Bikini Kill’s “Double Dare Ya” Video On YouTube

The video above is the video for bikini kill’s song “Double Dare Ya”. It is posted up on youtube.

Feminism Friday: I’m Sorry No I’m Not

This article was taken from my Riot Grrrl Online website.

I’m Sorry….No I’m Not

I’m sorry I don’t believe it.
I’m sorry that I care.
no i’m not.
I’m not sorry that i still believe we are capable of creating something. that i don’t think punk is just a big joke and that we should be little and make fun of ourselves for still believing that everything we do makes a difference
i don’t care that it’s no longer punk to have fun anymore. that it’s no longer punk to criticize the society we live in.
so
what if i keep talking about abolishing wage-slavery while i keep working. it fucking beats the hell out of writing songs or zines about how we are all hypocrites and all our actions are worthless.
we are all hypocritical superwimps (?). we are never (?)
SO IF YOU’RE BEING ALL PUNK AS FUCK AND TALKING SHIT ABOUT PEOPLE AT LEAST TRY TO DO SOMETHING THAN I’M (NOT) SORRY BUT I GUESS THAT MEANS I’M NOT PUNK ANYMORE AND IF THAT’S WHAT PUNK IS I’M FUCKIN GLAD I’M NOT AS PUNK AS YOU
[Kathleen]
I am a fucking idiot. I still think we can change the world.

Boy

This is another article from my Riot Grrrl Online website.

Boy

i will never be a rockstar.
i will never be rich.
i can’t take back my tenth birthday or the love i felt for you. there are no words for the hands that’re running all up with a liars veins, voice, words moist, so moist i believed. i believed that my best friends wouldn’t lie to me.
i will never be what the world wants me to be or have sex right. i will never open my door cuz in the eyes of the law it means i just spread open my legs and closed my eyes and said “c’mon in.” and i will never explain this to anyone i like cuz it’ll get used against me. the fact that i am not dead makes me an open target for murder. i swallowed your pride, i swallowed your heart, i swallowed your cum, guess that’s all part of it. there’s no justice and i’m really mad that people keep acting like there is. i don’t want to be a girl eaten up by your world, how can i watch girls eaten up by your world? how come i get hit and no one sees it? how come, bloodied, i am explaining to the man who hit me what he has done? why am i taking care of him, why oh why do i still love him…?
if you took away this lipstick would i still have a mouth underneath? is it true i’m only crying because i’m afraid to go to sleep? i will never be rich, not cuz rich doesn’t matter, but because i am crazy because i am full of hate… crazy means you don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.
when i was little my parents sent me to charm school and ballet. i don’t remember what recital it was fat-stomached and eight years old i was getting photographed in a bikini and a crown. now i’m crazy, fulfilling the american dream and being hated for it, they are just jealous. i don’t care.
i am in protest against the whole world. my body says it, slung into my clothes. i won’t stop talking, i’m a girl you have no control over. there is not a gag big enough to handle this mouth. i’m gonna tell everyone what you did to me. and sometimes i’ll tell it dramatic and sometimes i’ll blurt it out. and the hand you laid on my bare ass will be invisible as it spills right out of me. i will still bear the brunt of it, your smell. they will tell me i am inappropriate with their eyes. i’m not writing to please you, i’m not giving you a clean little hole to stick your dick in, a nice smooth arrangement.
pick me up, open me, put me down.
so sorry, i’m no hemingway, i’m writing for survival, my kind is being killed off, in fact i’m not even sure i exist. these words on this page mean something, if only that i was here and my fingers made this mess. i don’t know luxury, what it is to be carefree. that was your fantasy, remember?

Jigsaw Youth

Jigsaw Youth
Written by Kathleen from Jigsaw Fanzine #4 Spring 1991 Olympia, Washington.
Taken from my Riot Grrrl Online website, of course.

