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| Riot Grrls and the Third Wave |
Quotes ...
The Riot Grrl Revolution Although the Riot Grrl movement was criticised by some feminists for being inaccessible to non-university women, it was still one of the most successful feminist DIY movements of the last decade. Here's a brief introduction to the Riot Grrl revolution and its most famous member - Kathleen Hann.
"We wanted to start a magazine, and Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman from the band Bratmobile had started a little fanzine called Riot Grrrl and we were writing little things for it. I'd always wanted to start a big magazine with really cool, smart writing in it, and I wanted to see if the other punk girls in D.C. that I was meeting were interested in that. So I called a meeting and found a space for it, and it just turned into this sort of consciousness-raising thing. I realized really quickly that a magazine wasn't the way to go. People wanted to be having shows, and teaching each other how to play music, and writing fanzines, so that started happening." - kathleen hanna
"There were a lot of women in the beginning. It(the Punk Movement) was women doing things. Then it became this whole macho, anti-women thing. Then women didn't go to see punk bands anymore because they were afraid of getting killed. I didn't even go because it was so violent and so macho that it was repulsive. Women just got squeezed out". Jennifer Miro (from "The Nuns", commenting on what she saw happening towards the end of 1977)
"I always saw performing as an advertisement for feminist activityThe music is a way for women to validate what they're going through. That was the era in the early '90s, when all this work that had been done was getting pushed under the rug and there was such a big backlash--I didn't even know the word backlash, I just knew what it felt like." - kathleen hanna
"One of the reasons I even got in a band was because I used to go to so many shows and feel so alienated. I was like, someday I'm going to take the stage and I'm going to make a safe space for women." - kathleen hanna
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Articles ...
On August 20, 1991, indie rock fans converged on Olympia, Washington, for the opening event of the International Pop Underground Convention (IPU): "Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now." The all-female bill featured Olympia's Heavens to Betsy; Jean Smith of Vancouver, BC's Mecca Normal; and Bratmobile from Eugene, Oregon - all of whom were little known outside the Pacific Northwest. Within a year, these performers and many others would gather together under the banner "riot grrrl," a catch-all phrase coined by the participants of what would become an educational and revolutionary movement, partially inspired by women in alternative music. Later, the mass media would use the term "riot grrrl" to describe what they perceived as the seemingly "new" arrival of angry women in rock. From the moment of its inception, riot grrrl suffered from intense media scrutiny. But as an ideology and an evolving community, it has had a lasting influence on aspiring female musicians.
As with much analysis by the mass media, the mainstream take on riot grrrl was flawed. At the time, coverage was hindered by the fact that many women involved in riot grrrl declined to speak to the media; by the fall of 1992, a "media blackout" had been declared. Instead, the movement relied on cheaply produced photocopied fanzines as its primary means of communication. The mainstream media also tended to focus on the performance aspect of riot grrrl, overlooking the fact that not every riot grrrl was a musician and that the movement encompassed much more than music - riot grrrls were also activists and writers who supported progressive causes like gay rights and abortion. Significantly, the movement attempted to reinvent feminism in its own image. Through publication, performance and meetings, riot grrrl became instrumental in helping young women navigate the cultural and political terrain of the 1990s.
Partially due to media distortion, the history of the riot grrrl movement has remained unclear, its goals and accomplishments left unexamined. The aim of Experience Music Project's Riot Grrrl Retrospective online exhibit is to document and clarify that history. Using interview footage taken at an EMP-organized gathering of riot grrrls in Olympia in December of 1999, where key players from the riot grrrl movement met for three days of interviews, a panel discussion and performances, the Riot Grrrl Retrospective tells the story of the riot grrrl era, as experienced by the women involved in it, and those who were inspired by it.
http://www.emplive.com/explore/riot_grrrl/index.asp
=Kathleen Hanna is smart, funny, and breathlessly honest. She's also a musician of considerable talent whose first band, Bikini Kill, became the standard bearer of the Riot Grrrl movement in the early '90s. Punk rock and feminist politics found an intersection in Bikini Kill, injecting both with a roaring vitality they'd been missing for years.
