User:Jwillowrose/sandbox

The word ‘girl” was meant to indicate a time when girls are least influenced by societal pressures and therefore have the strongest self-esteem – childhood. The anger behind the movement was noted by the alternate spelling of the word as “grrrl”, which sounds like a growl.[1]

They partook in a new type of punk feminism that promoted the idea of do-it-yourself, exchanging manifestos and trading mixed tapes of favorite bands to get the word out.[2] They were tired of women being erased from history or having their experiences misinterpreted and ignored by others. In, response to patriarchal violence, adultism, and heterocentrism,[3] Riot grrrl engaged in negative emotional expressions and rhetoric similar to that of feminism and the punk aesthetic. The feminist argument that the personal is political was revisited in the image that Riot grrrl set forth, similarly to the culture of Punk that self-actualization is not to be found in external forces but rather through an individual’s true self.. By recognizing and reevaluating the institutional structures that affect individual experiences within social situations, an individual can gain the knowledge to better know herself and therefore know how to present herself to others so that they may know her accurately. Riot grrrl termed this movement to self-actualization, girl love – “girls learning to love themselves, and each other, against those forces that would otherwise see them destroyed or destroy themselves”.

The accompanying slogan “every girl is a riot grrrl” reinforced the solidarity that women could find amongst themselves. This created an intimate aesthetic and sentimental politic well expressed in the production of zines (a shortened version of “fanzines”).[1] Zines were handmade, crafted by individuals who wanted to connect directly with their readers, with simple items like scissors, glue, and tape. They called out injustices and challenged the norms that typically directed the expression of sexuality and domestic abuse, providing a space for women to exchange personal stories to which many others could relate. They challenged girls and women alike to stand up for themselves in a political atmosphere that actively sought to silence them.[3] The shared personal stories were, at times, met with attitudes that reduced the communication to “it’s all just girls in their bedrooms, sprawled out writing in their diaries, and then they’ll send them to each other”, while the choice to share in that way was an aesthetic one.

In the midst of this raising of awareness, riot grrrls had to address the generalizations that worked for them but that could not apply to women of color. Not all girls could be riot grrrl after all, for lack of privilege barred them from participating in such acts as writing “SLUT” across their stomach in an attempt to reclaim sexual agency. While this performance is an earnest one, racism had already labeled women of color as that term. As observed by Kearny, “the gender deviance displayed by riot grrrls is a privilege to which only middle-class white girls have access.”[3] Another aspect of this need for inclusive discourse arose in the movement’s preference for concrete knowledge and a disregard for the abstract that would foster theoretical inquiry.