We live in a world that tells us we must choose an identity, a career, a relationship, and commit… to these situations… as if we don’t live in a world of constant flux… which we do. Don’t freak out just cuz the jigsaw is laying on the floor and it’s not all the way phone and has been laying there for 4 whole hours now, resist the freak out. You will get to it… it’s all part of the process.
To force some forever identity on other people is stupid. Point out inconsistincies in their behavior, explain how they are not ‘truly what they say’ because you saw them ‘do this’ one time… why? Because it is easier to deal with cardboard cut outs than real people, cuz a lot of us pretend like we’re the center of the universe sometimes and everyone is just background extras in the movie we imagine we star in. WELL WHILE WE ARE ALL ARGUING ABOUT WHOSE GONNA GET TO OPEN FOR THE MELVINS, WHOSE GONNA WEAR WHAT TO THE PARTY, WHO IS LAME/TAME BECAUSE THEY PERPETUATE THIS THING WE HATE, WHO IS NOT REALLY A PUNK ROCKER CUZ “I remember when he/she used to listen to Duran Duran”, THE REVOLUTION IS GOING DOWN…no it’s not happening without us, it is just plain not happening at all… it is going down under the gurgling sounds of our own voices, reproducing the voices of our parents in a slightly altered way, the TV people… trying to dictate to each other what is and what isn’t cool or evolutionary or true resistence, what is or isn’t true in other peoples lives we sit around making all these boxes and labels, nothing to put in them, we are wasting valuable time. FUCK THAT SHIT, LET’S START TALKING FOR REAL.
To be a stripper who is also a feminist, to be an abused child holding a microphone screaming all those things that were promised, in one way or another, “I won’t tell.” these are contradictions I have lived. They exist, these contradictions cuz I exist. Every fucking ‘feminist’ is not the same, ever fucking girl is not the same, okay??? Because I live in a world that hates women and I am one… who is struggling desparately not to hate myself and my best girlfriends, my whole life is constantly felt by me as a contradiction. In order for me to exist I must belive that two contradictory things can exist in the same space. This is not a choice I make, it just is.
JIGSAW, a puzzle made up of all different weird shaped pieces. It seems like it will never come together, it makes no sense, but it can and it does and it will. Jigsaw, pieces like where you grew up and in what kind of fucked up culture and do you have a penis or not and did your parents have money and did you get teased for wearing the same coat four winters in a row and are you Thai-american or Black or Mulatto? And what do all these things mean when you are trying to resist, do something, have a good time??? I see the Jigsaw, fuzzy in my head as everything else, sometimes clear. The fact that he grew up in a working class family has everything to do with he is gonna express sexism, what kind of music he is gonna like, how I am gonna treat him. Jigsaw girl, she got fucked by her father, 8 years, people say she’s flakey and inconsistent, lays in her bed eating donuts, resisting going outside where the silence will engulf her, rather sit there wating than always being eaten up… her experience has everything to do with how the pieces are fitting together (or not) for her, judge her from your place without wondering what’s going on in that there Jigsaw mind of hers, and you have pushed her further away from clicking, her hand wants so bad to feel, one edge against another, together, one piece next to another, locking into place… you have to be able to see the puzzle before you start putting it together.
Resistance is everywhere, it always has been and always will be. Just because someone is not resisting in the same way you are (being a vegan, an ‘out’ lesbian, a political organizer) does not mean they are not resisting. Being told you are a worthless piece of shit and not believing it is a form of resistence. One girl calling another girl to warn her about a guy who date raped her is another. And while she may look like a big haired makeup girl who goes out with jocks, she is a soldier along with every other girl, and even though she may not be fighting in the same loud way that some of us can (and do) it is the fact that she is resisting that connects us, puts a piece together.
Jigsaw Youth, I don’t know what this means anymore than anyone… only what it means to me. Standing proud and saying “I don’t know who I am, I wanna know more, I am not afraid to say things matter to me.”
Assuming that people are either “part of the problem or part of the solution” disincludes a lot of people, who, at this moment, do not feel (and therefore ARE NOT) safe enough emotionally, physically, and/or financially to resist in the same ways you might be. By judging people according to your standards of resistence or whatever… it makes it harder for people to recognize what they’re doing as being important and political, etc…. it makes it harder for them to get into safe enough situations where they can reisit in more outward, community oriented ways if they want to.

