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."

It does not matter that Beardy Rubberjugs at Oxford may be ‘vulnerable’!! Why are certain posters falling over themselves to say this?

I don't understand this either. Do people think he might be mentally ill, so we should 'be kind' to him?

If his employers know he's mentally ill, they should be protecting him by making it clear to him that his offensive woman costume isn't appropriate for work, and helping him to get mental health support.

Good point, and this is also why the University is the primarily responsible party. Professional dress and professional boundaries are there for everyone. Not imposing appropriate professional boundaries in this situation is not fair to anyone including young female undergraduates who may experience this as sexual harassment and institutional coercive control (being silenced and unable to complain about this) but it's also not fair to the man parading around in comedy / porn style fake breasts.

Ultimately as he himself has pointed out no-one wants to engage with him. That means he can't do his job. It's not rocket science to figure out why no-one is ever going to want to or even feel they can engage with him in that get up. Pretending that this is not the consequence of his dress is not particularly kind to him especially if it's not a fetish. Maybe he really is sufficiently clueless about women and girls that he doesn't realise many of his female students will experience this as threatening.

The University is failing to protect anyone in this situation and then they're subjecting poor Dr North - who did nothing more than put up quotes that encourage critical thinking from authors such as Lewis, Orwell and Dawkins - to a campaign of bullying and direct threats.

Two tier doesn't cover it. It's toxic.

I understand this, but I don't know why it's so important in the context of this thread to keep saying that this man might be vulnerable (and of course, he might not).

If he is vulnerable, his employers aren't really helping him, are they? They should have put a stop to this the first time he turned up for work looking like this, and helped him to get appropriate help.

Yes, he might be entirely not vulnerable at all but very calculating. This is a good point. Who knows really. It doesn't matter, it's inappropriate.

The point is the University has failed in their duty of care. The University has failed at safeguarding, failed at professionalism, failed at equality, failed not to discriminate, and potentially also failed to help a vulnerable employee. Fail fail and big fat double F fail.

And it's supposed to be full of intelligent people - laughable! Emperor's new clothes in action!

Totally agree. And we’ve a fairly clear consensus that they’ve been negligent in their responsibility to their students. Nothing wrong with making the point that their negligence may extend in another direction, too, to reinforce it. I hold them as responsible as him, if not more. If he IS vulnerable, that turns eyes even more persuasively onto their conduct. And from a less strategic perspective… employers do have a duty of care.

Also, it’s the humanity of the GC perspective in contrast to the fairly unstinting and explicit TRA abuse that first drew me in. Isn’t there some quote about best getting the measure of people by how they treat their enemies (obviously not a word that’s straightforwardly applicable here!) kinda thing? Certainly, fence-sitters who’ve been taught we’re all vicious termagants (been wanting to use that for SO long since learning it) may be more prepared to listen seeing this acknowledged? Different voices and approaches appeal to different people.

But lastly, frankly, because he may be. As Arabella says, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and I do think it’s important for this to be recognised. The kind of over-simplification (trans good! GC baaaad!) the ideology favours is what’s got us into this mess, and they love exploiting it.

Also, I do try to remember to choose my words while holding in mind a person sitting behind a screen after living through some kind of worst-case-scenario day. I’ve found this thread really hard to navigate for that reason. And I do know that some of my concern there will be female socialisation. But I think some is just me. I’ve always tended to feel pretty empathetic towards most people (toys… insects… vegetables, even, if we go back far enough in my childhood!) Too much, it’s tiring tbh. I mean, I can’t kill a bug and cry over roadkill. FWR’s helping me with this in ways… but partly because of that that I do also keep pulling back and questioning myself and seeking to redress any overstep in a direction I may on reflection regret. I’m finding my way.

And with regard to that…

Yeah, “kindness” also is what got us here, I know, and they exploit that too, I also know… So - again with the strength in different voices and perspectives argument, I guess.

It's also the case that there will always be people who test and ignore and crash through social boundaries and appropriate behaviour.

The university is absolutely at fault here. Outrageously, unforgivably so.

Their policies, procedures, culture, and I expect leadership are demonstrating a vast, gaping hole in their ability to safeguard students, to maintain a safe work and study environment, to ensure women and girls are protected from harassment and a man intimidating and threatening them. They are enabling abuse, inviting ridicule, and yes, exposing both their students and staff to harm, and also the man involved.

It's the institutions that need to be held to account.

Male abuse of power comes as no surprise.

If you create loopholes, predators will use them.

the quality of people's academic scholarship.... but that's how we do it. Teaching and research come first.

Yet students are required to wear expensive sub-fusc at multiple times of their university career, and if they refuse to adhere to this dress code they cannot matriculate, take exams, or graduate. No matter how clever or industrious they might be.

Either it matters at Oxford that people dress appropriately or it doesn't, which is it?

If people were complaining that he 'just' had long hair, was wearing lipstick or a dress, you might have a point. The argument that dressing as a female is self-affirming if you are transitioning is a recognised one, regardless of whether you agree with it. But what innocent reason would anyone, male or female, have to wear excessively gigantic fake breasts? What is he achieving by dressing like that, that he wouldn't in just a normal padded bra?

To paraphrase a wise woman, some people are so open minded that their brains have fallen out.

Their policies, procedures, culture, and I expect leadership are demonstrating a vast, gaping hole in their ability to safeguard students, to maintain a safe work and study environment, to ensure women and girls are protected from harassment and a man intimidating and threatening them.

