Riot grrrl
Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington, and the greater Pacific Northwest, and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. A subcultural movement that combines feminism, punk music, and politics, it is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement and has recently been seen in fourth-wave feminist punk music that rose in the 2010s. It has also been described as a genre that came out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a movement in which women could express anger, rage, and frustration, emotions considered socially acceptable for male songwriters but less commonly for women.
Riot grrrl songs often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, classism, anarchism, and female empowerment. Primary bands most associated with the movement by media include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, Slant 6, Emily's Sassy Lime, Huggy Bear, Jack Off Jill and Skinned Teen. Also included are queercore groups such as Team Dresch and the Third Sex.
In addition to a unique music scene and genre, riot grrrl became a subculture involving a DIY ethic, zines, art, political action, and activism. The movement quickly spread well beyond its musical roots to influence the vibrant zine- and Internet-based nature of fourth-wave feminism, complete with local meetings and grassroots organizing to end intersectional forms of prejudice and oppression, especially physical and emotional violence against all genders.
Origins
The riot grrrl movement originated in 1991, when a group of women from Olympia, Washington, and Washington, D.C., held a meeting about sexism in their local punk scenes in the United States. The word "girl" was intentionally used in order to focus on childhood, a time when children have the strongest self-esteem and belief in themselves.' Riot grrrls then took a growling "R", replacing the "I" in the word as a way to take back the derogatory use of the term. Both double and triple "R" spellings are acceptable.'The Seattle and Olympia, Washington, music scenes in the Pacific Northwest had sophisticated do it yourself infrastructure. Women involved in local underground music scenes took advantage of this platform to articulate their feminist beliefs and desires by creating zines. While the model of politically themed zines had already been used in punk culture as an alternative culture, zines also followed a longer legacy of self-published feminist writing that allowed women to circulate ideas that would not otherwise be published. At the time there was discomfort among many women in the music scene who felt that they had no space for organizing due to the exclusionary, male-dominated nature of punk culture at the time. Many women found that while they identified with the larger, music-oriented subculture of punk rock, they often had little to no voice in their local scenes. Women in the Washington punk scenes took it upon themselves to represent their own interests artistically through the new riot grrrl subculture. To quote Liz Naylor, who would become the manager of English riot grrrl band Huggy Bear:
There was a lot of anger and self-mutilation. In a symbolic sense, women were cutting and destroying the established image of femininity, aggressively tearing it down.
Riot grrrl bands were influenced by groundbreaking female punk and mainstream rock performers of the 1970s to the mid-1980s. While many of these musicians were not originally associated with each other during their time and came from a variety of backgrounds and styles, as a group they anticipated many of riot grrrl's musical and thematic attributes. These performers include the Slits, Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux, the Raincoats, Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, and Kim Deal, among others. Of Kim Gordon, in particular, Kathleen Hanna noted, "She was a forerunner, musically Just knowing a woman was in a band trading lead vocals, playing bass, and being a visual artist at the same time made me feel less alone." Riot grrrl musicians and musicians-to-be were also inspired by the 1982 U.S. musical drama movie Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, which tells the story of a seemingly proto-riot grrrl band.
Pacific Northwest and Washington, D.C.
Olympia, Washington, had a strong feminist artistic and cultural legacy that influenced early riot grrrl. In the early 1980s, Stella Marrs, Dana Squires and Julie Fay co-founded the store Girl City, where they created art and performances. The first K Records release in 1982 was a cassette of Heather Lewis' first band Supreme Cool Beings, while she was a student at The Evergreen State College, a year before she co-founded Beat Happening. In 1985, the Go Team formed with then 15-year-old Tobi Vail. The band would go on to collaborate with Olympia scene musicians who are linked to the riot grrrl movement: Donna Dresch, Lois Maffeo, and Billy "Boredom" Karren. Karren was a rotating musician who played in the band, and it was there that he and Vail played together for the first time, later collaborating in several other bands which included Bikini Kill and the Frumpies. Maffeo hosted a women-centered radio show on Olympia's community radio station KAOS. Candice Pedersen interned at K Records in 1986 while at The Evergreen State College, and became co-owner in 1989.In the 1980s, two articles on the topic of women in rock would be published by Puncture, a Portland, Oregon, zine edited by Katherine Spielmann and Patty Stirling. Authored by Rough Trade employee Terri Sutton, these articles became what is considered by some to be groundbreaking and influential writing on riot grrrl ethos. One article, "Women, Sex, & Rock 'n' Roll" is considered particularly important as the manifesto of the riot grrrl movement. Sutton would also say, in "Women In Rock: An Open Letter", written in 1988, "To me rock and roll is about lust, lust for feeling; the worst I can say about a band is they're boring. That's why it's so crucial that women get up onstage and impart--inspire some emotion."
Meanwhile in the Washington, D.C., area, Beat Happening fan Erin Smith started her zine Teenage Gang Debs in 1987. In 1988, two D.C. women that had been in all-women punk bands there previously – Chalk Circle's Sharon Cheslow and Fire Party's Amy Pickering – joined forces with Cynthia Connolly and Lydia Ely to organize group discussions focusing on gender differences and sexism in the D.C. punk community. The results were published in the June 1988 issue of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll. In November 1988, Connolly published the book Banned in DC: Photos and Anecdotes From the DC Punk Underground through her small press Sun Dog Propaganda, and it was co-edited with Cheslow and Ely along with Leslie Clague. These conversations and the book laid the groundwork for riot grrrl when members of Bikini Kill and Bratmobile later came to D.C. in 1991. In fall 1989, Erin Smith visited Olympia and met Maffeo through Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson. Johnson had been in the Go Team with Vail, and co-owned K Records with Candice Pedersen. At the end of 1989, Cheslow began publishing her zine Interrobang?! focusing on punk and sexism, and the first issue included an interview with Nation of Ulysses. Vail saw a copy of this issue and was instantly captivated by NOU's aesthetic.
