Commentators have taken a fleeting glance at the Sydney Swans scandal, applied the wonderful simplicity of Karen Logic and immediately concluded that the entire nation needs to repent in sackcloth and ashes.
Five Sydney Swans players breached club standards by partying into the wee hours of Monday morning with strippers who - through the miraculous alchemy of public relations - quickly progressed from crude ‘strippers’ to ‘private performers’ before finally being universally revered as ‘exotic dancers’.
It’s alleged that one player sexually assaulted one of the women.
The serious allegation is rightly being investigated by police.
Separately, the Sydney Swans suspended the five players for the rest of the season because they should never have been out until 4am, let alone brought girls back to the team hotel.
Fair enough.
But watch what happened next.
In the blink of an eye, the misbehaviour of five players became evidence of a culture problem among all 44 players on the Sydney Swans list.
And before you could say ‘believe all women’, the Sydney Swans culture had become evidence that the AFL itself was rotten to the core.
And before excitable journalists could find Mitch Brown’s phone number for comment, the AFL had become evidence that male sporting culture was utterly corrupted and completely irredeemable.
And in the time it took a person to type ABC News into their web browser, sporting culture had become evidence that Australian masculinity was toxic.
And with all the confidence of Julia Gillard starring down Tony Abbott across the Parliamentary dispatch box, Australian masculinity was declared to be prima facie evidence that Australian men were misogynists.
So there you have it.
We travelled from a hotel room at the Melbourne Pullman to the entire Australian male population without even stopping for evidence.
This is the rhetorical equivalent of blaming every Toyota Camry owner because one uber driver double parked his car in Mosman.
The trick is conflation …
