A meta-note about beer blogging

On this site, I usually like to stick to talking about beer.  Sure, there are huge digressions about the context in which I drink beer or the people I meet along the way, but generally I try to make sure that beer or beer-related activities of some kind are the focus.  I’ve never wanted to have the kind of blog with posts bearing tags like “life” or “thoughts” because one woman’s internal musings are often another person’s snoozefests.  It’s like when someone tries to tell you about a dream they had last night: it’s interesting to them, but your mind starts to wander almost as soon as they launch into it because, well, who cares?

So, with that all in mind, I hope everyone will forgive me for a somewhat introspective piece that’s more about covering beer and brewing than about beer itself.  This was prompted by the fact that earlier today a friend pointed out to me that elsewhere in the world of online beer and brewing coverage I had come up as a topic of conversation.  I don’t want to mention where this was because I don’t want to point more people to it, but you’ll know what I’m talking about if you came across it too.  I had a busy day finishing up my ciders (which I ought to be writing about and would be writing about if this hadn’t come up), so I didn’t have a chance to go find out what was said until this afternoon.  If this is all starting to sound like a chain of high school gossip to anyone else, that ought to be your first clue that something is amiss here.

The gist of it all is that the friend of a group of guys who cover beer met me this weekend at NCHF, and he and his buddies decided to include in their coverage of the event a short discussion about me personally.  Most comments were on the subject of what I look like, am I single, and would I be impressed hear about their beer-related gig.  The discussion ends with a single token line to the effect of, “I hear she’s a cool person.  And a good beer writer.”

I can’t really capture the tenor of the comments here, and I know there are some guys who just aren’t going to understand why this got me angry enough that I took the afternoon to clear my head before responding so that I wouldn’t completely rant, but I’d like to start by asking this question: Have you ever, anywhere in the beer journalism or beer blog space, heard the journalists devote 90% of their time to discussing a male blogger or brewer’s looks and relationship status?  No.  And the reason is because (A) they wouldn’t be talking about him if there were no real news about him, and (B) he’d probably come kick their asses.  I wish these guys would have kept the comments to the topic of whether they respect what I do or not.  And if they had nothing substantive to say on the matter, which it didn’t seem like they did, to devote the time to someone who deserves it more, someone doing something awesome for craft beer.

I must have had at least 5 guys ask me this weekend at NCHF why there aren’t more women beer enthusiasts.  I usually just shrug.  I mean, it’s not like we all have one brain we share between us women – I don’t know why other women do what they do.  But then, this little incident made me want to say to everyone who asked me this question, “Don’t you think that at least a small part of it is that we women know you’re looking us up and down instead of listening to what we’re saying?  That you’re judging us by our hair and clothes and weight, instead of how we brew or write? Don’t you think we get tired of that? Don’t you think it makes it hard for us to trust you when you say you like the beer we brewed? Or the post we wrote? To ever talk to you like one professional to another?”

A least favorite segment of mine from the discussion: “Is she married? I don’t want to go to far…” Other participant, “No, I don’t think so.”  First participant, “Ok, cool.”

Excuse me?  So, if I had a husband who would be upset by their comments, they wouldn’t have made them; but so long as it’s just me that’s going to be upset, it’s all cool?  Real classy, guys.

In the time since this blog has started, my policy has always been never to discuss being a woman in beer.  It’s a choice I made very deliberately because I think that in an ideal world it deserves zero attention, positive or negative.  This is why I don’t have a blog name like “The beer chick” or “The beer babe” and why I don’t write posts like “A female perspective on ales”, etc.  I want the blog judged on it’s own merits. Generally, I just shrug off the occasional chauvinist comment made in my presence and pretend not to know about the ones made when I’m not around.  I usually just focus on wishing guys would realize on their own how obnoxious this talk is so that I won’t have to say anything.

So why’d I cave this time and decide to post about it?  Well, it’s not because this is the most egregious discussion I’ve ever heard.  However, as I thought about things this afternoon, I decided that I guess I can’t really expect it to stop unless I mention that it bothers me, to be talked about for what sex I am, what age I am, and what I look like, rather than for what I do and say.  So, to that end, let it be said here that, yes, it bothers me.  And no, I’m not interested in “cross-promoting” with a group that devoted the first half of their piece to a discussion of their new webcam, the “beer and beaver cam.”  As the much younger party here, I shouldn’t have to be the one to say this but, dude, grow up already guys.  And once you have, then sure, let’s sit down over a beer together.

Cheers,

-JJ

PS – I haven’t totally disabled comments on this post because, even though I mention no names here, it’s only fair to leave it open to the people mentioned, or other readers, to respond.  However, I have set the comments to require moderator approval because I don’t want anyone posting a link to the original discussion here – I’m not going to promote that discussion here on this blog.