#but it's so good it's got the class system dynamics getting all blurred...the power struggles...the underlying homosexuality...

[vonlipvig]

Listen if I go and watch The Servant and am made unwell, I’m gonna be pissed. You did this with Ravenous, man. Bear trap lives rent free in my head. Obsessed with fucked up homoerotic horror, I’m gonna be so mad if I’m not normal after this

oh, this is a jules-certified 5 star sexually-charged BANGER, it will make you unwell guaranteed, or your money back!

[awildgingeishere]

https://equalizersoccer.com/2021/03/05/christen-press-forward-position-training-profile-uswnt/

Christen Press is known for scoring world-class goals. The onlooking public swoons over the final product which is so often a picturesque finish bent into the side netting or hammered into the upper corner. Press often does this with such confidence that she makes the extraordinary look easy, even though it is anything but.

That final product, though, is in some ways the simpler part of the process. Press’ training habits and approach to the game embody the notion that most of an athlete’s work is done away from the public eye, on training fields and when nobody else is watching. Her unique approach to the game starts with individual training, where her focus on off-ball movement and manipulating tight spaces — rather than shooting for the sake of it, or individual dribbling drills — develops her ability to distinguish herself from any other forward. More than most, she can seamlessly transition between wide and center-forward roles.

“I think especially in the U.S., we don’t have as many players that manipulate space with off-ball movement,” Press said in an interview last year. “[It’s] something I learned in Europe and I think all European forwards do this, but we don’t often have players who do that. We typically have had players who are using strength to create space. So, I think when I play in the nine specifically, but even wide, my strength is off-ball movement, being very unpredictable, hard to mark, being dynamic and being kind of like blindside, off-ball so that I’m always stretching the line. And I think that’s a huge strength because it gives the midfield more room to play.”

All goal-scorers require a certain level of selfishness to be successful, which Press recognizes. What sets her apart is the execution in those moments. To paraphrase her teammate, Megan Rapinoe, you can always make a selfish decision to shoot and not pass… as long as you score.

“In the final third, I think I’ve always had a goal-scorer’s mentality,” Press said. “Once I’m in range of shooting, I don’t think about anything else. If I happen to pass, it’s because I couldn’t have shot. And I think that there’s a breed of players that are just wired that way. And then there’s a breed of players that play the same position that aren’t. I am wired like that, and there’s also pros and cons to it, but my first thought is always setting my feet to score, setting my feet to take a touch and then score. And then anything else that happens in that space is just a second option, honestly.”

***

Press blazed her own path to being a United States women’s national team regular. She left the U.S. club scene in 2012 to play in Sweden, feeling as though she needed to make a change after largely being left out of the U.S. picture by then head coach Pia Sundhage. Her back story has been recounted ad nauseam over the past decade, but it is still essential to understanding the person and the player – a do-everything forward who has been shaped by these experiences. Her path is unique among her peers of the same generation, and it shows in her different approach to playing forward.

Press famously thrived in Gothenburg, becoming the first American to win the Damallsvenskan’s golden boot. That move abroad — at a time when U.S. internationals not only were not playing abroad, but were actively discouraged from doing so — ironically solidified her place in the United States team ever since. Her goal in last month’s SheBelieves Cup against Argentina was her 60th, tying her with Shannon MacMillan for ninth in U.S. history.

Press grew up as a pure No. 9, a goal-scorer. She carried on with that through college, lighting up the scoring record books at Stanford, and used that to her advantage during that glorious first stretch of her career in Sweden. Cracking the national team was a different story. Abby Wambach was the incumbent No. 9 at the time, often alongside Amy Rodriguez, and Alex Morgan — who graduated college the same year as Press — burst onto the scene as the U.S.’ up-and-coming No. 9, meaning Press was often relegated to wide positions.

