Susie O’Brien: Why Dane Swan’s and Scott Cummings’ sexual assault “jokes” can’t go unchecked
Dane Swan is refusing to own up to his disturbing sexual assault “jokes” and instead of listening to the advice of domestic violence groups he chooses to blame journalists for doing their job, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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My name is trending and my Twitter feed is chockers with vile, abusive messages from men I’ve never met.
“She’s about to get trolled by 3000 pissed off listeners” Ryan Johnston wrote a few days ago.
He was wrong — more than 5000 fans of the Humpday podcast made by former AFL footballers Dane Swan and Scott Cummings and former Footy Show producer Ralph Horowitz have bombarded me with abuse.
Clint called me a “Major f---wit!”
Matt said I “just hate men”.
“S--- on her car bonnet,” Ralphy,” said Bob.
And “I hope the axe swings your way next for being a terrible columnist,” Jordan said.
“F--- off Susie you mud blood,” said tommy.
Stephen called me a “absolute loser”.
They’re angry with me because they think I’ve caused the Humpday podcast to be pulled from the air. They can’t see it’s not about me, but about comments made by the men themselves.
At the time Cummings and Swan said they did nothing more than have “22 weeks of laughs among themselves”.
22 weeks of laughs among ourselves and ppl who chose to listen and be part of it. Thanks very much everyone. It was fun while it lasted 😀 #humpday #scottyandswanny #thanksandgoodnight https://t.co/m1mBf7LXyC
— @scottyandswanny (@scottyandswanny) July 2, 2019
They don’t understand that laughing while reading out apparent sex acts, including “sneaking up” on a woman while she was vomiting on the ground and masturbating into a sleeping woman’s face is never okay.
Nor is making jokes about “having sex with a fat woman in a pit of mud” and having “bonpa” relationships — “but only no public appearances” — a reference to ugly women.
It’s not funny, its disturbing and wrong.
Making light of sexual assault is not right, and never will be.
It may have been an explicit podcast with a self-selected audience, but that shouldn’t give its male hosts carte blanche to degrade women.
When comments like this go unchecked they can set the conditions that allow sexual assault and abuse to occur.
Women are dehumanised and reduced to mere play things of men.
Scott Cummings says he gets it and has apologised, but he’s just lost his job with 3AW because his actions so far suggest otherwise.
His fans were outraged when Cummings posted an apology yesterday.
“Look at the bright side, Wayne Carey actually smashed a glass over a woman’s face and he’s still the face of Channel 7,” someone called Johno tweeted him in response.
Rather than look at what was said in the podcast, these men blame me — a female journalist — who was just doing her job.
The consensus seems to be that women like me are “told to listen in wait for something in your podcast to be quoted out of context just to gain clicks”.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
Events unfolded late last week when I followed a tip-off and wrote a story about a spat between the three men and two women who run a couple of very successful female-focused podcasts called Shameless and Love etc.
I did not trawl the Humpday podcast for clickbait, as Horowitz has accused me of doing.
The story I wrote focused on their interaction with the Shameless women, mentioning the other content almost in passing.
I thought it worthy of inclusion because it was so offensive, but it wasn’t the point of the story.
In fact, it took a male colleague of mine to take it further and seek reaction to the comments.
And yet it’s me that’s the focus on the three men’s wrath.
Horowitz continued to attack me, yesterday tweeting that I have been writing “complete s--- without the professionalism of checking neither accuracy nor fair representation, TAGS US INTO THE S--- then stand by … today says we’ve been trolling her. What the actual f---”.
Yet it’s clear I am being trolled by fans of the podcast for doing nothing more than my job.
Sadly, this isn’t going to go away, mainly because Swan and Horowitz still think they haven’t done anything wrong.
Yesterday Swan was tweeting Horowitz: “wanna start a podcast when I get back from holiday @rtralphy? Got some things I wanna get off my chest and this time I may seriously offend people”.
Swan also wrote directly to me: “Don’t worry Susie I’ll be back in a month with more s--- for you to write about and use me to get clicks on your putrid work”.
I sincerely hope not. I’ve had more than enough of these men and their vile views.