http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/kathleen_hanna.shtml
=A short time later, in 1991, Hanna started Bikini Kill, just as the Riot Grrrl movement was attracting young women across America. In interviews, Hanna has denied being a Riot Grrrl "founder," but the feminism espoused by that movement is very much in sync with her own--one that builds awareness from the personal experiences of oppression and unfairness that every young woman goes through and turns that awareness into action. In a way, Riot Grrrl meetings were like consciousness-raising sessions updated for the 1990s--and so were Bikini Kill shows. "I always saw performing as an advertisement for feminist activity," Hanna explains.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20030113&s=frey
Males might be asked to move to the back of the room, while female fans up front were handed lyric sheets. Those lyrics pulled no punches, and the band's music was powerful. Kathleen didn't present herself as a pretty flower to be ogled by the audience. She was known to take off her shirt onstage and perform with the word slut written on her stomach or back. Such an image ran uncompromisingly contrary to the commercial norm - it still does today - but Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill weren't selling an image so much as they were delivering a message.
Bikini Kill are credited as being a major force behind a music and attitude called riot grrrl. The message of Bikini Kill is the definition of riot grrrl - a feminist message of enlightenment and empowerment. The music might be called punk, but riot grrrl music is most often a loud answer to the misogynist attitudes - of both men and women - underlying societal institutions such as corporate-generated rock music. The primary message of riot grrrl is a feminist one aimed at young women - a message of self-respect and unity through support of the individual.
http://www.aurealm.com/bikinis.htm
There are differing thoughts as to the origin of the riot grrrl. Most agree riot grrrls originated from the punk movement. Riot Grrrls are both a historical music movement and a basic ideology. In music the battle cry was "Revolution Girl Style Now!" lead by all grrrl bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. Politically, riot grrrl are people (girls and boys) who stomp out sexism and inequality wherever they see it.
Riot grrrl activities in the early 1990's included national conventions in D.C., the Pussystock festival in New York City, and a slew of zines, notably Girl Germs, Satan Wears A Bra and Quit Whining. To their horror, the riot grrrls found themselves media darlings by 1992, featured for dragging feminism into the mosh pit in magazines from Seventeen to Newsweek. Internal disagreements led to resignations of people like Jessica Hopper, who was at the center of the Newsweek coverage. Riot grrrl leader Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill called that year for "a press block" and reporters from papers like the Seattle Times, Washington Post, and Houston Chronicle found themselves fleshing out riot grrrl articles by describing exactly the way in which various scenesters hung up on them.
While the riot grrrl label was soon being fixed on any aggressive or overtly sexual girl-band--including major label bands like L7 and Babes In Toyland--most actual riot grrrl bands stuck doggedly to independent record labels and maintained a commitment to cheap, all-ages shows.
http://music.dartmouth.edu/~wowem/electronmedia/mish/riot-grrrl.html
So, what would make a young woman today think that taking off her shirt at a concert is a good idea? Everything would make you think that. Everything! The world tells you that. Look anywhere! Watch VH1's Behind the Music, the Def Leppard one, where girls were pulling up their shirts in the crowd and the band would, like, pick the one they wanted. You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie. Every time you turn on the TV or open Spin, or any kind of mainstream *bleep*, what you see is just this rampant misogyny being sold as if it's the new rebellion, as if feminism completely took over and now these people are reacting against this new feminazi fascism that supposedly exists. Part of that has to do with the backlash against the Lilith Fair and the fake "year of the woman in rock" bull*bleep* that happened recently. It's like, well, you girls got your 15 minutes and now we need to literally, you know, "take back the night." Except now it's Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit's singer, taking back the night.
http://www.msmagazine.com/aug00/shesays.html
= Kathleen Hanna's Riot Grrrl Manifesto
http://riotgrrrleurope.net/kathleen.html
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This feature was collated for the October 2004 newsletter and has contributed to the July 2006 Discussion Night.
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