For a long time, Press’ place there felt shoehorned, no doubt a contributing factor to a relatively quiet World Cup in 2015, when she was pegged by so many to be the breakout star. Slowly, however, she adapted, choosing to accept whichever role she was given if it meant playing for the best team in the world. Now, she thrives in both wide and central roles. The difference was tangible at the 2019 World Cup, where the wide role which once looked so uncomfortable for Press was the one which she stepped into for the semifinal against England, due to Megan Rapinoe’s injury. Press scored 10 minutes into that impromptu start, helping the U.S. reach (and win) a second straight final.

“I think that I have more of a responsibility than any other forward to play in all the roles as needed and I think that’s historically been because I’ve been a substitute coming on,” she said. “So, you kind of have to be ready for whoever’s coming out; you’re the first sub on. And now, I think it’s just flexibility because I’ve done it and I’ve done it okay in several positions that everyone’s like, ‘oh, well she can.’ So, I think that’s a blessing and a curse. It gets you on a roster to be versatile, but I feel like having a stake on the field is like you’re in one position and you’re always going to show up in that position. I think that that has its pros as well.”

Today, it is accepted as fact that Press can play across all three positions on the front line: center forward, wide left and wide right. For years, that versatility was a burden she carried, a struggle through the purgatory of being an elite player without a defined position. Now, however, she has leveraged this to her advantage. Press has for so long juggled different forward positions that she has mastered each of them. Her lack of a defined position contributes to the outside world’s inability to explicitly qualify her greatness, but it is also the very thing which makes Press such a singular talent.

Her shift throughout the front line illustrates how the forward position varies between certain roles, even if in nuanced ways. Press said the definitions are a little more blurred in this system, and that each forward shares the responsibility to get in behind and score, but the physical difference in where each position lines up on the field affects how she plays each position.

“I think technically it is very different playing in the different positions, because your orientation is just completely changed,” she said. “And I think my whole career, I played with the offside line behind me. That’s a nine. So, playing wide for the first time was really hard because you see the whole game through one eye. And your dominant foot and your mobility of your hips — I know it sounds crazy — really affects what you can and can’t do on each side. But now I’ve been passed around so many times, I feel like I’m like, okay, my second eye is — I can still see out of this one.”

***

Press views each offseason as a little book of its own. In past years, she would write a draft of what those figurative chapters would be, listing the things she wanted to improve in her game and designing drills to achieve those goals. Press said that she has had trainers in the past, but nobody knows what she needs better than her.

She tries to balance the design of her training sessions to work on skills she thinks she is exceptional at and areas where she thinks she is not very good. Anything in between gets lost. This is where those subtle foundations are formed daily.

“I have a very regimented way that I train, a flow of when I control practice, this is how it flows,” Press said. “Within each segment of my training, I’ll have specific things that I’m working on, and always starting in the beginning of training with the most simple drills that you would never actually see a professional do —really, really childish and then just working on the mechanics and growing from there.”

Press points to quick-release shooting as one of these simple things she trains: she starts as basic as lining up a bag of balls on the six-yard line and quickly shooting with only one step, to work on generating power. Press executes this better than any other teammate and that is because she has, through the years, taken what is seemingly a disadvantage and figured out a way to create an advantage out of it.

Instead of viewing the ball as stuck under her feet, Press sees an opportunity to catch a defender between steps or a goalkeeper flat-footed. Whereas many forwards are especially dangerous when barreling down the field at speed, Press might be the best goal-scorer in the world from a standing-still position in open play. She trains that — again, by beginning simply. Press will line up a bag of balls on the six-yard line and shoot in quick succession, taking only one step back to reset. This is the foundation of generating power.

“I think that if I look through the years [at] the space I train in, it’s in that exact ‘D,’” she said, referencing the arch at the top of the 18-yard box. “And I think the way that you most often score there is using your defenders as a shield and a little bit into negative space, and then bending the ball. I think that’s absolutely my best way of scoring.

