feralparakeet
Member
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2012
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Hi! I'm feralparakeet. I'm an officer in our local homebrew club (for the second year now, in a different position than the first year), and I'm a woman. I'd like to share my story here (one of the parties to this post is an active redditor on /r/homebrewing, so I'm avoiding that forum for now), and I apologize for the length of it all.
Now, it hasn't been an easy ride for me. I was first asked to be an officer (probably as a de-facto thing where I wasn't actually expected to do anything or be a part of decision-making) by a former president who was voted out during the same election when I was brought in, and whom has since gained a reputation for planning events, being unprepared, and taking his failures out on others. He recently referred to other club members, before they showed up to judge a competition without any benefit of training, as "morons".
I was asked to be the individual in charge of competitions for a large club that hadn't had a competition in some years. No problem, I said, I can organize it and get awards etc together - and I did, both last year and again this year. Even with past-president starting a competing competition a month before our club's, we had double the entries this year.
Our president last year, after past-president was voted out of office, was a bit of a train wreck. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy, but he didn't really have the leadership or organizational skills to be running a club of this size. There were also issues with the other officers, including the treasurer having a major family tragedy a quarter into the club's fiscal year. The secretary was partial owner of a now-open-and-thriving nano-brewery (his wife hugged me and thanked me when I took over his role this year), and one of the other co-owners of the brewery was in charge of securing beer for our annual homebrew/craft beer festival each fall. It also turns out that past-president hadn't bothered to file the IRS Form 990-PF to maintain our 501(c)3 status, and when the revocation notice came in, he returned to the IRS a bungled application to be considered as a 501(c)7, despite my having offered to review all forms before they were submitted, as I happen to be an expert on nonprofit issues. I'm still trying to clean up -that- mess.
All of this leads me to my big diatribe.
Our fundraiser each fall is the biggest driver of both our club's finances and our charitable giving. Last's years festival was a gargantuan mess - they thought Facebook would be a useful tool to plan things (it became a complete clusterfsck), a certain member (now-president) donated a lot of time and money from his own business to ensure that we had flyers to post around town and t-shirts to sell for the benefit of said charity, but the money seemingly disappeared, and one of the major distributors in the area didn't show up (apparently the beer wrangler managed to upset them somehow, and we're still getting the runaround this year because of it). Despite over 1400 attendees, somehow we were told by the Treasurer that "all we could afford" to donate was $2500 - I threw a fit during an officer's meeting about how we'd manipulated our charity partner for publicity and managed to talk him up to $3000. It was extremely embarrassing to present that tiny check to them after all of the work that they'd done to help promote the festival. The new batch of officers decided to give another $1500 to said charity, but it still was nowhere near enough.
This year, the now-president and his wife have been a godsend. Gone are the headaches of last year in terms of club management, we've updated our bylaws to be more charitable, rather than just a bunch of folks getting together and drinking beer. We always check with eachother and the other officers on major decisions, and even minor ones that involve any expenditures.
Sadly, the other officers this year haven't been as supportive. A woman was elected as VP for Competitions (I ceded the role when nobody else would run for Secretary), and she promptly disappeared off the face of the planet, leaving me to handle the competition this summer as well. Another woman was elected Treasurer, as well but she soon thereafter was given a promotion at work which required tremendous amounts of travel - and instead of ceding her place as a board member, she would simply send her husband in her place. Even when she was present at meetings, she would allow him to speak for her, which I find terribly problematic - not to mention outside of the parliamentary procedure that the club has employed for over a decade, and when I reminded them of procedure after he started assuming he had an extra vote during the officer's meetings (there's no proxy, much less spousal privilege in the bylaws), I was suddenly on the "***** list". I should note that our "first lady", while working her ass off for the club, has never attempted to assume any voting authority.
This year, I've set up a bulk keg purchase for the club, I've successfully entered multiple bylaw changes into the voting record (which were approved) in order to regain our 501(c)3 status, and I've spent, on average, 20 hours a week working for the club and our festival in addition to the 60-80 hours I work weekly as a tenure-track professor.
