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I'm Really Going Off Of Watching John Waters Speak One Time And I Remember He Just Kind Of Talked And It Was Totally Interesting. I Wanted To Hear About His Life And How He Got Started And When Did He Think He Made It, Stupid Stuff Like That. And What His Relationship With The Mainstream Is Because He's So Far Out There, But Then He Became Part Of The Mainstream In This Weird Way. He Was Really Funny, Though. Yeah, I Have To Work On My Jokes.

-Kathleen Hanna

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I'm Really Going Off

Kathleen Hanna

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I'm Really Going Off Of Watching John Waters Speak One Time And I Remember He Just Kind Of Talked And It Was Totally Interesting. I Wanted To Hear About His Life And How He Got Started And When Did He Think He Made It, Stupid Stuff Like That. And What His Relationship With The Mainstream Is Because He's So Far Out There, But Then He Became Part Of The Mainstream In This Weird Way. He Was Really Funny, Though. Yeah, I Have To Work On My Jokes.

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My Advice For Someone Who Wants To Be Creative But Has A Chronic Illness Is To Think Of Something That You Can Do As Opposed To All The Things You Can't Do - And Do That. It's Just Like Gardening: What Can Grow In This Soil? There's Some Soil You Can Grow Roses In And Some Soil You Can Only Grow Cactuses In, So If You Can Only Grow Cactuses, Become The Best Cactus Grower In The Whole World. Taking Care Of Yourself Is The Most Important Thing. Find Something That Makes You Happy. Don't Get Down On Yourself That You Can't Run A 4k Or Dance All Night Long At A Fun Club. Give Yourself A Break.

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Black And White

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Internalized Sexism That Makes Us Feel Like We Can't Show Ourselves Not Being Perfect.

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Popularity Is Totally Overrated.

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I Get Emails Every Day From People Saying, "i Never Heard Your Music. I Don't Know Anything About You. I Just Happened To Watch This On Netflix. I Hope You're Feeling Better. More Power To You." It Just Shows You, I Don't Know, How Generous And Wonderful People Can Be.

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People Are Actually Having Conversations About "is This Sexist?"

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Obviously, We're Really Upset About The State Of The Election. It's Horrifying, As Everybody Knows, That We Could Have A Totally Fascist President.

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There Are People Who View Their Feminism In Different Ways. I Used To Beat Myself Up If I Didn't React To Things Like I Was Supposed To.

Jason Mraz, And The New James Blunt Song Is The Worst Thing That Has Ever Been Created On The Face Of The Earth.

When You're A Musician And You Go Out Onstage, And You're Someone Who Loves Attention, You Are Going To Become A Role Model To Some Extent.

My Mom And I Had Secret From My Dad That We Didn't Think We Were Stupid, That We Didn't Think We Needed Feminism To Be Explained To Us.

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I'm Not That Interested In Female Superheroes.

I'm Not Going To Sit Around And Be Peace And Love With Somebody's Boot On My Neck.

Sexism And Racism And Homophobia And Classism Are So Naturalized. All These Stereotypes Make People Think It's Just Normal That Straight White Men Are Getting All The Breaks.

What I've Heard From Younger Women And Women My Age Is That The Albums Changed Their Lives Or It Was The First Time They Had Heard Feminism That They Could Relate To. So That's Great.

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I Watch Videos On Youtube Of Bands That I've Heard Of That I Want To Check Out. And Sometimes I Don't Even Finish The Video. And That's Really Sad, Because Maybe I'd Like That Song. I Think That We Don't Give Stuff A Chance To Really Sink In.

I Saw A Video On Youtube Of A Girl Who Had Very Similar Reactions To Late-stage Lyme Disease As I Did. And I Thought It Was Crazy. And When I Saw Her Basically Have A Seizure On Camera That Looked Very Much Like My Seizure I Felt, "oh My God. That's Me." And So It Was Really Important To Me, And I Said To Sini, 'we Have To Find Some Way To Not Just Talk About Lyme Disease, But To Show It.

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Having A Good Time

So Many Women Have Experienced Horrific Forms Of Male Violence Throughout Their Lives, And Why Isn't There A Song About How You Get Depressed Because Of It?

We Support Hillary [clinton]. We're Saying That Strongly. "i'm With Her," I Don't Think That We Can Be Any Less Strident. She's The Best Person For The Job.

I Almost Wish We Would've Filmed A Whole Fake Tampon Commercial Around ["i'm With Her"].

Sometimes, Being A Feminist Artist, There Are Times Where I'm In A Position Where I Just Want To Feel Like I'm Saying All The Right Things Politically, Or I Feel Like I Have To Mention My Own Project Over Other People's Projects.