“And I think that’s because of my strengths. I can get into the pocket with speed often. I don’t actually like dribbling around defenders very much. I don’t practice dribbling so I’ve got one way to get by them, but I often work on manipulating my defenders so they can’t block my shot, rather than working on manipulating them so I can get by them. And I think that’s why then I developed a shot that I can take basically with the ball under my feet and generate a lot of power, because it’s unexpected for the goalkeeper and it’s out of reach for the defender.”

Training this type of skill is very intentional. Even on a field by herself, with no active defenders, Press knows that if she takes four steps before a shot, she has failed. In a game, with real defenders, she will have been tackled or her shooting window will have closed.

Soccer is about a feeling, Press says. U.S. Soccer sends film to players after each training session so they can self-evaluate. Press says she does not look at how she performed technically, but rather what her body language said about her approach to a given training session.

She has not gone without dry spells or rough patches, from the more subtle grind of transitioning to wide roles and changing teams, to the more obvious and overt moments, such as the penalty-kick shootout miss in the 2016 Olympic quarterfinal against Sweden.

There is a notion that forwards need short memories, to not dwell on such misses. Press said she views things slightly differently, borrowing some inspiration from fellow teammates.

“I think instead of even a short memory, I always told myself since I was a young person: the more I miss, the closer I am to my next goal,” she said. “Because it’s almost like once you play long enough, you’ve missed so many times that it’s no longer emotional. I guess a certain miss in a certain moment might be, but even those, I’ve done it; I’ve missed as bad as you can miss and I’ve let the team [down]. So, life goes on and I feel like if I’m in a game and I’ve missed an easy goal, that means the next one, I’m gonna score. Because I’ve missed a million easy goals before, and I’ve always scored again. So, that’s kind of how I approach it and I actually think I see this a bit in Carli [Lloyd]. If she ever misses an easy chance, she kind of becomes ravenous. She hunts and hunts because she wants to replace that memory with something else, and I try to even embody that a bit, where I’m even more hungry in the final part of that field.”

Lloyd and Press combined for a goal against England at the 2020 SheBelieves Cup. The play was a microcosm of all these things: Press intentionally drifting into open space on the opponent’s back line before receiving the ball, opening her hips to face up to goal in one fluid motion, and firing a quick shot which caught England’s defenders and goalkeeper by surprise. The camera angle from behind Press showed just how much the ball bent to tuck into the side netting. ESPN announcer Sebastian Salazar screamed a phrase which quickly made its way to a t-shirt: “Christen Press, what have you done?!”

It was another spectacular goal from Press, one worthy of all the plaudits it received. What had she done? Well, it was the same she has been doing for a long time, drifting between forward positions and scoring a noteworthy goal from skills she has developed away from the public eye."

[thebrewstorian]

Pop Culture Conference 2017: Beer Culture: Session 5: What does a brewer look like?

I put a lot into this talk: thinking, words, interviews, time. And I didn’t get to finish it at the Pop Culture Conference last week. I’ve tightened it up so the post was SUPER long, but I’m glad to have this forum to share the last bit. I think you’ll see why when you see that the end, the part that was cut, was the words of the women I interviewed. 

Being an archivist means promising to be objective – or at least trying. In the past, we might have been passive collectors, gathering materials with a level of personal distance. When archivists are also oral historians, those lines start to blur. We are not simply collectors, but creators and history shapers. And when an archivist, curator, and oral historian focuses on an underrepresented group within a larger industry, it’s a short step towards political action, advocacy, and a shaping of the objective historical record in very subjective ways.

I didn’t start my career intending to be a brewing archivist or an oral historian, nor did I intend to focus on community archiving or gender politics, but here I am. And today I’m going to talk about my work documenting women in the brewing industries: the archives, the industry, feminism, my own background, how it’s changed me, and how I think oral histories have the potential to change the industry’s own narrative.

