I don't care how pink it is - if it's got 15 oz. of gin in it, you're definitely gonna taste the alcohol.

(In other words - I think there should be a decimal point in there somewhere.)

Or -- the number of women who don't care about performing femininity when they belly up to the bar has grown and those women are ordering what they like, which is whiskey. As a woman who started drinking whiskey about 15 years ago, I definitely noticed the approval from men but I only drink whiskey because I like it. And on those occasions when I want something fruity and less spirit-forward, I drink that instead.

Also worth noting -- if not many women drank whiskey before, it's easy to become the fastest growing segment of whiskey drinkers. A jump from 1% to 2% means that segment grew 100%, which is pretty hard to replicate if you've already got a good chunk of people in a particular demographic doing something.

I'm an American woman and fond of whisky - have been for several years. While visiting parts of northwest India last year, I found that men thought this was particularly admirable. I've noticed the surprised nods of approval here when I order a whisky/water, my preference, but abroad it was more noticeable. My taste for it was also convenient, because along with vodka, it was the only liquor widely available in the region.

Culturally, it was interesting - the women in the communities I was visiting and staying in confided that they never drank, as it wasn't proper, but their husbands were free to do as they pleased. In some places the women wouldn't even sit near their husbands if they were imbibing (the mere illusion of impropriety was too much).

Despite my gender, as a guest, I was encouraged to drink as much as I liked and quite often more than I wanted to. After a month in the country I had learned to leave my glass full, otherwise someone would come up to fill it every time it even neared empty.

A young boy remarked at my glass one evening:

"You drink whisky?!"
"Well, yes."
"But ladies don't drink whisky."
"American ladies are different than other ladies you've met," I said.

“What will happen when women are sipping from all the bottles?” The exact same thing that happened when women started wearing all the clothes. Men didn't stop wearing pants once women decided that just wearing skirts was too limiting. We just moved from a society with male and female clothes (pants and skirts respectively) to a society with gender neutral clothes and female clothes (again, pants and skirts respectively).

Whiskey will be enjoyed by all people, just like skinny jeans are worn by all people.

Both men and women tend to accentuate the differences between the sexes in their behaviors, I suppose to better attract each other, and that choice seems consistent over time. Still, I think most men AND women prefer drinking wine and beer over hard alcohol. In fact, putting foo foo drinks with silly colors and little umbrellas aside, I'd think drinking hard alcohol as one's standard drink would have more to do with one's weight than sex.

My two favorite drinks are the Cosmopolitan and the Singapore Sling.

Looking at androcentrism from a nonconforming male perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GW22sAElpE

A friend's mother, who's in her 70s, has been a whiskey sour fan for eons. Come to think of it, that was my aunt's drink, and she would have been in her 80s now if she hadn't died. Are whiskey sours girlie drinks? I checked a recipe, and there's a half tsp of sugar, but that wouldn't do much to counter the juice from half a lemon. Which I guess makes it a juicy drink, but not one that hides the taste of the whiskey.

When I was a young thing, I favoured rye and coke, but that only lasted a couple of years before morphing into rye and ice, and finally, neat, even swigging straight from the bottle on those particularly hard days when the kids were young and I needed help making it through the afternoon.

Over the past year, I've "discovered" lime margaritas. Not the horrible sugary mixes, but lime, tequila, triple sec, lots of ice, the end.

If men abandoned whiskey,
could it be equally or more due to the fact that it became a more
popular drink in general rather than because women now
drink it? Maybe the abandoning depends more on the desire to be somewhat
unique rather than being ashamed that women drink it too. On the other
hand, I suppose, it could be compared to the use of slang; the ‘cool’
people invent or start using new slang when too many ‘uncool’ people taku up the old one. In this case, women could be, maybe subconciously, the 'uncool' crowd..

Is sherry a women´s drink? If it is, can I encourage all you whiskey drinkers to embrace you feminine side, too, and drink some sherry? You see, most good whiskey is aged in casks previously used for sherry, and with the whiskey consumption rising and rising, and sherry drinking declining, the world is in bad need of good sherry casks. If you're a whiskey drinking, please remember to drink your share of sherry, too. ;-)

I like whisk(e)y. I also like gin. I tend to like my alcohol to be high-quality and to have a discernible flavor. I also like to not have terrible sugar-induced hangovers, so I almost always order typically more 'masculine' drinks. And I have definitely noticed that I get approval (or sometimes awe) for ordering these drinks. [I was in a bar in London once that seemed to be frequented by mostly blue collar Scottish men and it was apparently mind-boggling to many of the customers there that I ordered Guinness: "A woman? Drinking Guinness?"] And I know other women who like these drinks for their own reasons. And men who like typically 'girly' drinks. I think we should all drink what we want to drink and see how society evolves as more and more people stop letting stupid gender prescriptions dictate their preferences.

