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."

Some years ago, I had a union member ask me for representation. He was a lecturer, and he had been told by his female HOD to go home and change, or he would be disciplined for inappropriate dress. He had turned up for work wearing shorts. He claimed that he was being victimised as his colleague Brian, also wearing shorts, had not been told to go home and change.

The weather had been unusually hot, so the workplace was incredibly warm.

I took one look at Stan in his very tight faded denim short shorts, with frayed edges and crotch bulge. He smirked for sure as he demanded Justice.

Brian, on the other hand, was wearing a natty linen suit with t shirt and below the knee baggy shorts.

I told Stan that it was best he go home and change, as the difference between him and Brian, was that Brian didn't have his bollocks on display when sitting with his legs wide apart. And so he did, with bad grace. Nice try creepy Stan.

Nowadays it seems I would be oppressing his true expression of his true self contra to para 234 b of the Union Handbook.

As it's different times now, I think Matts union rep should demand his right to have his pic included in the staff publicity. So that all the students can see who is going to tutor them.

Quite. Some academics really need to realise that there is more to the world than teaching and research. And I say that as someone who works in academia.

@oxfordfeminist I am the long time, very reluctant owner of a set of 34FFs. Over the years I have been groped by strangers, ogled by lecturers, had many many men talk to my boobs. These are men that would generally be considered to be good eggs.

From my daily lived experience am very very aware of just how much men sexualise large breasts. I keep them as covered as I can for just this reason.

The only time in my life I have encountered men wearing large prosthetic breasts it was for the purpose of either being derogatory to women e.g. countless stag dos, some pretty gross drag acts and/or as part of a sexual fetish.

So, if a beardy bloke turns up to my workplace wearing a giant pair of prosthetic boobs with a red lacy top on, why would I assume any reason for this outside it being at best a mockery of me personally or a insult to women generally to at worst a display of a fetish in the workplace that I am being forced to participate in.

How would I be assured that my conclusion is not the right one? He could be as nice as pie to me and I would still believe with every fibre in my being that he was being deeply and grossly offensive to me and all women. Should I just be expected to believe that despite my 40 years plus experience, that this is the one man who has a non sexual relationship with giant breasts?

This is not a witch hunt, this is a plea to go back to leaving your giant prosthetic tits at home and brining you professional self to work.

Oh. And I would bet all the gold that would fit in my giant 34FF cups that Matt has made plenty of women feel mighty uncomfortable. But feminists like you mean they hesitate to speak up.

Fuck this has pissed me off. Someone claiming to both have a brain and be a feminist defending this.

I am just imaging how the conversation goes when some first year pitches up, and complains

Fresher "Erm, I just wanted to say how uncomfortable I feel with the giant prosthetic tit wearing of one of my tutors"

Oxford Feminist "But what exactly has Matt said or done to make you feel uncomfortable"

Fresher "well, I was kind of thinking the giant fake tit wearing would be enough"

Oxford Feminist "oh no, unless and until he decides to motorboat you with them, then we must all assume this is an entirely normal and not at all sexual expression of his gender identity. For anything else would be a witch hunt, would it not?

Can I interest you in my extensive library of Judith Butler books?

Thank you @Taytoface . Same, except mine are 38 ff. I spent years dressing to detract from the damn things. That man definitely feels like an affront to the sexism and sexual harassment I faced in my life and career. And I think that most large breasted women would feel the same.

On reading the first couple of lines of your post, OP, I thought he was going to be some horrible, pervy entertainer working at Oxford University. I can’t get my head around him being a man of science. And wearing massive, comedy tits while explaining the Krebs Cycle in his biochemistry lectures.

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

The idea that one can express an identity by appropriating somebody else's body parts makes my skin crawl.

It affirms the belief that a woman's breast size/voice/gait/height is all a choice and that by simply having a female body a woman is deliberately sending a message to men 24 hours a day. It's 'she was asking for it', but without even the requirement that a woman wear a short skirt.

At least when the rugby club does this kind of thing on a stag night they are probably drunk and aware that some people will find them offensive.

When a man does it and doesn't even allow for women to be offended, that is abuse.

