Here We DARVO Again
Now is the time of monsters.
You’ve probably heard it in the last few weeks.
You’re not quite sure if you’re hearing anything at all. If you are like me, your millennial birthright of tinnitus may be masking it sometimes.
But it’s there.
A low but noticeable sound like a gust of wind.
That sound you hear?
It’s the sound of the relieved sighs of many brewery owners, leadership, and others up and down the chain of command that they don’t have to act like they care about “DEI” anymore.
“Finally!” I can almost hear them proclaim, “Finally, someone is thinking about the white men. They have not been the center of conversation for…well, never, the industry has always been centered on them. But still! At least now we can go back to just taking annual pictures of our female staff throwing hops into the boil to celebrate just how much we care about women. We did it, boys.”
“We can go back to holding company events at places like Topgolf. We can stop the bare minimum of posting our job openings on the Pink Boots website because we’re just going to hire a dude whose dad was a fraternity brother with the CEO. We can go back to ‘participating’ in International Women’s Day by buying the Pink Boots hop blend and never donating any of the proceeds.”1
“We can create problematic beer labels and names because they’re ‘just a joke.’ At last, the days of ‘you can’t say anything to anyone anymore’ are over and we can go back to - well, continue because we never really stopped - just being guys being dudes because that’s what this industry is all about, right? It’s just beer. Beer is supposed to be fun.”
“Finally, we don’t have to be frustrated anymore because someone from a historically excluded community asked us to please not do sexisms or racisms or microaggressions.”
“Rise up! We no longer have to fear being ‘canceled.’”
Let’s be very clear: “cancel culture” is not an actual thing. If you think you know of an example of cancel culture, I would love for you to send it to me and explain why it’s cancel culture and not accountability. Explain to me how it’s cancel culture and not people in positions of power being held to the same standards they demand everyone else be held to.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Ever notice how people crying about cancel culture usually live at several intersections of privilege - white, male, powerful, cis-gender, heterosexual, monied, able-bodied, and access to large platforms. A veritable buffet of privilege where the sneeze guard is presumed tacit immunity.
Who don’t you see proclaiming they are being canceled when their actions are called into question? Literally everyone else. Because everyone else is not given multiple chances. At best, they are given *A* chance. One chance that you may not even be aware of is your only chance.
So we’re going backward and I’m betting what little ongoing equity work is still going on will dwindle off. I’m guessing most of it already has. Social media grids have already gone back to mostly white faces. White women will probably still be held up as exemplars of breweries' diversity initiatives.2
But not given support, only access. Because the deal wasn’t that you would prosper or even be happy. The deal was you got hired so we could parade you around in public while undermining you in private. We set it up so that the opportunity for historically excluded people is so compromised that it’s designed for them to not want to show up. That way, we can wring our hands in public that “diverse” applicants aren’t applying and it’s probably because they’re not interested in being involved.
Speaking of white women, when was the last time you had to pause doing your actual job to attend your brewery’s “diversity team” meeting so you could do the unpaid labor of educating your bosses how to treat you like a human? I will be shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you! - if those meetings lasted past mid-2022.
But back to cancel culture, as misguided belief in it is partly responsible for where we find ourselves today. To cry “cancel culture” in the face of being asked to be accountable for your behavior fits into the RVO of DARVO.
DARVO, if you are not familiar with it, stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender Roles. Please become familiar with it, because it is all around us and will continue to get worse as the world around us continues to get more delusional. Once you learn to recognize it, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of it you see.
If you would like to see stunning examples of DARVO in the beer industry, check out literally anything James Watt has been involved in, such as the repeated sexual harassment of employees and customers.3
If you haven’t already read Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi, please consider this essential reading. Faludi does an excellent job of tracing the backlash to the feminism of the 60s and 70s through the media, entertainment, and politics of the 1980s. Remember all those awful mean “career women” in movies with big shoulder pads who only cared about their careers and didn’t care about being married or having kids? They either end up as lonely villains who got their comeuppance or learn their true role in life is to give up their careers and belong to a small-town man.
I bring this up now because I want you to pay close attention to what is going on around us. Learn to spot DARVO when it is happening. Even if you feel powerless to confront it, there is still value in understanding what is happening. And it’s going to continue getting worse.
