Monday, May 7, 2018

Bars Have Had It Wrong When It Comes to Gender and Cocktails



     This article has some interesting points about what people will and would really like to be drinking at a bar.   I know that when a group of guys would come into a bar, only on a rare occasion would a guy order a flowery drink when the rest of them were ordering those macho image drinks. 

     Our culture is undergoing a gender revolution. Thanks to decades of work from pioneering activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, we cisgender people, that is, those of us whose gender matches the one we were assigned at birth.  We are learning there’s more to gender identity than the male and female binary that we grew up accepting.  Terms such as “trans,” “nonbinary” and “agender” are starting to seep into the mainstream.   At the same time, people are questioning what it truly means to be masculine and feminine and whether those descriptors are useful or outdated.   Truth is it’s quite common in the beverage world to experience antiquated thinking about gender.   “Imagine your masculinity is so fragile that you can’t drink a cocktail out of a coupe.”  Some people were shocked that this was even a thing, while others shared their exasperation.  A few bartenders told me that as a matter of policy they don’t exchange glassware for men who request more manly vessels for their drinks.   Refusing to drink out of a coupe tells the world that you’d rather suffer a warm cocktail than be perceived as feminine. That should tell you a lot about how deeply entrenched misogyny still is in our culture.