The planning group for our annual festival has been a nightmare. After last year's complete debacle with Facebook, somehow it was decided not to completely abandon the group, and now it's grown into a whole new, more evil beast. We did integrate some Google Docs for better collaboration, but a handful of the "old guard" has essentially refused to use it. That past-president guy randomly spouted off lowball amounts for sponsorship agreements without checking with anyone, and new-president and I had to clean up his mess, and eventually I had to essentially fire past-president as a volunteer (I don't think he ever accepted the message, but at least he's been neutralized... for this event, at least).
I should note that current-president doesn't like confrontation, so we'll often have conversations where he expresses a strong opinion but won't follow up on it, so I post emails/facebooks/whatever to a very toned-down extent, and he doesn't exactly back me up. Every time I deal with others in the club, the "Kyle's Mom is a *****" song plays in my head, because experience has demonstrated that it's an entirely accurate depiction of how others see me.
There are two people in the club who actively seem to be maligned against the idea that I do much of anything beyond breathe. First, the self-proclaimed-local-beer-king who keeps a blog/newsletter - last year, when a publicity opportunity for a morning show arose and I said that I was free that morning and happy to do it, he chewed me out because HE was in charge of media appearances. I noted how good it might be for a woman to be the face of beer for a change, but didn't fight it too much - he won that argument, no biggie to me... until he didn't even bother to show up for the television broadcast. Yep, still on the "Kyle's Mom" list for that one. He also threw a fit this year when I said that I had a problem with our event's first-billing being ceded to some radio station or magazine when we were the ones doing all of the work. When he presented a proposal that seemed fitting, we were pleased - and then we called to confirm and the magazine in question backpedaled on whatever they agreed to, instead requiring exactly the sort of thing we had said we wouldn't give up in terms of naming rights. This is pretty much par for the course here.
Second is the artwork guy, currently the one who's VP for events. He barely changed the advertisements from last year, and when some members objected to the visuals on the flyer (it really did look like Kim Kardashian in a dirndl), instead of offering to change it, he threw up arguments about how he couldn't understand why we didn't appreciate his work and he didn't see what the problem was. Eventually, I replied with a comment to the extent of "Hey, we've asked nicely for you to change it and all you've done is argue... just change it already." His wife then came in to argue for his point of view, and commented how much she liked the people who actually supported him. Another mark for the "Kyle's Mom" list there.
I should note that Artwork VP has a bad habit of booking venues and not cancelling when we make other plans for club meetings, so venues end up ordering a ton of extra food that ends up turning into waste. Self-proclaimed-local-beer-king swore months ago that he would confirm attendance of the major distributors, but I learned late last week that he hadn't, and so I had to make emergency calls in the hope that our brewfest hasn't completely been screwed over. I'm still not sure that it hasn't been, but man, I hope it hasn't, because I've been working way too much for this.
Artwork VP guy also suddenly decided to take it upon himself to order t-shirts for sale, as opposed to leaving it up to now-president who has the wholesale printing relationships. Now-president and first lady questioned it, but instead of responding to those comments, he instead posted it as gospel to the club's FB group. Of course, after this, I had to be the bad guy once more, and asked why he was so combative after anyone had any criticism of his work, and why he decided to take t-shirt purchasing upon himself when in no officer's or committee meeting was he asked to do so. In response, he and self-proclaimed-local-beer-king threw another fit and called me the combative one, etc etc etc. Woohoo, I've achieved "Super-king-kamehameha-beyotch" levels!
I left a voicemail message for Artwork VP guy and replied to the Facebook thread noting my voicemail, and asking him to contact me to help with correcting those misunderstandings. More than eight hours have passed, and he hasn't even acknowledged that I made an effort to reach out and correct any miscommunications. Nope, I'm still Kyle's Mom, the big fat *****.
"Have you ever met my friend Kyle's mom?
She's the biggest ***** in the whole wide world
She's a mean old ***** and she has stupid hair
She's a ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****!"