I started the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives in 2013, the first of its kind in the country. I collect, preserve, and share materials that tell the story of Northwest brewing, focusing on materials related regional hops and barley farming, craft and home brewing, cider, and mead. Cornerstones are the university research dating to the 1890s, papers of beer historian Fred Eckhardt and Oregon Hop Growers Association, extensive industry periodicals, book collections, newsletters, photographs, memorabilia, advertising materials, and of course an ever-expanding collection of oral histories.

At its core, OHBA is a community archiving project, and I’m lucky to work with people who have changed the industry in such significant ways. I am also situated in the Northwest, a fascinating spot to study the cultural and social aspects of a region so identified with hops and brewing.

Like many Oregonians, my family history is connected to farming and I have deep Oregon roots dating to the 1850s. My great-great grandpa and his brother grew hops before mildew wiped out their crops and they planted sour cherries in the 1940s. Despite this, and the fact that my first legal beer was a Widmer Hefeweisen, I am an outsider with a unique perspective as an observer.

And I had a lot to learn.

I came away from my first year with some good connections, more knowledge, and a great pile of coasters, but also a few important epiphanies. I had my fair share of requests for Henry Weinhard recipes, but also about lesser known stories of pickers, family farms, or small pre-prohibition breweries. People love history, especially local beer history, but most don't quite get what goes into an archive or how I'm different from a journalist. People downplayed the importance of their own stories or the things they’ve saved. The people who started these industries are still in these industries and their archives are actually still business records – companies had valid concerns with privacy and for most farmers this is family history.

I began to see how gathering oral histories could be a way to record the history without actually taking stuff. It seems to be working – over the past three years I’ve had a lot of informal conversations and meals, and I’ve gathered nearly 70 oral histories with brewers, farmers, scientists, journalists, and advocates.

But before I talk about those, I want to share my third epiphany, one that was actually more of a confirmation: these industries tend to be white and male dominated. So if I wanted to represent the industry, the majority of the people I’d be talking to would be white men. If I wanted to document people outside of the norm, I’d have to be intentional in my interview selections and questions.

It’s important to look at the demographics of people in the brewing industry because I think it’s good to frame the more theoretical, yet oftentimes personal, with numbers. Although you can find decent analyses of analysis of consumers based on gender and race/ethnicity, finding actual statistics on the number of women brewing or owning companies – let alone details on job categories – is basically impossible.

In my own research I came across plenty of articles making sweeping statements about “an increase of women in commercial brewing” or variations on the theme of “women breaking the glass ceiling” or “these ladies brew.” When I reached out to the Pink Boots Society, the non-profit education and outreach organization for women who earn income from the brewing industry, the Executive Director expressed frustration that she didn’t have these numbers nor had she been able to get a broader industry group together to gather them.

In 2014, Stanford researchers Sarah Soule and Shelley Correll were commissioned by the Brewers Association to study the industry. Out of 2,536 breweries, 20% had at least one female founder, 17% had at least one female CEO (typically wife/husband team), and only 4% had a female lead brewer. The following year Martin O’Neill and Erol Sozen of Auburn University studied brewers’ primary motivation for getting into craft brewing – it reported that 29% of brewery workers were women, but I didn’t find details on the jobs they were they doing or why gender was a data point.

I wanted some data on Oregon, which also proved challenging. In 2016 there were 230 breweries employing 8,500 full and part-time people. One of my students looked through the web sites for all 230 breweries and found a total of 43 women with roles as brewers or owners, with only 13 in brewer positions. If we use O’Neill and Sozen’s 29% brewing industry staff finding, that means only 13 out of the 2,465 women employed are brewing. Even guestimating 250 brewers in the state, that’s 5% female brewers and only slightly above the national average for lead brewer.

I thought “there must be more to the story."

I’m not a feminist scholar, but I want to give a brief overview of some trends as they pertain to oral history.

Most early radical feminist oral history projects of the 1970s were community-based, set against the backdrop of political action fighting for equality. Interviewers were part of the community, and they saw their recordings as both a form of political activism and a means for empowering both the narrator and interviewer. The high tide raised all boats when “the personal is political" and "identity politics" ruled, and the more voices were represented and the more they learned from each other the higher that tide was.

