Riot Grrrl
The Grrrls Guide to Zines, DIY and Total World Domination
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Riot Grrrl
3 Chapter
Published in 2021 by Riot Press 545 W 30th St, New York, United States +31 (0)70 42 78 117 theshed.com Riot Press have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanic. ISBN: 978-3-16-148410-0
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Riot Grrrl
Riot Grrrl The Girls’ Guide to Zines, DIY, and Total World Domination
5 Chapter
Content
Intro 8-11 Riot Origins
12-17
Riot #1 18-27 Thorn 28-33 Race + Riot
34-39
Conclusion
40-41
Plates
42-43
Bibliography 44-45
Intro
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Riot Grrrl
9 Chapter
Hello grrrls...
The following essay will examine the Riot Grrrl scene of Olympia from the late 1980’s into the mid-90’s. I will investigate the use of zines and music by riot grrrls to share personal stories, political stances and art with other young adults across the country. I will be evaluating the do it yourself (DIY) ethics that riot grrrl was built on and how it empowered women to create and distribute art and other media freely and without censorship, and the anti-capitalist values that followed with that. I will also be investigating who exactly was represented by Riot Grrrl zines and music, and whether the movement was as inclusive as claimed. I will draw from “Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism” by Natalya Lusty to discuss specific zines and their contents. I will also reference “We ARE the Revolution: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment and DIY Self-Publishing” by Kevin Dunn and May Summer Farnsworth to evaluate the DIY practices of Riot Grrrl. Lastly, I will use “Riot Grrrl: Race and Revival” by Mimi Thi Nguyen to investigate race and intersection within relations in Riot Grrrl.
The Riot Grrrl movement had a lasting impact on feminism and intersectionality. The relationship between Riot Grrrl and people of colour in the US in particular is important as a case study to examine how we approach these relations today. I will investigate the use of DIY zines and music by riot grrrls to share personal stories, political stances
10 Riot Grrrl
and art with other young adults across the country. I will be evaluating the do it yourself (DIY) ethics that riot grrrl was built on and how it empowered women to both create and distribute art and other media freely and without censorship, and the anti-capitalist values that followed with that. I will also be investigating who exactly was represented by Riot Grrrl zines and music, and whether the movement was as inclusive as claimed. I will draw from “Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism” by Natalya Lusty to discuss specific zines and their contents. I will then also be referencing the “We ARE the Revolution: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment and DIY Self Publishing” by Kevin Dunn and May Summer Farnsworth to evaluate the DIY practices of Riot Grrrl. Lastly, I will use “Riot Grrrl: Race and Revival” by Mimi Thi Nguyen to investigate race and intersection within relations in Riot Grrrl.
11 Intro
Riot O
12 Riot Grrrl
Origin
She-Punk
Riot Grrrl was heavily influenced by the punk movement which emerged in New York City in the late 1970’s with bands such as the Ramones. Punk later gained popularity in the UK through bands like the Sex Pistols. Punk ethics were all about counter-culture and were completely anti corporate. However, punk began to assume an overtly masculine character that wasn’t necessarily hospitable to women. Hyper-masculine bands such as Black Flag came to the forefront of punk, and punk shows became increasingly physically violent. It became so bad that Jennifer Miro, of the band the Nuns, stated, “women didn’t go see punk bands anymore because they were afraid of being killed.” This need for a space for women and emphasizing the needs of women lead to the emergence of Riot Grrrl.
“women didn’t go see punk bands anymore because they were afraid
of being killed.”
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Fig 1. X-Ray Spex and Poly Styrene
15 Riot Origins
Alison Wolfe and Molly Neuman of the band Bratmobile created the first “Riot Grrrl”, a new collectively authored feminist zine in Spring 1991. Shortly after, Kathleen Hanna started to organize weekly “Riot Grrrl” meetings. Riot Grrrl was conceived as a grassroots Do It Yourself (DIY) feminist movement. One of the most notorious and artistic elements of Riot Grrrl, aside from the music, were zines. These zines were utilised to share ideas, information, art and poetry. They allowed radical speeches and manifestos to become everyday facets of political opinion.