I think it is also worth considering the effect that this type of behaviour has on the young men in his class. This man, in a position of authority, is modelling misogynistic behaviour to his male students. At best he is showing them that it is fine to humiliate women, at worst that it is laudable to involve them in a fetish. He is showing them that they have the power to disrespect women and to control women's reaction to that.
That the University/College are complicit in that tells us all we need to know about how little Oxford values women.

This is an important point, and one that often gets missed in these discussions. Amy de Sousa (psychotherapist knownheretic on Insta and various other places) shared the following story, which I think is relevant here:

STORY: Principal in NC tells girls to "go somewhere else" if they don't like boys in their locker room.

This is the SAME OLD cultural playground script | grew up with: telling the girls that if they don't like what the boys are doing to ignore it, go away, or simply "boys will be boys."

What's actually happening in that playground (locker room) moment

A common scenario:

• One group (boys) escalates intensity-rough play, teasing, intrusion
• Another group (girls) signals discomfort
• Authority response: "If you don't like it, go somewhere else."

On the surface, that sounds like conflict avoidance. But underneath, it teaches two very different lessons at the same time:

To the ones crossing boundaries (boys):

• Your impulse doesn't need to be regulated-others will adapt around you
• External feedback (someone saying "stop") is optional, not meaningful

To the ones experiencing the boundary being crossed (girls):

• Your discomfort doesn't organize the environment—you must relocate yourself
• The solution is withdrawal, not response

So one side isn't required to develop internal brakes, and the other isn't supported in exercising external limits.

Why this matters (the deeper mechanism)

Healthy boundary development has two parts:

• Internal boundary: "I can feel my impulse and regulate it"
• External boundary: "I can respond when something crosses my line"

That playground message bypasses both:

• It removes the need for internal regulation in the initiator
• It removes the legitimacy of external response in the receiver

So instead of:
"Your behavior needs to adjust" and
"Your signal matters"*

The system teaches:
"Boys expand, girls accommodate"

@oxfordfeminist

Asking you this time. If a trans man tutor decides to put a big phallus shaped item inside their trousers - noticeable enough that the first impression anyone would have was that their tutor had a massive erect penis - would the sheer discomfort of others justify a request to desist? Or does that person have to be sexually harrass someone expressly before this takes place? Just so that we can see whether standards are being applied consistently. I’m not saying, by the way, that having large breasts is the same as having a constant erection in daily life, but the lecturer with the big inflatable breasts has chosen an item that is intended to push the boundaries, and this would be the male equivalent.

@TwoLoonsAndASprout Yes, that is a brilliant analysis. Thanks for posting it.

The irony is that Queer theory is supposed to provoke a critique of the power dynamics around gender and sexuality, yet that critique appears to be missing from one of the top-ranked universities in the world and is being explored on Mumsnet and X instead.

Makes it more likely that it is not a bold expression of queerness in a biochemistry class, just an everyday bloke with a fetish.

They know this won't fly with the very very wealthy foreign parents who pay tens of thousands to send their children to Oxford.

It's part of the coercive control, really. They know it's wrong, but they allow it then gaslight anyone who dares complains and employ DARVO.

Imagine if you'd spent 30k a year for your daughter to go to Oxford and then she's faced with this dude with comedy clearly porn-inspired fake breasts?

I hope they get sued by such a parent.

I wonder if it would be ok for a woman to go around with a massive dildo (fake penis) strapped to her head? Surely that's less obviously sexual / related to porn than if it's in the correct anatomical location. It's just a comedy fake penis then. Still offensive to very many students and staff I'd imagine but LESS offensive than Biggus Titus where it's very likely to be a fetish on public display.

I think he's enjoying asking why no-one engages with his lectures - because he knows that no-one can say 'it's the massive fake tits, Matt, they make us uncomfortable on many levels and you know that, that's why you do it'. Because they'd be threatened, bullied and ostracised if they were honest.

But is the fact that we are discussing it in an of itself gratifying to this individual? I wondered if it might be mortifying but I suspect all attention is good attention.

