Biggus Titus of Oxford University

[Forecastsayssnowbutthereisnosnow]

Sadly, not a Monty Python sketch.

Matt Rattley, a large bearded bloke who wears giant fake breasts, appears to be happily working at Oxford Uni.

I was really hoping this wasn't true but there is even a youtube video with him talking while wearing the giant breasts and red lipstick, applied to a degree any circus clown would be accused of overdoing it. The video includes a slide stating he works as a lecturer and tutor in the Biochemistry Dept at Oxford. He's also on LinkedIn.

I mean, how obvious can it be that this is a sexual fetish which he is involving unconsenting students and staff in???

Dr P on X has been (correctly) very robust on this case:

""This is Matt Rattley saying, "I can do whatever I please and nobody can stop me".

This is highly antisocial, abnormal, boundary-violating, paraphilic behaviour.

And we should not be afraid to say so."

I thought you had marking to do.

His behavior is abusive and you are expecting 18 year olds to complain about it before the university does anything about it. This is a shocking dereliction of safeguarding duty. Honestly. I am shocked.

You won’t even need to find a table. You can both just balance your coffee cups on his massive fake tits.

As a non-British person I have often wondered about the British obsession with Oxford and Cambridge, I'm even less convinced now that it is justified.

If one of this man's students came to you and say they were uncomfortable and feeling harassed what would you do?

It's particularly galling that he's at St Hilda's.

Also, he has an academic job but no PhD as far as I can see...

But NO female academic dressed like this would be taken seriously. THey wouldn't get an interview, let alone a job.

Sigh. I know what abuse of power looks like. (FWIW I was a student of Simon Goldhill many years ago... I won't say more, but it was uncomfortable.)

Being a trans or queer academic does not in itself constitute abusive behaviour. It's amazing that I even have to say this in the 21st century.

In fact, in past centuries, one can find far more flexible notions of gender identity and sexual identity than are evident on an MN thread like this one.

Judging by the posts they'd explain that they were making Matt feel uncomfortable and sad and that boundaries are for peasants. Possibly with a suggestion that said student should reframe their trauma

I have been expecting one of the (alas, they do exist) Oxford apologists to turn up eventually.

In fact, so confident was I that I put money on it.

Thank you, oxfordfeminist; you have won me a fiver.

And OP should be a good little woman and shut up, because men can do whatever they like. And sex fetishists are absolutely harmless. Until they’re not.

It's not him being trans or queer that constitutes abusive behaviour it's his actual behaviour that is abusive.

That's assuming he is trans or queer

Oh god not this one

the one where women who couldn't participate in multiple occupations and positions because of you know sexism (odd isn't it how in the past they always knew exactly who wasn't allowed to vote wasn't it?) and in desperation to do what they wanted to do, disguised themselves as men were in fact men all the time??

it's the Joan of arc was nb argument isn't it

If a female student confided in you that she was getting a horrible ick sensation from interacting with a male lecturer who wore giant rubber boobs with lots of cleavage on show (let's call it an AGP vibe that she was sensing) would you tell her that she should focus on the words in the lecture rather than the way the lecturer chose to dress?

If you can't comprehend that a bearded man wearing an enormous pair of fake tits to work is a "fetish", then it doesn't say much for your own critical thinking skills, frankly. Nor your social awareness. Nor your understanding of men's fetishes or those who've been impacted by them. Or boundaries and consent, or care of your students, come to that.

You're a gullible enabler, basically, displaying precisely the kind of woolly-minded handwavery that abusers, fetishists and others who seek to push others' personal boundaries deiberately seek out. It's not very intelligent behaviour at all. So I'd drop the faux intellectual snobbery if I were you. Your lack of awareness is embarrassingly naive, not a sign of intellectual superiority.

This isn't about whether somebody is gay, trans or whatever this man thinks he is.

This is about a work place, but also a place where young people are probably for the first time away from home, and finding their way in on their own.

As a PP poster said this have nothing to do with trans, gay or anything else.

This is about somebody behaving inappropriately in a work place and imposing on others mostly young people, to accept something that isn't normal is normal.

Again as a PP said is a woman with naturally large breasts dressed like this at work I have no doubt she would be criticised not just by colleages but employer.

I am sure there are many gay men who on a night out or on a "Pride" march dress in an exhibitionist way, but do not go to work dressed like that.

I think even if it was just about a shared workplace this would be wrong.

I think that young people are being meant to see this a normal is very wrong.

Added to which there is no evidence this has anything to with being gay or trans and to imply this is insulting to both.

This is someone who has found he can make his exhibitionism "normal" because the whole rainbow umbrella has now been spread so far those who aren't in fact part of that rainbow now assume this weird perversion is part of it.

If however this is in fact an actual manifestation of queer politics, then gross as it is, it does show how fatuous and meaningless queer politics is.

I look forward to an essay by Judith Butler on how this is the peak of queer expressionsim.

@MrsOvertonsWindow you're right that I should have probably put a warning on that video! Although in my defence, it was shown on prime time national TV before the watershed.

No but his massive comedy breasts are.

You're behind the curve, mate. Almost everybody knows about autogynephilia now.

Seriously. Ketchup!

@oxfordfeminist I get what you're saying, but for me (another feminist academic) the parody of "womanhood" this man is displaying, and the contempt it demonstrates for actual women, is what is wrong here. His choice of clothing and that awful joke shop, pantomime false breast plate is just basically insulting to women.

And that's before we start on the lack of professionalism in the way he's dressing.

I'm sorry you had those encounters with Goldhill. FWIW, he's been very helpful to me on a couple of occasions - but then this was only a couple of years ago, and I'm a few years older than him! Men who use their power over undergrads like that are despicable (I have friends who tell stories of a certain T. Eagleton, so it's not related to political allegiances or discipline).

Ooh I've been deleted!

Must go and sit on the naughty step.

Hopefully no one wearing massive rubber tits passes me by or they'll have my eye out.

Why do you keep using ‘them’ instead of ‘him’ for Matt Rattley?

Sycophants.

Maybe she’s talking about the comedy tits?

Dress code in my office is “no bright trousers and skirts to the knee” but I bet they’d be too scared to challenge a bloke doing this.

Yep.

Trying to argue for the rights of a man wearing fetish prosthetic of sexualised body parts to work in a position of authority where he is advising or teaching young people is the Emperor's New Clothes taken to its most absurd extreme.

Does the phrase ' rape culture' ring any bells?