Let’s examine the flip side of some of these things.

If bartenders (who come in both genders – the author doesn’t state or imply it’s all men) tend to offer indecisive women “juicy or sweet” or pink drinks, what do you think they’re offering indecisive men? I think it’s fair to say that they’re NOT offering “juicy or sweet” or pink things. If the author’s point is that women somehow have more constraining gender roles, this article certainly does nothing to offer any actual evidence of that. Their drink suggestions will tend to be gendered, and men and women both will be on the receiving end of these hateful assumptions (note sarcasm).

I, a man, have also had many, many bartenders over the years, men and women, give approving nods and words when I order something straight
up boozy like a Manhattan or whiskey neat. Many bartenders tend to be pretty
into drinking themselves, so they can respect someone that doesn’t F around
with the small stuff. Ordering hard booze = not being afraid of alcohol. I’m
just not seeing that the gender of the server or the served really matters much
in this equation.

Now, this is the part of the article that gets just laughably stupid: “women are expected to perform femininity, but when they perform masculinity, they are admired and rewarded. This is because we still put greater value on men and the things we associate with them.” Again, let’s examine the flip side of this. Women can choose to “perform” femininity, and 99% of men and women will not care that she makes this choice. Women can also choose to “perform” masculinity (at least when it comes to things like drinking a whiskey instead of a Cosmo), and again, 99% of men and women will not judge her negatively. As the author points out, it will actually give her BETTER treatment and esteem from certain types of people (mainly people that romanticize overconsumption of alcohol). Can we honestly say that a man has the same latitude in this regard? Will a man actually get nods of approval and extra female attention for ordering a foo foo, sugary “girlie” drink? I would contend that he will receive nods of approval and extra female attention for ”bucking the gender system” far less often than would a women for doing the same. In fact, he will receive for more derisive and dismissive looks and remarks from both men and women. Men, in so many ways, actually have their gender role policed to higher degree, and it comes from both men and women.

So, in light of everything I’ve pointed, how can anyone still take this facile ”women have it so hard, because we value men more than we value women” argument seriously? How is it that I’m the first commenter to point out the utter stupidity of what is being proposed here?

Also, men will not stop drinking whiskey. You know why? For the same reason that men didn’t abandon smoking cigarettes en masse after women took it up. Despite what some gender ideologues think, men aren’t actually that simple and reactionary.

This article and its comments confirms that Lisa Wade does not know any men in her life.

Must be a lonely and sad existence.

I've put in a sizable chunk of my working life tending bar, and I've given my share of approving nods and exasperated glares. Most of the time, it has absolutely nothing to do with regarding masculine things as superior.

If someone ordered a whisky or some other neat sipping spirit, and they weren't falling-over drunk at the time, they'd always get a nod and a smile, for choosing the quickest and easiest order to fill. Slow-drinking whiskey-sippers are the ideal bar customers in that regard. On other hand, when you're in the middle of a busy rush and someone wants a complicated mixed cocktail that's not on the menu, they are basically your mortal enemy. And people who want rounds of shots - well, they're easy at the time, but you're counting down to the minute they start making trouble.

Another factor at play here is habitus. Most bars have a particular drinking culture, and a certain slice of the booze spectrum that they're most comfortable in, and customers are expected to recognize this and order accordingly. You don't go to the gruff neighborhood pub and demand a Purple Hooter. You don't ask for a Budweiser at a chic wine bar. You won't get a milkshake at a nightclub. There are values attached to all of those things, but they vary widely from bar to bar - unlike gender, which tends to stay the same when you walk from a sports bar to a cocktail lounge.

People, people, please stop making sense in the comments and offering alternative non sexist non androcentric explanations for the behaviors Lisa has decided are sexist and oppressive of women without offering us any explanation or evidence.
Please don´t let pesky silly things like rationality, logic and evidence get in the way of Lisa´s obvious victim complex.

a stupider article couldnt be written if you tried

Interesting article, one thing that stood out to me was the mention of "Male Flight" could you point me to more studies/books/articles on the subject?