No Swans song

Meanwhile, female journalists have been milking the whole kerfuffle for all it was worth. "What do we do with our rage? What do we do with our grief?" asked Caroline Overington in The Australian. As a Swan's ambassador, she argued that women fans in particular would not take well to the idea that all the "family friendly" messaging was no more than a marketing tool. "They believed in the Swans. Now they feel like they were taken for a ride."

Last week there was a media campaign urging people to support the Swans' women's team in Sunday's historic double-header - then walk out when the men took the field. Never mind that the five men actually caught up in the scandal weren't even allowed to play.

What was really odd was the genuflecting to the Swans' women's team throughout the fallout, with apologies flowing for damage done to the brand by the men. Odd, because nobody extended the same courtesy when it was women misbehaving. When Matildas' captain Sam Kerr was hauled into a London court - accused, after a drunken taxi dispute, of racially abusing a police officer by calling him "f---ing stupid and white" - nobody rushed to apologise to the Socceroos for the reputational hit to Australian football generally. She was eventually acquitted, but the damage to the "brand," if that's the currency we're trading in, was done all the same. Funny how that works only one way.

When it came to reporting last weekend's Swans' games, the AFL Women's own account claimed the women's team had run out onto the SCG in a "see of red and white," a typo that rather summed up the week. Here's that rather sparse sea:

Overington wrote about the hundreds who walked out after the women's game - but what she failed to point out was that, even with numbers down for the men's game, the crowd was still double that of the women's. The men's team went on to win by over 50 points and was greeted by a standing ovation.

Good to see that so many loyal Swans fans had the good sense not to taint this team of hardworking, talented men by the foolish behaviour of such a few. That's cause for celebration.

There was a very telling tweet this week about how regularly there seems to be a "massive outbreak of hysteria over male sexual behaviour." The tweeter suggested this could have something to do with "maintaining control for the feminist complex that runs Australia." Indeed.

Hardly surprising then to see Teal MP Zali Steggall this week showing her feminist credentials by nudging Albanese in Question Time, invoking Australia's "crisis" of violence against women - with the Swans scandal as Exhibit A. Albo didn't miss a beat, declaring that "every woman and every girl has the right to feel safe and must be safe at all times," before announcing domestic and sexual violence would be a special agenda item at next week's National Cabinet.

Funny, that - a foundering government suddenly handed the perfect moment to look like it's doing something, riding a wave of manufactured male-shaming all the way to the next taxpayer-funded knee-jerk reaction, the next tilt of the scales of justice a little further away from due process and a little further towards guilty-until-proven-innocent. That is, as long as the accuser is a woman and the accused is a man.