I didn't see it as defending sexism. It was more pointing out the hypocrisy of Apple for firing Martinez while selling and promoting 'Beats by Dre'. In both cases the creative works were well-known before the hire/acquisition.
Pointing out that hypocrisy is a strategy some took with criticizing Apple, but it's not the direction PG chose. [1]
He said nothing about Dre, focusing entirely on saying "He's a good guy, actually", which is the epitome of the strategy taken by men historically to defend other shitty men.
That's not "defending sexism" per se, but it is excusing sexism because of the content of someone's character. "Sure he said sexist things but he is not sexist". It does not pass even the most baseline level of scrutiny.
I think it's also worth saying here that the comparison to Dre is super irrelevant:
1) Musicians may write lyrics in the first person, but the general default for all musical content is it's "fictional", and not representive of their personal views on the matter. It's artistic license with ideas - occasionally problematic. That is not the case with "autobiographies", which is what Antonio's book was purported to be.
2) Dre has taken complete ownership of all of his past indiscretions and apologized for them [2]. Antonio double down.
Which is a poor critique considering Martinez would be working directly with other Apple employees while Dre is barely involved with Apple as far as I know. The issue isn't the creative work alone, the issue is the impact on fellow employees and the working environment.
