Rebel Girl Quotes

“I thought those were pretty big words coming from a guy who covered AC/DC songs.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I wasn’t going to let him step on the gas pedal of my empathy till he drove me off a cliff.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“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.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Charlotte Caffey played lead guitar like it was a totally normal thing for a girl to do, which made it a totally normal thing for a girl to do. It didn’t seem shocking or revolutionary to me—they were just a fucking great band.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I realized that sexism was telling me to stay home and not par pate in the larger world. "Dance to records by yourself in your room would say. "Stay at home and read alone!" it would yell. I decided I gonna do everything in my power to make Bikini Kill shows a brief prieve from sexism, even if it was imperfect and fleeting.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I realized that night that there was something really powerful about counseling women at places where they already hung out instead of at a crisis center.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“If you’re someone who hasn’t been heard your whole life, it makes sense that when you’re newly radicalized you could be overzealous and tear people down needlessly. It also makes sense that if you don’t process your own traumas, you may dump them onto others.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I opened my mouth and said, “Because no one has listened to me my whole life and I really want to be heard.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Is a woman a building you enter? Is a woman a wall you can paint your name on?”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“A few months after we’d started Bikini Kill, Kurt asked Tobi to be the drummer for Nirvana, and Tobi said no because she was convinced our band was going to change the landscape for women in music. I’m saying that again, for the people in the back: Tobi Vail could have been the drummer for Nirvana, but she chose to be in a feminist band instead.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I was finally ready to mourn the girl who was excited to show everyone our new zine, the girl who was amped to go on tour and move to DC. She was gone and I was exhausted trying to pretend she wasn't. But now some new person was in her place, and maybe letting her exist would let me feel some of the joy I used to feel.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“But if you ever wonder why so many well-off kids were in nineties punk bands, that's why. They could afford to not get paid. They could also afford to look generous by donating their services more than we could.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Was it really so bad that a working-class guy who couldn't afford to play five-dollar shows for the rest of his life had signed to a major label? Was it really so bad that his band wanted to reach an audience that didn't have access to labels like K or Dischord? The indie-vs.-major labels thing started to seem like a silly hill to die on.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I yelled "Revolution girl style now!" before "Double Dare Ya" like I'd been doing live and reassured myself that the session was meant to take a snapshot of our songs, not to make them sound perfect. Maybe being sloppy would inspire other girls to start bands.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I thought it was interesting, but selfishly I just wanted to relive my own childhood and win this time.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Poetic lyrics were important, but it felt like women sometimes hid behind poetry as a way to say something without actually saying it. I was on a mission to just fucking say it.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“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.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I'd always dismissed "transcendence" as an experience that divorced music from activism, but I walked away from that show a changed woman. I didn't have to choose between being a socially conscious person and being a singer who could connect with magic onstage.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Many of the domestic violence survivors had to work jobs an hour away from where they lived to save money to buy generators. That way they could move into cabins in the middle of the woods and not have any bills so their exes couldn't find them. Before living off the grid was an environmentally friendly, small-footprint thing or something that right-wing Armageddon preppers did, battered women were already doing it. For them, the apocalypse was every day.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Up till then, I'd dated people by default, because I either needed help paying rent or was afraid of what would happen if I rejected them-but Luke was different. I chose him. I ended up going home with him after a party a few nights Inter and woke up so deeply in love that there aren't enough poems or songs or words to ever explain it.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I cannot explain to you how utterly crazy these comments by my
"punk family" made me feel. I had just seen the most important band in the world. All I wanted to do was to get their information so I could invite them to play at Reko Muse, All I wanted was to be near them. They were everything. I'd seen God and she was three women playing songs in a shack in the middle of nowhere.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“The first time Amy Carter played live I felt like I was gonna puke all over the microphone. But by our third song, the feeling I had being Annie in grade school and the feeling I had opening for Acker morphed into one thing. We performed a couple of times at Reko Muse and then the band fizzled out when senior year started, which was fine. I knew who I was now. I was a singer in a band.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Before I found out about Olympia's punk scene, I thought that everyone making music was untouchable and magical. But when I saw Tobi from the Go Team at the Smithfield Café, I realized, She's in the Go Team and she goes to the same coffee shop I do. If she could be in a band, maybe I can too.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“She was the only woman on the whole record and hearing her gave me the first thought that someday I could be in a band.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I don’t feel much like a “rebel girl”—most of the time I feel more like a dirty napkin. But Dirty Napkin is a terrible title for a book. It’s also not who I am.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“My breasts to tempt inside my bra My face is painted like a movie star I’ve studied my flaws in your reflection And put them to rights with savage correction”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“This was the early seventies, when a man going to therapy was about as likely as a woman going to the moon, so he just got drunk a lot, and all his unresolved traumas filled up our house like toxic gas.”
― Kathleen Hanna, REBEL GIRL: Mi vida como una feminista punk

“If not for male violence, would I have ever written anything at all?”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“Running allowed me to learn about so many cities and towns I never would’ve known about otherwise.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

“I scribbled endless shit above his bed with the Sharpie from my back pocket: “Kurt is the keeper of the kennel . . . Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.”
― Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk