Hill Farmstead (2021)

Did it really take more than a week to come up with that?

Is he just trolling here?

 

Man. He is struggling. For such a deep thinker he seems to know fuck all about how to properly handle this.

 

He makes good beer.

He writes verbal diarrhea

Writing can’t save you from this. Philosophy doesn’t care if you’re a shit bag to women. It’s 2021. Start with yourself and figure out what needs to be done to fix you. You can’t hurt anyone else if you are working on yourself. Even if you have to step away from your current work. You also can’t make anything better if you don’t fix yourself.

 

SH unsurprisingly taking the high road, considering that from his perspective, he and his brewery (and therefore, his employees) are being unfairly and wrongly accused and dragged through the mud.

Won't satisfy those who have already convicted him a sexual predator, but you can't please everyone.

 

We have no clue whether that’s his perspective though because his statement certainly doesn’t say that explicitly or implicitly.

What you gathered that from (other than wishful thinking) I do not know.

 

I know I’d much rather be the seltzer making, adjunct filling, BMW driving, capitalist brewing business owner. Than this shit storm

But you know, he dissed all those said above brewers in the article

 

Damon is still available...are sales down? If so, why?

 

The "I know him he sold me beer and took some of his precious time to talk to me" excuses are lame

 

The woman who brought out my bottles a couple weeks ago said that this was a larger batch of Damon which was also why you could come every day and get 2 bottles if you wanted to.

 

At this point he might as well just come out and say, "I'm sorry if you *********s felt triggered," because that appears to be how he really feels, judging by the fact that he has had over a week now and can't even fake accountability or a sincere apology.

 

Those statistics are for reports of sexual assault that have been filed to the police.

Now find statistics for how many second-hand, anonymous, years old instagram stories are found to be "baseless" or "false".

 

An absolutely insane and tone deaf comment to make.

 

The heart of the problem in Hill's statement is his inability and/or unwillingness to recognize that unintentional harm is just as real, and can be just as damaging, as intentional harm. Men have to be accountable for their actions and the results of those actions, not their intentions. Intentions don't matter. Results do.

Men's habitual and unconscious behavior - that is, things we do unintentionally - is often terribly demeaning and harmful to women. We have developed ways of speaking to and about women which show that we think about them as little more than sex objects, and can't see them as fellow professionals or even fellow humans, really. Hill's alleged comment about setting up a couch for the purpose of having sex with a fellow professional is a classic example. To him, in the moment, it seems like a joke. It's not intentionally harmful. But it's harmful anyway because it takes a brilliant female brewer whose craft and contributions to the industry demand respect on their own terms, and depicts her as nothing more than an object of sexual gratification, a person to be conquered, not credited. If he can't see that, even after hundreds of women point it out to him, then he's got a serious problem.

If Hill wants to recover from this he has to acknowledge that things he has likely done routinely throughout his life are misogynistic and harmful, regardless of the intentions behind them. He needs to give specific examples of things that he has done unintentionally in the past that he now recognizes as harmful, apologize for doing those things, and explain how he will avoid doing them in the future and push other, fellow men in the industry to avoid doing them too.

 

Well, at least if he wants to maintain anywhere near the respect he historically had. I mean I'm sure he'll still sell plenty of beer. But like you said, he's a huge name in the industry and his behavior inevitably can trickle down to what others in the industry deem acceptable behavior. I think though his comments are probably all being made from a legal liability standpoint. There's nothing criminal here, and admitting anything untoward could I guess give ammo in any future civil suit over, say, workplace harassment or discrimination in hiring/firing. So I think his priority is not delving into nuance and really examining his behavior but just avoiding any issues down the line. That's my read anyway. Best case here they, like many other breweries, make it standard practice to have robust HR, anonymous reporting, clear enforcement of codes of conduct, and, when you are this successful, maybe sponsor training etc for underserved groups in much larger numbers than the industry currently does.
Certainly though the initial comments are a bunch of silly nonsense at best and really unhelpful.

 

Everything you're recommending is positive and good, the problem is you can't demand all of this of everyone. If you applied this same scope of introspection/action/leadership to every other important injustice/cause, people would go nuts trying to become the perfect leader and wouldn't have time to get their actual business taken care of.

Sexism. Racism. Environmentalism. Civil Rights. Public Health (pandemic!). Employee wellness. Community involvement/activism. Sustainability.

We need leaders in ALL of these arenas. But you can't expect every owner to lead in every area.

"I am listening. I am committed to growth and change. I will continue to work towards an equitable, safe, respectful, and inspired community".

You can either believe him or not, I guess.

 

Sure, for anyone who is questioning whether they will continue to patronize his brewery in light of these allegations it may come down to whether or not they believe his statement.
For some people, a more thoughtful and introspective statement may help them accept his statement as being sincere. As @dele stated, recognizing or recalling an example(s) that in retrospect he can see how his words/actions were harmful would be a solid demonstration of understanding the issues.

 

I'm pretty sure he once said that he initially wanted to live by just selling one growler a week/month, and then all this attention came from nowhere. If people stop buying his beer, I'm sure he'll be perfectly happy to downsize operations, exactly as he originally intended.

 

This entire thread should be deleted and replaced back with discussion on beer. Completely off the rails.

 

Couldn't disagree more. Sexism in the beer industry is having a watershed moment, and Shaun got swept up in it, rightly or wrongly. This is way bigger than the liquid itself. It needs to allowed to breathe and be discussed, warts and all.

 

I’m sorry, is the topic of conversation for this thread not Hill Farmstead?