It seems that Privilege Denying Dude exists, lives in Australia and his name is David Koch. via The Sydney Morning Herald, De Rossi accused of sexism after ‘refusing’ male interview:
Hollywood star Portia de Rossi has been accused of hypocrisy after Sunrise host David Koch revealed she refused to be interviewed by him because he is a man.
The Australian-born actress appeared on the top-rating Channel Seven morning program on Tuesday to publicise her new memoir, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, but would speak only to Koch’s female co-hosts, the network said.
Of course, Koch took it to Twitter and offered us gems that would be very suitable for the Privilege Denying Dude posters (emphasis mine):
Koch took to Twitter yesterday to vent his frustration, accusing the star of double standards.
“Portia de Rossi would only be interviewed by a woman. Am I weird in thinking that’s strange. Be outrage if a man made that a condition,” Koch wrote.
“Portia has campaigned, quite rightly, for gay rights and equality. Then insists on only being interviewed by women. Hypocritical? U tell me?”
Context be damned! His rights were threatened, so of course Ms. De Rossi is sexist. No word of institutionalized homophobia and the underlying reasons why she might have decided she is more comfortable dealing with female journalists. In reality, De Rossi’s preference (and that was the word she used, preference), were a lot more reasonable:
Austereo public relations manager Chelsea Kelly said the program was not advised of a blanket ban on men.
“The word used yesterday to us was ‘preference’ – it was her preference to speak to a woman,” Kelly said.
“The reason we were given for that was because her book and the context of her book is about women’s issues and the pressures on women to be thin and it was just a better fit if the interviewer was a woman.
For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you. Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.