3rd wave

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody
that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force
that can, and will change the world for real. — Kathleen Hanna

I keep coming across amazing Kathleen Hanna stories and videos and photographs – maybe because she’s donating her papers to NYU and has been in the news a bit lately – and they’re too great not to share. It’s so weird to see 90s nostalgia because I lived through that time, and this is really tangible proof that that time is now history, and is now being mediated through so many people’s memories and experiences, and the mediums of the internet and CDs and coming back to me. And the 90s were really great towards the end, and part of why that was was Kathleen Hanna, Sleater-Kinney, Kim Gordon, and all the other third wave feminist and women’s bands who just laid it down.

Bikini Kill gave this live performance of “Suck My Left One” in 1992, and Kathleen gives this breathless speech and it’s so rambling and earnest and awesome.

“This next song was written because there’s all different kinds of ways people resist. You might look at a girl and go ‘Oh, she’s not a feminist, because she looks like a mall girl.’ Like ‘She wears Limited clothes, so she doesn’t exist,’ or something like that. And that’s bullshit because we’re all in difference places right now. Then there are poor girls who get a whole different thing of usually getting reputations as sluts a lot easier than rich ones do, and there’s all different kinds of stuff to do with race and class and gender… and my sister [Mary] is here today. When guys used to say stuff to her at the bus stop (we used to live in Chevy Chase by the Metro) then she used to reply with this. And this song is for her because she wrote it.”

The Riot Grrrl Manifesto

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.

BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.

BECAUSE we want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can’t play our instruments, in the face of “authorities” who say our bands/zines/etc are the worst in the US and

BECAUSE we don’t wanna assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary “reverse sexists” AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCKSOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW we really are.

BECAUSE we know that life is much more than physical survival and are patently aware that the punk rock “you can do anything” idea is crucial to the coming angry grrrl rock revolution which seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, according to their own terms, not ours.

BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.

BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.

BECAUSE we see fostering and supporting girl scenes and girl artists of all kinds as integral to this process.

BECAUSE we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits of being cool according to traditional standards.

BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousism and self defeating girltype behaviors.

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

(from minerva)

I’ll throw in some other stuff, too. Like this video of Kim Gordon putting makeup on Kurt Cobain.

Nirvana members drunk with Sonic Youth, 1991.

Their videos are super fun. “TKO” by Le Tigre, 2004.

Here’s another live performance of Bikini Kill, this one’s from 1992 – “Jigsaw Youth” from a Rock For Choice show in D.C. Long live bad girls.

http://missworld.tumblr.com/post/480047716/getdirnty-so-much-awesome-here

Sleater-Kinney‘s “You’re No Rock and Roll Fun” live at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, 2006.

From fuckyeahpoehler:

Kathleen Hanna: Sometimes when I see older people in my family I haven’t seen in a long time, they’re like, “You’re a singer, sing something!” Do people in your family or weird people you meet say, “Tell me a joke!”?

Amy Poehler: Totally. All the time. People assume you’re going to be really hilarious when you’re walking out of the gynecologist’s office or hungover buying coffee at Starbucks.

Why aren’t there more women in bands? And it’s like, duh.
Bikini Kill, “Suck My Left One,” 1994.

It’d be like saying girls aren’t okay just for being girls, which is what people are always telling girls – that they’re dumb and their opinions don’t matter. We want to be empowering and encouraging, and how can you do anything if you feel like shit about yourself and like what you say doesn’t matter?

– Kathleen Hanna <3 (via weliveinyourair)

From GritTV:

Guess it’s time for show and tell. “Well Well Well,” Le Tigre.

L7! “Fuel My Fire.” Fun visuals.

How to Make a Zine

For girls to pick up guitars and scream their heads off in a totally oppressive, fucked up, male dominated culture is to seize power. We recognize this as a political act.
—Tobi Vail, from Bikini Kill and The Frumpies

On Bush’s “freedom fries” to a French audience: “You guys must think Americans are so stupid!”

More from the French show. Pink giant penis, coming through…

The whole point of Riot Grrrl was that we were able to re-write feminism for the 21st century. Feminism was a concept that our mothers and that generation had… It was written in a language that was academic, that was inaccessible to young women. And we took those ideas and re-wrote them in our own vernacular.
—Corin Tucker from Heavens to Betsy and Sleater Kinney

“I wish there had been a superfeminist who did upfucked punk when I was a teenager. God, what did I have? A jim morrison-poster to talk to?” – Kathleen

(from medlem.spray.se)