Was Riot-Grrrl Really Queer, or what?

Any mention of sexual politics is gonna make this unpopular...

God is my Co-Pilot?

is this a trick question?

Why would it be a trick question?

I didn't really bother with much of the riot-grrrl stuff beyond Babes in Toyland and Bikini Kill, so I'm curious what anyone who actually participated thinks...

I did think that the WIRE Le Tigre article was interesting though - writing it all up as Riot-grrrl Pt.2. where the 'uncomfortable' camped-up queerness of the group was obvious put aside for liberal feminism instead...

i dunno, the whole thing has always seemed very gay to me, i never knew that people didn't think so...

Well riot-grrl always seemed to me to at least allude to radical feminism and feminist seperatism, and I've never been able to exactly tell where those end and lesbian feminism/lesbian separatism begin. The flirting with masculinity might seem more explicitly "queer", except that said flirtation seems to be a cornerstone of radical feminism anyway (at least as it's expressed at my university). Albeit riot-grrrl usually seemed to have an element of playful subversion, which is quite opposed to the latent misogyny that often seems to be the undertone with the more hardcore radical feminists.

living in olympia has made me as suspicious of overt sexual politics as living in nyc made me suspicious of ambiguous ones.

to someone who was living in the thick of this "thing" in the early- mid 90s (buying huggy bear singles and going to bikini kill shows and identifying with all this "stuff" which made up the post-hardcore underground at that moment) yet identifying basically as straight and white and middle class (although it was helpful in discussing/understanding my own latent/nascent homo/bi feelings...haha did i just come out on ilx?) there was always a sense that there was something i was never going to "get." however, the "violence" towards men - verbal, physical, or mental - at these shows was always a media construct. i always felt very welcome and open, as did my male friends. (let us not forget that bikini kill and huggy bear both had male members.) queer politics seemed to be included under the rubric of "riot grrl" (a term which was never really taken seriously by anyone i knew...at least as soon as spin & sassy got a hold of it), but - like most scenes - it split very quickly as soon as a group of people felt like their own particular demographic wasn't be dealt with. thus, queercore, which had always existed but now as an adjunct. (it was also - coincidentally - when the music took a real nose dive in quality. bikini kill had never been the most technically accomplished band but at least they could throw out a screamy hook when needs dictated.)

if there was one thing which queer/riot did "accomplish" it was to instill a fear in the underground of any sort of ambiguity. punk's never been a particularly articulate or clever forum for political rhetoric (the lyric sheets of most political hardcore bands in the mid 90s read like the cliffs notes to a nation article), but there's a real lack of play most of the time. i'm listening to kitchens of distinction as i write this - merely by chance - and when the "you breath in fear once a year/we suffocate every day" line crops up (as it just did, again bizarrely coincidentally) , it only "works" if you know the kod backstory. But yet, when you do, what a devestating line. but how much of that killer-ness comes from the delivery and the music, since the kitchens were primarily interested in music not polemic. there's a particular half-assed- ness to much of the music from this quarter which does a real disservice to its message, usually under the guise of "keepin it real." hell, finding out bob mould was queer in spin @ 14 probably had a bigger impact - in its way - than all the kill rock stars records in the world.

was their something "queer" about it? undoubtedly. how many of the people involved were "queer"? who knows. another important thing to understand is that many or most of the people involved felt "queer" even if they weren't actually fucking the same sex. it was a way of identifying your own oddness/apartness from mainstream society with a "downtrodden other," with all the positive and dodgy implications that may imply. if anything expresses the dichotomy of riot grrl - with it's simulataneous inclusive/exclusive outlook, its self- flaggelation and guilt, its joy and release - its a one page cartoon in the recent dance of days book on d.c. hardcore where a girl finds happiness once she finds her community in grrl power. it's done so straight it can be taken either as rhetoric or parody: so you found a group of like minds to support you, do you now fizzle into groupthink/speak or do you use this as a platform to develop your own sexual/cultural/personal politics?

(haha, i'm still figuring out that last question myself.)

I'm really really REALLY tired of "Riot-Grrrls".
Someone please make them go away.

when the revolution comes your anonymity will not save you, etc. etc.

