riot grrrl

A couple of years ago I saw ex-Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna speak in New York City, right before she donated her musical archives to New York University’s Fales Library. I was struck by her acerbic wit, her ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude.

While I was a teenager during the grunge and Riot Grrrl era, for some reason I was (at the time) more drawn to hyper-masculine, testosterone-saturated grunge and metal bands and was not that interested in what was happening on the other side of the scene. As Hanna’s talk was intriguing, I took the opportunity to check out The Punk Singer, part of the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto.

About 10 minutes into the documentary, I knew that I had made a colossal mistake.

This week, feminist punk pioneers Bikini Kill started their own record label. Yep, you read that right.

JD Samson is certainly no stranger to Bitch; a significant voice in the Riot Grrrl movement, and a more than prominent queer and feminist icon, it only makes sense to let you know what she's up to this summer. Last week, while attempting to figure out exactly what to write for this post (because leaving you with just a list of tour dates would be boring), a dear friend deemed me a “JD Samson connoisseur.” While I gladly accepted this title, there's definitely a bit of a difference between knowing a lot about someone and having a mild obsession* with (read: giant crush on) that person, and you can probably guess where I stand within this spectrum of connoisseurship. Though, with this giant crush, comes a great deal of respect and admiration for JD as both an artist and an activist.

Another week, another collection of web adventures.

• ColorLines shares responses to the claim of a "post-racial society."
• At TransGriot, Monica reports on an anti-trans* "bathroom bill" in Maine. If you're a Maine citizen, check the link at the end to see how you can help.
• Bitch contributor Sarah Jaffe unpacks the impacts the Bush tax cuts have had for their tenth anniversary at AlterNet.
• The San Francisco Chronicle's blog wants a Hangover cure.
• The Crunk Feminist Collective examines Kreayshawn's success and appropriation.
• Are you near Detroit (or stoked to travel)? Check out the Allied Media Conference 2011 on June 23-26!
• Bitch contributor Jarrah Hodge lists some of her favorite websites at Gender Focus.
• The Times gives their two cents about the enduring influence of Riot Grrrl.
• Feministing rounds up the paternalistic responses to Steven Levitt's already alarming statement, "If the answer is that I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it, then I don’t mind the government passing a law against it."
• AfterEllen talks about Jane Lynch hosting the Emmys this fall. Will you be tuning in?
• Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature looks at Census data and the effects of not having "American Indian" as a preset option.
• Queerty wants to know your take on the treatment of Kevin, the openly gay character in Archie comics.
• Shakesville passes on the news about Glenn Beck's next project: essentially a YouTube channel. Good riddance!

Thoughts? What else have you been reading online?

Reception is important when thinking about movies. So far, the titles I've selected played in a theater at some point, whether on a festival circuit or during a theatrical run. This wasn't always the case with the work of Toronto-based queercore pioneer G.B. Jones. Though her movies were screened at festivals, some also played in galleries or make-shift event spaces.

I'll hazard that many of Bitch's core readership grew up during the 1990s, potentially influenced by the mainstream success of alternative rock. Based on the recent success of Sara Marcus' Girls to the Front: The True Story of Riot Grrrl Revolution and Marisa Meltzer's Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, as well as the possible relaunch of Sassy Magazine, it's clear that the merging of punk's DIY ethos and radical gender and sexual politics that helped define mainstream feminism in the first half of the decade still resonate for many feminists.



Jim McKay's 1996 feature Girls Town came out at an interesting time. It was released a few years after riot grrrl was co-opted by the mainstream and Sassy folded, but a year before Spin Magazine attempted to capitalize on a cultural moment with their problematic Girl Issue and Alex Sichel's coming-of-age drama All Over Me received a limited theatrical release. It made its stateside cinematic debut two days before Annette Haywood-Carter's Foxfire, an adaptation of Joyce Carrol Oates' novel that also focused on a teenage girl gang, which helped launch Angelina Jolie's career, attempted to do the same for Calvin Klein model Jenny Shimizu, and represented a liminal period for former child actress and Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis. While Foxfire is better-known, I'd argue that Girls Town evinces more progressive gender and racial politics.

You've heard about Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, and now you can hear directly from the author, Sara Marcus. Ellen Papazian (of Page Turner) interviews Marcus about what Riot Grrl meant today and now, how the internet compares to zine-swapping, pushback against Riot Grrl from both within and outside the movement, and why narrative ended up being the best choice for the book.


Stream it below, subscribe on iTunes, or download at archive.org. Transcription available here (.doc)

Everybody's talking about Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. Sara Marcus spent the last five years researching for this book which Kathleen Hanna describes as "the first meticulously researched book about Riot Grrrl."

Marcus is about to start her book tour, complete with appearances from Jessica Hopper, Anna Oxygen, Kathleen Hanna, Mirah, and Tara Jane Oneil, among others. Girls to the Front is very likely coming to a city near you, and I don't think you'll regret taking part in this Riot Grrrl revival. Check out the complete events list here.

More after the jump!

"FEMINISTS, WE’RE CALLING YOU! PLEASE REPORT TO THE FRONT DESK!"

It’s fucking hard to be feminist. (If you just made a dick joke to yourself then get the heck outta here!) No one said negotiating power was easy, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t rock out while challenging the status-quo, being politically active and refusing to compromise your principles. Enter Le Tigre, and for fun’s sake, let’s put ‘em on tour!

"Rave On" is the Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Today we feature media activist and writer Anne Elizabeth Moore on the Dirty Plotte comic books by Julie Doucet.

I don’t spend a lot of time reading feminist theory, which speaks to an inherently limited audience. I study anti-oppression strategies in general, so most of what I’ve read that’s influenced my drive as a political person who identifies as female isn’t overtly feminist.

In fact, I find far more use in work that’s not usually discussed in a feminist context, like Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Or books that sort of rail against feminist projects or events and address its weak points, so I can sort out where those sit with me. Like Norma McCorvey’s I Am Roe.

But if I really think about something I read that made me gack with identification—that spoke to me in a pretty deep way about being a girl in the kind of world I was living in—it would have to be Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte comic books.