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."

The academicalilly intemalectuallic super-complimacated Oxobrigian position, apparently, is that suggestions of appropriate attire for appropriate situations is "everybody will be forced to wear uniforms" - who knew such simplistic all-or-nothing hyperbole was the cutting edge of modern deep thought?

This is a great scenario to think about.

TBF I got the impression that Lady is interested exploring the issue in more detail.

I hope you're still here @Lady1576 .. If so, did you get the chance to read the link I sent to the blog written by an AGP? I found it particularly interesting that the man who wrote it found himself disgusted at how his fellow AGPs didn't care about the impact their fetish was having on women. I have no idea if he stayed strong in this resolve and gave it any more thought, or if he succumbed to his sexual urges and things escalated in some way. Either way, his thoughts at the time that he wrote the blog seem genuine - they are certainly helpful when considering AGP motivations.

@BonfireLady I think that his additional thrill would have been having a woman union official represent him in some kind of faux victimisation claim against his boss, who was also a woman.

I've always found that dealing with the issue, not the personality, gives a clearer perspective. Stan could have been the kindest man who loved his Mum and trees and bees.

His bollocks were still hanging out of his mansplainy wide apart legs when talking to students and staff.

All this "but I would share a coffee however he was dressed" is just so much guff. The issue being wearing huge rubber tits and deep cleavage in an educational setting. Fine for Foo Foo"s Palace in Blackpool but not a University.

What Goldhill did was overt unwanted sexualised behaviour, and an action which involved a student non-consensually (I gather he put his tongue in her mouth, uninvited).

It's nameable, recognisable, and legible as sexual harassment (nowadays - 15-20-30 years ago, it wasn't quite so easily recognisable).

What this tutor at St Hilda's is doing is more generalised and not directly acting on/against any specific person. We don't really have a language of sexual harassment for this sort of behaviour.

But the parallels are obvious: it's sexualised behaviour, involving general non-consensual people acted upon.

My language here is clumsy (I really should be writing a couple of lectures!) but also because we need to find a public language for this, and non-conforming men (eg leather queens on Pride Marches) have pushed so many boundaries we have trouble naming this generalised behaviour as sexual harassment.

But we're starting to.

Does that start to get to the nitty-gritty of what you mean @murasaki ?

Oh definitely. Sadly thrills can be found in all sorts of different ways.

My own experience of being on the end of dupers' delight wasn't a sexual one. It was more akin to the additional thrill you describe above. It was someone in a position of significant authority who was deliberately showing (to me) that he could manipulate the two other attendees in the room on the subject of gender identity. TBF he might have got a sexual kick out of it for all I know but I got the impression at the time that it was more about showing me what kind of influence he had. I've been in another other meeting with him (on a related subject - this time it was safety in sports, single-sex v mixed-sex) where he got away with lying, brushing it off as a simple mistake. No idea if he was smirking then too but I would assume so.

In the case of Stan, it sounds like you handed his scantily clad arse to him in style 👏👏

As for the delightful man in my case, sadly he's still at large wielding his influence. I'd love to think he'll get his comeuppance one day, but he's a slippery fish and unfortunately I suspect not. Perhaps I could borrow you if I ever have to meet with him again 😬😂

Mumsnet is a good place for mothers/parents to get useful information on further/higher ed.

How many mothers will be happy to pay fees for their daughters to be validation fodder for this prick?

What @murasaki said resonated with me - my ex's abuse was mostly very subtle, very insidious, so easily deniable, it was designed for no-one else to experience therefore recognise. I've often thought there's more of an honesty (it really doesn't feel like the right word but I can't think of a better one) in a shouter or puncher.

How many mothers will be happy to pay fees for their daughters to be validation fodder for this prick?

And that is all they are to him.

Anyone who actually respected the students they teach would not go to work looking like this. Anyone with appropriate boundaries, self awareness and decent level supervision would not go to work looking like this.

Thinking further re @murasaki 's posts, I think also because it's not immediately obvious that this man has DONE anything to any other specific person.

Our thinking about sexual harassment is within a legal framework, where someone does something to someone else which infringes their rights/person (is that Torts? I know nothing ...)

This man is "just" wearing something. So we need to find a way to name his behaviour and define it as sexual harassment.

Does public display of sexual fetish cut it? AGP on plain show? This is what we probably need to work towards. Maybe akin to the way that sexual harassment comes under both employment & equality law: it creates a hostile work environment. This man's grotesque fetish wear create a hostile educational environment.

But anyone who's see Ric Bierstein's Speechless (on the BBC iPlayer) will see how the TWAW #bekind etc etc etc mean that speaking out in public about this stuff is severely punished.

The fact that no-one at Oxford feels free to say loudly 'look at that man wearing massive fake tits, why is he doing that? At best it's a massive distraction from his lecture' i.e. tell the truth is a form of coercive control in my opinion. A climate of Orwellian fear.

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

My grandmother was in the first cohort of women to graduate with full Oxford degrees.

Shame should absolutely be a thing again. Men should absolutely be sham d for expressing their kinks in public especially when the ‘public’ element is a massive part of the kink.