Others have noted throughout the past two years (including the now-president and first lady) that such comments and arguments would never have transpired, had I only been born with XY genes instead of a pair of boobs. Funny enough, I live a lifestyle much closer to an early-20s bachelor (my house is pets, beer, research materials, dirty laundry all over the place, and more beer) than a mid-30s woman.
Thus far, I have only heard support from individuals in private conversations; they'll tell me that I've got the balls and the skills to make the trains run on time and I'm more dedicated than anybody, but nobody else seems to be willing to stand up for the fact that I'm task-oriented and get things done, that I'm not an arbitrary control freak or anything. The first lady even apologized for tipping me off to Artwork VP's rant, which resulted in the controversial posting that should never have been controversial.
Normally, I would gladly just say "screw it" and go on my merry way to find another hobby, but I've invested nearly a thousand dollars' worth of equipment and an amount of volunteering time that I would likely have billed out at over $50k (or more likely twice that) in total had I been doing consulting work at my regular rate.
I really don't want to run this damned club, though some friends have suggested I take over as President next year. I'd much rather the now-president/first-lady/myself triad somehow keeps going, because we make it work. Still, it pisses me off that so very few in the club are newbie friendly, that so few people show up now that we finally do group brew days, and that new members get torn to shreds when they post pictures of their techniques. I know multiple women who have been run away from this club, and I still am asked by even the old-school types (who know my history of independent brewing) what my boyfriend/husband thinks of my hobby.
So, I'm sorry for this long rant, but I just don't know what to do anymore. I love brewing, especially for charity (I probably brew 5x as much for charitable events annually as I ever will for personal/friend use), but I'm sick of the misogyny. I can't imagine that any of this hatred would ever be channeled toward a male who took charge, or how people with less self-control than I have manage to resist throwing punches.
Having searched HBF for other females, I know that we're few and far between, but I hope that this allows you, the other subscribers, to seriously consider how you treat other women (especially in leadership roles) in your clubs. And, of course, I welcome your suggestions for how to deal with all of the drama, but please, follow Wil Wheaton's rule (as I hope you would anywhere else) - "Dont be a dick".
Now, it hasn't been an easy ride for me. I was first asked to be an officer (probably as a de-facto thing where I wasn't actually expected to do anything or be a part of decision-making) by a former president who was voted out during the same election when I was brought in, and whom has since gained a reputation for planning events, being unprepared, and taking his failures out on others. He recently referred to other club members, before they showed up to judge a competition without any benefit of training, as "morons".
I was asked to be the individual in charge of competitions for a large club that hadn't had a competition in some years. No problem, I said, I can organize it and get awards etc together - and I did, both last year and again this year. Even with past-president starting a competing competition a month before our club's, we had double the entries this year.
Our president last year, after past-president was voted out of office, was a bit of a train wreck. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy, but he didn't really have the leadership or organizational skills to be running a club of this size. There were also issues with the other officers, including the treasurer having a major family tragedy a quarter into the club's fiscal year. The secretary was partial owner of a now-open-and-thriving nano-brewery (his wife hugged me and thanked me when I took over his role this year), and one of the other co-owners of the brewery was in charge of securing beer for our annual homebrew/craft beer festival each fall. It also turns out that past-president hadn't bothered to file the IRS Form 990-PF to maintain our 501(c)3 status, and when the revocation notice came in, he returned to the IRS a bungled application to be considered as a 501(c)7, despite my having offered to review all forms before they were submitted, as I happen to be an expert on nonprofit issues. I'm still trying to clean up -that- mess.
All of this leads me to my big diatribe.
