The Criminality of Metaphorical Liminality: International Women's Day Special Edition
Raise your hand if your employer made sure to post your picture on social media today to show much they value all women everywhere 🙋🏿🙋🏾🙋🏽🙋🏻🙋🏼
Today is always a weird day for me, and usually the balance between bitter and sweet tilts toward the bitter. I’m fortunate to have a global community of women in my life, whether we’re parasocial friends or we’ve met in real life. Sometimes that community is everything I need.
Sometimes I have to take a step back and scream into the void because it all feels so hopeless. Sometimes I can focus on being grateful for buying myself a punching bag while in a “The Vow”-induced Raniere-rage a couple of years ago. I’ve given some of you reading this a real what for on that punching bag and I’d like to think some part of you felt it when it happened.1
On International Women’s Day two years ago, I was driving back home after participating in a Pink Boots Society collaboration brew day. I had to “make a case” for why I should be allowed to participate in the brew day, despite being the Chapter Lead for Georgia at the time.2 I was exhausted from being told to be sure to “take lots of pictures” so my brewery (I bet you can guess which one!) could post on social media about how much they support the women (like, all 5 of us) who worked there. (Also big lulz to one of our co-founders for demanding to know why I wasn’t organizing similar events at our brewery.)
Narrator voice: Jen did not send any pictures to her employer that day.
Driving home, I was overwhelmed with the heaviness of knowing how my company repeatedly chose to treat me and others privately while publicly decreeing that they “use their platform to effect change.” I know many of you reading this can relate. It’s a weird day to have to pose for pictures of you dumping hops into a women’s day collab brew wearing matching shirts only to return to work the next day to be undermined and abused.
I had been working on my free beer judging training idea for a couple of months and decided on my way home that I was going to make that particular International Women’s Day about something else, something positive and something better. There are plenty of places where you can read about the training, so I won’t go into too much horn-tooting except to say that I thought maybe 40-50 people would sign up and nearly 700 people did within the space of a few days. It was clear that I wasn’t alone in my feelings and there were so many people out there who needed to have someone tell them that they were welcome.3
I still tear up thinking about the emotional conversation I had with two close friends about how nearly every beer competition in which I’ve ever judged has sent multiple emails saying they don’t have enough judges and would have to limit the number of entries or add multiple sessions. Here I was with a list of 700 people, mostly women, who were so eager and grateful and excited to be included.
“Where were you looking?” I sobbed, “Who were you asking?”
If you had a great day being celebrated by your company or being surrounded by people who see and support you, that’s super awesome and I’m really truly very happy for you. I get a big smile on my face when scrolling through social media and seeing friends joyfully showing off their brew days with friends. I love to see it.
If you got pulled out of your workday today or any day this month and made to pose with the other women with whom you work, I feel you. This day for me is filled with fluctuations of supporting and being supported and nearly abject despair that most of it is for show, for naught, and entirely temporary. So if you feel the same way, know that I share your love and confusion and gratitude and pain and visibility and invisibility. You are not alone.
Liminality & The Sunk Cost Fallacy
But You Can’t Leave | But I Won’t Tell You to Stay
I was recently speaking with a friend about her experiences in the industry and how she isn’t sure if she wants to stay or leave. It was a very familiar experience to me as I’ve been through the same cycle several times over the past few years.
Liminality is a rite of passage in which we pass between two states. We leave behind one state, the state that prescribes normativity and the status quo, to enter into an ambiguous, unstructured state. Because we haven’t entered our new state yet, we are dangerous to the status quo because we’re an unknown, a wild card, void of status yet full of possibility. In our liminal states, we challenge societal structures and make people, including ourselves, uncomfortable. And we humans despise discomfort and unpredictability. In liminal spaces, we can challenge the status quo and address systemic unfairness and injustice.
Liminal space can be broken down into the physical (i.e. walking down a hallway) and psychological spaces. Psychological liminality can be further broken down into emotional liminality (i.e. graduating, moving, getting married) and metaphorical liminality, which exists in our individual minds.
While you may not have heard of the precise term “metaphorical liminality” before, you’ve certainly found yourself vacillating between decisions, such as planning a trip or - most relevant to our discussion here - choosing to leave a job or an entire industry.
