I hate beer commercials.

It's not because they all take place in bars, or because they contain inexplicable images of running horses, or even because 90% of them are advertising anemic fizzy yellow non-beer that I would only drink if it was the last beverage on earth.

No, the reason I hate beer commercials is this: they don't acknowledge the fact that I exist. Who am I? A female beer drinker. And as far as the beer companies are concerned, it's not worth their time or money to advertise to me. Beer commercials are designed to appeal to the hyper-masculine, and women only appear in them to bring men their beer, or to be attracted to the magical masculinity that comes with drinking this brew or that one.

I know, they're just commercials, and I'm sure I can find no shortage of people who will tell me why I shouldn't care about them. However, these commercials have an effect on how people perceive women and their relationship to beer.

Why should that matter to me? Because when I say I am a beer drinker, I don't mean that I occasionally down a bottle over the course of an evening, or forego my usual Cosmopolitan in order to impress the guys. I mean that beer is a minor obsession to me. I mean that I order the tasting tray at the local brew pub and painstakingly analyze every selection on it for aroma, body, bitterness, and quality of hops. I can identify the presence of a Belgian yeast by taste, and I know the difference between a stout, a red, a porter, and a lambic. And like anyone who has as high a degree of interest in a topic, I enjoy discussing it with others who are similarly inclined.

But when you're a woman beer connoisseur, virtually no one takes you seriously.

Okay, so it's probably not one of the bigger feminist issues in the world, but nevertheless, it worries me. I always find that it is the small, generally unobserved ways in which sexism permeates society that can cause the most damage, and every time I discover a new one, I am reminded of just how much work we have to do.

Also, there are other implications to the ways in which alcohol is and isn't advertised to women. As far as Madison Avenue is concerned, the only things women like to drink are sweet, fruity things, and I think there's a disturbing degree of infantalization present in that assumption.

The other thing I always think of these days when I see how beer has become a domain of men is the fact that, historically speaking, it has not always been this way. Beer brewing began in Europe as a way to preserve wheat, and it was, for many centuries, almost exclusively something done by women, who also sold extra beer. This didn't really change until the Catholic church, with its brewing monks, decided that it didn't like the competition it was getting from women in the beer market and decided to crush it by unofficially asserting that female beer brewers were in league with the devil.

No, I'm not kidding. Look it up.

I want to see change. I'm not saying men can't have their beer, or can't have their role in making it. I'm all for share and share alike between the sexes, especially when it comes to something as wonderful as beer. But it's time for women to realize that the disenfranchisement we face everywhere we go is a sign of deeper problems than we might like to think.

It's time for us to take back the beer.