Rebel Girl

Last night Kevin and I watched Don't Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl. It was a little thin and it was obvious that it was someone's college project, but it was interesting nonetheless. Ian MacKaye of Fugazi/Minor Threat/general-pain-in-the-ass fame earned my everlasting disgust by moronically saying, "I don't really consider myself a feminist; that's probably due to a lack of reading about the subject." Dude, you get up on your high fucking horse about every social issue that exists, but you can't be bothered to learn about one of the most important social movements of the last century? Screw you.

Watching it got me thinking about what I was doing during the whole early-mid-nineties riot grrl/punk revival thing that was going on. Looking back, I can't believe I didn't embrace it with wild abandon. I was a feminist before I was brave enough to call myself one, I had definite punk rock sensibilities, I read Sassy, for christ's sake. But I didn't know where to start and I was always, always too intimidated to join in; the people were so much cooler than me. I've never really gotten over that. I still feel like it's the cool kids table and I'm waaay too dorky to try and set my tray down.

Kathleen Hanna's interview was so great, because she was so normal and adorable and talked about how scared she got when things got out of control at Bikini Kill shows. And so much of what she said just resonated, like when she was saying she could never stand to hear her own voice and still can barely listen to her albums, and how that seems to be such a common thing for girls. And, yeah, why is that? Why do we have that problem? Let's collectively knock it off, shall we?

I wish it hadn't taken me until my mid-twenties to grow enough of a pair to start exploring this stuff. I wish I had spent more time making art and writing and DOING something instead of watching lame TV. I hope I'm able to get over the idea that I'm too old now and start fitting this stuff in a little more than I have been.