Laura Byrne has slammed Kyle Sandilands in leaked texts to Life Uncut listeners in defence of her co-host Brittany Hockley, following the slut-shaming comments they made about Abbie Chatfield on live radio.
ICYMI (however, not sure how you did): Abbie blasted the radio hosts on December 13 for offensive comments they made about her on The Kyle and Jackie O Show during an interview with rapper Yung Gravy.
Following this, Laura took aim at Abbie after she revealed she would be hosting a new reality TV dating show called FBoy Island. The mum of two labelled the role “hypocrisy” as the show “encourages men to lie to women and manipulate their emotions in order to win a cash prize”.
“Talks about dismantling the patriarchy… Announces that they are hosting FBoy Island,” she wrote in a series of brutal Instagram Story posts. “That is enough internet for me today.”
The Masked Singer judge quickly fired back: “I can tell you that I would not sign up for this show if that was the premise of the show, Laura.
“So I think you need to maybe address what your co-host did rather than trying to retaliate in this very passive-aggressive way.”
Laura Byrne tells her Life Uncut listeners to direct their anger towards Kyle Sandilands, not her co-host Brittany Hockley
Whilst Laura has yet to condemn the behaviour of her Life Uncut co-host, the 36-year-old slammed Kyle during private text exchanges with her listeners.
As revealed in episode 239 of the So Dramatic! podcast, a number of Life Uncut listeners shared the DMs they received from the Laura with So Dramatic!.
Her responses to the messages were identical, indicating she copied and pasted the same reply to each user.
Explaining that she had “spoken to Britt in private”, Laura said she “doesn’t need to berate her on social media” because “it has been done enough”.
The former Bachelor star then implored her listeners to “target” the two men involved in the incident instead of Brittany, saying, “you cannot hold two sets of standards”.
“I just don’t think you can fiercely call out a woman as a cog in the patriarchal machine and then align yourself with a show that is based on the premise of gaslighting women,” she said of her takedown of Abbie.
“I don’t agree with what happened on The Kyle and Jackie O Show – I think the segment was gross. However, I also know that Britt was made to feel incredibly uncomfortable by Kyle’s comments – something that Abbie even said in her podcast episode.
“However, on social media, Britt has copped the full force for her part in this.”
Laura Byrne takes aim at Yung Gravy for ‘playing along’ during Brittany Hockley and Kyle Sandilands slut-shaming segment about Abbie Chatfield
As well as directing her listeners to focus their anger towards the 51-year-old radio shock jock, Laura said that Yung Gravy is also to blame.
“The other thing that happened in that interview is that when Kyle offered Britt and Abbie up for a date (something Britt did not want) Young Gravy [sic] chose Britt and laughed also,” she wrote, noting that “he also played along”.
The reality star explained that whilst Abbie said Young Gravy was “all class” during the incident and was “made to feel uncomfortable by the line of questioning”, this was not accurate.
“Britt was uncomfortable but she was not afforded the same grace,” she said. “Britt has apologised and Abbie refused to accept her apology.”
She continued: “But I strongly disagree with targeting the female and holding her to a higher standard than the other two men in that room.
“The one who said the misogynistic things and the man who didn’t speak up either.”
The podcast host concluded: “This whole thing is a sh*t show and has been utterly exhausting.”
Life Uncut listeners share their ‘disappointment’ over Brittany Hockley’s ‘lack of acknowledgement’
One listener shared a series of “respectful messages” they sent Life Uncut with So Dramatic!,.
They expressed concern about the podcast moving forward, following the “disappointing” segment and Brittany’s “decision to join The Kyle and Jackie O Show“.
“I would strongly urge for Britt to rethink how she interacts with Kyle and enables misogynistic behaviour, whilst on a ‘female empowering’ podcast,” they wrote.
“It’s really sad to see Britt go along with misogynist vulgar comments from Kyle, and not call him out on his behaviour. I would like to ask, does Life Uncut support this? The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”
The message was ignored by the hosts, so the listener followed it up with another.
“I was a huge fan of this podcast but recently Britt’s slut-shaming of Abbie is not an isolated incident, not a one-off mistake,” they wrote.
“The choice to align yourself with Kyle and the continuous slut-shaming and put-downs of women goes to show the lack of feminism your podcast has built the reputation off.
They then told Life Uncut that their podcast is “going to lose followers and interest if there is no acknowledgement” from Brittany about the incident.
“I’ve been listening for a while now, hoping there is some acknowledgement and justification of why Britt thought it would be a good idea to join Kyle and how she condones his behaviour while simultaneously running the Life Uncut ‘feminist’ podcast.
She concluded: “So disappointing, hoping to get more of an apology and explaination from Britt.”
Laura Byrne comes to the defence of her Life Uncut co-host again, defending her role in the slut-shaming incident
Laura responded with the same copy-and-paste message she sent other listeners whilst adding that Brittany was forced to take the role alongside Kyle “in order to progress her career“.
“Britt was put into a really hard spot,” Laura responded via the Life Uncut podcast Instagram page.
“The fill-in spot next to Kyle was only 2.5 weeks. However, it was a caveat spot that Britt had to do if she was going to do summer fill-in breakfast radio with Mitch Churi.
“The thing that is so disappointing is that in order to progress her career in a medium that she loves (radio) the barricade was to sit across from Kyle for that period.”
Laura then added that the incident has been a “huge learning curve for Britt.”
“I think [Brittany] was naive in thinking that she could handle it,” she said. “I have strong feelings about it myself and have spoken to Britt at length in private.”
The recently married star then concluded by saying that Brittany is the victim of an unfair “pile on”.
“I do however think it’s really problematic how the past few days have unfolded and biting my tongue has been hard,” she wrote.
“Ultimately it’s turned into a mud-slinging contest now, and while the man who is the issue is at home drinking tea – Britt who is a good person (albeit made a poor judgment choice) is at the bottom of a pile on.”
It comes after the Life Uncut podcast was flooded with scathing one-star reviews following the slut-shaming segment.
Want even more goss? Listen to episode 239 of the So Dramatic! podcast with Megan Pustetto below!
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