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I Felt It Was Really, Really Important, Not Just In The Vein Of Feminist Erasure Or Whatever But Also Just As An Artist That I Honored My Work.

I Know What A Good Question Would Be For An Actor. What's Your Least Favorite Thing That You've Ever Heard An Actor Say About Acting? Or About Being In A Movie?

Younger Feminists Actually Care About Stuff That Came Before Them, The Same Way That I Totally Cared About And Loved And Felt So Lucky To Have Access To The Feminism That Came Before Me. To Have Younger People Take What Me And My Friends Have Done, And To Say 'we Have Access To That, But We're Going To Put That Through Our Own Internet Generation Filter And We're Going To Make It Into Something That Speaks To Us And Is A Lot Smarter.'

There Are So Many Great Artists That Are Doing Interesting Things, That I Don't Want To Focus On Boring People.

I'm Not Sure Riot Grrrl Would Have Been As Big A Deal If The Internet Had Existed Back Then. Because There's So Much Stuff On The Internet. People Could Have Been Like, Oh, Whatever, I'm Going To Go Look At Pictures Of Barbie Vaginas, You Know What I Mean? There's So Many Different Things On The Internet, You Read One Article And Then You Read Something Linked Off That Article And You Go Down The Rabbit Hole.

There's Still A Lot Of Misogynist Pop Music Out There, And I Think That Hearing Something That's So Explicitly Feminist And So Angry - When We're Still Growing Up In A Culture Where Girls And Women Are Not Supposed To Be Angry - Is A Real Revelation For Young Women.

My Illness Has Changed Me - I've Always Thought "life Is Short And I Wanna Make As Much Of It As I Can," But I Really Don't Have Time To Mess Around. This Has Really Been A Wake-up Call In Terms Of What's Important, And I'm Working Hard To Figure That Out. I Need To Get Better At Not Doing Favors For People All The Time. It's Hard Because There's So Many People Who Have Helped Me Get To The Point Where I'm In A Band That People Wanna Come See, Or Where People Pay Money To See Me Lecture.

No One's Female And Male, We All Have So Many Different Traits. It's Just A Lie That These Certain Traits Are Male And These Certain Traits Are Female.

I Wouldn't Want To Play Miss Hannigan. I'm Not A Villain. She's Mean To Little Children! I Can't Do That. That Would Disrupt My Brand.

I Really Like To Talk About My Work In A Way That Is Complicated.

For Whatever Reason I Just Remembered Being Six Years Old And My Parents Leaving The House And Trusting Me To Be Alone. I Had An Older Sister, I Think She Was Supposed To Babysit Me But She Immediately Ran Across The Street To Her Friend's House.

It's Really Funny - When I'm Depressed Or I'm Having A Hard Time, I'll Write Really Fun Stuff. And Then When I'm Really Happy, I Write Really Depressing Stuff.

Find Something That Makes You Happy, Like Looking At Beautiful Pictures, Or, If You're Able, Listening To Beautiful Music, Or Sitting By The Window And Looking Outside - Small Things Like That Can Be Absolutely Huge.

Me And My Friends In High School Were The Only Girls Who Went To Hardcore Shows. It Was Three Of Us, And The Rest Of The Audience Was Male. We Didn't Really Think About It. We Weren't Thinking We Were Alienated Or Whatever, But Eventually, As There Started To Be Violence In The Scene We Were In During High School, We Started To Be Turned Off By The Violence.

Young Girls Getting Into Feminism.

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Part Of Being In A Band, Being A Painter, Or Starting A Nonprofit Is That You're Going To Make Horrible Mistakes And Look Like A Total Idiot, But You're Never Going To Create That Thing That Really Connects With People If You Don't Fail Over And Over And Over Again.

I Know I Love Sexy Surf Guitars, I Know I Love Loud Snare. I Love Really Simple Repeating Bass Lines, And I Love Weird Mad Scientist Keyboard Sounds.

I Wanted To Say To Myself As Much As Anyone Else That We Made Art.

I Talked A Lot Early On In My Career About Intersectionality And How Racism And Classism And Sexism And Homophobia And Capitalism Are All Connected With Each Other, And They're These Crazy Systems That Are Feeding On Each Other And Are Also Damaging. I Can't Even Go Into The Whole Spectrum Of It. But I Feel Like Kids Today Are So Much More Savvy About That Conversation. And I'm So Thrilled When I Get To Meet Younger People Who Are Doing That So Much Better Than I Did.

I've Always Been Like, "look, You're Going To Die And It's Not Going To Matter After You Die That You Got Out Onstage And Bombed."

What Usually Happens With Me Is That I Start With One Idea In Mind And Then Something Else Happens.