Jigsaw Youth, the island of lost and broken toys, feminists who wear lipstick, people who envision ‘the land of do as you please’, whose lives are not simple and they are sick of trying to make themselves cohesive enough to fit into a box. Jigsaw Youth, listening, strategizing, tolerating, screaming, confronting, fearless, girl soldiers, boy lovers, boofy haired teen girls scraping out the eyes on a photo of Rick Astley, Jigsaw Youth, the misunderstood seeking to understand other people’s reality. Making mistakes… making mistakes… making mistakes… making mistakes… feeling something. Knowing you will never see the puzzle put all together but trying anyways cuz each fucking piece really matters and being with friends matters. Jigsaw Youth… inventing and reinventing what these words
mean.

Color Activity Book Intro

This was taken from my Riot Grrrl Online website. It is a zine article written by Kathleen Hanna in the early 90’s.

Color Activity Book Intro

Bikini Kill is a band and this is our little thing to give out at shows, etc… AND THEN THERE’S THE REVOLUTION.
Bikini Kill is more than just a band or a zine or an idea, it’s a part of the revolution. The revolution is about going to the playground with your best girlfriends. You are hanging upside down on the bars and all the blood is rushing to your head. it’s a euphoric feeling. the boys can see our underwear and we don’t care.
I’m so sure that lots of girls are also in revolution and we want to find them. Sure our revolution has a lot to do with making ourselves important enough to start a revolution, but we also don’t care about this… Because what makes us feel good without hurting others IS good. This society isn’t my society cuz this society hates women and I don’t. This society doesn’t want us girls to feel happy or powerful in any way.
My girlfriends help me stop crying and start looking towards whats important (revolution) my girlfriends know the revolution (sex) my girlfriends aren’t owned by me BUT have cringing and choking on boy cum in common (revolution) MY GIRLFRIENDS WANT REVOLUTION GIRL STYLE NOW.
Being sexy and powerful female is one of the most subversive projects of all. (We are the priestesses of a new kind of power oh yeah.)
We know we are not like this due to any weird gene formation or luck or trick. We are how we are from working together with our eyes open and having experience and getting help from out Moms and friends. We vow to struggle against the “j” word (jealousy) the killer of GIRL LOVE. We are not special, anyone can do it. ENCOURAGEMENT IN THE FACE OF INSECURITY is a slogan of the revolution.

44 Writings I Need For This Blog

I am in need of some articles and writings for this blog. I will add to this list as I see fit. The ones listed below are ideas for articles and writings and are some writings/articles I need for the blog. By writing the article (or articles), You will be emailed an invite to join this blog and will be able to post up your writing on the blog. Be sure to let others know that you wrote the article (or articles).

ARTICLES AND WRITINGS NEEDED:

