Kathleen Hanna Quotes

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.

Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill

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Quotes to Explore

• 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!'

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Up
  • She

• I just write what I want to write.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Men
  • Power
  • Night

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Mind
  • Heart

• My vision of punk rock was these dudes who were spitting on the audience and moshing. That's why I kind of left that scene. Then I see all these people around my same age or between 17 and 25 that were making music themselves in their own town. They weren't just singing, but creating. I see them putting out this music where there are tons of women involved in the scene and involved in the bands.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Age
  • Kind

• What happens tomorrow is going to happen tomorrow.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Women
  • Taken

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

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill

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

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Art

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

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Work

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Music
  • Writing
  • School

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

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Great
  • Interesting

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Time
  • Long
  • Why

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Important
  • Political

• 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.'

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Question
  • Beginning

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Up
  • Men

• 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!

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Music
  • Writing

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Women
  • History
  • Cool

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Writing

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

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • People
  • Fear
  • Band

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

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Culture

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Great
  • Music

• 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.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • World
  • Believe
  • Different