Two decades later, feminists of the 1990s focused more on the intersectionality of gender, race, class, sexuality, but also recognized ambiguity, rejected the constructs of categories as well as their us-versus-them nature. Many refused to identify as feminists because they saw the word itself as limiting and exclusionary. At the same time, they moved their projects – and naturally their scholarship – into the academy as they took university teaching positions jobs, generally generating more theories than activism. They turned towards a discourse-based analysis, focusing on words for universal themes rather than on shared community stories. And though interviews were removed from the community, there was a growing “approval” by the academy of oral history as a legitimate historical source.

In the 2010s, feminism is moving from the academy and back into the realm of public discourse. Some projects focus on individual women’s stories and harken back to feminism of the 1970s. Yet there are many others that reject the gender binary as exclusionary and see in the “for women only” a subtext that perpetuates a gendered society. This is no longer about just the struggles of women—it’s a call for gender equity for all genders.

However, certain things have not changed. At its core feminist oral history has always been about personal connections, community, and giving voice. It’s also been about deconstructing power relationships in patriarchal systems, aiming to understand the nature of gender inequality, allowing us to look at how we define the “historical record,” and at the complex relationship between interviewer and narrator.

How have these gender theories impacted my own career? I went to university in the 1990s and got an English Literature MA at a Midwestern school, when it felt like the race/class/gender lit theory discussions were hitting a fevered pitch. I came from a liberal Pacific Northwest family, but I didn't know enough about the subtleties (or not) of power relationships to understand why we talked so much about lit theory in class and why we weren’t reading actual literature.

Over time, age, education, life experiences, being a mother who wants a strong daughter, and working in academia for most of my career have exposed the imbalance of power relationships, as well as how powerful the collectors and keepers of history are. I’ve always been interested in the multiple perspectives of history - not just the top 100, not just the most famous, but the taciturn, contradictory, messy, underrepresented stories. And I’ve stubbornly pushed students and researchers to complicate the standard narrative.

So maybe it’s actually not surprising that I loved oral histories, gravitated towards community-based archiving, and over time began to explore feminist theories of oral history. It was natural to think about sexist marketing practices and an unequal gender distribution in the industries, but also the inherent subjectivity of the oral historian and the power dynamics of an interview.

But when I submitted this paper proposal last fall I assumed when I gave my talk we’d have the first woman president. We know how that turned out.

During the campaign we talked more about gender than I can remember since I was in graduate school – both pro and anti-women rhetoric – and it was kind of exhilarating. Nonetheless, despite the confusion of my co-workers and consternation of my 13-year-old proud feminist daughter – even in the midst of this historic election I couldn’t label myself as a feminist. And I still I tiptoed around gender, asking vague questions or avoiding gender because maybe it wasn’t a big deal.  

And then the election happened. And then the narrative changed. And I couldn’t absorb that we had a president who bragged about groping women. So while I still felt I needed to be a “professional chameleon,” not wearing my politics on my sleeve, being polite and/or professionally distant, I didn’t know how to think about gender without bringing up politics.

Before I started doing brewing interviews I had done a sum total of one interview — I did most of the talking, I froze when the interviewee said something racist, and I swore I would never do an interview again. I say this not to diminish myself or my work, but I admit that when I started interviewing again I was flying a bit by the seat of my pants. As long as I could ask some decent questions and listen more than talk, I felt pretty okay.

I thought being an oral historian meant acting “professional.” Despite my “powerful position” as interviewer, advice and books I’d read suggested the interviewer should be quiet, do a lot of nodding, and generally avoid of too much self-disclosure. But I wanted to ask questions that might be uncomfortable, and it seemed unfair it was one-sided and unnatural to be silent when I was asking for so much self-disclosure. And as I did more interviews and moved beyond “story gatherer,” I noticed I naturally broke these rules.