Absolutely this.
I think there’s an evens chance St Hilda’s is going to find itself at the wrong end of a lawsuit over this and a more than evens chance the college will lose.

Don’t be so silly

He's getting a lot of publicity. Those plastic boobs are popping up everywhere now.

Hm. How d'you like that reputational damage, Oxford? If the thought that young women are being harmed and harassed won't shift the dial, perhaps a bit of brand devaluing will.

This one man has toppled all the respect I formerly had for the institution.

Quite an achievement.

I really don't like that there's some pretty nasty, de-humanising stuff out there - stuff which isn't so much analysing or critiquing the behaviour and its impact as aggressively targetting him with explicit abuse. I do know this can be something of a fine line (and again, at risk of being called out on this, still hope he's OK in himself). I think it's another irony of trans ideology that, in labelling women who are expressing concerns about inappropriately sexualised behaviour in public, with reference to safeguarding conventions, bigotted... you open the door to genuine bigotry by dissolving the previously rather clearer line between the two, (< shout out for the Oxford comma!) and by removing the language we used to have to condemn the latter. And in silencing any concerns at all - whether overtly, by dismissing complaints, or more subtly through the trans-ideology-chilling effect - Oxford has itself contributed to a retaliatory fury that's such that (I hope) at least some of those now using unambiguously abusive language online may at least have found doing so anathema in a different cultural context.

It feels like we're heading towards the amplitude of some kind of pendulum swing seeking to redress the imbalances caused by trans ideology. It never needed to get to this point! And the sooner we get to some kind of negotiated, sensible equilibrium again, the better. So, over to you now, Oxford, with all your influence - and others like you. How can you fulfil your duty of care to employees and respect women discomfitted by this kind of behaviour? 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 a tangled web etc....

I think the pendulum swinging too far back the other way may well happen.

There are several separate though overlapping issues, safeguarding female (and male) students and staff (e.g. preventing them from the sexual harassment of being used in a fetish or being exposed to overly sexualised porn-like attire), appropriate professional behaviour in the workplace, and compelled ideological belief and speech (which creates a chilling effect and undermines a safeguarding culture of people feeling free to report sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviour).

It's really not rocket science. A no fake sexual organs in the workplace policy one would hope would be fairly non-controversial. But they also need to not horrendously bully and conduct a witch hunt against scientists with sex realist views (aka following the evidence) as Dr North has been.

Having said all this, I think there were a lot of men at Oxford who really weren't keen on women having an equal right to education, like the Taliban, so I'm not going to rule out that this is the general world view of those in positions of power. Who cares if young female students are put off studying Biochemistry or Biology? I know, I know, some of those in power are women, but we have the handmaids tale and Aunt Lydia (and Aunts in general), and the Isla Bumbas of this world, to show us some women are very, very happy to throw other women under the bus and subject them to harm purely so that they can hang onto a bit of power.

This is the irony of queer theory. The words say inclusive the action is to exclude women and girls in particular (and some others).

He has at least two male friends over on X vigorously defending him. Both of whom appear to be frothing woman-haters of the ilk who enjoy standing in crowds of men screaming abuse at women. One, a would-be Green party councillor, once boasted of his pleasure at getting to stand with a bunch of other men yelling outside a Women's Place meeting calling the women inside wankers.

Apparently any woman who objects to Matt and his fake tits (sorry, his "just existing" having a "different gender expression" and "for the crime of having big tits") are "in a far right swamp" naturally and "bigoted haters" of this man who is apparently lovely and respected by every single student and colleague at Oxford (because of course, there is no way at all that any students might be put off complaining by the unhinged displays of woman-hating demonstrated by his fellow male tutors and friends).

The worst thing for the cause about this Biggus Titus is that he has exposed the fetish and the exhibitionism within the cause, and that makes everyone uncomfortable.

Therefore, TRA ignore it, and allies pretend that he's an outlier or is 'unwell' and not like the lovely men who do the same but different. They criticise women for noticing and speaking out, as if it wasn't his intention to be the centre of attention.

I just cannot believe that there are still women who cannot see the safeguarding issues here.

That it could be a fetish and therefore should never be allowed is one aspect of safeguarding. Normalising the sexualised dress which should be contravening the professional dress standards aspect is another issue.

And yet, there are still women out there who are defending this man's choices.

He's an abuser. He is seeking the response of others to his deliberately outrageous, overtly sexualised decision to wear a rubber bra-form. It's quite possible he has some kind or kinds of personality disorder.

PDs may respond to therapy, but the absolute worst thing that could be done for them is to encourage them, support the behaviour, and normalise it. FWIW people with PDs can also be charming, and there is also the 'vulnerable narcissist'.

However. People don't, on the whole, react well to abusers. Note how such men are treated in prison.

I can remember reading about this toaster example. It explains a lot:

Before the internet, men had all sorts of paraphilias just as they do now. However, the internet has changed things considerably.

Previously, if a man had a fetish (the example given was that he wants to fuck a toaster), he would push the thought out of his mind as he knew this wasn't a good idea and it was shameful to him. If the thoughts continued, he would get therapy.

Now, he joins a subReddit for fellow toaster lovers, and they all have a lovely hugbox where they normalise this fetish amongst themselves. It becomes something that is part of their 'identity', plus you mustn't be kink-shamed. So anyone who points out that this fetish isn't a good idea or something that should be alluded to in public is a nasty, horrid, Nazi bigot.

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 ...

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 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'

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.

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.

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.