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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Not to be outdone by Bud Lite, Miller Lite has apparently been running their own "woke" beer advertisements: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_NtBQWZqaHo

IMO the campaign here is actually clever, take this "bad" thing, use money to buy it, and turn it into a "good" thing. Whoever came up with this idea: cool idea.

But here's my question: is any of this old "bad" stuff actually bad? Let's look at contemporary things like onlyfans, instagram, tiktok, the hundreds of reddit 'gonewild' type porn forums, etc. It seems to me that many women, given the chance, enjoy wearing bikinis, being sexualized, being lusted after etc. Not all women, obviously, since some women don't like this, but...isn't this trying to strip the pro-sexualization women of their agency?

Aside from that, isn't Miller saying that women belong...in the kitchen? Don't go out to the beach and get drunk and have fun. Wear modest clothing (like the person in the ad), stay inside in the dark, and make things for people to eat.

Also: the claim that women were the primary brewers historically, is not only dumb, it's also wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihenstephan_Abbey?useskin=vector

Also: the claim that women were the primary brewers historically, is not only dumb, it's also wrong

For most of history beer was generally home-brewed, and in those instances it was indeed produced primarily by women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_brewing

Commercially brewed beer has been a predominantly male occupation for about 500 years. Basically, since the time where it was something a modern person would drink and recognize as beer.

The ad didn't split the hairs you're trying to split.

Because as soon as something become profitable, men take it over and pretend women didn't contribute anything.

To be more precise, people who are willing to take big risks on obtaining status through commerce, who tend to be from a small minority of men, undertake the big risks involved in making things profitable and marketing them on a large scale, and tend to ignore or forget about earlier contributions, many (and sometimes most) of which were made by women.

Historically, when women e.g. had to worry about bleeding part of the month, being raped by a random stranger on a highway, having to raise enough children to fund their old ages despite the high levels of child mortalituy, as well as a host of legal inequalities, this gendered pattern was particularly prominent. See the history of textiles. Even today, AFAIK, women in business tend towards relatively stable but unprofitable businesses like baking, rather than sink-or-swim forms of enterprise that offer the possibility of huge success and the probability of large opportunity costs or even bankrupcy.