My Grrrl Revolution

If someone were to ask me what my ultimate New York memory was, I’d have just one answer: The Kathleen Hanna Experience. Yes, Kathleen Hanna: Bikini Kill/The Julie Ruin/Le Tigre singer, feminist, core of the riot grrrl movement, possibly my biggest life idol.

I first met her as I exited the train to walk to Union Hall to see her speak. We had walked to the venue together and she was nice and candid and great, everything you would wish your life idol would be. I was so overwhelmed that I could no longer even react when she asked Kathi Wilcox, her bandmate from Bikini Kill,  to take a photo of us. Over the course of my three month stay in New York, I managed to have every experience my inner riot grrrl has craved for years. I hung on to her every word when she talked at The Interview Show, had her sign my book at the Riot Grrrl book launch, and blagged my way into a sold-out The Julie Ruin show to finally see her play live.

Before she left the venue that first time, I said to her, “Thank you, Kathleen, You revolutionized my life.”

And she really did.

In the year 2002 I ended up becoming close friends with Quark Henares and Ramon de Veyra, who introduced me to the wonderful world of indie rock — years after riot grrrl was at its peak. I was no longer singing for my old band Candyaudioline, a shoegaze band, and before meeting them I was listening to indie pop. Ramon would bring burned CDs to my studio, where we would all hang out, and Le Tigre and Sleater-Kinney became my workroom anthems, and there began my obsession with riot grrrl and girl bands.

In the summer of 2003, we formed Death By Tampon and wrote all our songs in my studio and our guitarist Goldie’s bedroom, one of our first songs Let’s Go Metro with a chord progression achingly similar to Le Tigre’s On Guard. The song Kinder Pop came about after listening to Sleater-Kinney’s Little Babies and realizing it sounded a lot like that children’s rhyme that became the foundation of our song.  

In her blurb for the newly released book The Riot Grrrl Collection, Kathleen Hanna said, “Riot grrrl is the gateway drug that girls use to find feminist history.”  For us self-proclaimed “panty rockers” (a term that we came up with and, ironically, first came out in our first band feature in the music section of men’s magazine FHM that said we wrote “songs on heavy subjects like rape and a mission for women empowerment”), our love for riot grrrl music paved the way for us to mimic the riot grrrls before us  — strong, empowered, and never giving a f**k. 

Our being a girl band got us interested in feminism and basically made us extra aware of our womanhood and what it meant. We prioritized feminist gigs, and wrote songs about the men in our lives who were treating us like shit. We took on this role like it was always meant for us, and we loved it, and it genuinely shaped us as individuals and as a band. We didn’t want to sign with managers who booked us because of our “look” or who wanted us to write “radio-friendly songs” because we were “never going to sell out.” Then, a year after the band was formed, I went on Celebrity Big Brother thinking it was a good idea, while half my band totally cringed at the thought. My chosen charity was the Women’s Crisis Center, and  I consciously made a fuss about objectification and respect when the boys in the house made Keana jump rope and snickered at her boobs. When the masses picked on me for “making a big deal out of everything,” my loyal bandmates came out on national television to back me up and defend me, and the conservatives called them rude and crass, and they said everything they had to say back on the then-popular Live Journal.

We didn’t necessarily have the same views — Lara was anti-porn, hated the Suicide Girls, was completely against objectification, along with Rin who made a huge deal of men’s magazine trying to shoot her “posing sexy” at a gig. I saw things in a different light, developing a huge interest in the power of the erotic female and the introduction to Bikini Kill’s first zine which captured all that I thought: “Being a sexy and powerful female is one of the most subversive projects of all.” But none of those differences, among the many that caused “band fights,” really mattered; at they end of the day we loved each other. I, for one, had never felt how great girl love could be until Death By Tampon came to be.

After Kathleen’s talk at Union Hall, Lara (our DBT drummer who was with me for the talk) and I realized that without that whole riot grrrl influence, we’d probably be very different people. I grew up really sheltered, and although my family was always politically aware, I wasn’t raised to take public stands about anything; yet suddenly I had the balls to say everything I ever wanted to. Suddenly I became aware of the things around me, particularly the situation of women around me, and that probably paved the way for me to turn my hat business into a social enterprise that empowers women and gives them skills instead of just running a normal business.  It led me to become interested in reproductive health, and gave me my own view that maybe the conservative views we are raised with weren’t always right. My becoming a corsetiere came from my interest in fetishism and eroticism, all of which stemmed from an interest in female sexuality, and so did my preference for feminist art. I’d be a totally different Me if not for that stage of my life.

A friend once was chatting to me about Vivienne Westwood’s Climate Revolution, and said, “It’s a pity it’s all fashion people who show up, people who are fans of Vivienne’s work in fashion and aren’t really interested in the cause.” 

It’s not a pity. Sometimes people need someone they idolize in another field to inspire them to open their eyes to the world around them, like the way Kathleen and her music did for me. I’m sure some people are born to be socially aware, but there are those who aren’t, like me. I needed someone else to ignite that spirit in me. We need these revolutions, not just for the ones who already know what they’re fighting against, but also for those who have yet to find out what they have to fight for. 

And that is how Kathleen Hanna revolutionized my life.

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The Julie Ruin’s new album “Run Fast” comes out on Sept. 3. Visit www.thejulieruinband.com.