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."

What he is wearing is massively offensive. Almost certainly deliberately so. So, actually, it does matter and I WILL judge him on it. Because what he's teaching his female students is that their boundaries don't matter and their womanhood is a joke.

Can you point me where you answered about toilet design @oxfordfeminist ? I would like to hear your views as no one who doesn’t want single sex toilets has answered before. All avoid the practical question of how this works for health and safety.
1 or 2?

He is also teaching his male students that women's boundaries don't matter and that they, their feelings, and their wish for respect and safety are a joke. If he isn't a very bad man he is doing an extremely good job of acting like one. He should not be facilitated in this by the college, the department, or the University.

This is why this whole thing is ridiculous. Deadnaming or using the pronoun is “literal violence” while a bloke in fake tits is just expressing himself. I think we would see quite a different reaction if any of us turned up as a parody of a TIM…. What are Oxford Uni thinking? It’s really making me think hard about whether a uni degree at this point is the right path for my kids. These institutions seem really unhealthy places with horribly misogynistic attitudes. I had been thinking a year out might be good but now thinking an extended break/travelling and then self employment/starting a business might be a much healthier way to go

No, race and sex are really, really not different, they are the same thing. Both black people and females are oppressed, and both (with black women, Rachel Dolezal) have the oppressor sex/race trying to culturally appropriate and identify into the oppressed group's struggle. They are exactly the same thing, it is your cognitive dissonance that stops you from admitting that you yourself.

Yep. I will also judge anyone defending him.

Women want to be taken seriously at work. This means dressing professionally, blending in, creating a welcoming, nice environment for colleagues (and, in this case, students) and being judged on the quality of their work and character.

This - whatever is happening here - is the opposite of blending in and including everyone. It’s deliberately provocative, designed to make people (women and men) disguise their discomfort, and this person is getting their dopamine fix from riling everyone up, whether or not they’re showing it, or admitting to themselves.

It’s a dick move.

@Forecastsayssnowbutthereisnosnow I don't have anything meaningful to have (I wholly agree with the majority here) but may I just thank you heartily for the title of this thread? I literally giggle every time I open FWR and see "Biggus Titus of OU". At least something good has come of it!

DH reminded me of this. No one thought this would be acceptable daywear back then. It was a massive joke to distract from a National football “disaster”

This.

I'm really tempted to engage with some of the questions @oxfordfeminist

I’ve tempted you twice. Be great for an answer.

You're very welcome. As the whole scenario was so Monty Pythonesque, I thought it warranted a Life of Brian reference.

I'm aware I have a different username but I am the OP. I had a brief 5 minutes one evening of thinking I really must reduce my MN time, so attempted to go cold turkey by deleting my account. Lasted 48 hours before re-joining. 😬

Nicely argued paper, and (sadly) still as relevant today as when it was written. It applies outside what's narrowly called "drag" to a lot of what is now called "trans".

Thanks for sharing @EdithStourton and for reminding me I wanted to read the linked article. Crikey, it’s prescient, isn’t it? Makes all the arguments we make on here. Ugh, when do we get to say stop with this parody of womanhood?

eta: A sample from the article:

DRAG = BLACKFACE
The culture and experience of women is not a costume. Everything I do is feminine, by definition, because I am female, while any decree about what is feminine restricts my range of options. When RuPaul says, "we're born naked and the rest is drag," he is wrong. He is in drag because he is a man, and he can stop being a woman whenever it becomes inconvenient. When being a woman is inconvenient for me, I need to remove the inconvenience. Male ideas of "femininity" are a major inconvenience to those of us who are actually women and have to live our lives in that state.

Nah, he's annoying but he's one bloke at one university. He's not representative of anything much (apart from weak local management I suppose) Yes it's one kind of misogyny but the business and travel worlds are not exactly misogyny-free zones either and your DDs will encounter plenty of other kinds. They shouldn't let this put them off.

Thanks, Knotty Auty.

Akua Reindorf KC and Naomi Cunningham posted about this on X. It's mentioned in this thread at page 24 for me. (Not saying you should have seen it bc it's a long thread).

Here is the link to Akua Reindorf's thread https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2049489384945107214.html

Naomi Cunningham replied, saying
My only point of disagreement is that I feel rather more confident than Akua that wearing giant prosthetic breasts at work (or indeed anywhere else) is "conduct of a sexual nature." I honestly can't think what on earth it would be.

https://x.com/LoudBonnet/status/2049501190149243141

Akua was not as sure bc she thought the law was not clear about whether "conduct of a sexual nature" under s.26(2) applied to behaviour that was not targeted at an individual.

https://x.com/akuareindorf/status/2049502166834975231

Still dying to hear why indulging blokes tarting their fetish about in huge rubber tits in a professional role facing young people is supposedly 'trans inclusionary feminism'. Boundary between people with trans identities and people with major sexual behaviour problems unfit for the workplace seems to have become a bit lost there.

Unless we're now saying the quiet bit out loud and activists would like to openly acknowledge that in their view Trans/sexually and socially inappropriate and unacceptable has become one and the same thing. Which seems to me really transphobic. I have yet to see for example India Willoughby or the barrister White dressed inappropriately when working.

The 'feminism' descriptor there is also a bit dodgy; I would absolutely not support a woman flashing her tits around inappropriate in a professional workplace. Why would that be 'feminist' ffs?

I asked upthread but I'll repeat myself, what if Matt suddenly decided that to feel comfortable he needed to start wearing a codpiece à la Grayson Perry. Would that be okay? If not, why not?

Side issue, if you want to know where Grayson wore this note the 'Children with Cancer' sign in the background.

Eta MN might censor it, I wouldn't blame them. They may have a better grasp of what's appropriate than a children's cancer event...or an Oxford feminist college.

That's more a dildo than a codpiece.
Grim.

And the thing in his trousers looks like one, too.

Apologies, I thought I'd read the thread but if I did I'd missed that the 'codpiece' comparison had already been...ahem...raised by pp (around pg.9).

I agree but I’d also look carefully at the possible choices. I’m aware of one university with a Fetish Society that teaches 18 yr olds how to be tied up safely (ropes provided).

I wonder what sort of liberal progressive bloke likes to teach these 18 yr olds to do that? Just bringing his authentic self to work. Common safeguarding has gone out the window in allowing ‘liberal’ progressives full rein of policies and practices but which is actually anything but progressive.

W. T. A. F.

Stuff like that is why when the UK university system collapses some people will treat it as good riddance, rather than the appalling national tragedy it will be.

And the irony is that Oxford will keep right on trucking.