Have you ever thought about how masculine the world of rock is? How many female bands of this genre do you know? And, how about punk, huh? The space for women is even more limited.
The girls of the 90s were tired of this, and of all of society’s impositions, be they in the way of speaking, acting delicately, dressing and, mainly, about the places they could occupy. So a whole movement emerged in the city of Olympia (Washington), when Kathleen Hanna, vocalist of the band Bikini Kill, started to popularize the phrase “Girls to the front”, that means letting girls be in front of the stages and her own lives. At the same time, the third wave of feminism began to take its first steps.
Riot Grrrl, the name of the movement that I’ve been writing about since the first line of this text, brought to the world a revolutionary way of making underground culture. Permeated by experimentalism, a striking characteristic of it is the “made by yourself” stuff. Yeah, they incentivated women to create things they want by themselves, so the habit of making fanzines and learning how to play the instruments they needed to create a band became an everyday thing.
Because of this, the songs of the Riot Grrrl punk were kinda messy, but in a way it could show to the world all the anger girls have repressed during the years. They also could spill the beans about some situations women had (and still have) to pass through without euphemisms. Some of them are: sexual abuse, ophression of the patriarchy and gender violence. As you could understand the songs of the movement want to generate women empowerment, and incentivize them to become a political force.
But, there was a failure in that movement, which was the fact that it doesn’t represent all the women groups and it’s particular needs, being more representative for white women. It had few black girls highlighted, one of them was Ramdasha Bikceem, that created a fanzine called GUNK and in a certain moment put on the agenda the lack of diversity in the Riot Grrrl movement and even the racism.
So she started the Sista Grrr’s Riot with Maya Glick, Simi Stone and Tamar-Kali to help black girls having their voice recognized by the society. The band was a pioneer in the afro-punk scene and the songs of that movement tells about the difficulties that people faced to insert themselves.
After some years, punk music became a mainstream musical genre, and lost a great part of it’s protest stamp. But it is undeniable that the Riot Grrrl movement was very important to feminism and also to the punk scene.
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The article above was edited by Laura Ferrazzano.
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