Vail began publishing her zine Jigsaw in 1988, around the same time that Dresch started her zine Chainsaw. Zines became a means of urgent expression; Laura Sister Nobody wrote in her zine Sister Nobody, "Us, we are women who know that something is happening – something that seems like a secret right now, but won't stay like a secret for much longer." At the time, Vail was working at a sandwich shop with Kathi Wilcox who was impressed by Vail's interest in "girls in bands, specifically," including an aggressive emphasis on feminist issues. Meanwhile, in 1989 Kathleen Hanna had co-founded the Olympia art collective/band Amy Carter and feminist gallery/music venue Reko Muse, both with Tammy Rae Carland and Heidi Arbogast. By summer 1989, the space had hosted the Go Team, Babes in Toyland, and Nirvana. Hanna also interned at SafePlace, an Olympia domestic violence shelter and provider of sexual assault/abuse services, for which she did counseling, gave presentations at local high schools, and started a discussion group for teenage girls. Hanna came upon a copy of Jigsaw in 1989 and found resonance with Vail's writing. Hanna began to contribute to the zine, submitting interviews to Jigsaw while on tour with Viva Knieval in 1990. In Jigsaw, Vail wrote about "angry grrls", combining the word girls with a powerful growl. Some issues of Jigsaw have been archived at Harvard University as a research resource along with other counterculture zines. After touring for two months in summer 1990, Hanna's band Viva Knievel called it quits. Hanna then began collaborating with Vail after attending a performance of the Go Team and recognizing Vail as the mastermind behind Jigsaw zine. Dresch later started a record label under the name Chainsaw and formed the queercore band Team Dresch. In Chainsaw #2 she wrote, "Right now, maybe, Chainsaw is about Frustration. Frustration in music. Frustration in living, in being a girl, in being a homo, in being a misfit of any sort...Which is where this whole punk rock thing came from in the first place."
Molly Neuman and Allison Wolfe met in fall 1989 while living next door to each other in dorms at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and they traveled to Olympia on weekends. They first read Vail's zine Jigsaw in January 1990, and around the same time met Hanna. While on winter break 1990–91, Neuman returned to Washington, D.C., where her family lived and created the first issue of the zine Girl Germs. Corin Tucker came up with the band name Heavens to Betsy in Eugene during the summer of 1990, and moved to Olympia that fall to attend The Evergreen State College. Kathleen Hanna and her friends Tobi Vail and Kathi Wilcox, who were also studying at Evergreen, recruited Billy Karren to form Bikini Kill in fall 1990. Neuman and Wolfe played their first show on Valentine's Day 1991 at the North Shore Surf Club in Olympia, after Johnson invited them to perform on a bill with Bikini Kill and Some Velvet Sidewalk. While working on a documentary film about the Olympia music scene, Tucker went to this show and interviewed Neuman and Wolfe. Hanna, Vail and Wilcox collaborated on a feminist zine titled Bikini Kill for their first tours in 1991. The Riot Grrrl movement believed in girls actively engaging in cultural production, creating their own music and fanzines rather than following existing materials. The bands associated with Riot Grrrl used their music to express feminist and anti-racist viewpoints. Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy created songs with extremely personal lyrics that dealt with topics such as rape, incest and eating disorders.
Jenny Toomey and Hanna had known each other as young teens while attending the same D.C. area junior high school. Toomey co-founded the indie rock label Simple Machines with Kristin Thomson in early 1990, and they ran the label out of a punk group house in Arlington, Virginia. They shared the house with Positive Force activists before moving into their own group house in Arlington. Toomey visited Olympia during fall 1990, where she formed My New Boyfriend with Tobi Vail, Aaron Stauffer from Seaweed, and Christina Calle. Upon returning to Arlington, Toomey and Thomson formed the indie rock band Tsunami.
The third issue of Vail's zine Jigsaw, published in 1991 after she spent time in Washington, D.C., was subtitled "angry grrrl zine". In spring 1991 Cheslow was living in San Francisco, and she received letters from Ian MacKaye and Nation of Ulysses' Tim Green informing her about Bikini Kill and "angry grrrl" zines. That spring 1991, Neuman and Wolfe spent spring break in D.C. and formed Bratmobile there with Erin Smith, Christina Billotte, and Jen Smith. Bikini Kill toured with Nation of Ulysses in May/June 1991, converging in D.C. with Bratmobile that summer. It was here that Neuman and Wolfe created the first issue of riot grrrl zine.
While Bikini Kill and Bratmobile band members were in D.C. during summer 1991, a meeting was held with women from the D.C. area to discuss how to address sexism in the punk scene. These women were inspired by recent anti-racist riots in D.C., and they wanted to start a "girl riot" against a society they felt offered no validation of women's experiences. The first riot grrrl meeting was organized by Kathleen Hanna and Jenny Toomey, and it was held at the Positive Force group house in Arlington, Virginia. Hanna later said, "We had to go to a Positive Force meeting first. I'd never had a pitch meeting before. But I was doing a pitch meeting for why they should let us use their house for this all-women's radical feminist community organizing meeting."
In August 1991 many of these individuals gathered at the International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia. The first night of the event became known as "Girl Night". Tucker played her first show that night, on guitar and vocals with Heavens to Betsy and Tracy Sawyer on drums. Writing later about that summer, Melissa Klein said, "Young women's anger and questioning fomented and smoldered until it became an all-out gathering of momentum toward action...Bikini Kill promoted 'Revolution Girl Style Now' and 'Stop the J-Word Jealousy From Killing Girl Love'." As this ideal spread via band tours, zines, and word of mouth, riot grrrl chapters sprang up around the country.