It never appealed to me. They positioned themselves outside which seemed to accentuate the whole us (female) vs them (male) even more. Then again ignoring gender it doesn't seem to the solution it either. I don't believe that music can really bring change, it can only point out what is happening in society. Bikini Kill was good on paper, but somehow it didn't appeal to me on record. Maybe in action (on stage) it was more effective.
It is interesting that Electroclash has lots more women. But then Electroclash is very Caucasian.

C'mon, they had their fifteen minutes. It's all style, no substance. Let's move on.

Let's not.

thats the fanciest thread evah!

C'mon, they had their fifteen minutes.
They could cram about 8 songs in those 15 minutes. Pop sans excessive fodder. Let's move backwards,sideways, forwards and then back sideways. Hey we're on the same spot again.

it's kind of funny that almost every major riot-grrrl player insisted that they weren't associated with "riot-grrrl" in any way. I like the term, actually. beats "punk" any day.

what abt "pnnnk"?

who was it that decided riot-grrrl should have exactly three r's, anyway?

tony the tiger.

He loves those nasty angry beatches, especially the part where they scratch each other

An old joke for you that I tell every time there is a riot grrl thread.

q: How many riot grrls does it take to change a light bulb?

a: none, cause riot grrls will never change anything.

Hyuck hyuck hyuck.

Anyway, serious answer now.

Funny, because I threw up my hands and walked away when same issues were raised on the Ladyfest 2002 list (last stand of the Riot Grrls, Olympia style). Several things are banging around on this subject, many of them in conflict with one another.

1) Supposedly, Riot Grrl, Mark 1 *was* very queer, was very interested in homosexual issues, because (Ok, let me try to get this logic straight) sexism, homophobia, racism, and all prejudices are faces of the same evil mindset that perpetuates The Patriarchy, aka The Enemy. Bands like Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill explored this. Fair enough, maybe they had a point, but...

2) There is this assumption/prejudice that if you are A Feminist, or if you are a Woman In Music, you must be a lesbian. I don't know where this assumption came from, but it is SO prevalent that it has come to annoy me. But then again, organisations like Ladyfest seem to back up this preconception with their radical politics and their separatist attitudes.

I am only going to rant if I start talking about this subject more, so I'll leave it there. I am bored of queer theory. I am not homophobic, I am just not gay. I would like to see more exploration, musically, of feminism from a straight female perspective.

i was considering earlier bringing up the line 'we don't need yr dick to fuck' - the queerness is def. political.

Sorry to get all semantic on your ass, but burely the fundamental mistake being made here is to equate "queerness" (and, by association, Queer Theory), solely with homosexuality/bisexuality. The more progressive, interesting developments with definition are about deviance rather than same-sex emancipation/segregation. Or as Subversive Street Queers said: “Queer politics is about queering people’s assumptions about everything to do with everything to do with sexuality, whether they see themselves as straight or gay.”

I think my main problem with riot-grrrl is the way that it depicts sex as a dirty rather than celebratory act, and sexuality in theoretical models than have long been if not totally discredited, then defined by their intransigence. Bit like the music, then.

But then again, organisations like Ladyfest seem to back up this preconception with their radical politics and their separatist attitudes.
In sense I saw their stance - setting themselves apart- ended up in its downfall. I rather see subversion from within. Maybe that's why Le Tigre is more accessible?

i have no problem with "riot grrrl", but i have big problems with peoples attitudes towards it. firstly, a lot of people seem to think it was/is hegemonic. in fact it wasn't nearly that coherent, it was quite diverse and there was a lot of difference of political opinions going on. but people still wanna say, riot grrrl IS this, riot grrrls think THIS, and so forth. furthermore, i'm also really sick to death of the way some people will characterise you as a riot grrrl these days just for being a woman in an all-woman band. i know someone who says that Liliput are riot grrrls, despite them coming from a completely different time period, style and country. i think the words "riot grrrl" are often used as an insult, a way to prohibit women from getting into rock music. but this is completely off topic.

the queer politics in riot grrrl was pretty diverse. some riot grrrl bands celebrated lesbian sex (and not as something dirty, actually) like bratmobile. some chose to come at it from an anti- compulsory-heterosexuality angle (see sleater-kinney's "a real man"). but its definitely there.