These Riot Grrrl zines embodied the DIY ethos of the movement. Typewriters were often used for text, as well as hand rendered text scrawled across the margins of pages. Images would be cut out and pasted down, often of cartoon images, as well as photographic sources. The only cost of producing these zines was photocopying, which could be done cheaply at the likes of Kinkos, an American chain that provided photocopying services. Anyone with a pen and some paper could produce a zine of their own, and share it with others. They may have been lo-fi and cheap, but they created a visual language of their own and allowed women to share their stories and experiences with others easily. Zines were a space for information to be shared without condescension or gatekeeping, including information such
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as how to play guitar chords, book your own shows, or make and distribute your own record . It demystified music and creation of music and performance. The sound of most riot grrrl bands was jarring and harsh, but in a different way to the standard punk music of the time. Women had been making punk music before this, but something about seeing all-girl line ups, with women singing and yelling in a way that was so unpolished allowed young girls to see themselves doing the same things. Independent labels like Kill Rock Stars provided assistance with music distribution, meaning bands didn’t need to resort to major labels to release their material. These were ordinary, accessible people getting up and performing and creating things. Kathleen Hanna herself said, “Tobi was walking by a coffee shop and someone said she was ‘the girl from the Go Team.’ It was the first time I realized I could maybe make music too, ’cause there she was just walking down the street.” She, as part of Bikini Kill, then went on to inspire and “embolden” women in music massively from SleaterKinney to even the Regrettes, through both her work as a musician and a zine maker. It not only empowered women to create art themselves, but it instilled a strong sense of self sufficiency. You didn’t need a major label to create music or a publisher for your personal essays or stories. The zines themselves were perfect vessels of information for such activities.
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Riot # 18 Riot Grrrl
#1
Fight the real enemy
Issue 1 of the Riot Grrrl zine was titled “Rape and Ritual”. The cover, photocopied in black and white, features a cut out photo of a women standing tall with her arms raised high, and the title is rendered in a cursive script. The subtitle is printed from a typewriter, and handwritten “xo” symbols are scattered around the page. The content of the zine emphasised the concept of organized religion as a means of social control, and highlighted the links between religion and sexual assault. This issue featured personal stories about sexual assault, as well as many poems dealing with themes of physical and sexual assault.
These experiences would have still been considered taboo in mainstream media, and sharing them so openly would have been rare. This spread not only awareness, but solidarity amongst young women of the prevalence of such issues and allowed people a space confide in others, albeit a small audience at the time. Formal reporting of these incidents not only rarely results in any justice, but can also be retraumatising. Furthermore, criticising organised religion and drawing links with sexual assault was absolutely not socially acceptable.
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Fig 2. Riot Grrrl Issue #1
21 Riot #1
The collaborative minizine What Is Riot Grrrl, Anyway?, part of Excuse 17 musician and artist Becca Albee’s collection, was made in Olympia in the fall of 1992. Becca remembers that it was a time when meetings had transitioned from intimate get-togethers in apartments to larger gatherings, with many new members, at the Evergreen State College. Becca told me that “there were no constraints, no guidelines, and the idea was that each individual could respond to the question.” Some chose to be anonymous, like the very author of this page, who (like many riot grrrls) identified with a fifties girl-gang trope repurposed for a new form of a feminist vigilantism: “In a girl gang I am the nite and i feel i can’t be raped and i feel so fuckin’ free.” This page is nothing but simple text, no showy images or drawings. Still, it has an inherent power to it. The way it speaks directly to the reader, and its brutal and genuine honesty invoke such string feelings that it leaves a lasting impact on anyone that reads it. You immediately feel a kinship with the author. Grrrl gangs forever.
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Fig 3. What is Riot Grrrl Anyway?
23 Riot #1
“ The feeling t someone som used scissor and their mo old typewrit labour of lov
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that mewhere rs and glue other’s ter... it’s a ve.” Anne Elizabeth Moore
In 1992, soon after this zine was published, Sinéad O’Connor famously ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live (SNL) saying “Fight the real enemy.” She was alluding to child abuse and sexual assault in the Catholic church, not unlike what was discussed in the first edition of riot grrrl. After this incident, O’Connor faced huge backlash. The next week on SNL, Joe Pesci said that if it happened on his show he would have “gave her such a smack.” This incident illustrates the climate at the time, that calling out the church was not accepted, at least certainly not in mainstream media. In reruns of that episode, they replaced O’Connor’s performance with her rehearsal tape. This further emphasises the need for DIY media and publishing. These views wouldn’t be allowed in a professionally published piece, DIY zines provided a platform free of censorship.
Alone on the stage, O’Connor adapted the lyrics of one of Marley’s anti-apartheid verses, singing instead, “Until the ignoble and unhappy regime which holds all of us through child abuse, yeah, child abuse, yeah, subhuman bondage have been toppled — utterly destroyed — everywhere is war.” At the song’s finale, O’Connor belted “good over evil,” and held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II before ripping it up into little pieces. “Fight the real enemy,” she spoke into the microphone, casting the papal shreds upon the studio floor.