I learned people seemed more at ease if I talked about myself before the interview. I learned it was okay to sit quietly when people cried. I learned I didn’t need to force stories out of people and that it was okay to get flustered during the uncomfortable bits of interviews. I also learned that my laugh can be really loud when I’m closest to the camera. I learned I wanted to be Terry Gross. Imagine my delight when I realized this was a way to reimagine the power dynamic of interviews, and by sharing who I was turned out to be part of why I was successful at I was doing.

What if sharing, honesty, and intimacy positively impacted the historical record?

So while I'd never labeled myself a feminist, I found myself pondering gender and representation, and looking critically at my own role and subjectivity.

Over the past three years I've interviewed 70 people, with 22 since the beginning of 2017. My interviewees come from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages: farmers, academics, brewers, cider and mead makers, authors, marketing staff, chemists, and many people with ties to the Pink Boots Society. Of those 70 people, 24 have been women, roughly 35%; but of the 43 interviews with people linked to brewing, 21 have been women, so nearly half.  

As you might expect, in these interviews there were certain themes like “you might like something lighter/lower calorie/from the wine list,” or “I’ll lift that for you,” or “Where’s the brewer?” or to the hops chemist who worked on the Cascade hop at her first convention “So what does your husband do?”

Many said they feel pressure to combat these assumptions, to be a representative for women or a translator for a broader audience. Lee Hedgmon, home and commercial brewer, said she has been a professional mentor for many women, knowing that brewing is a hard industry to break into since it’s often based on word of mouth referrals. She also staffed tables at home brew events or participated in public programs because she knew “if you see someone who looks like you, you can see yourself doing that job.” It can be uncomfortable to be the only woman in the room, but showing up and being a visual reminder of something other than the stereotype could ultimately make a space for new people.

The ideas of visual representation and appearance are actually pretty important. Though I know that we picture a stereotypical a male brewer, and I have been known to sprinkle in references to “bro culture” or beards somewhat boorishly when I talk, for women in brewing appearance and their bodies are infinitely more complicated topics. Some women say they’d love to be able to lean into a kettle without their breasts getting in the way or wish they had more upper body strength, but there are also subtler differences that effect feeling like a “professional.” For instance, I had one woman tell me that a brewers’ shirt is a sort of signifier, but in a men’s shirt you don’t look professional if your buttons are gaping open.

If you look at commercials showing women serving rather than making beer – or drinking it half-naked – and it’s not a big leap to assume women might not feel welcome if they see consumers supporting a sexist culture.

But not everyone embraces the idea that there has to be a “standard” appearance for any brewer. Some women purposely embrace the “feminine” as a marker of difference. To quote Teri Fahrendorf, founder of the Pink Boots Society and one of the first women I interviewed, “I have felt that my whole career, there were times I was a judge at the Great American Beer Festival or the World Beer Cup and I’m the only woman judge in the room and I would wear dresses, because I’m like ‘I gotta balance this testosterone man, I’d better wear a dress today,’ because it’s a beard festival.” Other women embrace tattoos, a flannel, and steel-toed boots. Some are married, to men and women, and some have kids, advanced degrees, spikes in their ears or purple hair or red lipstick. In other words, if being a woman already defies stereotypical expectations for what a brewer looks like, it’s fascinating to examine the ways they defy and embrace the expectations for “what a woman looks like” and “what a brewer looks like.”

It also was interesting to learn how “personal responsibility” played out for different people. This long passage is a tightened up version of a quote from Fahrendorf and it’s really thought-provoking. She says “It’s your responsibility. There was some concern about my ability to do the job, but if I’m 5 foot 6 [and] 120 pounds, somebody looks at me and says ‘well here’s somebody she’s got brewing school training. But I just need somebody to lift sacks of grain, muck out the mash, and here’s my nephew Louie and he’s a body builder.’ People are going after Louie a lot more than me, but it didn’t take me long to get a job and there are women today who say ‘oh I tried and no one hired me because I’m a woman,’ and I’m like ‘you didn’t try very hard then or you kept barking up the wrong trees, so keep going!’ I refuse to admit there’s a gender based glass-ceiling, the men have always embraced me, we are peers, I’m one of the boys sometimes, thus the pink boots to represent my gender. The only glass-ceiling in this industry is an education glass-ceiling, don’t blame it on a gender thing.”

