Racist Grrrl: the politics of race and anger in punk feminist movements

Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that originated in the 1990s in the Pacific Northweast of the United States, although some argue the genre truly started in the 1970s with bands like X-Ray Spex and The Slits. Often associated with third wave feminism, riot grrrl centers the political, social, and economic disenfranchisement faced by women. More importantly, riot grrrl was about female anger. It emerged in after the 1991 Anita Hill testimony, where Anita Hill, a Black woman, testified against African-American judge Clarence Thomas for sexual harassment before a Senate Judiciary Committee. The all-white, all-male committee relentlessly discredited Hill’s experience and dismissed her before ratifying Thomas to SCOTUS Justice. 

Punk being the soundtrack to the “girl revolution” was intentional. First, punk is aggro and it makes people listen. Second, it is nauseatingly male dominated. Anger is associated with masculinity in our cisheteronormative society. Anger is a rite of passage into manhood. Boys are castrated from the weakness of vulnerability and made into authoritative men who can lead revolutions, as if their god given right. While men are gelded from  “weaker” emotions, women are baptized in their waters. We are to be docile, discreet, and most of all, quiet. Anger is a sin and its expression is a death sentence. So what happens when women get angry? You get “we are Bikini Kill, and we want revolution grrrl style now!” in Bikini Kill’s “Double Dare Ya.” You get riot grrrl. The term riot grrrl came from Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman of Bratmobile, who coined the phrase “girl riot.” Jen Smith then created the term “grrrl” and later “Riot Grrrl” through “angry grrrl zines,” devised by Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill. Riot grrrl places anger at the center of girlhood by replacing the “i” with “rrr.” A girl is a growl. A girl is a war cry. A girl is a riot. The Riot Grrrl Manifesto by Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna encouraged female punk musicians and fans to take up more space in the male dominated punk and alternative scene. More importantly, it encouraged girls to make music, art, and media specifically catered to their needs. Theirs was a fight against “the bullshit Christian capitalist way of doing things,” and a fight for the creation of a non-hierarchical community that helped members “figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism, and heterosexism figures in our own lives.” Zines, homemade DIY publications, were instrumental in leading discussions about “taboo” women’s issues such as rape, incest, and addiction as well as mental health issues, feminist theory, and queer theory. 

The movement was met with backlash and moral panic, notably by men and women from both the scene and the mainstream media. Tabloids branded them as violent, as too radical, and painted the women as misandrists who needed to shut up and get laid. It also criticized riot grrrls’ appearances at concerts, specifically with how freely fans and musicians alike scrawled the words rape and slut on their bodies. Bikini Kill would also often pass the microphone to audience members at concerts so they could share their sexual abuse stories. Racism, another “taboo” topic, often appeared in zines. Yet, none of the revered figures of movement were Black or women of color. Why is it that the movement which was kickstarted by the abuse of a Black woman had so few Black representatives at its helm? 

Firstly, the absence of Black women from Riot Grrrl and from rock stems from deliberate revisionism by the music industry and media. Namely, white executives in the early 1900s categorized music made by artists of color as “race music” as a way to profit off communities of color while restricting what kind of music could be played on white radio stations. By 1950, “race music” turned into “rhythm and blues,” a genre that was almost designed to keep Black artists in a specific lane. It was a musical segregation of sorts which still persists to this day. White visionaries were allowed to branch out of mainstream genres to create newer subgenres. They were allowed to challenge the status quo while Black artists were relentlessly funneled into R&B, then later hip-hop. This explains why rock n’ roll’s patron saint is Elvis Presley and not Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Black gospel singer who started the genre and the use of distortion on electric guitar in the 1930s. It also explains why Tharpe was inducted into the  Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, 45 years after her death, while Elvis was mythicized while he was still alive. Finally, it explains why the godmother of girl punk is Patti Smith and not Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex. The revisionism of rock’s, and subsequently punk’s, history as a white genre makes people of color feel alien in the punk scene. They can’t identify with its whiteness. They can only relate to other core components of punk like anger, the rejection of mainstream society and its power structures, oppression, and queerness. 