I have a trans colleague, an incredibly gentle soul who would I’m fairly sure never dream of asking to gain access to female changing space, and who wears conservative feminine clothing. One of my favourite colleagues for their wit, intelligence, and insight. Their female persona is not big or grand, if anything it’s the opposite of attention seeking and perhaps almost apologetic.

for me, the difference here is the brazen and overt provocation of the giant breasts on display (I don’t much enjoy that on anyone in a professional context), with enormous scraggly beard and male name and entitlement. It’s the living embodiment of ‘I dare you…’. And it’s not about finding a way to live in a way that is true to some inner semblance of self, it’s about reward, gratification, and entitlement. The very things that women have been fighting men over for ever. His presence at Oxf in a position of power shows how little Oxf value women, and tbh I’m not sure they ever have.

Well, it's been less than 50 years that women have had (technically!) the same status as men at Oxford.

This is what I think younger women often forget (or don't even realise) when they defend behaviour that upholds age-old stereotypes reducing woman-to-body-not-mind, and other behaviours that make female access to tertiary education more challenging.

There could theoretically be posters on this thread right now who would have been excluded from Oxford because of their sex, in their lifetime.

That's how recent (and potentially vulnerable) our access to tertiary education is.

And that's the context in which we're judging this behaviour.

https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/article/a-short-history-of-womens-education-at-the-university-of-oxford

The least St Hilda's should do, given that they are employing this person, is to have his picture clearly visible on their website. Not an old picture with him dressed conventionally, but showing clearly what young students will be faced with and forced to navigate. Then prospective undergraduates - and their parents - will be able to make an informed choice as to which Oxford college not to put on their application.

There's more than one way to prevent women from accessing education. There's the direct banning route (e.g the Taliban) and there's the way that excludes them by making it too uncomfortable and difficult, too fraught with anxiety and fear perhaps, to participate.

There's a reason that when women started to go to Oxford and Cambridge there were women's halls set up.

And then to top it off, have the Veh Veh Clever Deep-Thinking Intemallectually Sophistimacated Yet Also Supah-Kewl-n-Up-To-Date Propahly Educalated Tutorializers Who Truely Compremehand Safeguarding and Harassment be the ones to "assist" you if you even dare to express anything but adoring sycophantic agreement.

Indeed. Nothing really changes does it? Just the illusion of change.
Women are still shut down, with a variety of threats from the subtle to the direct, when they raise an issue. It's happened to many women on this board I'm sure.

@oxfordfeminist and @Lady1576 and anyone else who doesn't have a problem with this man's fake breasts - your granny has just died and the man who comes to your parents' house, where the closest family members are in attendance, to organise her funeral is wearing this attire. Do you think that would be appropriate? If not, why not? If so, why?

I’m thinking that for the purposes of this thread @oxfordfeminist is identifying as a feminist from or at Oxford; similarly that@Lady1576 sees himself as a lay-dee, perhaps with a huge bosom.

Incidentally how much “marking” do tutors do? And what are the chances of bumping into clown tits in the SCR if you’re based at a different college?

Thank you. This is brilliant.

Managed to miss this post.

What a perfect way to put it.

He smirked for sure as he demanded Justice.

Once someone points out dupers' delight as a thing, it's so easy to spot. There's footage of Jimmy Savile doing it live on the BBC. It's only now when people look back at the footage, listen to what he's saying in the context of what we all know now that it becomes so blindingly obvious that nobody can deny they see it. For clarity, I'm not suggesting that everyone who uses the dupers' delight smirk is a paedophile, just simply that they are very much enjoying that they are duping people. I've been on the receiving end of it myself in a setting where it would have been impossible for me to call out what was happening without sounding like a nutjob. I took solace in the fact that the duper presumably still thinks I didn't notice. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing any reaction from me.

You signal your lofty disinterestedness of these petty games played by mere mortals by prefacing your posts with ‘sigh’… a sad sad sorry sigh that you brought so low as to find yourself even conversing with these Witch finder Generals. #sadtimes.

You never (ever) get an answer from the virtue signallers to the slightly more challenging questions.

But who knows, oxford feminist might well see nothing wrong with that scenario?