Kathleen Hanna quotes:

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  • I'm really annoyed by the wave of country music that's just a list of stuff. It almost sounds like L.A. people writing country music, because it's just a list of stuff: 'My pickup truck and my cowboy boots and my Levi's jeans and my girlfriend with the short shorts.' It's so boring!

  • In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonald's to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15.

  • I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.

  • But see, my idea on the whole thing is, hey, it's not the responsibility of marginalized, oppressed people to educate everyone. I personally wouldn't put myself in that position and go out there and do my schtick in front of the Red Hot Chili Peppers fan guys... because, you know...

  • Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes.

  • I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously.

  • In terms of men being feminist allies, it's just important to speak from your own place. I'd love to hear men singing about masculinity and the damage it does to them.

  • I have late-stage Lyme disease. I was misdiagnosed for many, many years and told I had lupus, MS, Crohn's disease, even degenerative arthritis. And finally in 2010, I got the correct diagnosis, because on the last Le Tigre tour, I was having several seizures a day and at times not being able to brush my own teeth.

  • 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.

  • Not to rag on myself, but when people say, 'What does it feel like to be an icon?' I'm like, 'My dog does not think I'm an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.' I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don't think about it.

  • When I watch myself on camera, in any capacity - being interviewed, performing, 20 years ago or yesterday - there's a part of me that really doesn't grasp that it's me.

  • 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.

  • Women didn't want to be on the stage with other women because they didn't want their bodies to be compared. They didn't want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.

  • It's unexpected for women's issues to be brought up in places other than women's centers on college campuses or crisis places.

  • Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. And the cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history. Part of the problem before the Internet was that we didn't know which books to read. Someone had to tell you.

  • 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 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.

  • There's just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world.

  • People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer.

  • If I can't sing them myself, there's nothing better than writing songs for other people and watching them be performed. It's kind of more thrilling than doing it yourself.

  • I think open adoption is a great idea, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you."

  • Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.

  • You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything: You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.

  • Find something you really love doing and mix it with something you really care about. That's why I've had such longevity as an artist. I really, really care about ending violence against women, and I really, really love playing music. It's super enjoyable!

  • I'm a very binary person in a bad way where it's like everything is either totally great or totally awful.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I always thought that putting tons of reverb on my voice was kind of the equivalent of airbrushing. And I wanted other girls and women to hear a real female voice that wasn't completely manipulated.

  • I think music can definitely be art; I also think music can be crap and not be art.

  • I have chronic - well, I like to call it late-stage Lyme disease and not chronic, because I like to think someday I'll be all the way cured. It took me a really long time to get diagnosed, and I was misdiagnosed for a long, long time. I was very ill during the end of Le Tigre, which was kind of why that ended, amongst other things.

  • I'm more interested in a feminism that ends discrimination for all people. It's not just about a woman becoming the CEO of a company or something. It's connected to racism and classism and gender issues that go beyond the binary.

  • Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

  • I'm not a goddess, for crying out loud. I'm a regular person who took feminism - which I have a deep connection to - and mixed it with music, which I really love to do.

  • I would much rather be the obnoxious feminist girl than be complicit in my own dehumanization.

  • I hate the attitude of, 'oh we already have a Lydia Lunch, so we do we need a Bikini Kill.' Well, there's like 2 hundered million all-male bands writting 'baby baby I love you, let me drag you around on my ankle.' Is that enough already? Duh!

  • 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...

  • I think that's such an important message, especially for younger women, to know, 'I don't have to come out of the womb painting like Frida Kahlo. My very first thing that I make isn't going to be an around-the-world sensation.' You have to paint a hundred really ugly, barfy, diarrhea paintings before you come up with that one where you start to really get into your groove.

  • You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.

  • If I were a supervillain, I would end capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia... but I guess that's a little too obvious and not villain-y enough. Because that's actually being a superhero. I would break down poverty with my machete; I would end world hunger.

  • Johnny Rotten isn't punk. Maybe that's punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is.

  • 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 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.

  • 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!

  • You guys are seriously missing out unless you all start listening to girls.

  • I think one things that's really important in the boy community or whatever, or the boy things, is like, to realize that oppression is a two-way street. You know what I mean? That it's like, white men are really missing out - I don't wanna say white men are oppressed but...

  • Internalized sexism that makes us feel like we can't show ourselves not being perfect.

  • 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.

  • I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

  • Just because you're wearing a goofy hat doesn't make it performance art.

  • It takes your mind off things when there's a cat in your lip and he's purring while you're petting him.

  • 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.

  • A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it's really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.

  • 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.

  • 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 like loud snare, and I like really treble-y guitars, and that's just never going to change.

  • I don't like being in the service industry and having to deal with people yelling at me all the time. McDonald's was the hardest job I ever had - so I have a lot of respect for people who work in the fast food industry. Because it's a hard job.

  • To make riot grrrl move into the future in a new way with a bunch of new names and a bunch of new energy, younger people have to learn about it and apply it to their own lives and own modern conversation. And they are.

  • 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...

  • I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don't have any talent, 'Well, neither do I.' I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers.

  • Popularity is totally overrated.

  • I don't want to be a historical action figure or treated like I'm dead. Like one of those people where they go, 'Oh, isn't she dead?' And then I walk up, and they're like, 'Whoa.' I can't really complain... because I've made myself into a historical action figure. I was like, 'Yeah, come on in!'

  • I'm just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don't know what's going to happen, and I'm letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.

  • I was making stickers for guys' bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn't even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.

  • Singing is my life, and I have to do it, or I'm going to go totally bananas.