Our fundraiser each fall is the biggest driver of both our club's finances and our charitable giving. Last's years festival was a gargantuan mess - they thought Facebook would be a useful tool to plan things (it became a complete clusterfsck), a certain member (now-president) donated a lot of time and money from his own business to ensure that we had flyers to post around town and t-shirts to sell for the benefit of said charity, but the money seemingly disappeared, and one of the major distributors in the area didn't show up (apparently the beer wrangler managed to upset them somehow, and we're still getting the runaround this year because of it). Despite over 1400 attendees, somehow we were told by the Treasurer that "all we could afford" to donate was $2500 - I threw a fit during an officer's meeting about how we'd manipulated our charity partner for publicity and managed to talk him up to $3000. It was extremely embarrassing to present that tiny check to them after all of the work that they'd done to help promote the festival. The new batch of officers decided to give another $1500 to said charity, but it still was nowhere near enough.
This year, the now-president and his wife have been a godsend. Gone are the headaches of last year in terms of club management, we've updated our bylaws to be more charitable, rather than just a bunch of folks getting together and drinking beer. We always check with eachother and the other officers on major decisions, and even minor ones that involve any expenditures.
Sadly, the other officers this year haven't been as supportive. A woman was elected as VP for Competitions (I ceded the role when nobody else would run for Secretary), and she promptly disappeared off the face of the planet, leaving me to handle the competition this summer as well. Another woman was elected Treasurer, as well but she soon thereafter was given a promotion at work which required tremendous amounts of travel - and instead of ceding her place as a board member, she would simply send her husband in her place. Even when she was present at meetings, she would allow him to speak for her, which I find terribly problematic - not to mention outside of the parliamentary procedure that the club has employed for over a decade, and when I reminded them of procedure after he started assuming he had an extra vote during the officer's meetings (there's no proxy, much less spousal privilege in the bylaws), I was suddenly on the "***** list". I should note that our "first lady", while working her ass off for the club, has never attempted to assume any voting authority.
This year, I've set up a bulk keg purchase for the club, I've successfully entered multiple bylaw changes into the voting record (which were approved) in order to regain our 501(c)3 status, and I've spent, on average, 20 hours a week working for the club and our festival in addition to the 60-80 hours I work weekly as a tenure-track professor.
The planning group for our annual festival has been a nightmare. After last year's complete debacle with Facebook, somehow it was decided not to completely abandon the group, and now it's grown into a whole new, more evil beast. We did integrate some Google Docs for better collaboration, but a handful of the "old guard" has essentially refused to use it. That past-president guy randomly spouted off lowball amounts for sponsorship agreements without checking with anyone, and new-president and I had to clean up his mess, and eventually I had to essentially fire past-president as a volunteer (I don't think he ever accepted the message, but at least he's been neutralized... for this event, at least).
I should note that current-president doesn't like confrontation, so we'll often have conversations where he expresses a strong opinion but won't follow up on it, so I post emails/facebooks/whatever to a very toned-down extent, and he doesn't exactly back me up. Every time I deal with others in the club, the "Kyle's Mom is a *****" song plays in my head, because experience has demonstrated that it's an entirely accurate depiction of how others see me.
There are two people in the club who actively seem to be maligned against the idea that I do much of anything beyond breathe. First, the self-proclaimed-local-beer-king who keeps a blog/newsletter - last year, when a publicity opportunity for a morning show arose and I said that I was free that morning and happy to do it, he chewed me out because HE was in charge of media appearances. I noted how good it might be for a woman to be the face of beer for a change, but didn't fight it too much - he won that argument, no biggie to me... until he didn't even bother to show up for the television broadcast. Yep, still on the "Kyle's Mom" list for that one. He also threw a fit this year when I said that I had a problem with our event's first-billing being ceded to some radio station or magazine when we were the ones doing all of the work. When he presented a proposal that seemed fitting, we were pleased - and then we called to confirm and the magazine in question backpedaled on whatever they agreed to, instead requiring exactly the sort of thing we had said we wouldn't give up in terms of naming rights. This is pretty much par for the course here.
Second is the artwork guy, currently the one who's VP for events. He barely changed the advertisements from last year, and when some members objected to the visuals on the flyer (it really did look like Kim Kardashian in a dirndl), instead of offering to change it, he threw up arguments about how he couldn't understand why we didn't appreciate his work and he didn't see what the problem was. Eventually, I replied with a comment to the extent of "Hey, we've asked nicely for you to change it and all you've done is argue... just change it already." His wife then came in to argue for his point of view, and commented how much she liked the people who actually supported him. Another mark for the "Kyle's Mom" list there.
