wonder if they need someone to pour the wine. 🤩

Ahhhhh. Thank you.

Are there seriously women here arguing that men wearing giant plastic breasts at work don’t create a hostile or degrading environment for female students and colleagues?

Are they the daughters of the ninnies who a generation ago used to insist that the rugby teams and drinking clubs were ‘just having a laugh’ with their naked antics and joyless feminists should learn to find them funny?

Naomi C, in response to Akua R:

Excellent thread. My only point of disagreement is that I feel rather more confident than Akua that wearing giant prosthetic breasts at work (or indeed anywhere else) is "conduct of a sexual nature." I honestly can't think what on earth it would be.

https://x.com/LoudBonnet/status/2049501190149243141

This looks very promising:

Yes, that makes sense thanks: it's harassment, not discrimination, so not about comparators.

I think ARs comments that a woman should not be treated less favourably for objecting to it is connected to the third kind of harassment not in connection with comparitors for discrimination on the basis of GR.

The third potentially relevant kind of harassment is where B is treated less favourably:

- because she rejected or submitted to the conduct, and

- the conduct was either of a sexual nature or was related to gender reassignment or sex

If he habitually came into a class containing disabled students ( or even one that didn't) by leaning heavily on a crutch he didn't need and adopting an exaggerated lopsided walk, would they defend that as "Oxford eccentricity", I wonder?

I agree, a bit of a puzzle.
Maybe the comparator just relates to GR, and doesn't include the second PC of sex.
So, comparator of 'person' with GR is person without GR. In this particular case, the complainant is more likely to also be a woman.
IANAL though

Thanks to sharing.

I don't understand this point:

If wearing the giant prosthetic breasts at work is connected to the man identifying as trans, it's arguable that it's conduct related to gender reassignment. If so, a woman employee must not be treated less favourably for objecting to it.

In the case of gender reassignment, I would assume the comparator is a man who doesn't identify as a woman. So a male (who identifies as a woman) should be treated no less favourably than a male who doesn't when it comes to standards of decency while working in the university. Presumably this means that it's fine for anyone to say they find it totally inappropriate for a trans-identifying male or a run-of-the-mill male to wear them.

Obviously IANAL and Akua R is... so I fully accept that I could be barking up the wrong tree.

Input from Akua R:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2049489384945107214.html

Hey, Helen. I wrote a long reply to this above that I then wasn't happy with either (see my ongoing worritting above about navigating this!) But basically, it's words like "it" that I really find unpleasant (and self-defeating). I agree we must be able to call out unacceptable behaviour. (I also read about the posts you mentioned upthread and was disgusted by the Green guy. It says it all).

Exactly that.

I wasn't happy with how I phrased the above, either (even reported it to try again, absurdly, as I'm finding this so hard to navigate - what a time-waster...) But yes, that's everything I mean, Arabella. And what we're supposed to say shows some seriously revealing swerving, too. 50 years ago, it was, Laugh it off (and don't worry, love). Now, it's Respect it (and shut up, poppet). What that's bypassed, notably, is women's right to speak their "truth" (based on devastating stats and a lifetime of experience): to say, This disturbs me immensely, and with good reason. And I think that history is directly reflected in my discomfort writing about it, actually. We've never been given or permitted the language to say that neither is this a belly-laugh pub joke, nor an admirable expression of deep-seated truth. It's fucking scary and/or degrading, is what it is - respect that, why don't you?!

Barbie Kardashian is 100% vulnerable. Likely ought to be accommodated in a secure hospital. See also the late Tiffany Scott/Obi Wan Kenobi.

Society has gone from treating incredibly damaged and dangerous men like this as less than human, straight to lionising them. Swerving the sensible in-between path of ensuring both they and society are protected as much as possible.

At root I suppose its still a lack of ability to manage people who dont/cant follow societal norms.

I mean you could argue that Barbie Kardashian is vulnerable. He obviously had a difficult childhood. He's also clearly very dangerous. He also goes around with massive fake boobs.

Barbie Kardashian is convicted of having violently attacked his social worker and ripped off her eyelid. He has also made violent, graphic threats to hurt and kill his mother.

Institutions have a responsibility to protect women from men who may be a risk even if they are also vulnerable. This responsibility appears to have been forgotten.

In this context I'm honestly appalled that Barbie spent so little time in prison and is now free.

Just for clarity (although I think you'll know I think this)... it absolutely should not be tolerated or, heaven forfend, encouraged. I realised, too late to edit, that the last para. of my above implicitly contradicted itself and was a bit unclear.

I wrote:

...Had you already considered how to balance these rights and come down on one side? Or did it not occur to you that any balancing was needed in the first place? (I'm honestly not sure which I'd find more disturbing).

What would be more accurate would be to say that there is a clear and easy way to enact a professional duty of care both to someone acting this way and his students: simply not to permit this. It's not a matter of a "balancing" of rights (the wrong phrase in this context), but rather that, in challenging this, an employer protects everyone in the long run. I think it's significant that, while we here would like any hypothetical action taken to be in order to prioritise student well-being, HR could just choose the strategic approach of having a discrete word "entirely in your interests" (perhaps warning of the potential for overly sensitive complainants / more conservatively-minded students / pick your cynical stereotype) so as to preempt what's now happening. That even this step increasingly isn't taken shows all the more the extraordinary level of capture - and how self-defeating it's been. I'm not an HR person, and recognise it would be a tricky path to tread whichever way you look at it, but feel there is surely a better way through.

