Queer and Works With Beer
My queerness does not absolve me of my white privilege.
Where I “fall short” by societies standards in some ways, I am miles ahead of others because I am a white female-presenting person who has had a middle-class upbringing. Naively when I was much younger I had this idea that being someone different to the white heterosexual man meant that it was us versus them. That minorities were on all on the same team and our fight was the same.
By the time I had got to university the cracks within that feminism had started to show. I started to meet other (mostly white) women or queer people who were misogynists, transphobic or racists. I couldn’t believe it, it was like my simple binary world was being pulled out from under me, surely it was a case of good versus evil? That was when it really became clear to me that not all “activists” are fighting for the rights of those who are different to them and to most people their activism is just an act of selfishness.
Over the past five years the term intersectional has been banded around a lot; with black women rightfully asking for intersectionality within feminism and white women claiming intersectionality to boost their numbers whilst brushing queer and BIPOC women’s voices under the carpet. We have also seen a rise in the ‘gender critical’ and ‘radical feminist’ movement. People who are using familiar feminist terminology and are weaponising it against the trans community. Claiming to be fighting for the safety of women and their rights whilst also demonising and accusing trans women of not being women in one fell swoop (I’m looking at you Joanne).
To be clear; if your feminism does not support black, queer, trans, disabled, working class, people of colour or any marginalised group then you should not be allowed to call yourself a feminist - in the same way that if your pride doesn’t support marginalised people then it is not pride.
If life is a race then we are all running the same one, except where white people have ten to twenty hurdles to jump, people from marginalised groups, especially black trans women, have eighty to one hundred.
“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us”
Micah Bazant
By this point you might be thinking, what does this have to do with beer? A common theme I see popping up on twitter is the rhetoric that beer cannot and should not give its opinion, that beer should be unbiased: “let beer be beer, leave politics out of what we’re drinking”. When really everything is political.
You will notice that the people who make these proclamations are the same people who do not have anything to lose by not having a brewery stand by them. What I mean by this is; the beer industry mirrors the default state of the world, it has been built to suit the white man. It’s like an ergonomic office chair, that you can only sit in if you’re white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, and male OR if you squash yourself down and lose yourself by becoming the person that society and the media demand you to be in order to be successful (like Kirsten Dunst’s character in Hidden Figures who really encapsulates the role of “successful” white women in society).
As with most things; beer is steeped in misogyny and it always has been, it is your traditional man’s drink. Women don’t drink beer because it’s not a drink for ladies, men drink beer whilst watching sport and shouting. Women pour the beer because such is their duty but obviously they don’t actually know anything about beer. This translates very easily into homophobia, because of course why would gay men like beer? Gay men aren’t masculine… gay women are masculine but they are also women so as men we’re not quite sure how we feel about that but we will keep shouting slurs and sexually harassing bar staff all the same…
The moment that a queer person or a person of colour enters and exists loudly in a white cis het male space, they become a political statement, whether they want to be or not. So by rejecting politics within beer you are rejecting people. In a recent interview with The Grape Nation podcast, Julia Coney of Black Wine Professionals said
“We have to change the industry because we want to change the world”
She was referring to wine but this is of course applicable to our own industry. There are so many wonderful and diverse people within beer, but unless we can change the problems we currently face and start working on protecting those within marginalised groups then we will lose those people.
As I write this piece I’m sat watching Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns Forever; a collection of work by queer artists and drag performers; it makes me feel safe and seen. I can’t honestly say the beer industry makes me feel safe or seen. I’m not suggesting bars need to start putting on drag shows but at the bare minimum; bars, pubs and taprooms need to start protecting their queer customers and employees. If a customer uses discriminatory language in a bar and you as a manager just shrug it off, what you are saying is; that sort of behaviour is acceptable and that your staff member or any queer customers in or out of the building do not matter.
Everytime we ignore problematic behaviour to avoid discomfort or even out of “politeness” we hurt marginalised groups and perpetuate a culture of bigotry.
The title of this piece is in reference to my twitter bio. It has been ‘queer and works in beer’ for about a year now because even though it’s a small thing, hopefully someone who is in beer or someone who wants to work in beer will see it and will know that they aren’t alone. Over lockdown, I realised it wasn’t enough, I needed to do more, be louder, be prouder, fight for those who need it.
I will continue to work as hard as I can making the bar that I work in a friendly and inclusive environment, I will keep signal boosting on twitter, start raising money for local charities and to get Burum Collective to a point where I am able to step back from blog content and be able to pay people from queer and BIPOC communities to write and tell their own stories. But whilst I continue to apply for grants, work hard and save money; I need the beer industry to step the fuck up.
This is me, asking you, the managers, bar owners, brewery owners to do more. Don’t just throw a beer in a rainbow can for pride month and pretend to care about queer people for a week in the summer. Connect with your local community, do a collaboration brew, donate all the profits to a local queer charity but most importantly don’t just listen to what I have to say. Diversivy your brands social media feeds, listen to what people in marginalised groups are saying and be ready to learn because you aren’t always going to get things right.
For this month’s Behind the Bar I have interviewed 8 different queer people within the beer industry from both the UK, the US and Canada who I think are incredible. I implore you to read these interviews as they get released over the next few weeks, more interviews are also being scheduled. Every single one of these people has had a different experience within beer and have different feelings on pride but we all agree that the beer industry needs to do MORE. Not just for queer people, for all marginalised groups. Stop rejecting politics and start protecting people.
What can I do?
Donate to your local queer and BIPOC charities, change happens on a small scale.
If you are looking for something more beer orientated then connect with your local queer beer groups and find out what you can do to help them. You can also help by donating money to and signal boosting people within the industry making changes for people of colour such as Beer Kulture or The Michael Jackson Foundation.
Stand up for marginalised groups, within your own life, within your own industries, help change the world.