Here is where many women in the beer industry find themselves, although it is not unique to women in the beer industry. During the same tearful conversation with my two friends I wrote about above, I also finally shared every story I had about my job, all at once, all out loud, some of them for the first time. Fans of Arrested Development may remember when Buster Bluth delivers a bleep-ridden invective to his siblings about their mother.
That was basically the gist of my sharing my experiences. Shock followed by a pregnant pause until one of my friends quietly said, “That’s a lot of red flags.”
The metaphorical liminal space I inhabit the most often and recognize in friends and colleagues, especially those who have taken up the mantle of continuing tough conversations and advocacy, is deceptively simple: Should I stay or should I go?
If I stay, I can continue being a voice and providing support for others within the industry. If I leave, how will I know those same people will be okay? Who will continue fighting the same battles? How long will new soldiers be willing to be in the phalanx for the cause?
If I leave, how do I know other people will be okay? If I leave, who will step into the shoes of being told, “Noooooooo, you can’t leave! You do so much!” If I leave, is it admitting defeat against the system? Did patriarchal and white supremacist cultures win?
If I stay, how much more personal suffering and stress am I expected to endure? How many sleepless nights? How many tears? How many instances of sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, crying as quietly as possible because one person in an instant reminded me that my presence is often tolerated at best and my seat at the table can be revoked at any time?
Here’s where the sunk cost fallacy enters the proverbial chat. The sunk cost fallacy is the reluctance to abandon a course of action because the course of action has been heavily invested in, even when it’s clear that leaving would be more beneficial. The sunk cost fallacy is why my reaction to people saying they are burnt out and traumatized and don’t feel safe in the industry anymore is almost always the same:
I’m not going to tell you to stay. There are people who don’t want you here. Those aren’t your people.
I’ve seen so many people who are wrestling with the metaphorical liminality of staying in an industry that has consistently shown us what it is and what its values are (not us and not us) to continue fighting or leave the industry and feel like protecting our well-being is somehow losing. It is not losing. In the presence of sunk costs, it can be really easy to keep throwing good energy into toxic situations.
For a very long time, I did not talk to other people about what I was and what others were (and are) experiencing at my job. Because that would mean that it was a mistake for me to leave my previous job (which I loved very much), a mistake to move to a different state and live separately from my husband and dogs for several months, a mistake to then move my family to a place that not everyone was super psyched about, a mistake to take a pay cut, a mistake to defend my pervy misogynist supervisors when others pointed out their misconduct and bad vibes. It would all have been a giant mistake. The sunk cost fallacy is also why people stay in cults, continue with MLMs (kind of still cults), endure unhappy marriages, and continue with poor jobs. Because what would it mean if you admitted it wasn’t working anymore?
We have to abandon this type of thinking. The people I’ve known who have ended up at this realization are now in much happier and more peaceful places, myself included. The situation has already happened and cannot be revisited. We can move forward into the metaphorical liminality of leaving behind something known yet toxic for something unknown.
It’s the unknown for a reason, but there is so much power in saying “I don’t know what’s next, but it won’t be this.”
It can be very easy to feel like you are alone and isolated, especially in this ::gestures to the world around us:: time in which we find ourselves. Isolation and gaslighting are also very effective tools for keeping marginalized people quiet and well, marginalized. If you are reading this newsletter, you are at the very least a part of my community. Sharing can help unburden you, even if you don’t know what you will do next. If you don’t feel as if you can share with people who know you, please consider sharing your stories anonymously somewhere like Right to Be’s Storysharing Platform.
Hear Me Out
Who wants to wear these matching shirts with me?
Our version of Live, Laugh, Love, and the people who get it get it. Those are our people.
To paraphrase: that sting you feel is pride fucking with you.
At the time, I was the Chapter Lead for the Georgia Pink Boots Society chapter. In August 2021, I resigned from that position and let my membership lapse after much deliberation and disappointment. I’m happy to share more about that journey with anyone who would like to know more.
If you are reading this and wondering how you can make people feel welcome, please refer to my Can We Not? newsletter.
Thank you for being so honest and vulnerable here Jen! I have several folks in my life, who are ardent supporters of women's brewers, that I am trying to educate about the term badass. This last weekend at SheBrew there was a beer named More Than a Badass and I give big props to both the brewer and brewery for doing that.