Re: what more they could/should do besides that, including if there were health/well-being for the individual, I don't know. But it's immensely frustrating that whereas, in the recent past, this kind of behaviour would have indicated that something was seriously off, now it's seen as a sign of strength (stunning and brave, and all that). It feels as if we've rushed straight from denying or ridiculing this kind of thing (so it just keeps happening, but underground) to embracing it as admirable (meaning it just keeps happening, but in the office). All without stopping at a more responsible halfway point of thinking, OK, so as well as being hugely problematic for those affected, this sits so far at the far end of a spectrum that it may also justify some concern for the individual themself (who, in any case, has shown a problematic lack of awareness for how their behavior impacts others which needs to be addressed): as such, how do we actually respond to all this, from careful conversations with appropriate people at one end, to police involvement at the other?

I thought about this clearly deranged person overnight and came to the conclusion that yes, he is probably vulnerable and needs help, but the manifestation of his vulnerability is unacceptable.

In the same way, someone whose vulnerability manifested itself in cutting holes in the front of his garments so that his genitals were left hanging out of his trousers would need help.

I don't see why, in either case, anyone else (male or female) should be subjected to having to see the manifestations of vulnerability.

Research among several males of my acquaintance has revealed that they find this St Hilda's ginkwit as disgusting as I do, and wouldn't want to be lectured to on any subject by someone so obviously off his rocker. Pity may be possible, but any desire to have anything to do with him isn't present.

And I doubt that pity is what he is trying to get.

Re this going viral, has it broken out into the mainstream press world?

Isla Bryson was the last time this happened. This story has the potential to do the same, although obviously for different reasons.

I am yet to meet anyone in the everyday world who thinks Isla Bryson deserves identity validation etc. The nearest anyone seems to get to that is a variation on rapist-gender when discussing whether Isla is a woman. For most people though, it's an easy "of course not".

Obviously this lecturer isn't claiming to be a woman (like Isla did) but the similarity is that I suspect most people would look at those giant rubber breasts on show and conclude very easily that this look is wholly inappropriate for a lecturer at a university. Once there is enough public awareness, anyone defending it in any way is going to sound as odd as Nicola Sturgeon did re IB. Currently it sounds like the sympathy card is just about working. With enough exposure (pardon the pun 🤢) it won't.

Yes, that's true.

I think it was the explanation of finding others in their internet hugbox and how this helped to embolden the whole group that clicked for me.

I don't know if the toaster fetish quite covers it. Because:

It's worth remembering that many of these fetishes are predicated on the responses of other people. That may be seeking attention, shock, anger, disgust, shaming, even. The whole 'sissy' thing revolves around eliciting disgust and angry responses from other people.

Wearing an absurdly large pair of fake breasts is undoubtedly invoking a sexual response based on the responses of others, particularly the non-consensual aspects.

Most paraphilias include non-consensual participation.

https://icd.who.int/browse/2026-01/mms/en#2110604642

'Paraphilic Disorders are characterized by persistent and intense patterns of atypical sexual arousal, manifested by sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, or behaviours, in which the focus of the arousal pattern involves others whose age or status renders them unwilling or unable to consent (e.g., pre-pubertal children, an unsuspecting individual being viewed through a window, an animal). Paraphilic Disorders may also involve other atypical sexual arousal patterns if they cause marked distress to the individual or involve significant risk of injury or death.
Paraphilic Disorders include the following:
6D30 Exhibitionistic Disorder
6D31 Voyeuristic Disorder
6D32 Pedophilic Disorder
6D33 Coercive Sexual Sadism Disorder
6D34 Frotteuristic Disorder
6D35 Other Paraphilic Disorder Involving Non-Consenting Individuals'

No indeed.

And it' certainly worth noting where most of the "nasty dehumanising stuff" has actually been coming from in this 'debate' and to whom it's mostly been directed over the last decade or so.

Unfortunately, a decades-worth of violently abusive misogynistic language akin to incel and domestic abuser talk is not considered sufficiently demeaning to mere women, not to mention the constant smearing and lies about individual women who stand up for their own legal rights under longstanding equality and human rights laws, to 'count' even as a "micro-aggression" in the eyes of so many self-appointed "progressives". In fact, when it's not being studiously ignored and/or enabled, it's even been considered praiseworthy by some (see Jolyon Maugham and his support of masked violent woman-haters Bash Back, for example).

So no, I'm not going to consider women pointing out that a man behaving like a creepy fetishist is a man behaving like a creepy fetishist and perhaps it shouldn't be enabled by his misogynistic mates as being either nasty or dehumanising.

I'm reminded by this comment that:

Selina Todd (Professor in the History Faculty) has had to have security to & from lectures, and was stopped from speaking at a Women's Liberation conference held at an Oxford college.

Prof. Kathleen Stock had to have multiple security guard protection when she was invited to speak at the Oxford Union.

So who is really being damaged here? Who are the "poor vulnerable" people here?

Sure as hell ain't the trans-identfied fetish displaying men ...