Over the Rainbow? Why Queer Beer Is Important

And as I mentioned, I do just that. I will try and support LGTB breweries if they make good beer and advocate for them, just as I will support other groups and breweries that either because of identity or financial hardships make great beer and face difficulties, like Cellador Ales.

What I am against and reacted to was the idea of atomizing the idea of a community to make it a moral blackmail to orient purchasing practices to all subsets of industry, because underrepresentation is a ubiquitous phenomenon across practically most industries, and I believe that one ought to support beer one loves irrespective of the identity of their makers. That doesn't mean being unconscious to or indifferent to the struggles certain groups face, just that it is not a moral obligation nor is it practically feasible to support businesses on the basis of underrepresentation wholesale. And I certainly don't dissuade people from try and buy beer by LGBT brewers either.

I am in Peru currently and have spent a fair bit of time exploring the craft beer scene here and will be writing something substantial about it when I get back and have some time. Yet I don't see even a morsel of the same "generosity" extended to other minority groups here and I have mentioned them repeatedly, including your beloved beer community groups.

Also, to double down on sarcastic jabs at my teaching practice when you are talking precisely to someone who faces hardships as a result of being part of an underrepresented group in a draconian industry facing difficulty when I am actively trying to help generations of young people grow awareness of the issues you proclaim to support speaks to a double standard. That you are a beer hobbyist that goes the extra mile to buy a LGBT owner beer is nice, but when you demean a person's professional efforts to support growing awareness despite facing precarity, making snarky remarks about my teaching practice should make you ashamed of yourself.

 

Go take a walk, splash some water on your face, and then come back and tell me what you smoked in order to come up with the last paragraph, because I’d love to try some. It’s the biggest reach of all time and you are literally making stuff up. How did I do or say anything remotely to “demean a person's professional efforts to support growing awareness despite facing precarity”?

 

Probably this;

But maybe you were just commenting on the general trend of increasing costs of higher ed while support infrastructure either stays steady or decreases...

 

Not sure if serious or not, but if the former - clearly that was in no way a commentary about the struggles of a Latino adjunct professor. More so his/her lack of reading comprehension, as they have posted again and again and again in a purposefully obtuse manner, intentionally misunderstanding the crux of the article, and repeatedly and insincerely asking what they are "supposed" to do. I responded to the adjunct question after that.

 

No shit. I need no excuse for being a knucklehead. It just comes naturally. Stressing out is a past habit.

 

Thank you for succinctly summing up what I've been trying to say throughout this thread. For the life of me I cannot understand why this is so difficult for so many people to understand... like, it's literally what the article says.

 

Hi, current Clown Shoes artist here. I absolutely understand your stance on those 2 labels but I want to point out we stopped making those labels far before we even thought about the harpoon thing and before I even started doing the art, which was around 2013. As a father of 2 girls I try my best to represent strong women without sexualizing them. As a brand we have come a long way since those days. I hope you could give us another chance but I understand if you don't. Cheers!

 

Your petulance is not conducive to better dialog. To say that my students may not be getting their money's worth when someome is facing precarity just because I suggest atomizing and disseminating identity politics to all branches of industry is neither morally conpulsory nor practicable is simply in poor taste.

"Taking the longer route home" and "going a few extra miles" to visit LGTB ran businesses and breweries? Well, i don't drive nor go to breweries these days because Covid decimated my employment and nobody seems to care about professors that lost their jobs and get exploited for pennies without benefits. How about you stop buying a craft beer or two or take the extra hour to research and support educators? Beer being a hobby and parading your consciousness about minority struggles is frankly little more than gloating. Still, I try to support within my limited resources the breweries I find most inspiring in my area. And I already said I try beers from LGTB breweries snd support them if I like them, as with any other identity group, and oppose discrimination when witnessed. I gave examples.

My issue was with the danger of using identity politics for moral blackmailing. I said think one can support a cause without necessarily feeling morally obliged to make this equivalent to mediating business decisions on the basis of identity, for the reasons I mentioned.

