Yes, we should have a riot grrrl revival or something
A few days ago I finished my reading of Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna. I have been super into Bikini Kill for some months now and was curious about her life, so I really enjoyed it! During my reading, I didn’t think I was going to have a lot to say about a pretty personal book to discuss. It's easier with fictional characters, but talking about real people makes me apprehensive even if I do my reviews just for myself.
When I got to writing the review, I found out that I, in fact, had a lot to say. And some days after that, one of my friends asked me something about the punk scene, and elaborating thoughts as our conversation kept going, I began to repeat some of the ideas I had written in the review, so I sent her the link to my Notion page and asked about her thoughts. She isn’t a rock person at all, but she is an author and likes to get my view on some things that can be used in book ideas. She mostly agreed with me after analyzing her own experience as a woman. To make this make sense, these are the most important parts of the text: (This was written in Portuguese btw, if something is strangely put, that’s why).
[...] I’ve already seen some criticism about the book from people who are bothered by how much Kathleen beats herself up for not having done anything for Black women or POC in general in Riot Grrrl, while at the same time I see people saying that she doesn’t beat herself up enough. I think nothing is ever good enough, and I don’t see anyone holding punk pioneers, who are predominantly male, to the same standard of inclusion. It’s just that, when talking about a women’s movement, everything needs to be perfect, as always. She, since the first zines, makes an effort to make her anti-racist views and the hope that the movement would form around these ideals explicit. She beats herself up until the end of the book for, unintentionally, having become the leader of the movement. She talks so much about having tried to promote inclusion and failed, she talks about her disappointment with the rest of the movement, she talks about her leaving for exactly this reason, and she talks, later, about regretting leaving when she could have insisted more and changed something with the influence she had.
"I assumed other white girls were educating themselves about racism—I assumed it came with the feminist territory. But even though I was trying to do something antiracist, I ended up creating something hurtful and racist. I wasn’t one of the “good ones” just because I knew better than to say overtly racist shit—I was a privileged white person trying to show I cared about racism without putting in the actual work. I had been putting sexism first because it was more comfortable for me—I got to be the victim and position myself at the center. Grappling with the fact that WOC were experiencing sexism alongside and intermingled with racism would’ve shattered my simplistic binary, so I clung to the slogan “think global, act local.” The problem was that local, in my life, was white."
"Susan was an extreme example of identity politics gone wild, which made it all too easy for me to blame her for all the problems within Riot Grrrl. But I was the one who had the privilege to distance myself from the group when racist grrrls took over the Unlearning Racism workshop. I was the one who chose to wallow in all the “you’re a man hater” crap when I could’ve spent that time challenging the racist elements in RG and in myself. I also could’ve admitted I was seen as the leader early on and used that position to open up, rather than shut down, discourse."
I think one of the only things I disagree with in the book is that, as it goes toward the end, she continues rejecting Riot Grrrl and its slogans and ideals as if everything were useless because it had flaws, even though she criticizes punk purists thousands of times and continues to be punk, even though she admits that “I could’ve spent that time challenging the racist elements in RG and in myself.” If she could have insisted on improving the movement, if she insists that punk needs to be something that evolves and not something pure, set in stone, why not believe that the movement can remain alive and be revolutionized? Why not believe that “girls to the front” can, with the time and effort of new generations, include trans and non-white women? If every revolutionary movement were restricted to the mistakes of its beginning and they believed in the improbability of making that and the world a better place, no matter how difficult it may be, they wouldn’t exist.
And when I was asked if I wanted a “Riot Grrrl revival,” I always said no. “Take the good stuff into the future and leave the lack of intersectionality behind. But don’t call it Riot Grrrl, because it has bad connotations for a lot of people. You all can think of a better name!”
“Girls to the front” may have served a purpose when we were a tiny band playing tiny clubs, but it was outdated. And while I knew “girls” included trans women, I guessed they might not feel safe pushing to the front, where TERF-y cis women might hassle them.
The thing about creating a new concept, leaving these “worn-out” ideas behind, could have been true during the short period when things seemed to be getting better in the world, but we are in a recession, things are ugly. There’s no way to think about moving forward when the worn-out ideas haven’t been assimilated yet. We need to insist. If Riot Grrrl worked for a while, if there are new generations finding motivation in fighting using “girls to the front,” then so be it! New ideas will naturally form. In the meantime, we need these old things to find ourselves, unite, organize ourselves.”
I wanted to put these ideas here, mainly because these past few weeks I saw a lot of young girls like myself beginning to have an interest in the feminist punk scene, that being Riot Grrrl or others. I also saw people saying that punk died because it was not inclusive, that because some dumb punks in the 80s used swastikas and far-right symbols as mockery without realizing that was a mistake, punk was a useless movement that failed. I myself think that both of these arguments are not true. Nothing that changed things for the better, even a little bit, is dead. Every revolution, even the ones that “failed,” contributed something to its cause. The punk movement DID change a lot of things. We live with the influence and consequences of it even in things we don’t realize, like fashion, ways of rebelling, organizing politically when people don’t have the privilege of an intellectual-based front line, philosophically, ways of interacting with each other, the street life and scene, THE MUSIC! How can you call dead something that is alive in all sorts of forms? Not only that, I think punk is alive in itself, but reformed. People are still in the streets, people are still making DIY music and fashion, poor people, oppressed people that don’t have the resources to buy at Shein and post TikToks using spikes and a leather jacket talking about “I wish I was a punk in the 80s.” And yes, the feminist movement did change A LOT. We are trying to discuss things that were unfortunately ignored in the beginning, like WOC, trans women, working-class women, queer and disabled women, but I can’t help but notice similarities about what’s happening to ALL of us and what happened back then to make Riot Grrrl even have the need to exist. We are being murdered, right-wing ideas are on the rise, we are being fed the housewife or whore propaganda again, not only those white American middle-class women from the beginning of the feminist punk movements, ALL OF US. This will eventually, and is NOW, culminating in the creation of political/artistic movements. We will get inspired and base the new things on the ones that worked in the past. That can even be involuntary, but it will happen, and I can’t not think of a reason to not consider the punk feminine movement that it’s forming Riot Grrrl or Riot Grrrl adjacent if it comes from the same place as the original, if it gets its methods from the original. Of course, it can have another name, it can and it needs to be different in a lot of parts, but every movement evolves. I don't think it’s wrong to consider this an evolution rather than a substitution.