Well, Part Of The Thing Is, Like, What's The Difference Between Censorship And Social Responsibility? I Sometimes Find That The Whole Censorship Argument Is Used As A Way For People To Avoid The Fact That They're Like.

It Feels Amazing And Beautiful That Music Can Have Such An Importance On The Way That People Form Social Groups. Music Can Change People. People Can Change The World.

Everybody Wasn't Always Wasted. Why Is Punk Rock About Getting Wasted? Isn't It Punk Rock To Be Sober And Change The World? I Thought It Was About Challenging Capitalism? How Are You Going To Challenge Capitalism If You're Wasted?

Every Band I've Been In, It's Just Become My Total Life. I Feel Like A Child Star - I've Missed Out On So Much.

I Was Lucky Enough To Go To College For Four Years. At What Was Supposedly A Hippie School With No Tests And No Grades, Blah Blah Blah, I Wasn't Learning That. I Was Taking Photography Classes. That Stuff Just Wasn't Talked About. It Was Like, "does This Picture Have The Right About Of Grey In It?" It Wasn't Even An Art School. It Was A State-run School.

I Do Have Personal Relationships With A Lot Of "fans," In Quotations. I Answer All My Mail, I Get Emails From Fans, And I Try To Answer Them All. That's Important To Me, But Occasionally There's The Thing Where People Basically Ask Me To Write Book Reports For Them, And I Don't Have That Kind Of Time. I Feel Like There's A Certain Sexism Involved, Like Because I'm A Woman I'm Supposed To Constantly Be Like Giving To Everybody.

I Feel So Lucky That I Met The Love Of My Life. You Know Somebody's In It To Win It When...you're Having A Seizure And They're Holding You.

Love Of My Life

I Don't Want To Waste The Precious Moments I Have, And I've Felt That Way Since I Was 17. I Have To Take Risks Because Why Else Would You Be Alive? Put Your Pirate Patch On And Go On An Adventure Because You Only Have One Life To Live.

Just Because I'm A Woman Doesn't Mean I'm The Same As Every Other Female Singer.

It's Unexpected For Women's Issues To Be Brought Up In Places Other Than Women's Centers On College Campuses Or Crisis Places.

I Know That's Really Horrible, But That's How I Do It In My Head. I'm Going To Die. It Doesn't Matter. I Don't Matter. I'm A Grain Of Sand. As A Grain Of Sand, I May As Well Go Out And Relate To People And Enjoy My Short Time On This Planet That I Have. Who Knows What's Coming Next?

I Stood In The Bay Window At Our House And I Sang Away In A Manger. It Was My First Time On Stage, But There Was Nobody Watching. I Just Remember It Was So Natural And It Was Such A Secret - Like Masturbating. I Felt Like I Had To Wait Until Everybody Was Gone. So I Guess Six Years Old Would Be My Most Important Age, 'cause In That Moment, I Just Knew What I Wanted To Do.

It's Really Cool That Miley Cyrus Said She's The Biggest Feminist Ever. I Was Like, 'that's The Sound Of 200,000 Eight-year-olds Googling The Word "feminist!

I Really Love That I'm Giving Myself The Opportunity Finally To Not Have The Pressure Of Every Single Song You Do Having To Be "political" Or Whatever. I'm Just Making What I Wanna Make.

I Don't Appreciate It When Women - Or Men - Bandy About These Stupid Stereotypes About Feminism That Are Age-old, And That Are Meant To Keep People Turned Off From It. It's Like, "all You Have To Do Is Wikipedia Feminism To Know That It's Not About Man-hating - So Shut Up." That Makes Me Annoyed.

Certain People Are Like 'oh, Here Come The Feminazis!' You End Up Acting 10 Times Nicer Than You Even Need To Be, To Be The Opposite Of The Stereotype Like 'you're The Man Haters!' We're Always Bending Over Backwards Being Extra Nice. And I Don't Know If Being Nice Is My Legacy.

I Think My Biggest Fear Is Dying. Although Sometimes My Biggest Fear Is Not Dying. But Yeah, I Think Health Stuff For Me Is More What I'm Afraid Of.

Every Band I've Been In, It's Just Become My Total Life. I Feel Like A Child Star - I've Missed Out On So Much. I Never Got To Play Grand Theft Auto And Get Stoned Every Day. I Figure At 45 I Should Probably Start Doing That.

I Kind Of Decided That Doing Music Is Enough Because I'm Already Running A Couple Small Businesses. I'm A Part Of Bikini Kill Records, Le Tigre Records, And Digitally Ruined Records. In Dealing With My Health And Everything, My Ability To Do That? I Wouldn't Be Good At It.

Later As Things Progressed And I Saw The Direct Correlation Between Being Able To Keep Making Records And Having People Know About The Music, I Became More Interested In Using Popular Media As A Way To Get The Word Out.

