Oxford University biochemist Matt Rattley is the sort of man in a dress we are not supposed to snigger at. A tutor at the proudly inclusive St Hilda’s College, Oxford, he takes ‘bringing his whole self to work’ several cup sizes further, pairing a wispy beard and hulking frame with massive prosthetic plastic breasts. No one in his male-dominated department has publicly criticised his sexist sartorial choices, and he has been pictured and filmed at professional events looking as though he has wandered in from a stag do.
Even if the blatant sexism didn’t bother them, you’d think the childishness would. No, Matt, we don’t do funny dress-up on the job, we’re supposed to be adults.
Rattley doesn’t claim to be a woman. He is just a man who wears low-cut frocks and a huge rubber rack. The question is not about his identity, or even his motivations, but whether his choices infringe on others.
There probably aren’t explicit rules about that kind of thing, because they are assumed, because adults are assumed to know tacit rules about how to behave around other adults. The fact that the rules are tacit doesn’t translate to it’s ok to ignore them. Tacit rules can be the worst to ignore.
Dr Ace North is a biologist who has found himself on the wrong side of Oxford’s inclusion inquisition. Recently, he was hauled into a meeting with human resources and branded ‘hateful’ by senior staff after questioning what he saw as the department’s increasingly overt ideological signalling, from Progress Pride flag displays to a ‘gender unicorn’ poster in shared office space. Commenting on this double standard, he said of Rattley on X: ‘As an employee of the university, I feel grossly insulted that this is tolerated, even celebrated, yet even mild criticism of gender-identity ideology is shouted down. I can’t imagine how young women in his classes may feel.’
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Ultimately, a university is not a stage, nor a fetish club. It is a place of learning, where young people ought to be able to study without being forced to navigate someone else’s exhibitionism. Oxford’s problem is not that it attracts weirdos. It is that it has forgotten how to say no to them. Regrettably, it seems Matt Rattley will be at liberty to display his plastic tits until university officials find their ovaries.
Or until they get tired of all the attention? Here’s hoping.
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