Biggus Titus of Oxford University

@oxfordfeminist your granny has died, or perhaps your infant grandson, and the man who comes to your parents' or child's house to organise the funeral is wearing oversized fake breasts. Do you think that is okay?

It's a genuine question, I'm not trying to trip you up or be hateful, I really would like to understand your thinking.

I think overall I'd personally find a naturist lecturer less threatening as I know there really are people who just like to go around naked. I don't think it's appropriate in a workplace because I do think it'd exclude many students. However it's is less likely to be a sexual fetish imo than massive fake tits.

What if he felt comfortable wearing a codpiece like Grayson Perry has been known to, would that be okay?

You say there are differences between race and gender that make white people in blackface offensive and unacceptable, but male people in womanface or giant fake tits simply self expression.

Can you please back this up by giving some example of differences and explain why as a result the impact of these acts on members of the two oppressed groups is so different?

Ok @oxfordfeminist

I too am old and tired but thankfully post menopause.

I do not think this thread has been especially hostile towards Matt or yourself.

All we are asking is why is he wearing a massive pair of rubber boobs? As a Science teacher surely he deals in actual facts? The fact he ensures the boobs are always visible in all of his photos is a deliberate act. You must see that?

At best it is silly and provocative and at worst it is a massive red flag to see what reaction he gets and if the reaction is negative he can pull out whatever card people objecting to fake massive boobs is now a hate crime.

We have got to a point where in my opinion and experience, mediocre people in the workplace adopt a ‘characteristic’ that we no longer can challenge as everything from anxiety to stress to fetish has to be tolerated.

What is the next boundary to be pushed? When can we as women say no, enough?

Actually I dress in a way that is appropriate for the occasion or event. Not just comfort.

Does it matter if one person feeling 'comfort' makes many others uncomfortable? Are naturist lecturers allowed?

I find it deeply ironic that OF finds this online space where they're not required to come "a hostile space" but the space Matt R is creating for female and tbh male students with his giant rubber breasts where they are required to be not at all hostile

Also massive fake tits are not clothing. They have no practical purpose. He's not wearing them, he's using them.

Are other sex toys allowed at work at Oxford? Massive dildo?

but it's such a hostile and one-sided space here

Well, if you engage in good faith, and at least try to answer the questions you clearly would rather not answer, then the space becomes not one-sided, surely?

I would say that race and gender are very different issues, in some ways it's a big red herring (not to mention downright racist) to conflate the two

I, for one, would be very interested in an explanation about this statement, if you have one? We were discussing the use of blackface to "represent" certain people in a derogatory way and the use of "woman-dress" (for lack of a better term) to represent women in a derogatory way.

I'm very happy to chat about this with people one-on-one

But, you would rather not discuss these issues in public or on a forum? Even if you are anonymous? Is this because you don't have any actual credible information? Or are you used to dealing with only one person at a time? That would be difficult, I imagine, when dealing with students all the time as an academic.

I don't have the time or capacity to reply to all the comments, nor do I have all the answers.

Oh, my mistake, you've covered part of that question already. So, just "translating" a bit here, you are saying from the outset that you are not going to answer any questions you don't feel like have time to spend answering. Ok, no problem, you're not obliged to answer questions. Perhaps just don't expect us to believe what you state without evidence.

Yes! But the thing is, we don't personally attack each other. We may be dead opposed to one another's ideas, but there's still an underlying assumption of good faith. Ideally anyway!

Here on the MN threads it feels very different. When I was younger I cared more about engaging with anyone who was up for it. Now I'm just older and tireder. Sorry! (and thank you menopause)

If you come to Oxford, DM me and we can meet for coffee.

So you're ok with, for example, observant Muslims self-excluding from the course?

And how can any student complain given the witch hunt against Dr North? They obviously can't. Relying on complaints where there's a totalitarian imposition of the gender religion is just another way of shutting down concerns and excluding people.

I'd like to know when and where this nonsense attire is deemed acceptable. At the bank? An estate agent? A solicitor?
People would vote with their feet, surely.
Students are stuck with their teachers. So it's a calculated move by Matt, isn't it?

“I'm really tempted to engage with some of the questions, but it's such a hostile and one-sided space here, it feels like a self-destructive exercise from my point of view (in that I'm just setting myself up to be attacked).”

Aren’t academics (especially Oxbridge ones) used to having to engage with robust challenge? I thought it was one of the cornerstones of the gold-standard tutorial system?

I'm not at Matt R's college so I don't know how the college is handling any potential student complaints. We don't know what if anything has happened behind the scenes.