Christina, the whole purpose of Queer Theory was to blur the lines between straight and gay , male and female , and homosexual and bisexual, married and unmarried so to break away from binary thinking that blinds people realizing that sexuality is complex manner thar can"t be broken down into discreet labels. In fact some queer theorists are quite critical of radical lesbian feminism for its essentialism ( i.e. michigan womyn's music festival banning male to female transexuals for not being "real women"). Now regarding the riot grrls as a queer movement I would answer yes because they were using music to our assumptions about gender and sexuality.

riot is a thing you grown out of and up with, not much different than britney or janet jackson, just for teenagers of a different place and with different issues to grapple with. community as the thing you find to abandon, socialize to externalize yr. contradictions, and move beyond when the discourse no longer fits. as such it could last as long as its founding generation, who had sense enough not to last too long themselves. howevah representing an attitude without an amplitude, riot was not supplanted by something new and better but saw its radical difference pass into the discourse of the right, saw its feminism transformed into feminazism in the popular consciousness and mainstreamed or descended into self-parody in response. riot happened once, so can never happen again. riot is always happening. today somebody wore a ripped t-shirt to school with "destroy all american" scrawled in black magic marker. someone called her Taliban, and she wrote lyrics to a song about it. she doesn't play the guitar, but her friend does and maybe they'll start a band. they kissed once, because she thought it would be radical, but it was just sort of awkward. sometimes she reads kristeva and sometimes she reads bell hooks. the last thing she read mentioned engels, and that sounded interesting too. riot is dead. the world better watch out.

where can I buy one of those "destroy all american" shirts?

Same place you buy the handy dandy Sony protected CD code-breaker.

they smell good, too! i wuv the future!!

(i mean magic markers not riot grrrls, but in a sense they are THE SAME!! hurrah!!)

Magickah Makahs => no replaced by Hard Candy!

Magickah Makahs => now replaced by Hard Candy!

what the hell was that, riot grrl slash?

Kathleen is reeling. She takes Corin's hand and looks deeply into those eyes. They've always been so odd. Seeming to be so many colors...green, brown, grey...

Corin leans forward and takes Kathleen in her arms. The whole scene has an unreal quality to it. "I won't be able to do anything like this for a long, long time, you know...."

(&c.)

Tribe8 is the only Riot Grrrlish band that was lesbian. Altern8 may have been gay, but they weren't Riot Grrrl. (Fem2Fem weren't Riot Grrrl enough to qualify.)

Kathleen takes Corin's top off, pausing only to sniff her deeply, then — gripping her slim steel body firmly — scrawls BOYS SUCK in big black letters across the Menudo poster.

Corin stammers out... "d-does this mean we're lesbians?"

Kathleen smacks her. Hard.

"No, you stupid bitch. We're queer."

The answer to the original question, is yes, duh.

Don't girls realize they're meant to look pretty? "Punk" is a much cuter look on a boy. Bonus question: guess if I'm kidding.

this little rant is mainly in response to masonic's posts. re: riot grrrls can't change anything, i'm not sure if you that was just the punchline to the joke or if you actually believe that. i think it depends on how you see change. if you think its some kind of instantaneous revolution then no, riot grrrls can't change anything, but on a smaller, more individual level they can, have, do.

i'm not sure why you feel like a queer feminist take on rock music necessarily detracts from a straight one. i think there are plenty of straight feminist takes on rock in existence. and if you disagree kate, you're a musician, you know what to do about it.

complain?

To go back to the original question for a minute:

is there a move towards 'ambiguous' sexual politics throughout pop- music in general with the current revival of postpunk (i.e. electroclash)?

Two starting points:

a) Pop music and ambiguous sexuality are inextricably linked (perhaps because sexuality is inherently ambiguous; partly because pop music is often sexual and always ambiguous).

b) But that doesn't necessarily turn into a sexual politics.

c) Yes, the sexual politics of Electroclash is ambiguous, but the ambiguity lies not so much with reference to sexuality, but to the politics. (This would go for all pop music I guess).