Controversy Down Under!
Mrs. Ellen DeGeneres, actress Portia di Rossi, has incensed the media in her native Australia after requesting she only be interviewed by female reporter as she promotes her recently-released memoir Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, which details her struggles with eating disorders
and her sexuality.
Unbearable Lightness chronicles the former model’s many years keeping her sexuality a secret:
“Hiding your sexuality is the most horrible way to live and it really does a huge disservice to society, because if everybody who was gay came out in every profession, teachers, doctors, if everybody came out and said, ‘I’m gay. Who cares?’ it would make a big impact to what’s happening with all this teenage suicide,” she said.
The lesbian actress shot to fame as Nell Porter on Ally McBeal and famously married beloved talk show host DeGeneres after a four year union in 2008, but her request for female interviewers has been met with mixed responses, with some of the biggest names in Australian media slamming de Rossi for discrimination, The Herald Sun reports.
David Koch, a TV morning show host in Sydney, was among those offended by de Rossi’s male journalist ban. Koch says he was not allowed to quiz the actress about her autobiography.
“If a male said ‘I don’t want to be interviewed by a woman’, there would be a massive outcry of discrimination,” Koch argues. “Obviously she has got issues and I feel quite sorry for her. I admire what she and Ellen have done for community tolerance and inclusiveness. But it is a real contradiction for what she stands for, which really surprises me.”
Koch’s co-host Melissa Doyle ended up speaking to Portia via satellite from her home in Los Angeles.
