Punk isn’t always pretty. In most cases it’s not, and that’s the point. Punk is a counterculture in the form of what has been deemed “improper.” Punk is a step outside of the rules and hierarchy of society. Trying to give definition to a social movement about rejection is somewhat impossible.
Though, by the late ’80s, punk was beginning the process of redefinition. The genre that had been about rebellion and rejection of the status quo was led by men, and the women in the scene were taking notice that the same societal issues faced by women plagued punk spaces just as much.
A movement fronted by women for women with a goal of female empowerment was quickly becoming an inevitability, and Olympia, Washington is where the driving force behind the movement, known as riot grrrl, began.
For Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, a leading pioneer in the riot grrrl movement, the idea to form a punk rock band started after she began volunteering with a rape relief and domestic violence center in Olympia. According to the Guardian, Hanna credits the experience with opening her eyes to the fact that her experiences as a woman were not one-off. The anger that she, and many other women, felt as a result of their harassment and belittling at the hands of men is what propelled her forward in her feminist ideals. And in 1990, Bikini Kill was born with Hanna on vocals.
Alongside the music was a burgeoning zine community. (The movement’s namesake comes from a zine titled “Riot Grrrl.”) The first of these feminist punk zines started appearing throughout the punk scene in 1990 and 1991, with the start of Washington’s “Bikini Kill” and New Jersey’s “Gunk.” The term “girl power” appeared for the first time in the second edition of “Bikini Kill,” — several years before the Spice Girls made it their trademark slogan. “Gunk” became an influential zine for punk skaters, embracing the women and femmes that enjoyed the intersection of punk rock and skateboarding.
The two zines are linked by the fact that Bikini Kill’s drummer, Tobi Vail, became pen pals with Ramdasha Bikceem, the powerhouse behind punk skating zine “Gunk” and the band of the same name. The two sent each other zines back and forth from Washington to New Jersey, sparking the inspiration for Bikceem to start “Gunk” at 15 years old. Bikceem went on to reach out to “Thrasher” magazine for “Gunk,” complaining in a published letter to the magazine that there wasn’t enough female skaters represented in their magazine, and that they were going to make their own magazine for all of the girls reading.
Though the riot grrrl movement was spurred from a want for female liberation and safety in punk spaces, it didn’t necessarily include everyone. In the years since the rise of riot grrrl, there have been many complaints leveled against the movement regarding inclusivity. And these complaints aren’t without warrant; it’s true, most of the initial riot grrrl movement consisted of middle-class white women.
In “Don’t Need You,” a 2005 documentary about the riot grrrl scene, Bikceem expressed their concern with the movement in terms of race. They were disappointed to see that most of the anti-racist workshops hosted within the riot grrrl movement were being led by white people that weren’t open to criticism.
In a 2022 article titled “Racist Grrrl: The Politics of Race and Anger in Punk Feminism Movements,” writer Emmanuelle Mphuthi argues that part of the reason for the lack of racial diversity in riot grrrl spaces was due to the way that the music industry would section off Black musicians into categories like R&B, where white musicians creating the same music would be heralded as creating new genres.
According to Mphuthi, a widely known example of this would be Elvis Presley’s title as “King of Rock ‘N’ Roll” despite Black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe adding distorted guitars to her music years before Presley. Mphuthi emphasizes that this may be a contributing reason as to why the riot grrrl movement contains so little racial diversity.
The music within the umbrella term of riot grrrl ranges wildly in terms of sound. Bands like Bikini Kill and Lunachicks lean into what could be considered classic punk rock, sounding similar to bands like Dead Kennedys or Bad Brains with similar satirical messaging in the lyrics. However, groups like Babes in Toyland and L7 incorporate wailing guitars and grungy bass with raspy vocals and poetic lyrics commonly attributed to grunge rock of the ’90s. Bratmobile remain an outlier within the genre with their literal lyrics and exploding, experimental, beach-rock punk.
It’s important to note that it’s hard to say which bands are part of the riot grrrl movement and which bands from this time period are just all-women punk rock bands. The idea that every all-women or female-fronted band is a riot grrrl band is an ongoing debate that still permeates music circles today.
Amyl and the Sniffers may be a female-fronted punk band with songs about the injustices endured by women, but their purpose isn’t to just stand for female empowerment. Frontwoman Amy Taylor frequently takes time during shows to condemn anti-trans legislation and the destruction of Palestine. Are they a riot grrrl band? According to KBVR, the answer is a simple yes, but to boil every female-fronted band down to one distinctive genre purely because of their gender is a slippery slope.
Bands like Potty Mouth are hesitant to identify with the riot grrrl label. In 2014, the group sat down with My Spilt Milk to express their discomfort with being considered purely a riot grrrl band. While the band members are involved in more political projects outside of Potty Mouth, they didn’t see why four women in a band together immediately put their music within a genre that it didn’t fall into, since their lyrics weren’t political.
While the history of the underground feminist punk movement is clear, the future of riot grrrl is unknown. From issues with artists self-identifying with the label to the movement’s problematic racial history, it seems that the movement has slowed. Though, the plea of “girls to the front” isn’t going anywhere. Bands like Slutever, Lambrini Girls, and Mommy Long Legs are harkening in their own breed of femme punk rock rage.
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