[HoosierBrew]

Amanda, I'm really sorry that you (and others) have to deal with garbage like that. You have my empathy and respect. All I know is that, at some point if we get to swap beers in the swap I'd be thrilled if some of my beers are on a par with yours, period.

[brewinhard]

I am aware this post my be "too politicy" for this forum, so feel free to police it if you want.

My issue with the post is that it is a qualified woman's expertise is ignored in pursuit of something  related to the gender. Being a woman can really suck, especially when you work really hard to become respected in a male dominated field just to be ignored or marginalized. Unless you've experienced it in real life, there's no real way to explain it besides that.

I'm better at examples, so I'll give you one from my own life. To set the stage, I work as a Project Controls analyst in Construction. I have become an integral and respected member of our team (manager's words, not mine). Lately, I have worked my way into proposals. On a recent proposal, I worked directly with the lead estimator. I found tens of millions of dollars in errors, oversights, and general crap on a $50MM proposal. The VP of Construction requested that I be in the room when the "top brass" came in to review the proposal. I was excited to be invited, hoping to show my expertise and perhaps help answer questions about this subject that I was very familiar with. When all the upper management (all men) came in, they looked at me and the only other woman (a secretary) and asked why we hadn't made coffee yet. Queue the heart sinking. I went and made coffee. I could come up with at least 50 other examples of stuff like that, but that's the freshest one.

Anyway. My initial response had nothing to do with Annie herself or how she responded. It was more about how we (meaning women) are sometimes treated when all we want to do is to be taken seriously. I know that it is unintentional in many cases, but that doesn't make the action any less sucky. :/ Did the execs mean to belittle my contribution? Probably not, but it still sucked.

Well, now you guys know a bit more about me than is probably needed, but I had to say it.

Sorry to hear this.  Your manager should have shut the exec's down and told them that he wanted you there for a good reason. Your intelligence and money saving abilities!! What idiot man wouldn't listen to that?

[dbeechum]

Amanda, that's a giant pile of crap to deal with and it sucks.

If you listen to the podcast at all, you know my our feelings on these sorts of issues, so I'll leave it at that.

True would have spoken for you but didn't want to shut down your voice

[beersk]

I found tens of millions of dollars in errors, oversights, and general crap on a $50MM proposal. The VP of Construction requested that I be in the room when the "top brass" came in to review the proposal. I was excited to be invited, hoping to show my expertise and perhaps help answer questions about this subject that I was very familiar with. When all the upper management (all men) came in, they looked at me and the only other woman (a secretary) and asked why we hadn't made coffee yet.

In the movie version this is the part where you would say "I just saved you 30 million dollars, you make the coffee you jackass". This kind of thing makes me cringe -- I can't believe you had to put up with that.

Would've been difficult not to say that anyway. Seriously, that's f*cked.

[AmandaK]

Why did you not turn around and ask the secretary to make coffee?

Because there's a whole giant raft of socialization that would put her in a bad position if she did. Men who would ask would be galled at the temerity she was showing and possibly label her with epithet attached to "difficult women". Aka sometimes it's just easier to take a big ole bite of a crap sandwich if the time/place isn't right.

Exactly. In my industry (and likely many others), there is a very fine line between "difficult woman" and "knowledgeable and respected woman". The latter involves knowing and being capable of 200-300% more than all of your colleagues and management, very carefully calculating when to show that knowledge (but not too much, lest you become the 'know it all'), being able to have a good sense about yourself in order to question authority at the appropriate time, and having a slightly crass humor to boot.

Amanda, that's a giant pile of crap to deal with and it sucks.

If you listen to the podcast at all, you know my feelings on these sorts of issues, so I'll leave it at that.

I am way behind on EB podcasts, but I'll be sure to give it a listen tomorrow.

...I can't believe you had to put up with that.

It happens everywhere. Neighbors making small talk over our latest yard project, the shed, go directly to the husband and ask about the plans. They just assume that he's in charge of it. They don't realize that I'm the one designing it, laying it out IRL, doing the material takeoff, and figuring out the schedule/cost estimate. I'll also be overseeing all the brute force work once it starts, making sure the project is built to my specs. Car salesmen (the worst!) go directly to the husband for negotiating, ignoring me in the process. They don't know that I handle all the finances and probably know more about the car than they do. Last time we bought a car, husband smiled at the guy and deferred to me. I decided to let the guy do his thing and then went in for the 'yeah, I know more than you and I'm not buying it' kill. I got so much out of him by the time it was all over and signed, the guy showed me the books on that car. We paid ~$2000 less than what he paid for it on trade in and we got a years worth of oil changes and a warranty (which would come in handy later when they replaced the engine for us for $0). He shook my hand and nodded as we left. Joke was on him! Hahaha. (I used all my knowledgeable/respected woman tricks mentioned above on him.)

Please know that I'm not singing a "woe is me" song here - I am just attempting to shed light on something that is typically unnoticed or unintentional.

Anyway. I don't think I am treated this way at this forum or in the majority of homebrewing. It happens sometimes. Can we all be better about it? Sure. Normally it doesn't bother me to much and I can make a crass joke about it (how else do you think I've advanced in the construction industry??). But I just don't like seeing reminders of it on homebrew stuff.