 

I've been to almost 250 breweries in the last 5 years. I return to the ones that had beer I enjoyed and don't return to those that had beer I didn't. I have no idea who owns any of the breweries and don't have the time or desire to investigate. Just like I don't investigate who owns any of my local liquor stores, movie theaters, Subway restaurants etc.

 

I tried reading through all the comments to finally find out what “queer beer” tastes like… couldn’t find a description. Can anyone recommend it? I think I’ve been drinking hetero-cisgender-straight beer for so long that my taste buds have grown used to it.

 

I think a side-by-side would prove that beer is beer, no matter race, creed, sexual orientation, or political affiliation.

Beer, the true bipartisan link.

 

First off when I read the adjunct part of your comment I was like "this cat is talking about teaching in a wheat field?" . Sorry, beer site, beer terminology, that's where my brain goes.
Secondly, I think what you're proposing is difficult to say the least. If you had a brewery and brewing beer we could make the comparison. The fact is that some people don't have the money to even go to college. It's not a slander at adjunct Latio professors that they can't support the university you worked at. Beer is an outlet for discretionary income, for as little as $5 a year a person can support a minority owned brewery. I can't send my kids to college for that paltry sum. If you start brewing beer I would support your endeavor. I'd buy your beers. Other people would too.

 

Well, there is more ways to support a professor community other than enrolling in classes taught by them. There's NGO's, funds, charities, etc. My only point was that I support products I enjoy, regardless of the identity group behind them, and don't atomize my purchasing decisions based on identity considerations, since most products in this world, recreational or not, have under-represented identity groups within their communities, and it's not practicable to mediate your decisions on those factors. I don't think of atomizing identity groups into communities belonging to every sector of industry is the way forward.

 

I get it, there are other ways to support all groups. The argument can be made that this is virtue signaling, and holding people hostage via compulsory sympathy if that makes sense. The flipside to that is that the only way to support a brewer is to buy their beer.

 

Yeah, Milo Yianopoulos and the Roy Cohn are primarily known for being super lefties. Ernst Rohm, too.

 

Humans grow, make, distribute, etc. all of the products we buy. We rely on all of these humans to do a good job. Considering the struggles of those individuals doesn't seem like a lot to ask, especially of people with enough time and resources to buy craft beer and talk about it on a website.

 

I interpreted that post as sarcasm. Oddly, someone else either didn't, or decided to like it from an unexpectedly ironic presepective!

 

Hello. Not sure I understand the “doesn’t seem like a lot to ask” part of your comment. What am I being asked to do? I could be wealthy beyond belief but I still don’t need to know who owns the places I make purchases from.

 

If a human you truly despised happened to own a business whose products you enjoy, you would still keep buying those products?

That's the exaggerated view, to illustrate the point. If Josef Stalin owned the best brewery in your town, would still buy Joe's beers?

 

I wouldn't. But I'm not sure what you think follows from that.

I don't know about the employment practices or companies that manufacture 90% of my electronic devices' parts. They could employ child labor, they could be owned by utter pigs...
The beer I drink could be owned by someone who is reprehensible or is virtuous. Mostly, we don't know. One decides what to support and not on a case by case basis: if you come to learn that a business indulges in some form of evil you find intolerable, then that might persuade you not to do business with them, even if you enjoy their product. If you come to learn that someone that is part of a minority group makes a product you don't particularly enjoy, that might not persuade you to make business with them. And there's other possible scenarios: if I love a place that serves beer I find mediocre, maybe I will continue to go there for the rest of the experience, etc.

You don't need to know the identity of who brews the beer / owns the company, and knowing this need not change one's practices, even if it can. I don't think it's wrong to support a brewery because one wants to support the LGTB community irrespective of whether one likes their product. And I don't think it is wrong not to do so because one doesn't. What I would be against is someone refusing to try a brewery because they are LGTB.