So Many Women Have Experienced Horrific Forms Of Male Violence Throughout Their Lives, And Why Isn't There A Song About How You Get Depressed Because Of It? And You Don't Know What To Do, And You Don't Know How To Talk To Your Friends And How Weird It Is To Be A Feminist In That Situation, Where There's Sort Of The Expectation That You're Super-strong Superwoman But You're Just, Like, Eating Pizza In Your House Avoiding Talking About It.

I Think Music Can Definitely Be Art; I Also Think Music Can Be Crap And Not Be Art.

Just Because You're Wearing A Goofy Hat Doesn't Make It Performance Art.

I Feel Like There's This Weird Thing That As A Feminist Band You Get Put In This Role As Ambassadors.

Every Day It Gets Worse And Worse And Worse. We Just Want To Get Everyone To Vote And Be A Part Of The Noise. I Can't Do Phone Banks Because I Have To Save My Voice For Stage, So The Least I Can Do Is A Song.

Taking Care Of Yourself Is The Most Important Thing.

Take Care Of Yourself

It Was One Of The First Things I Did On My Own; I Worked At Mcdonald's, Raised The Money And Did It. I'm Really, Really Passionate About Pro-choice, Because I Wouldn't Be Here Talking To You Right Now If I'd Had A Kid At 15.

I Like Loud Snare, And I Like Really Treble-y Guitars, And That's Just Never Going To Change.

My Mom Wasn't, Like, She Was Reading All These Historical Romance Novels The Majority Of The Time. She Read A Feminist Book And Then My Dad Would Sit Down And Explain It To Her Like She Was An Idiot.

You Guys Are Seriously Missing Out Unless You All Start Listening To Girls.

I Won't Stop Talking. I Am A Girl You Have No Control Over. There Is Not A Gag Big Enough To Handle This Mouth.

I Wanted To Make Something That I Wanted To Hear That I Wasn't Hearing.

My Vision Of Punk Rock Was These Dudes Who Were Spitting On The Audience And Moshing. That's Why I Kind Of Left That Scene. Then I See All These People Around My Same Age Or Between 17 And 25 That Were Making Music Themselves In Their Own Town. They Weren't Just Singing, But Creating. I See Them Putting Out This Music Where There Are Tons Of Women Involved In The Scene And Involved In The Bands.

Think Of Something That You Can Do As Opposed To All The Things You Can't Do - And Do That.

I Think That The Internet Is Really Cool Because A Lot Of Young Feminists Don't Feel Like They Have To Reinvent The Wheel.

It's So Important For People In Political Groups To Learn The Difference Between Productive Criticism And Not. When It's About Something You Can Change, It's Productive. But If It's Just Like "you Are An Evil Person", You Can't Change That. There's No Way Around That.

Art Revolves Around Creating Something That Isn't There.

Creating Something

The Idea That Musicians/artists Have A Responsibility To Be Community Leaders Or "role Models" Is Problematic To Me Because I Really Believe That Some Of The Most Exciting Art Is Not Community-minded At Least In Any Obvious Or Direct Way, Which Is Not To Say That It Is Not Ethical Or Consciousness-changing.

People Can Be In A Prison Of Their Own Mind. [there Are] People Who Don't Have Their Hearts Open To Other People's Ideas, And Can't Listen To Other People's Ideas Without Feeling Like They're Being Slapped In The Face. Those People Are More In A Prison.

I Made The Decision That My Contribution Needed To Be More Musical Than Political. My Music Was Enough, Politically. Art Matters. Art Was Enough. My Music Was Enough To Say What I Had To Say.

Most Of My Records Are Never Going To Be Commercial Successes, And I Don't Expect That. It's Just All A Learning Process To Me. If Something Appears As A Failure, Fine. If There's Success, Fine. I Like The Record, And My Friends Like The Record, And That's Kind Of All I Can Really Care About.

I Can't Constantly Be Trying To Write The Unwritten Song, The Song That The 15-year-old Girl Needs. I Need To Write The Song That I Need.

If You Really Hate Me, You Should At Least Have The Courtesy To Take Out A Piece Of Paper And Write It Down And Mail It To Me. If You're A Worthy Nemesis, I Want To See Your Handwriting. I Want To See Your Name And Your Address, And If You Don't Have The Guts To Give Me Those, Then You're Not A Worthy Nemesis.

I'm A Very Binary Person In A Bad Way Where It's Like Everything Is Either Totally Great Or Totally Awful.

The Cool Thing About The Internet Is That It's Allowing Women More Access To Their Own History.

I Don't Consider Myself A Divining Rod Whom God Is Speaking Through Or Any Kind Of Crap Like That.

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Samuel Rutherford

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