From my experience I would say that colleges now handle student complaints of sexual harassment in a much more robust and sensitive way than they did previously. A lot has changed over the course of my academic career. That doesn't mean that everything is perfect now, but progress has been made. The possibility of litigation is also now very real, which is a good thing; it means that uni admin is less likely to close ranks and ignore complaints made by students or colleagues.

Where I differ with most people on this thread is that I don't see Matt R as having done anything complaint-worthy, unless further information comes to light.

We all dress in ways that make us feel comfortable, whether that means wearing makeup or cutting/styling our hair or choosing particular clothes or having plastic surgery. I don't see wearing prosthetic breasts as categorically different. Yeah, it might look a bit ridiculous, but that's not the same as abuse.

Wishing everyone a good weekend.

Yes I'd love to know this too. @BlueLegume I find myself nodding along to your posts all the time

Ok @oxfordfeminist if you do not see a man wearing oversized rubber breasts as a fetish please could you describe how you see it?

I don't see it as a fetish, sorry.

I would return to the point that this lecturer should be judged on the basis of what they say and how they teach, not on what they're wearing.

About blackface, I would say that race and gender are very different issues, and in some ways it's a big red herring (not to mention downright racist) to conflate the two.

To compare is not to conflate. Though I can see how someone who doesn't wasn't to engage could mix the two up and add an accusation of racism to avoid having to explain what they believe to be the difference.

There was nothing red-herring nor racist about the academic paper discussing drag and blackface linked upthread , which I assume you didn't have time to read.

What do you think about the students who feel othered and creeped out by Matt's massive fake tits? They'll definitely exist.

What do you think the University's responsibility to them is, to have a place where they can study without feeling they are being used as an unconsenting participant in a fetish?

I'm really tempted to engage with some of the questions, but it's such a hostile and one-sided space here, it feels like a self-destructive exercise from my point of view (in that I'm just setting myself up to be attacked). As I said, I'm very happy to chat about this with people one-on-one, but the MN feminist threads have a strong trend of belittling/insulting language ('you're like Aunt Lydia! you're a handmaiden!', 'you're a traitor to your sex!' etc). So it feels like a defeatist exercise.

About blackface, I would say that race and gender are very different issues, and in some ways it's a big red herring (not to mention downright racist) to conflate the two.

I decided to respond to the 'you are not who you say you are' issue as that's more straightforward. Very simply, I am who I say I am. But responding in that way could be seen as self-defeatist too, because there's no way of proving that on MN without outing yourself in real life.

I used to try to argue in good faith on these threads and explain the rationale behind trans-inclusive feminism, but I don't do that any more, because the issue is so emotive and it inevitably turns into a massive pile-on.

You can criticise me for that, fine, but even relatively resilient people need to look after their own mental health.

Please note that I haven't accused anyone on this thread of not being a feminist. To me, feminism is a broad church, and intelligent women can espouse a diversity of views. I hate dogmas of all kinds, and I'm endlessly careful not to impose a dogma on my students.

I posted on this thread not to say 'I teach at Oxford, my point of view is ultimate truth' but to say, 'I'm at Oxford, I'm actually a colleague of Matt R, and this is how I see things.'

Feel free to disagree. I don't have the time or capacity to reply to all the comments, nor do I have all the answers. My main goal is to point out that feminists don't need to 'other' one another.

I do find it interesting to see when OF disappeared. I'm wary of saying this - who knows what's happening at their end - but in general terms, it's such a clear pattern among visitors using those same old lines. If they come back at all, it's usually when enough time's elapsed since the last difficult question that it can be more safely avoided. And often tellingly soon after a much, much easier post for them to challenge has appeared, as the moment they focus on that, conversation's carried even further from the issue they want to avoid.

I know it's rough to be in the minority here, but I find it so hard to understanding visiting here knowing the kind of perspectives expressed and persisting in opposing these... but doing so so obviously inadequately. If I'd come along wanting to change hearts and minds, I'd be diving right into debating the most challenging and popular questions. And OF claims to be able, and want, to do that - calling for academic rigour early on, and more recently, nuance.

To call for this but then not to recognise or even model it kind of suggests a visitor never really wanted to debate and came for a different reason entirely, or don't have any answers anyway - or that they suspect, on some level, the weakness of these answers. Or, maybe, they think answers just aren't necessary - which takes us back to this being a kind of religious dogmatism, with tambourine-wielding evangelists...

Whatever, it just seems to undermine their cause. I sometimes want to take over and try to argue it for them. I mean, the blackface thing is fascinating, and not entirely straightforward. There are some strong arguments that it's not an appropriate equivalence, from a historical, logical and ethical perspective. I think we could steelman (is that the word?!) it here pretty well tbh, in a way our visitors just don't seem prepared even to try...