Today women and girls don’t think twice thinking about starting a band and in many cases, they don’t even feel the need to call out the band member’s gender. Girls in bands are the new normal. 

In a recent interview for the independent cultural magazine, THE SKINNY writer Cheri Amour – who worked on the editorial team at the girls are with me for a number of years- discussed this fab new reality with Allison Wolfe musician, journalist, writer and podcaster, a founder member of key riot grrrl band Bratmobile and LaDIYfest (see Part 2). 

“A lot of that is to do with the girl rock camps, they’re really bringing up this new generation of musicians who aren’t going to think twice about starting a band.

“It’s weird because it felt like there was an army of these girls across the country. In the early 90s, there were a lot of girl bands but by the late 90s when RG had died off there was a backlash and a lot of bands had broken up it felt like it was back to the boys and that was disappointing That’s why I started Ladyfest and championing the RG idea. OK, we’re working towards this festival. After that date rape culture/bro culture, we created our community, we participated in creating our own culture.” Allison Wolfe (2018) 

1. The Reveal, uncovering and recording, unknown, or forgotten women musicians and artists, proving the bias in the musical canon through writers, editors, publishers. Examples are Gillian G Garr, (date) She’s A Rebel, Lucy O’Brien, Dusty and She-Bop, (dates), Jacqueline Warwicks (date) Girl Groups Girl Culture.  
2. Giving the artists’ voice, such as Liz Evans (date) Women, Sex and Rock n Roll, In their Own Words, Anne Savage, (date) They’re Playing Our Songs, Women talk about feminist rock music, or Zara Van-Burdens, (date) Women of the Underground: Music, Cultural innovators speak for themselves. 
3. Academic clout, the introduction of feminist theory applied to music culture, such as Deborah M Withers (date), Kate Bush Theory, Lucy O’Brien (date) Madonna, updated and republished 2019, Marion Leonard (date) Gender in the Music Industry. 

                       THE REVEAL

 

New Writing – the part riot grrrl played 

This was the key for me about Riot Grrrl – a quantity of new writing for comparison, contrast and reassurance. I had searched out and read all the right books for young alternative women writers, for example How to Suppress Women’s Writing, (Joanna Russ 1983), and Tillie Olsen’s Silences (1965), Underground: The London Alternative press 1966-74 (Nigel Fountain, 1988), but it was riot grrrl that gave me a quantity of women’s writing about music and socio-political culture, akin to my life, and gave me the opportunity for contrast and comparison, in order to go on the adventure I’d been waiting for – to find my own creative identity, my wholeness. And get away with it for the rest of my life. 

It’s good to know – white feminism

“What riot grrrl (in the UK) didn’t do particularly well was to reach out to black women. We had some non-white grrrls, but I remember failing to convince a very amazing woman that it was for her – she felt naturally excluded. So what I’m pleased about these days is the more diverse nature of punk rock feminism, the younger generation has taken it and progressed it where we couldn’t.” Jennifer Denitto, (June 2019) former member of UK riot grrrl band, Linus. 

Slipping into white feminism, understanding reaction/action as natural, when in fact it’s cultural, learned behaviour; the same thing we point out to men, is a critique of riot grrrl: non-inclusive, patronising, writing on behalf of people’s concerns, not verbatim but in a narrative of the writer’s making, like how we unpicked patriarchy/the hero from the text, assuming likes and dislikes. It was a missed opportunity because riot grrrl was driven to show and support alternatives to the male-dominated rock/indie/punk genre, and there’s no doubt these successful genres are dominated by white men.  

Imagine, all those people learning about being human, and some of them failing, because in a sense all the untypical girls had to start from scratch, the rock-poets, punks and riot grrrls. (Me, by circumstance and soul.) 

“All these artists had to trash out new ways of living, in a break from their foremothers,” explains Vivien Goldman in relation to the rock-poets and She-punks (2019). 

I spent some time comparing Nietzsche’s Will to Power theory with John Lennon, another who started from scratch, and continued to re-assess, challenge, experiment, and change – this is in fact what Madonna has materialised, in every sense. (It was an academic challenge given to me by a mentor.) 

Being told you’re a white feminist is hard to take, and in turn, proves the argument: it’s not all about you, but you have to hear it if it’s true. Girl love is not always whoops! and cheers! for everything you do. 

The argument that riot grrrls experienced a privileged position, relating to class, as well as colour, endangered the value of the political intent, and was reinforced when the internet arrived. The cost of home computers was at its highest peak, meaning that while it was important and relevant for riot grrrl to embrace this fabulous new tool of communication, it meant that the organisation and voice was the realm of the middle-class women (ones who had access to university computers). 

That said, I always felt that riot grrrl feminism wanted very much to be a progression from the first wave (the right to vote), the second wave (equality) when women of colour noted the ways in which mainstream feminism often failed to address their concerns. (Riot grrrl felt so inclusive.) Some of the second wave feminists were seen as totally uncool, even embarrassing, at the time.

For example, Mrs Rockafelller took up karate and gave public presentations with her woman only group, to show feminism at work. In the underground magazine Oz, 1970, Germaine Greer, the well known feminist and writer, dug in deep:

“Militant women owe a great deal to the media that guy them. The average housewife is dulled and confused by her day-to-day diet of pulp-journalism and crap television. She does not catch the nuances of contempt that swill around the images of Abbey Rockefeller splitting a board with her head. Treading her way through clouds of clever-clever verbiage she retains the overwhelming impression that ‘something is happening here’ even if  ‘what it is ain’t exactly clear’. Most of her life she has served fashion without demur, and now the media have created the fashion of female liberation. At last the fucking media look as if they are hoist with their own petard.” Germaine Greer (1970) The slagheap erupts, London Oz, issue 26.

In fact, educated riot grrrls had taken the benchmarks of identity politics, a term often credited to Demita Frazier’s, Beverly Smith and Barbara Smith’s, founders of the Combahee River Collective. Many individual riot grrrls have been influenced by some of the great poets, writers, and theorists that CRC made possible: Alice Walker (who coined the term womanist), Audre Lourde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis. Smith launched a WOC-focused publishing company from literally around a kitchen table, calling it the Kitchen Table (1980). 

What now? Feminism is more intersectional; communities of much smaller groups with their own focus and concerns related to gender identification, sexuality, colour, for example. All the strands of alternative feminism come together for a mutual cause, such as anti-abortion, FGM, domestic violence against women, women’s right in countries around the world. This tallies with how the internet and new media public sphere has expanded the cultural and political realms – and informal discussion and debate. It’s not that you need riot grrrl in your life. You need to know the legacy of the she-punks and riot grrrl, so you can build on it, rather than start all over again. 

Ngaire Ruth 1993 – So what did riot grrrl ever do for us?