Sexist cocktail names: Screaming Orgasm and Angel Tits

Cocktails with misogynistic names should be renamed. Who can do that? Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, he understands women now.

Sometimes a drink is even worse than its name Photo: Tom Wilde/getty

What do Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre and cocktails have in common? I would like to explain it, but I have to go back a little and tell you about an awakening experience that I recently had in a hip bar in Hamburg. This bar is run by a woman who is dating a much younger man. The audience wears T-shirts with slogans like “Before you ask: No” or “Nevertoolate” or “Those who don’t change have lost control of their lives”.

You sit at the counter or on low stools by the window, it’s dark and the mood is good. My friend, whom I visit regularly in Hamburg, and I like to go to this bar. Because the bar is cool. Our first drink – traditionally a martini bianco on ice – was quickly drunk, I went to the counter to order two new drinks when I heard an order: “A screaming orgasm, two angel tits, a slippery nipple and four blowjob shots .”

I like to repeat it: a screaming orgasm, two angel tits, a slippery nipple and four blowjob shots. At first I thought four young men for a bachelor party, who now like to be celebrated in extravagant ways, are really letting it all out again and ordering drinks, one of which sounds more slippery than the other. I scanned the room for the man’s drinking buddies, expecting guys to laugh out loud at drink names that only someone like Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre could have come up with for his so-called #MeToo novel Still Awake? I expected guys who, like Stuckrad’s protagonists, come along with gelled hair and big balls. Who rip one blow job joke after the other, like “Stucki” used to do for the Harald Schmidt Show.

But then the voice to the barmaid said, “Have you got a tray?” Fart dry, dead serious. The young man carried the orgasm, nipple and blowjob glasses to his friends. They took the cocktails, just as dry and dead serious, as if they either didn’t give a damn or didn’t notice the sexist cocktail names. I can understand the latter, I hadn’t noticed them myself – but I always drink the same thing in the barn anyway.

The more frivolous the name, the better the drink

Since then I’ve been scanning cocktail menus in all the bars very carefully. What can I say? There are other names for sweet, colorful drinks: Cock Sucking Cowboy. Fuzzy Navel. Sex with an alligator. Leg spreaders.

The more frivolous the name, the better the drink. For example the Silk Panties: vodka, peach schnapps, raspberry liqueur, ice cream, lemon zest. Fresh, light, invigorating. With the French Kiss – for once romantically titled – gin, St-Germain-Liqueur (a French elderflower liqueur), Aperol, lemon juice and champagne rosé are mixed. Looks extremely elegant in the champagne glass – and tastes even better.

But why are such wonderful drinks called as if they had been shaken up in a testosterone shaker? For an answer, you have to delve a little into cocktail history. This dates back to the so-called Golden Twenties. Back then, people knew neither gender nor gimmicks and had gender concepts that made bars drink hard stuff for men – whiskey, schnapps, cognac – and women for sweet stuff: liqueur, fruit wines, sherry. Cocktail legend has it that the drink Between the Sheets—cognac, white rum, triple sec, lemon juice—was designed solely for blasting away and shagging wildly in the process. At some point it became Sex on the Beach, which is now an integral part of any cocktail menu.

New names are needed

The tendency to name sweet drinks erotically is said to be particularly widespread in the USA, where sugary drinks were downed on the beaches and women “eaten like chocolates” a hundred years ago.

It’s okay with the sugary drinks, but definitely not with the women. BSB thinks so too, at least that’s what his novel-ego thinks. But women who say it out loud, like actress Rose McGowan who takes down movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, are quickly deemed “kind of exhausting” in the circles in which BSB and his novel self moved and benefited. . In these circles, one certainly likes to drink cocktails with slippery names.

New names are needed. Mr. Stuckrad-Barre, take over!