I should note that Artwork VP has a bad habit of booking venues and not cancelling when we make other plans for club meetings, so venues end up ordering a ton of extra food that ends up turning into waste. Self-proclaimed-local-beer-king swore months ago that he would confirm attendance of the major distributors, but I learned late last week that he hadn't, and so I had to make emergency calls in the hope that our brewfest hasn't completely been screwed over. I'm still not sure that it hasn't been, but man, I hope it hasn't, because I've been working way too much for this.
Artwork VP guy also suddenly decided to take it upon himself to order t-shirts for sale, as opposed to leaving it up to now-president who has the wholesale printing relationships. Now-president and first lady questioned it, but instead of responding to those comments, he instead posted it as gospel to the club's FB group. Of course, after this, I had to be the bad guy once more, and asked why he was so combative after anyone had any criticism of his work, and why he decided to take t-shirt purchasing upon himself when in no officer's or committee meeting was he asked to do so. In response, he and self-proclaimed-local-beer-king threw another fit and called me the combative one, etc etc etc. Woohoo, I've achieved "Super-king-kamehameha-beyotch" levels!
I left a voicemail message for Artwork VP guy and replied to the Facebook thread noting my voicemail, and asking him to contact me to help with correcting those misunderstandings. More than eight hours have passed, and he hasn't even acknowledged that I made an effort to reach out and correct any miscommunications. Nope, I'm still Kyle's Mom, the big fat *****.
"Have you ever met my friend Kyle's mom?
She's the biggest ***** in the whole wide world
She's a mean old ***** and she has stupid hair
She's a ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****!"
Others have noted throughout the past two years (including the now-president and first lady) that such comments and arguments would never have transpired, had I only been born with XY genes instead of a pair of boobs. Funny enough, I live a lifestyle much closer to an early-20s bachelor (my house is pets, beer, research materials, dirty laundry all over the place, and more beer) than a mid-30s woman.
Thus far, I have only heard support from individuals in private conversations; they'll tell me that I've got the balls and the skills to make the trains run on time and I'm more dedicated than anybody, but nobody else seems to be willing to stand up for the fact that I'm task-oriented and get things done, that I'm not an arbitrary control freak or anything. The first lady even apologized for tipping me off to Artwork VP's rant, which resulted in the controversial posting that should never have been controversial.
Normally, I would gladly just say "screw it" and go on my merry way to find another hobby, but I've invested nearly a thousand dollars' worth of equipment and an amount of volunteering time that I would likely have billed out at over $50k (or more likely twice that) in total had I been doing consulting work at my regular rate.
I really don't want to run this damned club, though some friends have suggested I take over as President next year. I'd much rather the now-president/first-lady/myself triad somehow keeps going, because we make it work. Still, it pisses me off that so very few in the club are newbie friendly, that so few people show up now that we finally do group brew days, and that new members get torn to shreds when they post pictures of their techniques. I know multiple women who have been run away from this club, and I still am asked by even the old-school types (who know my history of independent brewing) what my boyfriend/husband thinks of my hobby.
So, I'm sorry for this long rant, but I just don't know what to do anymore. I love brewing, especially for charity (I probably brew 5x as much for charitable events annually as I ever will for personal/friend use), but I'm sick of the misogyny. I can't imagine that any of this hatred would ever be channeled toward a male who took charge, or how people with less self-control than I have manage to resist throwing punches.
Having searched HBF for other females, I know that we're few and far between, but I hope that this allows you, the other subscribers, to seriously consider how you treat other women (especially in leadership roles) in your clubs. And, of course, I welcome your suggestions for how to deal with all of the drama, but please, follow Wil Wheaton's rule (as I hope you would anywhere else) - "Dont be a dick".
