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."

Female people enlarging their breasts is a different category of behaviour to a male person wearing prosthetic breasts for a sexual purpose.

These are not comparable.

I'm really looking forward to Bring Your Codpiece To Work Day.

I'm not so sure it's a good look for TeamTrans to stand up for this obvious fetishist particularly when he isn't even pretending to be "trans" just a massive bearded bloke with lippy & comedy breasts.

@Lady1576, thanks for saying you've read some posts and are going to think about them.

I think there are two quite polarised positions on this thread: most posters would say your own is very naive (I hope that's not offensive: I really don't mean it to be) in the "gender assigned at birth" and some men "naturally" having large breasts etc. comments. Equally, most of the rest are very cynical - some of my own included. This perspective, as you do acknowledge, does come from a LOT of wider reading about this by posters here - including of trans voices. I don't know if someone could post that quotation from Andrea Long Chu, or event that poster-style meme of similar quotations from a range of high-profile trans figures? They're quite eye-opening in themselves, Lady, in their overt celebration of the branch of trans that is about flaunting one's sexuality (AGP).

I'm going to stop posting now as summarising these two perspectives has made me realise I'm forgoing my usual caution when posting about, or in response to, individuals who may be vulnerable or have particular needs or whatever. I don't know this guy, after all. Maybe he's deeply dysphoric. Maybe he's unwell. Maybe he appears confident in this presentation, but behind it is questioning himself every second. I can't know for sure.

But I would say before I go, please do ask yourself, as I have, about the relative weight given to different people's dis/comfort in the contrasting posts in this thread. I'm fairly gender non-conforming, a lifelong leftwing voter and wholly supportive (I mean, so supportive that it feels absurd even to have to type it) of gay rights etc. But I posted because, to me, this feels so viscerally different that I do find it degrading as a woman. That's not an angry conservative instinct: it's about my own right to respect for who and what I am, in the context of how impossibly far women still have to go in attaining equal status and respect in society more widely. I do think the blackface analogy, although difficult and problematic in various ways, is relevant here in explaining posters' distress and anger at this. In a society in which wearing a sombrero to a party could lead to total ostracisation, I think it's really important that we at least ask ourselves, as you plan to, why is this guy's presentation - for whatever reason there may be behind it - conversely accepted and even celebrated?

Ok so this is an opinion. I think we could all decide to do that for sure. We don‘t do this at the moment though. I think it would be fair to make some rules around this for sure. Universities don‘t generally require business dress but probably have some rules around it. It would mean uniforms more or less in all areas of life. No headscarves, crosses, personalised jewelry. I mean. It‘s an idea.

This is just so fucking depressing. Why should students be subjected to this? If a woman behaved like this on the workplace there would be repercussions. Why do we have tolerate it from a man?!

Ffs.

Great thread. Glad to see it staying put.

Thank you to the MN moderators for navigating it so that it can. I've not RTFT yet and can already see a few deletions.... so presumably there's still a line that it's easy to cross. But I'm glad we can discuss the actions of an individual and the impact that these can have.

Here's to the thread staying the course...🤞

Apropos of nothing, my one and only deletion (so far) was on the subject of autogynophilia. Hopefully I won't get more but it's sometimes difficult to discuss things with the risk of accidentally going outside the guidelines.

Yeah I wouldn't want to deal with him in a professional setting.

I mean for god's sake. 🙄

He's so bad for their cause, I could actually believe he was trolling them.

This man is dressing like a pantomime dame. Having attire boundaries is not a toxic trait. I saw a teenage girl with her arse hanging out her tiny denim shorts yesterday and I didn’t approve of that either. Where is the decorum with people today? There’s so little class and self respect across the board. In my opinion this man is an egotistical attention seeker with no respect for others.

One of my elderly male lecturers used to have his very fat tummy, white, hairy tummy hanging out of his trousers where his shirt wasn‘t tucked in and his trousers were hanging low and jumper too small. Not very nice first thing in the morning if you were sitting right by him but I felt he was just a bit unkempt and I was supposed to be listening to his ideas not judging his appearance

I'm not following, sorry - who was this man supposedly parodying with fake prosthetics?

No-one's complaining this is simply unpleasant to see, it's a sign of - at the very least - disdain for female people because of the chestform he's chosen, and quite possibly a fetish.

“One of my elderly male lecturers used to have his very fat tummy, white, hairy tummy hanging out of his trousers where his shirt wasn‘t tucked in and his trousers were hanging low and jumper too small. Not very nice first thing in the morning if you were sitting right by him but I felt he was just a bit unkempt and I was supposed to be listening to his ideas not judging his appearance… I just saw it and got on with my life, not offended, not traumatised and I suppose the students taught by your fellow, probably feel the same.”

