Thu 13 Oct 2016 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Pebbles Hooper, the daughter of World designers Francis Hooper and Denise L'Estrange Corbet, has been accused of directing “queerphobic” and “abliest” comments towards makeup artist and member of the queer community, Richard Symons. Last night Hooper responded to a photo tweeted by Symons who was dressed in drag and wrote “@pr1ncessrichard but I’m not surprised such a massive pussy loves dressing up like a girl so much”. Symons says “Her tweets were absolutely queerphobic and absolutely ableist, when you bring a queer persons gender expression up and associaite it with a sign of weakness and call a person who suffers from social anxiety and depression as "socially retarded”.” He says this all started about a year ago “when I made a tweet about the public opinion of her after she made a comment describing the accidental death of a family of three in Ashburton as "natural selection" which she has since apologised for. “Her tweets to me were presumably prompted by a thread I was involved in about how she searched her own name on twitter and replies to people who have tweeted about her, but not to her combined with the fact that I was on set with her one day (for about 5 minutes) and refused to acknowledge her because of her abusive behaviour towards both strangers and my personal friends. “Honestly I was not surprised at all to be on the receiving end of her tweets, she has a reputation for going on tirades about people who acknowledge her unacceptable behaviour (please see racially charged tweets to Rose Matafeo) I felt targeted because of my position in the fashion industry and that I am quite staunch about making sure people who I work with don’t support abusers.” Responding to a barrage of tweets from a handful of people calling out Hooper on her comments on Symons’ photo, Hooper tweeted to one person “I called him a pussy because when he was in the same room as me, he was surprisingly silent. That’s a pussy.” The back and forth personal attacks on Twitter went on for a few hours last night although Symons says “Her tweets haven't affected me personally too much, I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to cyber bullying but it’s my civic duty to hold her accountable for the deplorable things she has said about me and others I am close with so that others do not have to experience what I have.” He says he would like for the people who support Hooper to hold her accountable for what she has said “I'm sick and tired of people giving her a space to spread her bigotry under the guise of "cutting humour". Its flat out offensive and unacceptable in 2016.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 13th October 2016 - 3:30pm