Way Past Policy

Note to the Reader: The author does not drink beer. He does enjoy refreshing beverages but only the unproblematic ones. He is already aware of any detectable bias and has made no efforts to correct this in the writing. He is however a fan of large department stores with vibrant two toned color schemes and moderately priced lifestyle brands and items.

So, originally this post was supposed to be written sometime in early May. A certain beer company had just rolled out a new product, a can with the picture of an influencer on it who is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. This, as observed in the past month, was probably a bad move. The backlash from the Right on this has fed into the larger cultural narrative of intolerance of LGBTQ+ persons as well as further critique of corporations and how they interact with the public. But as we neared the month of June, pride month, I decided to sit back and observe how this – all things being cyclical – would lead to other effects in this space. It may have started with beer but it certainly wouldn’t end there. I waited until it inevitably got worse. Only a month later, a large merchandise retailer based in Minnesota, noticed that a particular sector of it’s customer base is now profitable and wanted to cash in on that. This move was also bad, apparently, as it led to more backlash from the Right.

It’s really a simple formula. Company A introduces a product or movement and it pisses off Customer B. Company A then reels back its efforts through a few ways: fire the people responsible, double down on their commitment to the values and expectations of their largest customer segment, and gradually alter or phase out the new product/initiative/whatever.

Anyone who lives within any system will know intuitively or not symbols are a powerful thing. They make up the bulk of how we understand the world — they’re ways to process information so we can understand contexts. In a lot of ways they function as heuristics so we can explain groups, behaviors, intentions. But the thing that we generally forget is that they are manufactured and consented upon by a group. Symbols don’t really matter when only recognized by a single person.

Beer is a symbol, but it takes a little work to figure out what particular group it’s coded to. Is it a symbol of masculinity? Most (all) beer is masculine coded. Beer commercials were once rife with women in bikinis, pick-up trucks, football (specifically this sport), cookouts, etc. Even today you’re likely to see beer commercials with men camping, driving trucks, engaging in white collar hijinks and so on. The idea of remembering ones first beer is a prominent concept for young men within the American mythos. Even in the context of women who drink beer, rarely is it depicted in media that women drink it for the flavor rather than to be the cool girl. If you live in a place like I live you’re probably surrounded for miles on all sides by bars and microbreweries all owned an operated by a bespectacled and bearded man named Tanner or Cooper or Travis, and that brewery is essentially an extension of the desired lifestyle they seek. To drink beer is to be a man. To some people anyway.

Men on the Right have generally co-opted beer as a symbol of overt masculinity, patriotism, and cultural solidarity. For a beer company to come out and do something even mildly inclusive of a group that isn’t themselves is betrayal. The childlike emotional response is completely reasonable. I predict if I found out Tony the Tiger was convicted of multiple DUI’s or that Chevron actually didn’t care about the environment I’d feel the same way. I would stop eating delicious cereal and buying gasoline for my car. If Kroger announced tomorrow morning that they’d be starting initiatives to address child hunger by working with food producers to keep prices low (for the poors) I’d probably also resort to acts of terrorism.

Should we worry about beer becoming a symbol of transphobia? Yes, probably. Remember Tiki torches and Fred Perry polo shirts? It is not hard for a seemingly harmless item to be utilized as an ideological tool. These business behemoths, these planners of the American economy, are completely responsive to the violent whims of a very very vocal sector of people who buy their products. The people who go to their stores to buy overpriced candles and dog food are the same ones entering stores to harass employees and knock over shelves with shirts on them. They’re willing to stop drinking one brand of beer to start drinking another owned by the same company.

Recommendations

• Stop drinking beer altogether. It can’t be trusted. If the corporations we trust to defend our collective value ethos can’t be trusted by either side then we shouldn’t have them around. Call for a general boycott.
• Failing this, mock these people relentlessly. Remember that the intolerant reside in the hyper reality in which their victims are silent, civil, and reserved. The real weapon against intolerance is an unyielding reluctance to engaging with it in our reality.
• Don’t shop anywhere, ever. Companies only want your money because you belong to X group. You cannot engage with them ethically. Deny them the privilege.

Slightly better recommendations

• Companies limit their customer expansions to markets in which there is already fervent support for said community. Your product is not going to sway the minds of or be ignored by the intolerant. You have zero control of your product once it enters market.
• Celebrate your marginalized groups year round and make product lines for inclusivity permanent parts of your product lines. Weaponize normalization against intolerance. You’re allowed to, you know, have tolerances and preferences yourself that reflect the general trends of society. The world is no longer apolitical.
• Openly support, invest in, and support small businesses that themselves are inclusive.

We should have zero expectations that corporations are in any way supportive of whatever group we belong to. Our outrage should be tempered. For one, they are attempting to engage meaningfully with a marginalized group when the alternative is they could just not. We also have to keep in mind these corpo people are actually not all that smart. At least not in the ways we expect them to be. They’re run by people whose sole responsibility is accountability to shareholders. Doesn’t really require a lot of critical thought to remain profitable and profitability is solely the domain of metrics, analytics, economic theorems, and marketing. They aren’t trying to represent you, they’re trying to find the most effective way to get you to buy their items because it has colors you like. These companies are absolutely not going to risk alienating their most profitable customer base (white males, suburban moms, football enjoyers, etc.) just to satisfy a minority.

Or maybe we can put corporations through anti-bully training so they can gain the confidence to defend themselves against mean customers.