1-History of riot grrrl: how, why, where, when, and who started it. (about the music and the movement)
2-History of feminism: how, why, where, when, and who started it.
3-The 3 waves of feminism.
4-The many different types of feminism such as: anarcha-feminism, individual feminism, radical feminism, and all the others.
5-Write about your favorite feminism/riot grrrl website or write a review of your favorite feminism/riot grrrl website. (can be blogs, websites, forums, etc.)
6-Write your own definition of what feminism means to you.
7-What does riot grrrl mean to you? (Write as much or as little as you want.) Describe riot grrrl in your own words.
8-Write about being a riot grrrl in another country. What’s the riot grrrl scene like where you live? Is there a chapter where you live? Any riot grrrl bands where you live? How did you get into riot grrrl? How long have you been into riot grrrl?
9-Write about how you got into riot grrrl. What, how, when, who, and where made you get into riot grrrl?
10-Write about being a riot boy: how, when, who, what, and where did you get into riot grrrl?
11-Write your own riot boy manifesto. (I already have a version on my website.)
12-Write about being a male feminist: how, when, who, what, and where did you get into riot grrrl?
13-Write some feminism questions that you would like answered or start a feminism FAQ (frequently asked questions) of your own and the answers to them.
14-Write some riot grrrl/boy questions that you would like answered or start a riot grrrl FAQ (frequently asked questions) of your own and the answers to them.
15-Write about women’s issues important to you.
16-Write about feminism and what it means to you.
17-Write how you got into feminism and why.
18-Make a list of reasons on why your a feminist. Try to think of 50 or more reasons, if you can. 10-20 reasons will do too.
19-Make a list of reasons on why your a riot grrrl. Try to think of 50 or more reasons, if you can. 10-20 reasons will do too.
20-Write some DIY tips or share yours. Share your own DIY stuff.
21-Write something about being an activist/ or about activism.
22-Write something about zines or your life as a zinester.
23-Write about your ladyfest or a ladyfest you attended.
24-Write about a riot grrrl chapter or your own riot grrrl chapter.
25-Write about being pro-choice, why your pro-choice, or what it means to you.
26-Write something about how riot grrrl and queercore music are connected.
27-Write something about how riot grrrl and grunge music are connected.
28-Write something about how riot grrrl and punk music are connected.
29-Write something about feminism in other countries. What’s feminism like in your country or other countries?
30-Write something about human rights in your country or another country.
31-Write something about equal rights.
32-Write about why is feminism important today.
33-Write your own definition of what a riot boy is to you. Give your own definition of riot boy.
34-Write your own Zine DIY guide.
35-Write how to start a riot grrrl chapter DIY guide.
36-Write your own list of ways to be an activist.
37-Write a review of a zine or your favorite zine.
38-Write about your experience with the Riot Grrrl Online website.
39-Write about the Riot Grrrl Online website or do a review of the website. If you write about the website, write how you found the website, how you got active in the website and why. I’m sure there are more things you can write about the website, as long as your a reader or fan of the website, your input is appreciated.
40-A review of your riot grrrl or feminist website.
41-Write a news story. Write about an issue or topic important to you or an issue/topic you think would be important to others that is happening in the news.
42-Write your own women’s issue story. If you are a survivor (of anything from rape to cancer, etc.), I’d like to hear your story and what you went through.
43-Write how to start a ladyfest.
44-Write how to start your own record label and/or band.

If your interested in writing one of these articles, Feel free to read the “contribute” page and reply to the “contribute” page or email me. If you comment on the “contribute” page or email me, Please specify which article (or articles) you want to write about by letting me know which number or numbers (# or #’s) your interested in writing. If you have your own ideas for writings or whatever, feel free to email me some of yours.

*This is also posted on the “Ideas” page.

Tell Me About Riot Grrrl in Le Tigre’s Words

TELL ME ABOUT RIOT GRRRL!
Taken from Le Tigre’s website at http://www.letigreworld.com
http://www.letigreworld.com/sweepstakes/html_site/fact/fact.html

We are proud that Le Tigre is often considered one trajectory of Riot Grrrl, i.e. we are one art-damaged, deconstructive, performance-art, electronic pop off-shoot of the grassroots punk feminist organizing and cultural production of the nineties! This is not to say that Riot Grrrl does not exist anymore — we still hear of local chapters that are active — but the members of Le Tigre are not personally involved with Riot Grrrl now. (If you are in a Riot Grrrl group or any feminist group and would like us to link to yr website please email us. What is Riot Grrrl? What happened to it? We are asked these questions all the time and they are really difficult to answer. Many individuals, bands, zines, artists and scenes were lumped under this term once the “sexy new” punk feminism gained a little media attention. This gave the false impression that there was a centralized ideology or leadership unifying disparate constellations of feminist art and agitation. Journalistic narratives of Riot Grrrl also tended to isolate it from both a larger feminist history and from its own cultural moment in which a variety of media-savvy activist groups were changing the face of social protest (for example, ACT-UP!, Queer Nation, the Guerilla Girls, and WAC). So while we would not presume to define Riot Grrrl we can characterize it and make some observations that reflect our personal experiences (you can read about Kathleen’s involvement with the early Riot Grrrl meetings in DC in her herstory section).

