Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

by Kathleen Hanna

To keep writing and making things as a way for us to share our interests with each other rather than evaporate ourselves.

I am still so grateful that a guy we’d never met put his time and energy into what most people considered a shitty opening band. It made me see myself as worthy in the underground scene. It also undid a lot of shit other men doled out to me on that tour.

It wasn’t just the dude masturbating or the guys calling me a bitch, it was the fact that these fuckers stole my ability to be friendly and then screamed at me for not being friendly.

It evoked the complicated history of the bikini swimsuit, which was named after Bikini Atoll, the islands where the US government tested twenty-three nuclear bombs, resulting in racist genocide. The military taped a picture of Rita Hayworth to the side of one of the bombs, an act against Hayworth’s will that left her known as a “bombshell.” The title was also a sly reference to one of Tobi’s favorite bands, Gang of Four, who had a song with the lyrics “See the girl on the TV, dressed in a bikini, / She doesn’t think so, but she’s dressed for the H-bomb.”

We were reading Carol Gilligan’s book about how at age eleven some girls experience a “moment of resistance” in which they are brave and confident, but by the time they’re sixteen they’re suddenly saying “I don’t know” all the time.

“Draw Hearts and Stars on your hands,” it read, “and if you see a girl with hearts or stars go ask her if she got a postcard too, strike up a conversation.”

“Girls to the front”

I realized that day that many BIPOC women were as disappointed in white punk feminists as I’d been by white male punks.

I was soaking up everything they said to me like their words were milk and I was a delicious tres leches cake.

Not one of them had a sexual harassment policy ready for us when we arrived. To show us how edgy Interscope was, Jimmy Iovine showed us a Marilyn Manson video that hadn’t come out yet. “You guys could do an edgy video like that!” he said. “Could I hang you from a meat hook?” I asked.

“I’m just on autopilot,” I said. And with the most indescribably sincere expression, she replied, “You don’t understand, I don’t have an autopilot.”

Something about what Tobi said short-circuited my brain. I flipped back and forth between being present and being on autopilot all the time and assumed everyone else did too, but Tobi didn’t—which meant maybe I wasn’t destined to keep doing it either.

I was in control of the means of production with no interference, and it felt so fucking powerful.

I trusted they would show me what they wanted to be in time, and they always did.

I felt more like a Bic lighter that had washed up on a beach than an actual person.

I remembered how good it felt to have the wind in my hair, even though I was running for my life.

Instead of being proud of all the work I’d put in and buying myself a piece of cheesecake with a candle in it, I’d celebrate by damaging the most important thing in my life, my voice. I didn’t know how to celebrate, but I sure knew how to sabotage myself.

I wasn’t internalizing the hatred in the way I used to or coming home from tour full of unresolved crisis. I didn’t want to face the things that kept me moving like a shark and stopped me from enjoying the magical moments life was handing me. But it was time to stop trying to be everyone else’s rebel girl and start being a friend to myself.

Having not played Le Tigre songs live in fifteen years and suddenly being onstage in front of thousands of people definitely felt like diving into freezing-cold water. But then I looked down and saw Tammy Rae’s teenager taking pictures with the Linda Lindas and Julius jumping up and down with excitement, and right next to him was my mom, dancing to our intro music.

Did I smoke a joint after the show? Yeah. Did I smoke a couple cigarettes? Yeah. But when I woke up the next morning with a tight chest, I knew I was going to stop sabotaging myself. I made a list of positive ways I could celebrate my next achievement, because I knew there would be many more, and I wanted to feel every single hug my son or my bandmates or my friends gave me. And I wanted to keep flying to impossible places every time I sang.