Honestly at that point I really didn't get it, because she seemed to gloss over inequalities that I see woven into the fabric of the industry. When I asked her directly about sexism, Fahrendorf said “the answer to that is that yes there was some, but I chose to ignore it. I figure, I have something to offer and if somebody doesn’t want to hire me, then that’s just not the right fit.” And she said this with a matter-of-fact shrug of her shoulders.

As I did more interviews I heard more women saying similar things about personal responsibility – and resilience. Lisa Morrison, author, home brewer, co-owner of a bottle shop, and one of my most recent interviews, said “I don’t let it bother me, I grew a thick skin.” Robyn Schumacher, a brewer in Seattle, told me she felt really lucky to work in the Pacific Northwest and hadn’t dealt with a lot of crap. At the same time, she gets tired of being called on to speak as a “female brewer.” Another frustration being asked what it is like to be a woman in the industry. She knows she’s supposed to say it’s an accepting community and that she’s never had any problems, and though for the most part that’s true she also wants to be honest and say it’s not always great.  

It’s complicated.

So I’ve learned a lot and reconsidered a lot, but the one thing that continues to surprise me is how many women say “Beer has no gender” and “It’s not an issue if you don’t make it one.” And so I wonder what having a documentary project like mine does to the industry – do I change the way we have conversations about and within the industry? I don’t mean to over-inflate my impact or suggest that women are in any way dishonest when reporting their experiences, but there is a BIG disconnect between the comments section on articles about labels or marketing and reports of a relatively accepting and egalitarian community.

And at times I’ve also been guilty of wanting a single “us versus them” narrative, a simple answer to the gender question, or a shared set of values – a sort of monochrome female subculture. At times I also thought I had a level of “special access” because I am a woman. Did I assume that all women would open up about discrimination or sexism, sharing something so personal, possibly deeply humiliating, and oftentimes subtle or vague with a stranger who has a camera in their face? I also thought it was weird when gender didn’t come up, as if it was an essential part of why we were doing the interview and that my job was to ask. A few months ago I also wondered why I was only asking women about gender? We all need to talk about gender, and more holistically about demographics.

As I said at the beginning of this talk: I was not part of the beer culture before I started OHBA. I’ve done a lot of listening, a lot of thinking, and a lot reading. I still have my pre-determined narratives and feel conflicted a lot of the time about the fact that these interviews are becoming my research project. I’m still bothered by the masculine nature of it all, the drinking and watching football, the showing off equipment, the public sexism that flairs when labels or marketing is criticized.

But these interviews have changed me, my view of my state and these industries. I didn’t go on the strip club tours when the Craft Brewers Conference was in Portland in 2015, but I did go to a rodeo bar for lunch after an oral history and I liked it. I’ve met great people and been amazed by their willingness to talk to me, their support of their peers, and their work trying to get past the macho stuff.

Ultimately, in the end, I’m giving women the opportunity to have their own voice, to reflect on their own complicated and oftentimes contradictory experiences or observations. I am literally giving them the power of creating their own story or record of their experiences. Story-telling and autobiography is powerful for raising agency, and perhaps even opposition. We don't need to replace one truth with another – these stories can co-exist as multiple ways of knowing and understanding.

It’s easy to pick at answers or think about how I wished they had answered — or how I would have answered myself. My job might be to choose interviewees and ask questions, but it’s not my job to judge their answers. In gathering oral histories around an activist topic I am shaping the historical record and bending it towards… I don’t know, something else, something more? And that’s okay.