I push open the door and am greeted by a welcoming scene: soft lighting and loud laughter, smiling locals packed around tables clutching pints. There’s a best bitter on cask calling my name, so I sidle up to the bar and settle in for a cosy respite from the day’s work. The bartender greets me with a smile and slowly pulls the half-pint with a perfect, fluffy head. Then, as I smile and savour the earthy, spicy brew, they ask: “Will that be all, madam?”

Suddenly the beer tastes sour; the cheerful conversation turns to grating noise. I debate whether to say something; if they’ll even understand. I have just been misgendered, and it happens all the time.

Originally from Seattle, I live as a nomad. As I explore hospitality spaces in the U.K., U.S., and Europe while also exploring my gender, the journeys often inform each other. But wherever I go, it’s rare to find spaces where gender-expansive people are truly represented.

Identities outside the cisgender binary are as personal and varied as the people behind them: transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender-diverse, and gender-expansive, to name a few, terms that are defined differently by each person. I’ve used all of these to describe myself, often defaulting to “nonbinary” because it’s one people know. But no single label captures how I feel about my equally amorphous identity, that I contain all genders while fully embodying none.

I use “they/them” pronouns, yet I find this isn’t as easily understood in places where language itself is gendered or people are big on honourifics, something I’ve experienced in the U.K. They mean well with their “sirs” and “ma’ams,” “ladies” and “gents,” but it crushes a little part of my soul each time I decide correcting them isn’t even worth it. Few things are more alienating than not being seen as you are, especially in places you come to feel less alone, such as the pub, brewery, or bar.

***

“Hospitality is a gendered environment,” says Helen Anne Smith, co-founder of Burum Collective and bar manager at Bacareto in Cardiff, Wales, who is nonbinary. So much so, it’s part of what prompted their self-realisation: “I hadn’t been made totally aware of my perceived gender until … being referred to as ‘the girl’ or ‘the woman’ made me uncomfortable, and I had to figure out why,” they add.

But it’s scary to speak up, especially in a place where the customer is, ostensibly, always right. Not to mention, correcting the wrong person can come with the implicit threat of backlash, even violence. “I was so panicked I was going to upset someone,” Helen says. “I used ‘she/they’ for a long time, not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I was inconveniencing people.”

““No single label captures how I feel about my equally amorphous identity, that I contain all genders while fully embodying none.””

Workers are already undervalued in the industry, forced to make themselves what employers and patrons want them to be. Yet it goes both ways; when staff use gendered language, as in my case, the customer could be the very person they’re cutting down.

It’s a problem everywhere, but it seems to happen more often in U.K. watering holes than in other places I’ve been in the U.S. and Europe. For better or worse, Britain is a land where people live and die by politeness. The most common greeting—“y’aright?”—betrays the tacit social contract not to talk about it, centuries of repression simmering below the surface.

“In the U.K., there’s such a strange passive-aggression that can come from people, … [and] a big fear about stuff people don’t understand,” Helen says. “I think they’re panicked about the idea that they might get something wrong or be made to learn.”

During the pandemic, Helen met many craft beer colleagues online, pronouns prominently displayed next to their name or social media handle. But when meeting these same people in real life, they were dismayed to discover that these cohorts “ladied” them just as much as anyone. “In my mind, I’ve made it obvious; I’ve written about it,” they say. “I don’t mind if it’s an accidental slip-up, but it’s weird when it’s ongoing.”

Many hospitality workers quite literally have a script to follow, Helen adds, and it includes gendered terms; in fine dining, for example, older customers may be offended if they aren’t used. Meanwhile, calling everyone “guys,” “dudes,” or “your man”—clearly gendered terms some claim are gender-neutral—is common parlance in the pub, which can be harmful or triggering to trans and gender-diverse people. It becomes an unconscious rhythm, programmed through years of repetition; the key is changing the dialogue.

***

Things are different at The King’s Arms in Bethnal Green, where Oli Carter-Esdale was the general manager until very recently. Located in a former red light district, the pub initially drew queer, trans, and gender-diverse workers and patrons. Today, it remains a low-key queer venue: noticed through knowing glances between the “Sunday gays” and acknowledged by staff in language and behaviour.

Oli is queer and nonbinary, but LGBTQIA+ customers say they feel safe no matter who’s working behind the bar. “If you look after the people and the product, the place looks after itself,” Oli says, which means “making sure the people you work with and [serve] always feel comfortable, safe, and happy, to the best of your abilities,” plus buying from producers with aligned values.

They didn't explicitly train staff on inclusivity, but lead by example, using gender-neutral terms for people until it’s blatantly obvious; the people they hire naturally get it and learn by osmosis. “More and more, people realise that you can move towards language that’s not exclusive,” Oli says. “‘Mate’ is a good one. And it’s not particularly difficult to just go, ‘Hi folks, how are you doing today?’”

