5. Can We Not
The scene from The Menu where the guy has to cook for everyone but beer guy having to brew a beer.
Reminder: we can use labels other than “badass” and “rockstar” when describing women who excel in their fields.
Please continue to repeat this to yourself until you stop doing it.
Terms like “badass” and “rockstar” are used too often to describe women who excel in their fields, typically male-dominated fields. It’s reductive and often coded language implying that a woman is acting outside the norm of the very narrow scope of what is expected of “traditional” femininity. Recently, the president of an industry association (of the Americas) described the incoming president, a woman, as “ever-capable.” I don’t think you probably needed me to tell you her gender because no man has ever thought it necessary to describe another man as “ever-capable.” Men are often provided with an assumption of skill that people who aren’t men are not.
As we leave Black History Month and enter Women’s History Month, here is a non-exhaustive list of Can you not? actions to retire from your life. They are not compliments. Ever.
Before you well, actually me about how you know a woman (you don’t) or are a woman who enjoys being patronized with any of the below, hey I guess that’s swell and you do you. You are an aberration. It’s best for literally everyone else in the world for all of us to Pascal’s Wager this list and just not use any of the terms or phrases below.
The aforementioned “rockstar” and “badass”
“You handled that really well”
If you’ve stood by as someone harasses someone or makes them uncomfortable only to congratulate the person who was harassed after the fact, kindly fuck right off. There is a greater impact on the perpetrator when those with power and privilege respond to microaggressions.1 Take a free active bystander training if you aren’t sure what you should say or do. But you do know what you should say, so say it. Still take free active bystander training, though.
“We treat everyone equally at our brewery/homebrew club/beer competition.” See also: “Everyone is welcome here.”
This conveys that the playing field is even for everyone, so if you’re not part of the dominant class and don’t feel welcomed, the problem is with you, not the system. Further, if you look around and wonder why there isn’t more diversity in your brewery/homebrew club/beer competition, it is your responsibility to do the work to create an environment in which people can feel comfortable. It is not ever (EVER) the work of the people you wish felt safe enough to attend your brewery/homebrew club/beer competition to tell you how to make them feel safe and welcome.2
“That doesn’t sound like him.” See also: “I’ve never seen her be racist.” and “No one has told me they were experiencing gatekeeping.”
Everyone shows different parts of themselves to different people. If you’re in a position of power, you are going to have a different experience with people. Power can look like gender, skin color, economic status, employment role, education, etc. Trust that people are subject matter experts on their own lived experiences. Acknowledge that you may have privileges that contribute to the different experiences you’ve had with the same person and that doesn’t make the experience less valid for the other person. Multiple things can be true at the same time. I have had to reevaluate relationships with people upon hearing about their treatment of other people. We all like to assume we only associate with good people (remember the halo effect?) so it can be hard and uncomfortable to hear that someone we consider a friend, colleague, or mentor has behaved in a way that is not aligned with your belief system. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and the onus is not on the person telling you their experience to reconcile your feelings about the situation.
“Do you know women are AcKTuAlLee better tasters than men?”
I almost didn’t include this one because there are more important Can you nots but it is a pet peeve of mine and this is my newsletter. I’ve been subject to many a Jeff Foxworthy-esque tight five on how women are better than men at describing beer because a man will just call something “red” while a woman will call it “scarlet” or “crimson” or “burgundy.” It implies that women are inferior in every other way except for descriptive vocabulary. It’s also a variation of “rockstar” and “badass.”
First, gender is a spectrum and not a binary, so there is no men vs. women. Second, correlation is not causation. People who are exposed to a variety of odors have a bigger memory database from which to draw. Stroll down the aisles of a store and observe the difference and quantity of scent-based marketing. Forgive the gross gendered example, but dish soap has several different possible scents and motor oil has none. That’s not because we can’t add scent to motor oil - we have the technology.3
Honorable mentions of things to stop doing are putting an “x” in women, folks, and other words and saying “identifying,” i.e “female-identifying,” “regardless of how you identify” - both are TERFy and don’t send the message you think they do.4
Good Sensory for Bad Vegetarians
I have been a vegetarian for two-thirds of my life now.5 Back in the 90s, which is somehow 30 years ago even though 1980 was only 20 years ago, the options for vegetarians (especially picky tweens growing up in the Ozarks) were slim and usually ...not good. Think slimy portobello burgers and flaccid grilled vegetable sandwiches. If I was lucky, the chain restaurant in the nearest "big" city had a black bean burger. Combining being picky with bad options meant that I grew into what I call a bad vegetarian. Not bad as in I actually eat meat or bad as in I only eat Twizzlers and Cheetos. Bad as in some of the foods that make my insides turn black with hatred are the go-to vegetables for standard vegetarian fare, such as red peppers (I was in my mid-twenties before the smell of red peppers stopped making me gag), zucchini, squash, eggplant, and most mushrooms (which I bemoan as a person Trying to Eat Like an Adult).
