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."

Oh dear, shall we try for some grown up words and concepts?

It's inappropriately sexual, and reflective of a personal sexual experience
It intentionally involves non consenting others
It is disrespectful - intentionally - to colleagues and students
It is an insulting masquerade of womanhood expressing a message about women and breasts for a man's sexual self expression
It is intentionally behaving in ways that a woman would not do out of basic respect and decency, and would not be permitted to do if she was sufficiently inappropriate and unaware to know this by herself. (In which case she would probably not be in a position of responsibility.)
It attempts to use the shield of gender ideology to try and force others to accept this as something good and noble and freedom-based as opposed to wholly inappropriate. This is a rather muted version of flashing and indecent exposure, it's intended to incite shock and disgust and discomfort, while trying to weaponise silly ideas and words to force others to feel unable to have boundaries or refuse. Many unpleasant and abusive men enjoy seeing women in positions where they know and he knows he is sexually harassing them, but has the power to make it difficult for them to say no. It adds to the thrill.

People having healthy boundaries against and disgust for exploitative, inappropriate and fetishistic individuals abusing others, and a belief that this should not be permitted and that individuals and enabling places of work who do this should be publicly named, shamed and hopefully pressured to stop, is not them 'feeling sad'.

I found this essay a really helpful way to get my head around autogynophilia, written by an autogynophilic male:

https://archive.is/2pQIq

It doesn't cover everything (for example it doesn't cover the coercive control that can go on in a marriage when someone "comes out" as "trans" in middle age) but goes a good way towards describing the motivations of an autogynophile. It also looks at how this is different from other reasons why some males identify as women.

As PPs have said, it's not the same as "blackface", not least because that doesn't have a sexual element. But its potential to offend as dehumanising is similar, regardless of the motivation (including males who aren't autogynophilic), because it's about identifying into a group by mimicking an appearance. The comparison here would be whether someone was doing blackface because they really wanted to be black (e.g. Rachel Dolezal) or were mocking black people in some way (e.g. the Black and White Minstrels). I'm not black, but I imagine each is equally offensive, albeit for different reasons.

Similar to blackface, some autogynophiles enjoy doing exaggerated caricatures. Others get their kicks using other ways of hiding in plain sight.

The word @MaggieBsBoat used was parodying. Big fake strap on tits are a parody of womanhood in the same way as blackface or the Rasta hat with dreadlocks are a parody. Why are you OK with women being parodied?, but not others?

I think we’ve been slow-boiled long enough for someone to dust off Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey and start showing up at schools and libraries again. We’d be scolded for not respecting ‘British values’ if anyone looked askance.

This is disgraceful.

"....and feminist activists against transwomen"

Women campaigning to get their right's returned to them are not the above, by using such terminology I'd say your not a women and you were not 'born a women', you're a figment of your own imagination.

Trying to make 'giant foam breasts' the equivalent of a head scarf or personalised jewellery is a pathic attempt to normalise the abnormal, only a genderwanger would try that.

It's bad enough he was in his fetish gear but was that the done thing round your way, for librarians to hunt down late returners? And would it have been at a time when the male of the house, if there was one, was at work?

This is the problem. If the fetish is allowed at work, the thrill of expressing it fades. So how does he get that thrill back? What will he have to start doing next?
And doesn't all this just indulge a man in an obsession that has taken over his life? Where are the charities dedicated to providing support for these men to get their lives back on track? Where are the men, fund-raising for research on the best ways to recover full mental health? No-one is being well-served by allowing this sort of behaviour.

I’m not sure of the time of day, but I believe it was fairly normal that if you’d had the book long enough they’d go round and knock on the door, she always returned them promptly after that though, funnily enough. It upset her enough that she still remembers the incident 30+ years later!

I bet she does @Bumblebeeforever , it's so important but nothing to them, it remains with us forever.

If anyone doubts this is a fetish just look at Kristi Noem’s husband Now that he’s been outed it’s only a matter of time until he’s parading around in those one day. Why keep it private when one can walk around in a continual state of arousal with a constant stream of unwitting victims? I despise that this behavior is being normalized and it will get worse, it always does.

Definitely.

There's a middle-aged male teacher at my children's school who wears dresses and occasionally wears anime-style socks. I have no idea if the socks are for a special occasion, pure coincidence (i.e. the style is simply a coincidence and it's irrelevant that anime has a dark side re autogynophilia) or part of a journey towards further exploration of what can be got away with.

I'm going to assume that we won't be seeing a Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey outfit any time soon but never say never. The staff seem to love a bit of fancy dress whenever the occasion arises, and kindness (including preferred pronouns and recognising the importance of accepting people as they want to be seen etc) is a school value, so perhaps we will. Lots of students and staff seem to be sitting in the pan, valuing inclusion and respect, while it slowly boils.

I wonder if Grayson Perry has plateaued in his behaviour.

In his autobiography he talks about wearing frilly dresses (when dressed as "Claire") because it's a helpful way to hide erections.

Being photographed with a member of the royal family while wearing a frilly dress at a primary school is presumably a coincidence.

The Guardian article doesn't show the dress in full but describes it as a "lady who lunches" dress:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/15/duchess-cambridge-grayson-perry-visit-childrens-studio

The Mail has a full length shot of it, asking who has the best legs:

https://www.dailymail.com/lifestyle/article-2911257/amp/Every-inch-yummy-mummy-Duchess-Cambridge-pretty-navy-meets-arty-children-Grayson-Perry.html

I'm not sure whether his infamous codpiece at a children's charity photo was from before or after this appearance.