[brulosopher]

Brulosophy had the opportunity to interview a highly qualified person, some who obviously knows a lot about beer, brewing beer, and educating people about homebrewing. So what do they ask her? About vagina beer.


Oh FFS. This is just ridiculous. You have someone sitting with you who you can ask anything of (and probably learn something) and then you marginalize that opportunity by asking that person about something that only vaguely relates to their gender. What a waste of time for both the readers and the interviewee.

Luckily we have the EB Podcast with Annie. That was a better way to utilize her time. The fact that the Brulosophy crew even covered this is astonishing.

It's hard for me to me to convey how much choice Annie had in this and how astonished I am with the presumptions a few people have made because we ended up publishing it. Amanda, I respect you and your opinions immensely, thank you for sharing them so openly.

While I have the utmost respect for Annie, it's not like she's the Dali Lama. From her response, it sounds like she had fun and can be a bit of a dirty bird.

That was certainly the goal and based on my many conversations with her, that goal was accomplished.

Pushing content on a schedule is a beast that is always hungry. Not everything is going to be a base clearing hit in the bottom of the ninth and yeah I don't think Annie thinks of herself as that precious. I have no doubt that Marshall will engage Annie with more beery topics.

The topic itself is naturally eye roll inducing, cringey, sexist and stunty at best (says the guy making clam chowdah beer). Worse, it's not even a new concept. Everyone seems to have forgotten about OPB from a few years back. Yes that was an art project instead of a commercial product, but still can anyone see this lasting longer than the outage news cycle. It'll be precisely like the old fashioned Nudey beer - a cheap bachelor party twitter inducing thing.

So well put.

I thought Marshall's prelude covered the intentions pretty well. He seemed "intellectually conflicted" about 1) getting her opinion at all 2) publishing once the initial hype had died down.

Personally I'm glad he published anyway. I think it would've been twice the waste of Annie's time if she had written something so funny that never saw the light of day.

On the other hand, this is the danger in calling attention to something ludicrous -- even if just to say "can you believe how f'd up this is?!?!" By calling attention to it, you're giving it new life.

Sometimes the best way to kill something is to ignore it. Obviously I couldn't resist this thread so I guess I'm not very good at that either 

Thanks. Cheers!

[crynski]

Every time I use a heat gun at work "oh you are doing your hair".  My hard hat (American flag my boyfriend was given for being on the safety team) is "pretty".  Any time we have a feed or make food I pick up real work and try to be " too busy" to get thrown into cooking duty.
Though sometimes the coworkers and bosses will surprise me. Like when the shop misogynist says "well, my hand tight bolts and Colleen's hand tight are different." And my boss throws back without missing a beat, "yeah, Colleen's bolts are tighter". 
I am a maintenance electrician, the only woman in my department, one of only 2 currently in all of Maintenance. 

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

[hopfenundmalz]

This makes me wonder if the sexism has died off where I used to work now that the CEO is a woman?

[pete b]

This makes me wonder if the sexism has died off where I used to work now that the CEO is a woman?

Nope.

[pete b]

Thanks for sharing your experience Amanda. I have told you before how much I value your contributions here.
I do read the occasional comment here that is clearly sexist and I hope this makes people think twice before posting. I hope woman feel comfortable here.

[morticaixavier]

Thanks for sharing your experience Amanda. I have told you before how much I value your contributions here.
I do read the occasional comment here that is clearly sexist and I hope this makes people think twice before posting. I hope woman feel comfortable here.

+1000

[HoosierBrew]

Thanks for sharing your experience Amanda. I have told you before how much I value your contributions here.
I do read the occasional comment here that is clearly sexist and I hope this makes people think twice before posting. I hope woman feel comfortable here.

+1000

For sure.

[riceral]

Thanks for sharing your experience Amanda. I have told you before how much I value your contributions here.
I do read the occasional comment here that is clearly sexist and I hope this makes people think twice before posting. I hope woman everyone feels comfortable here.

[pete b]

Thanks for sharing your experience Amanda. I have told you before how much I value your contributions here.
I do read the occasional comment here that is clearly sexist and I hope this makes people think twice before posting. I hope woman everyone feels comfortable here.

Tell us what you mean. Do you mean that you hope other marginalized groups feel welcome here? I certainly don't want bullies, sexists, and racists to feel comfortable here.
The point is that 1. We are talking about women's experience 2.Sometimes people say things here that might not make a woman feel comfortable here and Amanda just shared some unusually personal stories about what that can feel like.

[riceral]

Thanks for sharing your experience Amanda. I have told you before how much I value your contributions here.
I do read the occasional comment here that is clearly sexist and I hope this makes people think twice before posting. I hope woman everyone feels comfortable here.

Tell us what you mean. Do you mean that you hope other marginalized groups feel welcome here? I certainly don't want bullies, sexists, and racists to feel comfortable here.
The point is that 1. We are talking about women's experience 2.Sometimes people say things here that might not make a woman feel comfortable here and Amanda just shared some unusually personal stories about what that can feel like.

Yep. I agree with you that I also don't want bullies, sexists, and racists feel comfortable here sharing those views. I think none of us would welcome those views.