My confession? I wasn't a riot grrrl.
I wasn't.
Now, many people would disagree. Those who knew me then. Those who know me now. Those who saw pictures of me from the early 1990s.
I fit the profile. I was (and still am) an avowed feminist and proud of it. I was angry. I was (and still am) fiercely pro-choice. I had been part of my local punk rock scene. I wore combat boots, I colored my hair, I shaved parts of my head, I wore a black leather jacket.
I was called a bitch. And a dyke. And I wore each one of those labels like a badge. And threw them back in the face of the person using them with the explicit intent to humiliate them. And I almost always did.
I was in your face. I would stand up for women who couldn't stand up for themselves. If you were a dick in any way, I called you on it.
I was a bad ass.
But I wasn't a Riot Grrrl.
This all came about when some friends and I went to see The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna. And I loved it. I loved it because it made me nostalgic and happy and proud and excited. I was nostalgic about being part of my local punk scene. I was happy about being a woman and being very sure of who I am. I was proud of Kathleen Hanna and how she has always stood up for who and what she believes. I was excited by the music. And the next day, I told a friend that I never considered myself a Riot Grrrl. And by the mid-90s when someone called me a Riot Grrrl, I'd get irritated. My friend was surprised, and I tried to explain why.
First and foremost, to some extent, I was too old. Not by much, really. And shortly before Hanna and the Olympia/Evergreen/Seattle scene began to bloom, I was part of my local punk scene. I was of that generation. But my focus was super local. I mean almost too local. I was involved in my scene, which for a medium-sized college town in Iowa was pretty vibrant. I was aware of the scene in Iowa City and knew of people down there, but I wasn't part of it. Same with Des Moines. My knowledge of punk bands was local. I knew more about the Hollowmen (Des Moines) and Zenoglossia (Iowa City) than I did about the other 1980s punk bands. That came later.
The world of punk is often testosterone-driven. It is aggressive. It can and often is chauvinistic. Despite that, I never felt it aimed at me. I never felt talked down to, oppressed, marginalized... or anything. Partly because the guys I knew were pretty great. The girls I knew were even greater. They were independent, opinionated and never took shit from anyone. And they were skaters and they were in bands and they did all kinds of things that weren't very girly.
Does that mean that everyone felt this way? No.
Another reason I wasn't a Riot Grrrl: I didn't (and don't) like being labelled. And boxed in. And I don't like those who don't know me deciding what I am. And by the time Riot Grrrl became something I was called, it was a label put on me by those who didn't know me and didn't understand my world.
The first introduction I had to the concept of a Riot Grrrl was in Time magazine. Or maybe Newsweek. It was the early 1990s. It was an article about feminism and like many articles before it and after it, it questioned whether feminism was still alive. I was disgusted by it. I was disgusted by those who felt that everything women had wanted had been achieved. They talked about people my age and how apathetic we were about women's rights because, you know, we had it all. And then they discussed the movement of riot grrrls. And I recognized me, at least in look and attitude. But did I think it represented me? No. But I don't remember why. My guess is that like most mainstream news sources, they article represented punk in a way that showed they didn't "get it." Or they simplified it. Or they just got it wrong.
Skip ahead a few years and someone saw a picture of me decked out a leather jacket, combat books, and jeans with hair cut in multi levels in a way that looked like it had been cut with a pair of fabric shears (and it probably had), and that person said, "Nice riot grrrl outfit."
Blood, boiling. And threw clenched teeth I said, "I wasn't a Riot Grrrl."
Do I dislike Riot Grrrls? No. Was I one? No. Do I understand why people think I was one? Yes. Am I irritated that people make an assumption I was? Yes.
So, simply put... It's complicated. But I wasn't a Riot Grrrl for the simple fact that I didn't identify as one. It wasn't part of me or my being or my self-awareness. It wasn't part of my world.
Oh... and a digression: Something that surprised me about the film? Was how cool it was to see how fucking cute and adorable and compatible Hanna was with her husband, Adam Horovitz, also known as a Beastie Boy. And it was interesting to hear her talk about what it was like when they first began dating. And it was very cool to see how much he supports her now when it comes to he health her anxieties and everything.
