Kathleen Hanna Quotations

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

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.

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'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!

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.

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.

It's now taken for granted that women are in bands and you can say feminist things in your songs. But back in the early '90s, there was a lot of violence at Bikini Kill shows that people don't realize happened.

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.

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

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.

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

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

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

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

That's the great thing about music. You can find some '60s pop record and feel completely invigorated by it, even though it's so old.

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.

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.

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 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'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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

I'm in a really lucky position where people will be interested in whatever I do, but what I do is sing.

I wanna be a legend; I wanna be a cult hero. I do!

What happens tomorrow is going to happen tomorrow.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Defining art is huge; I feel like it's such a subjective thing. It's more like what's not art. You know what I mean? I think there can be an art in the way people live their lives, and art can be a gift someone gives to somebody.

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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I just write what I want to write.

I wanted to say to myself as much as anyone else that we made art.

If I had to choose between the band or the friendships, I'd choose the friendships at this point.

If people are like, 'Oh, you're an icon,' then whatever. But who thinks of themselves like that? It's not like I have posters of myself on the wall.

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.

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.'

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.

If your best friend gets it, that's all that matters.

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

When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you're told that you're overreacting, you're too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.

When I get stressed out my de-stress default is - not cat videos - but I just watch his surrogates. They're so entertaining. It's like escapees from the Nordstrom cosmetics counter.

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

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.

Think of something that you can do as opposed to all the things you can't do - and do that.

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...

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.

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.

It takes falling down a bunch of times before you start running.

While sexism hurts women most intimately, it also damages men severely.

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.

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

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.

What (some) bands do is go, 'It's not important that I'm a girl, it's just important that I want to rock.' And that's cool. But that's more of an assimilationist thing. It's like they just want to be allowed to join the world as it is; whereas I'm more into revolution and radicalism and changing the whole structure. What I'm into is making the world different for me to live in.

I always get ‘What’s wrong?’ or ‘Lighten up.’ Half the time, when guys tell me to smile, I’m not even frowning, I’m thinking! Then I’m like, Oh! Some men don’t want women to think! Do they all have walkie-talkies? Are they all in this together? Like, ‘OK, she’s thinking, someone say something. She’s reading, go distract her.’ It starts feeling like that sometimes, doesn’t it?

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.

Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm the same as every other female singer.

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.

I think this whole Billy Bush thing just pushed women over the edge because it's so visceral.

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

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.

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.

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

Popularity is totally overrated.

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.

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.

Young girls getting into feminism.

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.

My mom was a housewife, and wasn't somebody that people would think of as a feminist, and when Ms. Magazine came out we were incredibly inspired by it. I used to cut pictures out of it and make posters that said, "Girls can do anything", and stuff like that, and my mom was inspired to work at a basement of a church doing anti-domestic violence work. Then she took me to the Soidarity Day thing, and it was the first time I had ever been in a big crowd of women yelling, and it really made me want to do it forever.

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

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...

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 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!

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...

You have these Stepford wives who are negating other women. But that's their job. [Donald] Trump is the one who is to blame, no matter how much I enjoy watching his surrogates fail massively.

I was like, "Oh my god, I hope you're secretly grossed out about everything that [Donald] Trump has been doing." But why is it such a shock to anybody? He's said so many things that show who he is and how ignorant he is from the beginning.