Backlash Beer Comments On The Treatment Of Women In The Brewing Industry

Last night, we held an event where we do the usual:  hang out and talk to people while drinking beer.  Unfortunately, I was unable to make it because Stout is sick and someone needed to watch after him.  So Maggie went alone.  Over 2 years we’ve developed pretty thick skin at events like this, because inevitably someone gets drunk and becomes outspoken about one thing or another.  It’s the sort of thing you laugh along with and shrug off.  But it seems whenever I’m not at an event with Maggie, she frequently reports back that someone (a dude) was rude/condescending to her.  I wish could say this has only happened once – but I’m realizing a pattern here.  It’s infuriating.  I took to twitter last night, expressing my anger.

I wanted to write this blog post last night, while still fuming in response to what happened.  But I decided that I should wait and see how I felt this morning.  Well I’m still pissed about the whole thing, so fuck it.  Here we go.

I guess it’s never been explicitly stated this way, so let me clear the air.

Without Maggie, Backlash would not exist.

This is true for several reasons.

1 – She believed in the idea enough to push us to pursue it past a dream

2 – She literally supports me and allows me to not be homeless while we get Backlash to the point where it can financially support the two of us.

3 – She has helped shape the brand and it’s execution to what we know today

I’m sick of people treating her like she’s some sort of tagalong.  From a quick look at my twitter stream and the responses the above tweet got, it seems to be a trend a lot of our female industry friends have experienced.  I’m actually a bit surprised by this, given how many husband/wife duos there are in the craft beer industry here in New England.  You would think that, by now, women in craft beer would receive the same respect that men do- but things like what happened last night remind me that we’re still far off.  It is certainly symptomatic of a larger gender perception problem, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t fix it in our small little craft beer universe.

But don’t get it twisted – special treatment is not only NOT the answer, it just furthers the problem.  Really though, if  ”women targeted” beers aren’t laughably stupid in what they’re supposed to achieve – I don’t know what is.

Let’s try this on for size:  Can we please just talk to each other, oh I don’t know, as people? Don’t assume that because you’re speaking with the female half of a male-female duo that she has any less knowledge about certain subject matter or has put in less effort than her counterpart.  I promise you, if you do so, you’re wrong more often than you’re right.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re not a douchebag.  You’re probably really cool.  A lot of this probably seems painfully obvious to you, but I swear – and ask some women in the industry – it is not.

Have a good weekend –
Go Sox.

H

–
See more at: http://backlashbeer.com/youre-probably-wrong/#sthash.gTIgcbjq.dpuf