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“Until the ignoble and unhappy regimes which holds all of us through child abuse have been toppled, everywhere is war.”
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Thorn
28 Riot Grrrl
n
The Rage of Blame
Kelly Marie Martin’s zine “Thorn” embraced rage and aggression . The Thorn manifesto states “Thorn is not about being ashamed of rage… it’s not about silencing others.” The manifesto is big and blocky with justified text and a stencil style heading. Little cartoons below, including a little black cat, along with the slightly off-centre text align with the typical aesthetics of Riot Grrrl zines. It states that it is “self-sustaining” at the bottom of the page, as most zines in this style would have been. Thorn also wasn’t afraid of addressing controversial political topics such as the AIDS crisis. Its 2nd issue included a spread featuring large black display type, exclaiming, “AIDS: ITS BIG BUSINESS ! (BUT WHO’S MAKING A KILLING?).” Above this text was this black and white image of a pistol. This is a strong, impactful statement of solidarity with the LGBT community. It shows real political engagement and creates a thought-provoking question. The bold text makes a clear statement, it’s one that the author clearly wanted to be seen, and to create a contemplative pause.
It’s a very effective piece of visual communication for a DIY, cut-and-paste zine and illustrated the communicative potential of zines as a medium. While somewhat biased, this provided an outlook or insight into the matter that may not have been prevalent in mainstream news sources. Although you may not realize it, media censorship happens to your news on a regular basis. While news stories are often simply
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Fig 4. Thorn Manifesto
31 Thorn
edited for length, in many cases subjective choices are being made about whether to keep some information from becoming public. Sometimes these decisions are made to safeguard a person’s privacy, other times to protect media outlets from corporate or political fallout, and yet other times for concerns of national security. Censorship is the alteration or suppression of speech, writing, photographs, or other forms of information based on the opinion that such material is subversive, obscene, pornographic, politically unacceptable. The zine does not benefit from appeasing to the government, and it has no sponsors or outside sources involved that might otherwise not approve of its content, and so it can allow a complete freedom of expression. Unlike social media, it’s a platform that can’t be taken away from you, while you can be suspended or banned from Twitter, you cannot be banned from zine making, although people can of course decide to stop consuming your zines. Kelly Marie Martin’s zine “Thorn” embraced rage and aggression.
The Thorn manifesto states “Thorn is not about being ashamed of rage… it’s not about silencing others.” The manifesto is big and blocky with justified text and a stencil style heading. It’s a platform that can’t be taken away from you. It was not until the late 1970s when the HIV strain that started the North American pandemic had made its way to the United States, via Zaire and Haiti. By then, the sexual
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Fig 5. Thorn Spread
revolution was in full swing and HIV was spreading silently among gay male populations in the larger American cities. The first official government report on AIDS came in 1981. In a 1983 appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, activist and Gay Mens Health Crisis co-founder Larry Kramer asked host Jane Pauley, “Jane, can you imagine what it must be like if you had lost 20 of your friends in the last 18 months?”
“Anatomical power and self health!” 33 Thorn
Race +
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+ Riot
Chop Suey Spex The Riot Grrrl movement was primarily made up of white middle class women. It is well documented that many of the women of colour (WOC) that took part in the Riot Grrrl experienced racial stereotyping. It was zines again that they turned to, to share their experience. “Chop Suey Spex” was a zine created specifically to document white privilege and racism within the movement. One such encounter detailed in the zine is about the “chop suey spex” that the zine is named after. These glasses had the lenses papered to mimic East Asian monolids. In this encounter, the creators of this zine encounter Excene Cerbenka, a prominent punk, in her novelty shop. It details the interaction they have with her about the “Chop Suey Specs” she is selling in her shop, which they find offensive. She is completely dismissive of them and at no point acknowledges her own ignorance, telling them, “Whatever. I don’t care. You can steal them.” If this is typical of what WOC experienced regularly within Riot Grrrl spaces, it’s quite clear that there was an issue with white privilege.
