Kathleen Hanna Quotes

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

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.

It's the idea that we as people can control our own destinies. The government and the corporations, more even than the government, can't dictate what artwork we're supposed to like or what comedy we're supposed to laugh at.

I think my biggest fear is dying. Although sometimes my biggest fear is not dying. But yeah, I think health stuff for me is more what I'm afraid of.

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 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 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 just write what I want to write.

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.

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.

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!

There are people who view their feminism in different ways. I used to beat myself up if I didn't react to things like I was supposed to.

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

I'm living in a world where there are LGBTQ straight alliances at high schools. I feel pretty psyched on that.

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.

When you're the person who's kind of in charge of everything a lot of the time, it's sometimes nice to get bossed around. It's sometimes nice to have somebody say, "This is what I want you to do" and to stretch your abilities.

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

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

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

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.

I'm sure if you see things you wrote when you were 19, you cringe. I saw stuff like angry poetry that I wrote when I was mad at my father, or photos I took where I smeared period blood on myself. It's embarrassing.

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.

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.

What I've heard from younger women and women my age is that the albums changed their lives or it was the first time they had heard feminism that they could relate to. So that's great.

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 ...

I've always talked a lot on stage - I really wanted to communicate my ideas and when you're playing at a lot of shitty punk clubs they don't have good PAs and so no one knows what you're singing about.

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 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.

The more people, as you know, are able to be on whatever spectrum of femininity and masculinity they are on at that moment, that opens the door for women to not have to be the opposite of what the supposed traditional male is.

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

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 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.

People are actually having conversations about "Is this sexist?"

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

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 was never trying to be the voice for anybody else. I was just trying to sing about what I was going through, and was singing about those things specifically because I knew there was an audience not being served.

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.

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

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

I've always been like, "Look, you're going to die and it's not going to matter after you die that you got out onstage and bombed."

I think the [fan] access is complicated, because it brings wonderful things into my life, and it brings really negative things into my life. I just try to keep the negative stuff at arm's length. Laugh at it and walk away.

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.

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.'

My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn't think we were stupid, that we didn't think we needed feminism to be explained to us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

My original goal in the '90s, after I found feminism and I was the first generation in my family to go to college, was to spread this information that feminism was still very much alive, and that you can't believe the media telling you that it doesn't need to exist and that it doesn't exist.

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

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

People can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.

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."

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 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 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 usually happens with me [is that] I start with one idea in mind and then something else happens.

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.

I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes.

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

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.

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

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 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?

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.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

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

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

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.

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 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 watch videos on YouTube of bands that I've heard of that I want to check out. And sometimes I don't even finish the video. And that's really sad, because maybe I'd like that song. I think that we don't give stuff a chance to really sink in.

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

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 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

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

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.

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

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 think that it's so powerful for me to go see someone like Bridget Everett at Joe's Pub and watch her weave her songs in and out of these funny, tragic stories - you can talk and sing and it's not this horrible offense, you're going to get thrown in artistic jail.

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

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

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.

The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.

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

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

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.

Me and my friends in high school were the only girls who went to hardcore shows. It was three of us, and the rest of the audience was male. We didn't really think about it. We weren't thinking we were alienated or whatever, but eventually, as there started to be violence in the scene we were in during high school, we started to be turned off by the violence.

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.

Younger feminists actually care about stuff that came before them, the same way that I totally cared about and loved and felt so lucky to have access to the feminism that came before me. To have younger people take what me and my friends have done, and to say 'We have access to that, but we're going to put that through our own Internet generation filter and we're going to make it into something that speaks to us and is a lot smarter.'

There are more people who are not straight, white males going to shows.

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?

I wouldn't want to play Miss Hannigan. I'm not a villain. She's mean to little children! I can't do that. That would disrupt my brand.

It's so important for people in political groups to learn the difference between productive criticism and not. When it's about something you can change, it's productive. But if it's just like "You are an evil person", you can't change that. There's no way around that.