The thing about men is DARVO, and the thing about DARVO is men.

Not even quite in a like, all men are evil fuckers way. The word “evil” honestly feels reductive in virtually all instances, the same way the word “good” does. Reductive and, frankly, limiting. I’d rather not assign “good” to myself, for instance. It reminds me too much of sterile-yet-colorful post-hospital settings, paper-mache feelings and illustrations of our inner self. The words echoed from the lips of all the manic folk in the room: “I have a heart of gold, truly. I’m a good person.”

What a claim, for anyone! What a tragedy to actually try and live by. Most folks who claim goodliness don’t see living by it as a baseline standard is what I’ve learned, however. Proving it seems far more important.

Back to men and DARVO.

DARVO stands for each of the steps men are ingrained and conditioned to take when asked to take ownership of even the most baseline fault.

Deny! Your reality is not his reality. Or at least, that’s what we are saying. You better back him up, though, cuz next up is

Attack! Absolute slander, he’s not like other men, he’s here for you, here’s examples he brings up. Truly, he has a heart of gold. What a tragic hero, facing down the reality you suggest, where this poor stud has faulted at all.

Reverse Victim and Offender!

I’ll be real, by this point I tend to be already a seething vat of absolute battery acid rage, and it’s hard to actually see how this one plays out. I won’t deny that I have fallen prey to it, though. I think we all have. Frustrated tears quickly becoming terrified small floods, a desperation for it to stop. Sorry! Sorry! God, sorry! Please! Please stop yelling at me, please–

He’s on a roll, though. On a role, though. This is all he’s ever been allowed: rage, the deepest permitted male emotion. The only place where they are allowed to get frantic, like the rest of us do, yet we don’t call it that. When a man does it, he’s angry. When a man is angry, he is strong.

I have a son I don’t want to see turn into a monster. I have a daughter who’s older and already, I see her making herself small. Accommodating. Not for the son; he’s a baby, and fully locked in to my tits and their milk. Yet the world out there waits for him, the way it waited for my baby girl. It will demand he be angry, and it’ll tell him he must be correct.

And in the same way of the manic in post-hospital group therapy bullshit, it’ll be the perception that matters. Facts fall to the wayside. Having a heart of gold isn’t about your actions; it’s about how others see you.

For men, we best see them correctly, lest we face the consequences.

My daughter told me she is anxious about getting the right answer in class if no one else seems to know it. I wanted to scoop both my babies up and flee, recognize this tiny apocalypse fully for what it is and hide out and away like the mothers in my favorite stories do. Teach them to hide or fight when another person comes upon them in our woods as if that person comes with violence. Teach them to expect that; shoot first. Hide, run.

Don’t let them talk to you. That’s how the destruction starts.

That would come off kind of hysterical though, wouldn’t it?