Secondly, the bulk of punk’s discography is devoid of discussions about race from racialized people. As in, race, when it was occasionally discussed, was talked about by white musicians.  Black voices were silenced because discussions about race weren’t led by Black people. Ramdasha Bikceem founded the GUNK zine, one of the only Black female-owned zines, in 1990. In her fourth issue, she said that the anti-racism workshops, which were directed by white riot grrrls, weren’t effective due to these women’s lack of experience with racist behavior. In her words, “maybe it (the grrrl revolution) shouldn’t just be limited to white, middle-class, punk rock grrrls ‘cuz there’s no denyin’ that’s what it is.” Furthermore, the closeness of women in riot grrrl groups created emotional enmeshment where one woman’s experience was “felt” by all women. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it can subconsciously promote monolithic womanhood, such that as a monolith, all women express anger at the same things and in the same way. This is obviously not true. White riot grrrls inadvertently created a movement that was only relatable for them and there was no thought given to the inclusion of women of color. Subconsciously, it was like Black women were expected to be grateful that their white counterparts were fighting for them because they all shared the same sexual organs. Kathleen Hanna herself acknowledged that it was as if “white, middle class, straight people [feel] entitled to everything, even other people’s oppression.” For Black women, the stakes were higher than having the right to wear the clothing they wanted or being able to sing on stage like the boys. To Black women, body autonomy extends far beyond the constraining vestimentary biases of society. Black women cared about the fact that they are more likely to die during childbirth simply for being Black women. They cared about themselves and their community being the victims of police brutality. They cared about being one of the most economically disadvantaged people in the United States. Black queer womxn cared about how they are more likely to be disowned from their families, sexually abused, and murdered for the mere fact of being Black, female identifying, and queer. So by conjoining their struggles to those of Black womxn, white feminists inadvertently replicated the very systems of oppression they vowed to dismantle while silencing the voices they aimed to uplift. Thus, riot grrrl’s anti racist and intersectional image was less based on actual intersectionality, i.e. really knowing the deep implication of being a racialized person, but on appearing to acknowledge their privilege as white women by simply “including” women of color in their secret societies. Black women were turned into cultural capital and instrumentalized by white feminists to appear radical for embracing something as provocative to the establishment as blackness and queerness. However, white radicalism has been normalized historically. When we are taught about revolution and anti-establishment, we are taught about the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution etc. When POC try to overthrow oppressive systems, they are villainized. Think of every revolution against US-backed governments (or French, British, Russian, etc.) in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Think about BLM and how it was reduced to looting and futile violence by mainstream media and not an organized and peaceful attempt at dismantling a policing system bent on oppressing racial minorities and upholding white supremacy. White women, like white men, can get violent and radical and history will reward them (although whether history is right or wrong for rewarding them is another, more complicated and frankly unrelated issue). White women, in spite of being a marginalized group, are still white. In the words of Ramdasha Bikceem, “no matter how much they deviated from the norms of society their whiteness always shows through.” This partly explains how by the time 1997 rolled around, “girl power” was in fashion. Girl power, which was co-opted by the Spice Girls, became a manufactured commodity. It was on t-shirts and lunchboxes, TV and radio. Then came Avril Lavigne, P!nk, and Gwen Stefani in the late 90s and early 2000s. Would girl power have become mainstream had it been​ the product of Black female radicalism? Would it be fashionable to endorse Black anger, let alone Black female anger?

The reception of Black female anger brings us to our last point in this opinion piece. The reason why Black women were not riot grrls is because of misogynoir, relating specifically to the “angry Black woman” trope. This trope has been used against Black women since the 1800s in TV, media and literature. It caricatures Black women as impertinent, confrontational, abusive, domineering, aggressive, bitter, and shrewd. Black women’s anger is not only presented as perpetual, but also as unjustifiable and unwarranted. She is an unhinged animal. This stereotype hinders Black women’s ability to voice their very justified and very valid gripes with the Black community, society at large, and themselves. It makes it difficult for Black women to express their anger in a musical scene supposedly built on the indiscriminate expression of rage, for fear of being “too much.” We have every right to be angry. In a Vice article, Kayla Phillips writes “my anger as a Black woman fronting an aggressive, politically charged hardcore/metal band with DIY punk ethics is somehow too much for them. […] What is it about a Black girl doing the same shit white men do that makes them feel like it’s too much? How am I the only one being labeled too aggressive in a genre that is all about aggression?.” And she’s right. What about Black female rage is so imposing… and so wrong? Why is it sinful? The refusal of society, and of rock music, to acknowledge the validity of Black female rage has discouraged so many women of color from participating and enriching the scene. Maybe that fear stems from Black femininity which, because of racism and white supremacy, does not resemble the patriarchal image of (white) femininity. It is in our nature to fear what we do not know. That fear is expected from bigots and racists, but not by people who cling to ideals of acceptance and unapologetic self expression and identity. (Cis) White women can scream and riot and burn the world to the ground and it wouldn’t matter because they look white and they look female and they are digestible and marketable to mainstream audiences. Black womxn are none of these things. I can’t even say that Black women are masculinized because even that’s not true. We are at the extreme end of “otherness,” meaning the mainstream is unable to stomach us or to celebrate us in a way that isn’t tokenizing or dehumanizing. This is prevalent especially in Black communities too. 

Before ending this article, I want to acknowledge that I left out a lot of material, mostly because this article would be too long if I included every identity that race and womanhood intersect with. Riot grrrl and punk rock not only have race issues, but serious issues relating to transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and so on. For those who were not mentioned, know that you are heard and you are seen. With that being said, punk has made some progress in terms of inclusivity and diversity of both its artists and its audiences. The more I scour the Internet, the more I come across incredible bands that belong to other minority groups aside from being women. So, I’ve decided to promote riot grrrl/punk rock/alternative music made by people of color and queer people of color. If you are interested, please check out: the Linda Lindas, Bleed The Pigs, Upchuck, Pinkshift, the Nova Twins, Mannequin Pussy, Soul Glo, Alt Blk Era, Cinnamon Babe, Wu-Lu, Ho99o9, Ergo Bria, Beau Radleigh, Dishonest Escape, Black Ends, Atari Teenage Riot, Paleos, The Muslims, Meet Me @ The Altar, We Don’t Ride Llamas, Troi Irons, Yet To Bloom, Lemon Boy, The Color 8, Action/Adventure, KennyHoopla, PRINCESSBRI and The Tuts.  

Written by Emmanuelle Mphuthi