  • I feel so lucky that I met the love of my life. You know somebody's in it to win it when they're changing your IV bag or you're having a seizure and they're holding you. And helping you to the bathroom. You know that they love you.

  • There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don't want to focus on boring people.

  • I go to lectures and girls are finding out about Bikini Kill or Le Tigre for the first time and are like,' This is my jam!' It still feels fresh to them.

  • I especially don't want men coming up to me and asking if sexism still exists. It's like, I'm seriously gonna barf a McDonald's salad on the next person to do that.

  • I was in a band in the '90s called Bikini Kill, and we were so freaked out about documentation then, and there was the whole thing, not just about the male gaze, but that people were going to misrepresent you... a kind fear of the mainstream that a lot of us had.

  • I think as a culture, we don't like conflict or looking at icky stuff - especially in our downtime.

  • I'm totally into Taylor Swift. I think she has super-clever lyrics, and I love that she writes her own music. Some of the themes she writes about are stuff I wish was there for me when I was in high school, and I'm so happy she really cares about her female fans. She's not catering to a male audience and is writing music for other girls.

  • I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing.

  • What happens tomorrow is going to happen tomorrow.

  • While everyone's experience of oppression is different and complicated and often overlapping, I really believe that if you have privilege, you need to learn as much as you can about the world beyond yourself.

  • 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. But I don't do that anymore. I just want to be off the cuff and honest.

  • You feel like people are looking at you like, 'I wanted the old Kathleen. Where's the old Kathleen?' I felt that way in the beginning of Le Tigre. I felt people were like, 'You're not angry enough anymore.' People still ask me that. 'Are you still angry?' I'm like, 'About what? About that question? Yes.'

  • As I've gotten older, I've realized that things are a lot more permeable. It's not so black and white: not every journalist is a jerk.

  • Clearly, gay marriage is on the top of the agenda right now. It's pretty amazing, considering where stuff was at when I was in high-school, when there were no LGBT Gay-Straight Alliances or any of that stuff. Am I a huge Lady Gaga fan? No, but I think some of the stuff she does that helps LGBT kids is amazing. And it's great that that's mainstream. It's fantastic that there's a pop star who's willing to put herself out in that way.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Every time I get sexually harassed, I'm supposed to turn around and yell at the person, but there are safety issues. Sometimes the best thing you can do it just walk right past that person and have a great day. But sometimes you feel like you really need to say something.

  • Feminism is something you do. It's a verb. It's what you are. It's an activity; it's something you're actively engaged in.

  • 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.

  • Gay marriage! That's a huge change and a huge win-win for feminism.

  • I almost wish we would've filmed a whole fake tampon commercial around ["I'm With Her"].

  • I always knew she was being funny, but when I tell my therapist that my mom played the trust game with me and let me fall on the ground, my therapist does not find that funny. She's like, "That's the reason for everything! That's why you have such a hard time with trust!" And I'm like, "I don't really have a hard time with trust. I thought it was funny."

  • I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don't have any talent, well, neither do I. I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything- You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.

  • I am not Lyme disease, that's not who I am, I'm still a feminist artist, but this is a part of my story too, and I'm not going to keep it out to look cooler.

  • I am possibly thinking about doing an Internet show in the future that will highlight political organizations that I seek out to let people know about them, volunteer opportunities, and donation opportunities.

  • I am such a bossy producer and such a control freak that there's a part of me that really longs to be bossed around.

  • I belive power can be used for good, I don't think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that's why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.

  • I didn't even know what the word lesbian meant until I was called one... and then I had to look it up in the dictionary.

  • I didn't go to high school, I didn't go to college, I didn't have women's studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it's still growing.

  • 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 don't consider myself a divining rod whom God is speaking through or any kind of crap like that.

  • I don't like every other musician's work. The same way that filmmakers don't like every other filmmakers' work. Just because I'm a feminist doesn't mean I'm gonna say that I like every other woman's work, or that I appreciate another statement that another woman publicly made.

  • I don't need to convince men that feminism is important, that just isn't a goal of mine. I can't even have that conversation of whether or not it's important, because if someone asks me that... I don't want to have a conversation with them until they grow up.

  • I don't think I've ever had a woman yell that at me, but women have yelled mean things at me as well.

  • I feel like there's this weird thing that as a feminist band you get put in this role as ambassadors.

  • I feel like what I'm best at is being a musician and a performer. I want to use that to help people who are good at starting nonprofits.

  • I felt like going out on the road and mixing it with music - which is something young people are always really interested in - would be a good way to proselytize. It was like feminist evangelism.

  • 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

  • I got hit up for a tampon commercial and so I asked [JD and Jo] if they had anything. Jo sent that over and I was like, "I love this track. Oh my god. It's so upbeat. It's so positive. It would be so great for a tampon commercial." That commercial never came through, so then I just had it. I was like, "That would be great for a Hillary [Clinton] song." I think it's so funny that it could be a tampon commercial.

  • I have no clue. I just know I would want to play the least amount of shows that the most people would be able to come to.

  • I just write what I want to write.

  • 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.

  • 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 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?

  • 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.

  • I need to see my friends or I'm gonna go crazy. I'm not gonna stay home and work.

  • I never thought that someone would be teaching one of my fanzines. I never thought I'd be off to lecture at a college. It's still shocking to me.

  • I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it's all you talk about.

  • I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.

  • I really like to talk about my work in a way that is complicated.

  • 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 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.

  • I search the phrase "Kellyanne Conway fails," and I'm just watching that Scottie [Nell Hughes] woman smirk all the time.

  • 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.

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