While the majority of women involved with riot grrrl most likely considered themselves anti-racist and inclusive, they were not immune to white fragility and guilt. Many involved in riot grrrl considered your own experience to be the most important, “location of the self as the source of authentic knowledge” . This is flawed, as your own
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Fig 6. Chop Suey Spex Spread
experiences are going to be limited depending on the circumstances of your life. As Nguyen states, “how could experience yield revolutionary knowledge about race, when the dominant experience was whiteness?” . No matter how well intentioned these girls were, if they were not willing to truly listen to the experiences of WOC and educate themselves further, it was all lip service. It is difficult to come to terms to the fact that, by virtue of your race, you are an oppressor. Many riot grrrls may have had a hard time reconciling with themselves that, although they themselves were a marginalised group as women, they were contributing to oppressive power systems. This discomfort with white complicity held them back from becoming affective allies. Many WOC involved felt that they were expending emotional labour by being burdened with the role of educator to these girls.
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Even in the film Moxie (2021), inspired by the riot grrrl, they make the same mistakes. The film centres a white, middle class cis girl despite an abundance of interesting black and Asian-American characters that are thrown to the side for most of the film. The film draws from Riot Grrrl aesthetics in the poster where they use hand rendered text and black and white photographic image to emulate the zines and posters of Riot Grrrl. Even so, the mistakes of the individuals involved in Riot Grrrl aren’t necessarily and indictment of the whole movement. Using zines as a platform, WOC were still able to share their stories and experiences and, in the case of “Chop Suey Spex”, we still have these artefacts available to us even now as documenting the experience of non-white riot grrrls. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t have felt emboldened to share their experiences or art without Riot Grrrl, but it re-popularised a platform to express those things freely, or potentially anonymously. Emma Dabiri writes that ultimately capitalism is the true instigator and perpetuator of racism . Although misguided in their approaches to race, could the anti-capitalist ethic of riot grrrl have been described as unconsciously moving away from the systems and thinking responsible for racial thinking in the first place? For instance, women of color wondered out loud for whom writing ‘SLUT” across their stomachs operated as reclamations of sexual agency against feminine passivity, where racisms had already inscribed such terms onto the bodies of some.
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Fig 7. Moxie Promotional Poster
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Conclusion Between music and zines, Riot Grrrl emboldened many young women to use their voices, as well as encouraging anti-capitalist mediums of communication and creativity. The rough, cut-and-paste aesthetics of the zines mirrored the jarring noise of the music, creating an environment that anyone felt they could take part in. This coupled with the community of DIY publishing and independent labels also created an inherently anti-capitalist attitude in those who partook. Although it encountered failures with regards to inclusivity, it introduced many young women to feminist ideas and encouraged doing by yourself and not allowing corporations and mainstream media to twist or dilute your message. Ultimately, its greatest strength was its refusal to engage with the mainstream media or corporate publishing.
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Fig 8. Kathleen Hanna
41 Conclusion
Plates Fig 1. X-Ray Spex and Poly Styrene
Fig 3. What is Riot Grrrl Anyway?
Fig 8. Kathleen Hanna
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Fig 2. Riot Grrrl Issue #1
Fig 4. Thorn Manifesto
Fig 5. Thorn Spread
Fig 6. Chop Suey Spex Spread
43 Plates
Fig 7. Moxie Promotional Poster
Bibliography 1. Barton, Laura. “Grrrl Power.” The Guardian. 4 March 2009. 2. Brownstein, Carrie. Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl. New York: Riverhead Books. 2015. 3. Dabiri, Emma. What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition. London: Penguin Books. 2021 4. Darms, Lisa. “Grrrl, Collected.” The Paris Review. 30 July 2013. Web. 10 April 2021 5. Darms, Lisa. Keenan, Elizabeth K. “Safe Space: The Riot Grrrl Collection.” Archivaria. 76. (2013): 55-74. 6. Dunn, K., Farnsworth, M.S. “We ARE the Revolution: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment, and DIY Self-Publishing.” Women’s Studies. 41. 2 (2012): 136-157. tandfonline.com. 7. History.com editors. “Sinéad O’Connor tears up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live.” History. 8. Hopper, Jessica. “Sisters Outsiders: The Oral History of the Bikini Kill EP.” Spin. 15 November 2012. 9. Lusty, Natalya. “Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism.” Australian Feminist Studies. 32. 93 (2017): 219-239. Academic Search Complete. 10. Nguyen, Mimi T. “Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival.” Women and performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. 22. 2-3 (2012): 173-196. tandfonline.com. Web. 18 March 2021 11.Laing, Olivia. “The Art and Politics of Riot Grrrl – in Pictures.” The Guardian. 30 June 2013. 12. La Jeunesse, Marilyn. “The Nineteenth Amendment Only Really Helped White Women”. Teen Vogue. Teenvogue.com. 16 August 2019. Web. 6 April 2021.
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“We are a group of girls who get together for support and to network because we need eachother in this society that wants to act like we don’t exist ”