In the early days of Riot Grrrl, exciting and strange girl bands were forming and touring, new feminist and queer aesthetics, vocabularies, and activist strategies were taking root in punk scenes, and intense penpal alliances were being forged. The founding members of Le Tigre (Kathleen, Jo, and Sadie Benning) met via their participation in this loose underground network of like-minded artists.

Riot Grrrl was, in part, a response to male dominated punk/hardcore scenes. As much as it reacted to and critiqued certain masculinist values and structures of punk rock, it was intrinsically connected to the DIY, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist values of those underground scenes (as well as intertwined socially and aesthetically with them). The way that punk music mocked notions of rock ‘n’ roll virtuosity and traditional stardom, the bands that were associated with early Riot Grrrl questioned the posturing and conventions of a boy-ruled punk scene by making stripped down punk music paired with feminist subject matter and performance strategies. Riot Grrrl meetings were similar to the feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 70’s. Mixed in with the practical work associated with making and distributing zines, promoting shows, organizing conventions, and doing activism, there was much discussion of women’s experiences of sexism, sexual abuse, assault and harassment, body-image, queer identities, and how all of these things intersect with class and race.

Riot Grrrl is/was not without its flaws, failures, inadequacies and dramas which we shall not enumerate here. But for whatever it’s worth, Riot Grrrl as a cultural phenomenon did, and hopefully will continue to make changes in the popular discourse surrounding “women in rock” (or whatever you wanna call it), and has created a lasting international network of feminist promoters, labels, writers, dj’s, journalists, musicians, artists, and fans so that a freaky band like Le Tigre could exist, make records, tour, and stay up all night writing crazy shit for our website!

Riot Acts: Punk Girl Groups Are Putting the Self Back in Self-Esteem

This is an OLD article from the New York Times about the riot grrrl movement.

Japenga, Ann. The New York Times
15 November 1992: Section 2, Page 30.

Riot Acts

Punk’s Girl Groups Are Putting the Self Back in Self-Esteem

The singer Kathleen Hanna sashayed onto the stage to distribute lyric sheets before a recent Seattle appearance of her band, Bikini Kill. The men in the crowd surged forward, extending their arms to receive the word from this new punk Madonna, with her flailing magenta ponytail and seductive stage manner. But she slapped the men back. “Girls only,” she scolded, putting copies of the lyrics in each upraised female hand. Ms. Hanna’s action set the tone for the performance: the band was delivering its wisdom to women, and men had better behave themselves if they wanted to hang around.

Bikini Kill is part of a growing cadre of so-called girl bands that are claiming a place in punk rock. And the rise of groups like Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Mecca Normal and Bikini Kill has inspired a larger movement of feminists in their teens and early 20’s who call themselves Riot Grrrls. That’s girl with an angry “grrrrowl.”

Riot Grrrls is a grass-roots movement that began in the summer of 1991 around Olympia, the sedate state capital 65 miles south of Seattle, in the same thriving music environment that has spawned other Northwest bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney. The term Riot Grrrls was coined by a small group of female musicians in an attempt to define a more confident, less passive attitude about being a young woman. And though no one knows how widespread the scene has become, concerts here at college auditoriums, church halls and even art galleries are packed with Riot Grrrls, and pockets of sympathizers have sprung up around the country.

To call herself a Riot Grrrl, a woman need only rally to the slogan “Revolution Girl Style Now” and appreciate bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, whose aggressive, unpolished sound has much in common with the early punk rockers Patti Smith, the Raincoats and Poly Styrene of the X-Ray Spex.

Indeed, the movement is above all a triumph of punk, a genre not normally noted for its enlightened attitude toward women. Riot Grrrls say they owe their existence to punk’s do-it-yourself ethic: if you have something to say, pick up a guitar, write a song and say it. “There’s no way any of this could have happened if it wasn’t for punk rock,” says Molly Neuman, Bratmobile’s 21-year-old drummer.

