Women, Religion, and Whiskey by Phil Conner

At some point in most of my days, I will center myself down with a glass of whiskey.  It is not the effects of the wonderful spirit that draw me to it so much as the myriad of flavors contained therein.  A good whiskey is like a good person; it will unfold with layers over time.  A good whiskey is always the same, always reminding you of why you loved it in the first place, but always fresh, exciting, and nuanced.  The experience of whiskey is a deeply spiritual one for me, and one that helps inform the way I move in the world.  Despite the fact that many whiskey-lovers experience whiskey in similar ways, whiskey brings with it negative binaries, especially in the United States.  Chief among these binary stereotypes are the two myths I despise the most: whiskey is a man’s drink and whiskey is antithetical to religion.  As someone who tends bar for a living, I see these myths perpetuated all too often.  “I don’t want that fruity drink; do I look like a chick to you?”  “Of course I want another drink.  What am I?  A Christian?”  Statements like these motivated me to start writing about whiskey in the first place, and Fred Minnick’s recent book, Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey, and the increasingly progressive whiskey-blogging community have helped me gain the courage to spread the gospel of the history and meaning of whiskey especially as it relates to women and religion.

The sexism in alcohol advertising (and common bar slang) and the assumption that religious people abstain from all alcohol in the United States were mostly developed in the early 20^th century.  In the last years of the 19^th century and the first decades of the 20^th century, many women followed in the courageous footsteps of assertive feminists, claiming a public voice and standing up for their identity as women.  Associations like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Women’s Temperance Crusade (WTC) sought to end the consumption of alcohol in the United States, seeing alcohol as exacerbating social evils.  Women saw their families being torn apart with their husbands downing liquor and spending all their money in bars and brothels.  Women like Carrie Nation had good reason for their anger, as she stormed through the Midwest with her axe, smashing saloons and threatening barkeeps (her husband had died of alcohol poisoning, leaving her to care for all their children with no income).  From the perspective of many women in the early 20^th century, Prohibition was a no-brainer, and their most common backers for political power were religious figures and religious organizations.  As a result when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, far too many lawmakers blamed the problems that were associated with Prohibition and anti-alcohol beliefs on the feminist and religious groups of America, even though these groups were nearly as involved with the repeal of Prohibition as they had been with its enactment.

In the aftermath of Prohibition, many states passed laws forbidding women to work in bars or even to be in them without a male companion, and many church groups continued to enforce their temperance stance, conflating societal ills with religious values.  Despite being over 80 years removed from the Repeal of Prohibition, the United States still suffers from the stigmas that Prohibition helped create: women are all against alcohol and should not drink it, and religious groups follow right along in their hatred of the spirit.  The push for Prohibition, and the women’s Christian organizations that were behind it were well-founded in their anger at alcoholic consumption, but the perception of the passionate appeal for Prohibition created a binary between men and women and religious and non-religious persons when it came to the consumption of alcohol.

Unfortunately, those gender and religious binary stereotypes were heavily played on by whiskey companies in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, and we are left with those binaries today.  If you have seen any of Dewar’s recent advertising campaigns, you know exactly what I mean.  Their slogan is “Dewar’s: The Drinking Man’s Scotch,” and their commercials portray a character called “The Baron,” who runs around Scotland making fun of heavier women and weak-looking men. When alcohol companies perpetuate these stereotypes for younger generations, these antiquated ideas about women and religious groups are perpetuated without any facts.  Contrary to what we see today from advertisers, for most of human history, alcoholic products were made almost exclusively by women, and the consumption of alcoholic products was an integral of the connection between humans and the spiritual world.  Today, the reality is that Bushmill’s distillery (the oldest active distillery in the world) uses only women on their tasting panel, almost every major American distillery has a woman at the presidential or vice presidential level, and the popularity of Single Malt Scotch in the United States is due largely to Bessie Williamson’s stateside representation of Laphroaig in the years following Prohibition.

To come full circle, the stereotypes that are being perpetuated by liquor companies and the average Joes at the bar are partly products of reactionary beliefs in the aftermath of Prohibition as a response to the groups that led the charge for temperance earlier in the 20^th century.  These binaries were wrongfully enforced by lawmakers after Prohibition; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now.  Drinking whiskey is a deeply spiritual and soulful experience, a mysterious journey through the bountiful harvest of the earth’s intoxicants.  More importantly, whiskey is a reminder of taste beyond differences in gender and religious beliefs.  The only thing whiskey really tells you about a person is how their taste buds respond to various stimuli.  Period.

Phil Conner is a native Marylander who enjoys whiskey, and has been writing about it on his blog, Bargain Bourbon, since the spring of 2012.  He holds a B.A. in history from Millersville University of Pennsylvania and a M.T.S. in philosophy, theology, and ethics from Boston University School of Theology.  His interests in history, religion, and whiskey often collide over a glass of small batch bourbon or single barrel rye.