"Boys, it's time to raise the bat! That's 100 women!"
Jeers and pats on the back accompany the man of the hour, hands in the air as though he's just escaped the Beaconsfield Mine.
He takes a seat to accept his crown. King of a kingdom the whole room agreed to build.
Proud, as he sits between disciples, bending to his heroics.
But what is he even proud of?
Who is he proving himself to?
And why does it make him feel good?
This is the sound of a sporting club.
Born from the Conquest Economy, and wrapped in a change room.
Where access to women equals power, and power equals status, ranked neatly on a second scoreboard.
One that can desensitise men to the point where they no longer know where the line is, and don't even know why they're keeping score.
An invisible force that walks men to the edge of sexual violence.
How do I know this?
Through two decades of playing footy and cricket, I've been around it, and fed it. In clubs and in friendship circles both.
Until I knew better.
Then, when working in professional sport, someone exercised their power over me. That’s when the language of the Conquest Economy took on a different meaning.
All of a sudden, I knew, I felt, what a man who boasts about sexual pursuits is capable of.
So why do we keep seeing reports of sexual violence stemming from sport?
You don't get a pattern this reliable from bad apples, you get it from the orchard.
But before I dig into the roots, let me be abundantly clear. None of this is an excuse. A man is responsible for what he does, every single time.
But if we refuse to look at the world that shapes a man, we will keep being shocked by what men do. And we cannot prevent what we do not understand.
Understanding the cause does not excuse the act, but once you find the cause, you can find the lever.
Shall we begin?
This is the Conquest Economy. Approval is the currency, and the fastest way to earn it is a story.
When a group of men accepts a system passed down for thousands of years and congregates under the banner of a ‘club’, history shows they self-organise under the hierarchy of the second scoreboard.
The conquest game creates a ladder that looms large inside skulls searching for significance. Which is why this is never just a superstar problem, these are whole-club problems.
The bloke who'll never crack the senior side, a yard slow, buried in the twos, he can't win on the field, but he's charming, he's funny. He can win here.
So the weekend gets retold, embellished, ranked, and every private thing a man did becomes a public entry.
Nobody has written the rules down, but you learn them the first time you watch a bloke get the room for a story. And in turn, learn the fastest way to get the room yourself.
But the scoreboard does something to a man over time.
Every entry has to beat the last. The acts get bigger. The story gets louder. And somewhere in the tally, she stops being the point at all.
You stop asking if you want her. If she wants you. You're not chasing a person anymore. You're chasing a number, for an audience, for a prize you can’t even describe.
But turn the number over. On the other side of that tally is a person.
Not a conquest, not an entry, not a story for Monday. A woman with a job she's good at, a family that texts her goodnight, and plans for a Tuesday three weeks from now that have nothing to do with you.
Ambitions bigger than the room you're bragging in. A full and complete life that was never a supporting role in yours.
She is exactly as real as you are, she just never agreed to be on your scoreboard.
But that's what the second scoreboard demands. To keep score, you have to forget she's a person. A tally has no room for a life.
So when a 'role model' crosses the line, we call it out of character. A good bloke. A one-off. A mistake.
But he didn't leap the line. He crept toward it, inch by inch, eyes on his mates, waiting for the applause.
He never saw it coming, because he was never looking at her. He was looking at them.
Men trying to impress men. Edging themselves into dangerous territory.
So what is it that’s so impressive about a conquest?
About a body count? About the outrageousness of an act?
Why are you better than me because you’ve had more sex or done dirtier deeds?
When we say it out loud, it sounds trivial. It loses weight.
This is the construct we have to pull down.
The lie that she’s worth more as a story than a person.
And what dismantles a system seeding bad apples?
A round? A hashtag? A policy?
All of those prune the branches and leave the roots to grow back.
The system only comes apart in one place, and that place is in the room.
Because the Conquest Economy is simply something we agreed was impressive. It’s the foundation the whole kingdom was built upon.
But the kingdom was never real to begin with. We just decided to bow to it.
It runs on one thing only, and that’s an audience.
Stop bowing, and the king is just a bloke alone with a number nobody wrote down.
The crowd is the power, and the crowd is you.
Take the status out of it, and you starve the drive underneath.
Dismantling the Conquest Economy begins with modest acts.
In the seemingly small, yet enormous moments that shape the safety of society.
We make conquest powerless when we refuse out loud to be impressed.
Silence is a vote. Laughing is a vote.
There is no neutral seat in that change room.
And while ‘good’ men kneel to a crown we pretend is made of gold, women are left to pick up the bill in the real world.
You are either upholding the Conquest Economy, or you are one of the men taking it apart.
So when old mate raises his bat in the air, and waits to be affirmed…
Do you quiz him, or give him the room?
Good men leave him holding questions the whole construct was built to drown out.
What am I actually proud of?
Who am I proving myself to?
Why do I need this?
Because two people get erased in the Conquest Economy.
Her, completely, and the man who needed her gone to feel like he was enough.