This example of yours again is not relevant to a male person exhibiting sexual paraphilic behaviour in the workplace. One is someone who has poor standards of dress but is not likely to have deliberately chosen to expose skin. The other is a male exhibiting a sex fetish in a work situation where other people are also powerless to complain about it. This adds to the power element that this man is enjoying.

”So are we saying it‘s ok to dress as our not-assigned-at-birth gender as long as we pass”

It is this approach, based in gender identity theory and queer theory that then dismisses the sexualised behaviour of this man. He is not just dressing as the opposite sex. He is dressing as in keeping with his fetish.

Patriarchy, innit

No I’m not ok with blackface. It‘s dehumanising a group of people, who when it was still acceptable were extremely oppressed at a very basic level. People here feel he is dehumanising women, because you feel that TRA are trying to do that. I suppose as it is quite a big statement and given the current climate between TRA and feminist activists against transwomen, he is almost definitely trying to wind up women like op. I don‘t personally feel dehumanised by him, but if I had more insight into the matter and his approach I might well do so.

Boundaries, dress codes etc - vexed issues in these libertarian times, I suppose.

What if someone turned up at work in a wheelchair and started using the disabled loo, but was actually not disabled, just identifying as such? (Not hypothetical, and not recent - here's a 15yo article about it, and then a few other examples.) https://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2011/10/27/3349293.htm
https://www.newsweek.com/wheelchair-using-woman-identifying-disabled-divides-internet-1757356
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/woman-in-wheelchair-pretends-to-be-paralysed-chloe-1553850

What if an adult turns up at a nursery school claiming to be three years old and demanding admission? I don't know of any such case yet, but we're not that far off it, although I think everybody knows a man (because it would almost certainly be a man) doing that would be acting out a sexual fetish. This one certainly is: https://www.mercatornet.com/six-year-old-transgender-stefonknee-wolscht-where-is-he-now
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46425774 (This guy just wanted to be 49 rather than 69, but he's also lost touch with material reality.)

And then there's this very odd case from ten years ago: https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/local-news/cambridge-academic-attends-university-meeting-11976364

What I particularly like about this last one is that the committee members sat through a 2-hour meeting steadily working through the agenda without once mentioning that one of their number was sitting there stark naked with 'Brexit leaves Britain naked' written over her (real) breasts. Cambridge this time, not Oxford. I wonder what the follow up was.

Ok - I see your point. That does help me understand where the anger is coming from.

Andrea Long Chu and others - if image will post

@Catiette have tried to post the amalgamated image of Chu/Lavery/etc

Well yes, he dehumanising women. As a white male, he is mocking an oppressed group just as much as if he wore blackface. Why the extremely large breasts? Why not a normal size?

Presumably you'd object to a person wearing a t shirt with a racist or sexist slogan on it to work, or making sexist or racist comments under the claim they are "just banter"?

This is exactly the same.

It's a sexist statement aimed at women's bodies. It's not ok, and I am very sorry you value women so little that you can't see that.

Thank you. I saw. I'm following, so will probably hypocritically post again at some point having said I won't! I do think that image shows where so much of the distrust and anger comes from. Many people aren't even aware of this facet of the ideology. It's not what it ALL is - my goodness, what's going on is SO complex! But...

I think the readiness to assume the worst, and directness in calling it out here, is in direct (inverse? I always get confused over what that means!) proportion to the overall societal tendency to ignore it currently - as this tendency is astonishingly inconsistent with the approaches taken to protecting other groups besides women.

The anger that Lady's beginning to understand reflects that imbalance, and the stronger posts here are a desperate, infuriated attempt to redress it.

I agree, its just too weird. The massive plastic breasts and the zz top beard combo 😂😂😂

It has to be satire surely?

They are cowards if they think they can't do anything. Bringing the company/entity in to disrepute is written in to almost every contract.

Does he have a protected characteristic? Because that’s what he would argue, alongside academic freedom. And Oxford is so risk averse that they would never let it get to tribunal. So they won’t do anything. The students and other staff will suffer, and this man will get his thrills.

‘But people wear all sorts of things at work’

i’m getting a bit old now. I’ve worked in a lot of offices. Far far too many honestly. Lots of different industries as well and I would say no, people don’t wear all sorts of things at work.
most places I have worked have an expectation of smartness, even if business casual. There is a minimum standard of formal dress. Even in industries where it is more casual, everyone still had to dress to a minimum standard. No one could turn up dressed for the beach. Even when I worked in an industry where there was a lot of gender non conformity and it was definitely a bit ‘out there’ at times, there’s no way on earth that this person would have been allowed to dress like that.