Oh my gosh! How awful for her. He looks like a literal clown. Her treating him with respect and kindness, and him treating her with complete disrespect and as basically a sex toy. I’m so angry on her behalf. She’s a member of the royal family you utter creep!

Oh come on. No woman would ever go to work dressed like that. Reminds me of this fetishist who was eventually told no in the civil service. There are appropriate clothes for work and this man isn't wearing them.h

ttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13725993/amp/Minister-civil-servants-fetish-gear-work-transgender.html

What does leave me 'feeling sad' is how some people's boundaries and sense of right and wrong are so absolutely fucked. Which makes them so very exploitable by this political movement.

Curious choice of attire for a primary school too. I can't imagine too many "ladies who lunch" going for a frilly, lacy skirt. Kate's is also above the knee but is not giving off quite the same vibe.

I think this is the interview where he talks to Kirsty Young about how he enjoys shocking people but sadly can't get it up in the same way as he used to, so it's less exciting for him now. Poor Grayson.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001wqf2

This ⬆️⬆️⬆️

"Be kind" and "it's important to show you respect [add in pretty much anything]" have a lot to answer for in the erosion of boundaries.

I'm very much live and let live. Wear what you like but be aware of the context when you pick your outfit. Just as I wouldn't expect to see someone wearing a bikini at a funeral, nor do I expect fetish outfits in the workplace. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, unkind and disrespectful.

I weep for the qualified women passed over for this freak

I can guarantee that many if not all of the young women who have to interact with this fetishist man as a result of their degree will experience this as sexual harassment.

It's funny how 'lived experience' is important until it's women being sexually harassed and then it's just put up with it.

I hope there are some young women undergraduates who are willing to don similarly outsized porn style fake penises to make a point. Apparently the Uni of Oxford requires staff to do sexual harassment training -it's obviously not very good, wonder how much it costs.

The bikini at a funeral is a really good analogy.

Clothing's coded to show consensus and mutual respect.

Funeral = bereavement & mourners = black or at least understated. To not do this is to undermine what the funeral is - and that could be intensely distressing for other mourners (unless there's a consensus that the whole thing should be a colourful celebration instead).

University = education & young people = practical but flexible. Again, to not do this is to, again, subvert that consensus.

And within all that, subversion has a place - Bakhtin and the carnivalesque is sooo interesting. But a key feature of that is that it's held in reserve as this liberating release that thereby sustains societal norms the rest of the time.

And ofc that's why you see people celebrating this as liberating, too - there's this naive assumption nowadays, riding high on the wave of the civil rights movements of the later 20th century, that norms are limiting and the dissolution of boundaries, progressive. And sure, that's often the case. Gay rights and Pride - right there's a carnival that, in its original incarnation, really did dissolve societal prejudice to establish a new, healthier norm. But that, with pomo theory, have somehow evolved into this naive assumption that norm = conservative = Conservative = BAD.

Logically, though, you can only take that so far - there's a point on the bell curve where things tip into chaos as there is no more "norm" left. But we need norms - they're what make up a society. We improve that society by negotiating new ones. That may involve playful subversion in the first instance, OK, but here, the subversion itself is supported by an authoritarian Establishment fury that's kind of inverting the usual trajectory of progress.

I mean, things like this haven't been negotiated, have they? Not when people are still fearful of discussing them - or, like Lady (we'd argue) don't fully understand the complexity of the issues surrounding them. Where this complexity has been systematically obscured by society's institutions (unis, the BBC etc.)

All a bit confused. Thinking "aloud"...

The thing is, once you have made it acceptable for some men to have breasts in public - implants, stuffed bras, breast-plates, whatever, then when does it become inappropriate? Where is the line where you can say, no, that is inappropriate, in a work setting/around children/etc. We all know that the massive, comedy breasts are inappropriate but at what size does it switch from acceptable to unacceptable?

Breasts are extremely sexualised in our society. Our breastfeeding rates are very low. Women's breasts are not valued for the job they exist to do so what motivates a man to give himself the illusion of breasts? All of them, not just the ones who take it too far.

For me, any appropriation of womanhood is wrong, but assuming this man has body dysmorphia, a size A cup would be enough to 'live as a woman' surely?

The ONLY explanation for giant breasts is fetish and porn. So entirely inappropriate in the workplace.

I'd missed this. I studied with him in the 90s, one to one, and he was fine with me. However, he was sleeping with one of my cohort, and mentally it did her a lot of damage. We all knew but didn't say anything which is awful, looking back. She has a successful academic career now, but god knows what the long term damage is. We were 19, he was in his late 40s/early 50s, and definitely in a position of power.

I know, but we need to get back to fetishes being private as no one going out in public should have to take part in someone else’s perversion. The more this has been normalised, the more emboldened these men have become. If they have a problem in that they are only turned on by transgressing other people’s boundaries, then they need help. Maybe a men’s charity could be established that can fund research and treatment, along with appropriate support.

I believe the trans rights agenda has emboldened this particular man, who uses they/them in the bio someone posted above, so can claim to be under the trans umbrella and therefore one of the special people who must not be questioned. Not so long ago he would have been pulled aside and told his attire is completely inappropriate for work and making people uncomfortable. This was not a bad thing!

I find it telling that the TRSOH response to the previously uncontroversial position of appropriate apparel for appropriate occasions was to jump straight to "people will have to wear uniforms for everything" - in the end, despite the claimed celebration of devil-may-care anything goes happy-clappy freedom, the mindset is rigidly binary.

You're either a glorious flower-child of the intellectual heights of flowing freethought, or you're a nasty bullying uneducated nonacademic bigot. Thus, you're either joyously on board with rainbow dildo giant tits rubber suits in the lecture theatre, or you're a Mao-suited straight-jacketed grey automaton.