It feels like the biggest vegetarian blasphemy I commit is severely disliking truffles. I have tried to like them since they are very fancy and other people seem to freak out about them. To my palate, they are body odor. As a junior sensory scientist, I needed to get to the bottom of what compound exactly (or approximately) I did not like.
The answer is androstenone, which has a musky aroma and is similar to testosterone. Androstenone is the wavy smell lines that perk up a female pig’s6 nose and make them dig up truffles, hence truffle pigs. As it turns out, approximately 40% of people are initially anosmic to androstenone, meaning they cannot smell that compound. About 25% of the population is very sensitive to it, which is where I fall. One interesting thing about androstenone is that, out of the 40% of the population who are initially anosmic to androstenone, repeated exposure to it decreases detection thresholds such that only 2% of the population is truly anosmic to it.
The conclusion I’ve drawn from this is that if you are initially anosmic to androstenone, exposure to it can lead to you learning to detect and like androstenone, hence probably enhancing your enjoyment of truffles. If you, like me, are sensitive to it in a bad way, your best bets are to either avoid truffles or I guess try to change your attitude about them? Because your genetic makeup is not going to change, but your mindset might? I’m not willing to find out because I, as a bad vegetarian, have my own limits to what I will try for sensory. If you are in the same boat I’m in, though, and have more fortitude than I, go bananas and let me know if you learn to like truffles.
And finally
Before we leave each other, here are a few more things that I am up to these days:
Prepping for a trip to Montreal (my first time!) to deliver a presentation on mixed fermentation sensory at the Master Brewers Association of the Americas Eastern Canada District Technical Conference. I have a fair amount of anxiety presenting at technical conferences where the majority of the audience has a scientific background because I decidedly do not. I’ve come by most of my science knowledge autodidactically, so having that on display puts me in a real vulnie place.
Reading Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black. It’s got a lot of great anecdotes that flow easily into historical anecdotes while explaining how our bones form. In another life, I would be a mortician because I lowkey think the way we’re allowed to die and our societal relationship with death is going to be one of the biggest revolutions in my lifetime. Also, I really really like working in quiet environments. See also: me registering for a Masters of Libary and Information Science program to become a legal librarian. Mortician or librarian - when I say I like the quiet, I mean it.
Listening to Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds by Gina Rippon. Surprise! There’s a lot of junk science out there about the differences between the brains of men and women (bonus surprise: not much is actually different). One thing this book does really well is walking the reader through critically evaluating the data collection process, pointing out who benefits and the language used. Questioning the motive behind headline-grabbing “scientific” “findings” is an important skill to build, as is evaluating the quality of the information source.
Also, on a related subject, do not stand behind historically excluded communities and expect them to be the guard dog, ESPECIALLY when you lack the courage to say anything yourself. Someone once tagged me in a problematic IG post saying “Get ‘em” and yet said nothing directly to ‘em ‘imself.
When I say “safe,” I mean actual safety. Like I’m not going to get harassed and that abusive and predatory behavior is not going to be tolerated and EVERYONE IS AWARE OF THAT. This is why a posted code of conduct is a great start to conveying that you want everyone to feel safe (like physically, emotionally, mentally safe) in your space. You still have to enforce your code of conduct though, for everyone, every time.
If you do choose to solicit help from a historically excluded community to educate you, FUCKING PAY THEM. Especially Black women. State your intention to compensate them at the beginning of the conversation without being asked. Don’t be gross and make the person have to tell you that you need to pay them. And don’t be even grosser and ghost them when they tell you what their compensation will be because “you don’t have the budget.” You have the budget.
And technically motor oil *is* scented, which is why it smells like …motor oil. As soon as there is scented motor oil, we are all going to start paying for craft oil changes based on our chosen or aspirational aesthetics and vibes.
Honorable mention to the honorable mentions, before you use the term “female,” stop and ask yourself what you are describing. A female what? A female human? Then say woman. Female brewer? Then say brewer. If gender is relevant to your communication first ask yourself if it’s really relevant. If it is really relevant, then consider using person-first language such as a “woman who is a brewer” rather than a “female brewer.”
Standard Questions Every Vegetarian Gets Asked By Everyone: I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 12 years old. I’m sure I had a noble, 12-year-old reason for doing so. No, I don’t eat fish. Yes, I eat cheese. Yes, I eat eggs but not usually by themselves because I don’t care for the taste. No, I’m not a vegan. Yes, my husband eats meat. No, I don’t cook it for him, but only because I don’t know how to cook meat well and he does, not because I judge him for eating meat. No, it doesn’t bother me when people eat meat in front of me (except anything on the bone). Also, I don’t need to hear how you could probably be a vegetarian because you “don’t really eat that much meat” – it’s a personal choice and I don’t care whether you eat meat or not.
See? A female what? A female pig