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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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I feel like what I'm best at is being a musician and a performer. I want to use that to help people who are good at starting nonprofits.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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. But I don't do that anymore. I just want to be off the cuff and honest.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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It takes falling down a bunch of times before you start running.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.'
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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In the '90s, people wore scrunchies, but it was very uncool in the punk scene.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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You guys are seriously missing out unless you all start listening to girls.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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I do have personal relationships with a lot of "fans," in quotations. I answer all my mail, I get emails from fans, and I try to answer them all. That's important to me, but occasionally there's the thing where people basically ask me to write book reports for them, and I don't have that kind of time. I feel like there's a certain sexism involved, like because I'm a woman I'm supposed to constantly be like giving to everybody.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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Gay marriage! That's a huge change and a huge win-win for feminism.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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I belive power can be used for good, I don't think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that's why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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The exciting thing about getting a label together and doing press for it is that hopefully some 15-year-old girl who is the only feminist in her junior-high class will hear about it and be like, "Oh, cool, I hadn't heard of that, I'm going to check it out."
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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My illness has changed me - I've always thought "life is short and I wanna make as much of it as I can," but I really don't have time to mess around. This has really been a wake-up call in terms of what's important, and I'm working hard to figure that out. I need to get better at not doing favors for people all the time. It's hard because there's so many people who have helped me get to the point where I'm in a band that people wanna come see, or where people pay money to see me lecture.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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The idea that musicians/artists have a responsibility to be community leaders or "role models" is problematic to me because I really believe that some of the most exciting art is not community-minded at least in any obvious or direct way, which is not to say that it is not ethical or consciousness-changing.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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People need to stand up, women need to stand up for each other and say, "No you can't kick this person like they're a dog. You can disagree with someone politically, you can have arguments, definitely privilege needs to be discussed in real productive and valid ways. But it's not real criticism if it's just like, "you're a disgusting bad person."
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
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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.
Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