There are people who want you to stay silent. They’re going to try to make you feel isolated. They’re going to try to make you feel ashamed about your response to their abuse so that you’ll be afraid to speak up. They’re going to try to gaslight you into thinking that actually, when you think about it, you’re the one who is the aggressor, and why are you trying to cancel them?
When you feel pressured to stay silent, whose voice is applying that pressure?
Who benefits when you have no questions?
These questions also apply to allies. Maybe especially to allies, because to be an ally means that you are not part of the group being attacked. Particularly if you can hide behind your whiteness, it is time for you to actually step up.
We are not powerless but we do have to be brave. You are not powerless but you do have to be brave.4 Which you can do, because you can do and have done hard things.
Smell Loss is a Warning Sign for Medical Conditions
In a previous newsletter, I wrote about the rise in awareness about anosmia and the impact losing our sense of smell, mostly due to the pandemic. We get regular vision and hearing tests, as well as routine dental visits. Why aren’t there routine smell tests?
Recent research has determined that smell loss can be an early warning sign of 139 medical conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and anxiety disorders. Smell loss is linked to virtually every body system from cardiovascular to metabolic. One thing all the diseases linked to smell loss shared is increased inflammation.
The researchers proposed three mechanisms behind the connection of smell loss and disease: a common factor affecting the olfactory system and body systems; substances produced by medical conditions causing damage to the olfactory system; and that the olfactory system may generate compounds that increase vulnerability to disease.
On the flip side, there is a ton of research out there that shows how effective olfactory training is in mitigating some of these diseases. Smell training doesn’t just make you a better evaluator of beer - it can improve your memory among many other benefits.
Imagine if we established routine smell tasting that could provide a baseline measurement of your sense of smell and help validate any loss of smell you experience. What if that routine test could be used with other risk factors and biological information to screen you for hundreds of diseases?
And finally…
Before we leave each other, here are a few things I am up to these days:
Having a blast with my Aroma: Explore the Wheel webinars. If you haven’t already registered for one, do it now! It is very cool to see this project come to fruition, but I was surprised by how excited doing the webinars and interacting with the participants has made me. These webinars are really fun, and I’ve gotten really positive feedback from participants. As a reminder, I aim to make all of my projects as accessible as possible, so there is a (very brief) fee waiver request form on my website, too.
Listening to Scam Factory, a podcast about those scam emails and texts we get. No, you probably don’t have unpaid tolls. No, “Michael from HR company,” you may not send me job opportunities. As it turns out, the people behind those messages are often trapped in “scam factories” and forced to scam people. The podcast is literally only days old, so you can catch up pretty quickly.
Attending my first Bier Omekase in Chicago. I am admittedly very biased about how awesome this project is because I am friends with the creators, Jenny Pfafflin and Shana Solarte. HOWEVER, Bier Omekase is such a cool concept and, of course, I absolutely love learning about beer culture outside of the Eurocolonial beer cultures we all know.
Men in the industry love to tell you what their brewery does for Pink Boots as if that is the sexism panacea. It is not. I would argue it’s not even the bare minimum. Something being pink and not for the boys does not automatically confer equity onto any organization. And even organizations claiming to uplift women can still decide to align themselves with the patriarchy and perpetuate sexism.
It is extremely rare for me to use the term “LOL” so please appreciate that when I say LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL at the white women losing their federal government jobs being pissy because “DEI” wasn’t supposed to include them, just Black and brown people. How are those face-eating leopards, ladies?
I recently learned of the 5 Calls app and have downloaded it to my phone. There is a list of issues from which you can choose, such as protecting transgender athletes, and stopping RFK’s attacks on vaccine access. When you select your issue, the app gives you the names and contact information for your representatives. Each issue also has a sample script you can follow, which I find invaluable. I think a lot of us are intimidated about contacting our elected officials because we don’t know what to say, so the scripts come in really handy. Additionally, if you are phone-averse like I am, simply call your representatives after hours and leave a voicemail. Boom! You have spoken up about issues you care about.
Thanks for the shoutout!!
Thank you for another educational newsletter; I always appreciate another learning opportunity. As a beer judge who previously experienced anosmia, I found that topic especially interesting.