They call the pub “a teaching space,” where the community gathers to grow together—or preserve themselves in amber, barricaded from the realities of a changing world. For all the talk of their equalising nature, pubs were historically segregated. Quite literally divided along lines of gender, race, and class, entire segments of the population were separated by screens or sequestered to different rooms and entryways.

“Even just two years ago, I was scared of pubs,” Helen says. “Through Burum, [co-creator] Rachel [Hendry] and I have been trying to actively put ourselves in those spaces, because there are things there we want.”

Issues of social status underpin many aspects of British culture, including beer. “Class difference and class deference permeate into the language that is used in these spaces,” Oli says. “People refer to people who own pubs as ‘landlords’ and ‘landladies,’ like that’s the aspiration.”

In keeping, workers often have to fight for their rights, Helen says, and “it can be hard when people have to make decisions about what [they’re] fighting for—the chance to have an actual break, or [their pronouns].”

Helen wears a they/them badge to work most days, but there are times when “I just don’t feel brave enough,” they say, “especially in an environment where there are more combative people.” They recall an instance where two customers were loudly debating the validity of pronoun identification right in front of them, then ceremoniously left.

It’s incredible, really, the degree to which some people take our identities so personally, projecting all their insecurities outward onto us. Those who have never experienced misgendering may call it a microaggression, but I challenge them to imagine how it would feel to be addressed as the wrong gender every time they walked into a bar.

“Language is part of the fabric through which we understand and operate in the world,” Oli says. “[People say,] ‘I can't use this pronoun for this person, and then they’re like, ‘Someone left their bag here, have you seen them?’ Well, you've been using this language all the time!”

Toilets are another flashpoint for people who have only ever had a place where they feel welcome. Oli says it flared up again after Covid-19 when suddenly everyone was policing bodies and hygiene. Gender-neutral toilets make a huge difference to those of us who don’t want to be forced to deny who we are every time we have to pee.

““When people consider gender to be a spectrum, it means they still operate alongside a line. I view expression versus identity and the gendered self more as a constellation.””

— Oli Carter-Esdale, formerly of The King's Arms, Bethnal Green

“If you haven't historically got an accessible toilet in your venue unless it's a completely new site, it’s not a requirement,” they say, but “there's nothing in the licensing rules about who can go into which toilet. Everyone's got a fucking gender-neutral toilet in their house. I hate places that don’t have one.”

These public debates may be new, but gender-diverse people certainly aren’t. We’ve always been here, it just wasn’t safe to come out. Some of us internalised binary social conditioning so well, we were hidden from even ourselves until new words entered the cultural lexicon; I didn’t realise my gender identity until 2020.

“Gender is a malleable construct, something you’re continually able to shape and be shaped by,” Oli says. “When people consider gender to be a spectrum, it means they still operate alongside a line. I view expression versus identity and the gendered self more as a constellation.”

Oli admits they present a lot like the “archetypical beer consumer,” standing nearly 6’4” in chunky, metal-studded work boots, thick auburn curls cascading down their shoulders and sprouting from their chin. The way they’re perceived in beer spaces often depends on whether they’re in the company of other queers.

“You can read people sometimes quite easily, and other times not,” they say. Even we don’t always get it perfect: Oli says they still have to watch their own language “when a bunch of geezer-y blokes come in,” and I, too, slip up at times. Gendered constructs about names, presentations, and physical attributes are embedded in every aspect of society and drilled into us from the moment we’re born, but what’s important is that people try.

“Breweries and pubs in general need to do more to support trans and nonbinary communities. [Organisations] like CAMRA could do a lot of good, because they have such an influence,” Helen says. That might look like “raising funds for charities or community groups. Quietly supporting isn’t super useful.”

Oli is sceptical of any gestures a for-profit entity might make toward inclusivity, because these are often performative, meant to maximise profit. “Awareness and support are not necessarily mutually inclusive,” they say, adding that creating resources and campaigns for specific groups “becomes a tick-box exercise: How many marginalised identities do we need to discuss… so no one can accuse us of bigotry?”

We agree that campaigns created by the trans and gender-diverse community could make a difference in educating bar, pub, and brewery owners and staff; Oli notes that even people with ignorant views often drop them upon actually meeting someone from an underrepresented background. A natural shift is also occurring as younger generations with a broader understanding of gender come of age. And those bathrooms truly make a difference: as Oli says, “I’ll die on the hill of gender-neutral toilets.”

***

To me, few things are more impactful than visibility and decision-making power. Getting more trans and gender-diverse people in leadership positions at breweries, bars, and organisations like CAMRA and SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) could change everything, from inclusive workplace policies and staff training to attracting more LGBTQIA+ customers and job applicants—but there is still a long way to go.

“Queer [and gender-diverse] people are probably overrepresented in the industry,” Oli says, but when their voices don’t rise above the lower ranks, “we just become marketing tools.”

Still, things are shifting, and at least there are places we can be seen. “Beer contains so much difference,” Oli says. “We should be able to welcome and embrace as many varieties as there are people, surely more.”