The story of women’s involvement with alcohol – both making and drinking it – is one of male control, says Mallory O’Meara
“Wait, there aren’t any books about the history of women and drinking? Seriously?”
I was also disappointed. Each and every book I brought home was written by and about men. If there was any women’s history mentioned, it was usually a few scattered sentences, maybe a single paragraph if I got lucky. Thinking perhaps that this was an oversight on my part, I texted my best friend to ask for some book recommendations. Maybe I wasn’t buying the right ones! She told me I couldn’t buy the right books – the history I was looking for didn’t exist.
Creating a distinction between “manly” drinks and “girly” drinks was also about control. Access to alcohol and judgment-free intoxication was reserved for men in power. Ancient Roman women were allowed just a taste, a weaker and sweeter version of the wine that the men drank, called passum and made from raisins. And so the gendered drinks began.
There have been female brewers, but also female distillers, bartenders and most importantly drinkers in every part of the world since alcohol was first created.have always been there, not just alongside men, but usually one step ahead of them. Their inventions and ingenuity have shaped every era of alcohol and drinking culture.
Since the days of Mesopotamia, alcohol was said to make women dangerously immoral. Dangerous? Well, dangerous to their husband’s or father’s estate. If a woman – whose reproductive abilities were considered property – got drunk and had a fling that resulted in the loss of her virginity or the conception of a child, that was a direct financial blow to the man who controlled her. Gendered drinking culture was formed because of a male fear of women acting like people, not property.
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