The Riot Grrrl credo is that young women should take care of one another. “This world doesn’t teach us how to be truly cool to each other, and so we have to teach each other,” says a Bikini Kill manifesto circulated in one of the movement’s scores of small newsletters. Riot Grrrls literature and lyrics speak out against the competition and jealousy that they feel society encourages among young women; the Riot Grrrls want to replace those attitudes with loyalty and support.

One of the central tenets is that talking about personal abuses and travails can make women stronger. Accordingly, Riot Grrrl bands address firsthand experiences of rape, incest, insecurity and the struggle of young women to define themselves within a patriarchy. “Don’t need you to tell me I’m cool/ Don’t need you to tell me I’m pretty,” Ms. Hanna shouts in a tune called “Male Approval, NOT.”

Riot Grrrls have a distinct look, combining traditional fashions like round-collared, cinched-waist dresses and incandescent red lipstick with harder touches: heavy black high-top boots and hacked-off punk hair. Also popular is a deliberately nerdy or dowdy appearance, a challenge to the cultural expectation that women should strive to be pretty. Some Riot Grrrls use felt pens to draw block letters on their arms and stomachs spelling out the words “rape,” “incest” and “shame,” another means of focusing discussion on painful personal issues.

Older feminists are heartened by the movement and see the Riot Grrrls as their descendants. “These are the individualistic daughters of the Reagan-Bush years,” says Michelle Fine, a professor of psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who works with teen-age girls. “It’s very hard for this generation of young women to imagine organizing. In their lifetimes, they haven’t seen collective struggle that has been successful.”

In fact, Riot Grrrl bands, nearly all white and middle class, seem more interested in networking with like-minded women than in courting mainstream recognition. Ms. Neuman wants to get the word out, but many young women who follow the scene will not talk to reporters. One explained her refusal by saying that the movement “is just something that’s been really important to me, and I’m afraid of it being exploited.”

It may be no surprise that these young feminists are trying to maintain a low profile. Society has traditionally been intolerant of young women who do not conform, suggests Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author with Carol Gilligan of “Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development.” “To be openly resistant is to invite trouble. These are the girls who get sent to therapy or get kicked out of school.”

Ms. Brown is one of several researchers whose studies show that girls suffer a plunge in self-esteem as they approach adulthood, with its still-rigid cultural expectations of femininity. By rewriting the word girl, Riot Grrrls are a rare example of young women banding together to reverse that trend.

From its inception in Olympia, the Riot Grrrl phenomenon has spread to cities like Toronto, Washington, San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio — as young women with little or no musical training formed what some of them call “angry girl bands.”

Bratmobile and Bikini Kill were among the first Riot Grrrl bands. Ms. Neuman was studying women’s issues at the University of Oregon in Eugene when she and Allison Wolfe, started Bratmobile and the newsletter Girl Germs. (”Spread as many girls germs as you can,” one issue admonished.) About the same time, Ms. Hanna and Tobi Vail were putting together Bikini Kill, in Olympia.

Adhering to punk’s do-it-yourself ethic, they started recording cassettes in home studios or releasing 45’s on small labels. The band members also began corresponding with other groups in Oregon and Washington, and out of that the Riot Grrrls movement grew.

“We were all talking about similar things,” recalls Ms. Neuman. “We were frustrated with the world and with sexism, and even with the sexism we saw in alternative culture. It was an exciting time for me, feeling like I wasn’t crazy and there were people who felt the same things I did.”

Calvin Johnson, whose Olympia-based K Records has recorded Bratmobile and Mecca Normal, is amazed at how Riot Grrrls have caught on. “There’s been a spontaneous explosion of interest that I compare to punk rock in the 70’s, when people in Toronto and Paris and Olympia and Tucson were all saying at the same time: ‘Oh, yes, this is what I was looking for.’ “

In Ms. Neuman’s bedroom is a cardboard box full of letters from young women who have responded to Girl Germs. One girl wrote from “an elitist school dominated by the American dream” to say that finding others like her was “my only hope to survive this living hell.” Her letter closed: “Send me your lives.”