With the rise of a new generation of bands represented by Dream Wife, a term that was once prominent in the 90s has re-entered the field of music fans.
Today, we'll use an article to review the 20-year history of the Riot Grrrl movement.
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Storms are brewing in the Pacific Northwest
When the violent women movement was just beginning to emerge, it was an era of punk rock: loud, brutal, and mostly boy-dominated.
In Seattle, a group of boys in flannel shirts played grunge, the most famous of which was Nirvana — and while Kurt Cobain himself hated that machismo, he couldn't hide the idea that it was an era of so-called "cock rock," which seemed to be something that belonged only to men's clubs.
Representatives of the Violent Women's Movement: Kathleen Hanna, Corin Tucker, Kat Bjelland
Meanwhile, in Olympia, Washington, many feminists began forming their own loud and rude bands and writing their own magazines in response.
Unable to find their place in the world of punk rock, they began to turn their attention to addressing sexism and began to look for their own underground alternatives. The new movement, driven by rioting girls, began to quell women's anger and celebrate their own sexuality.
In the early '90s, bands that included Bratmobile, Bikini Kill, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, Calamity Jane, Excuse 17 and Riverns to Betsy, among others.
Babes in Toyland
At this point, Kathleen Hanna, a freshman at Evergreen State University in Olympia, set out to produce the first issue of Bikini Killing magazine, and although the "Violent Women's Manifesto" that appeared in the second edition of the magazine did not fully define the violent women movement, it did contain many of the ideas circulating in the circle of activists and feminists in the city.
It reads: "We girls especially want some of these albums, books and hobbyist magazines to be open to us, to accommodate us, and to understand them in our own way." "We are angry because this society tells us that girls are stupid, girls are bad, girls are weak."
Kathleen Hanna
Girls, come to the front! ”
In 1991, the year the Violent Woman Manifesto was published, the independent label K Records hosted a punk music festival in Olympia, also known as the International Pop Underground Convention.
The festival lasted six days, and on the first night, all the bands in attendance were girl bands, also known as "Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now", and included bikini killing, Bratmobile, Kicking Giant and Riverns to Betsy.
The performance, which came to be known as "Girls' Night", together with the Ladies Music Festival (first held in 2000 and still continues to be held today), the International Women's Rock Camp movement and the women-only sister district of the Glastonbury Festival, are important role models for women artists to perform.
International Pop Underground Convention
Back at the height of the violent women's movement, Kathleen Hannah shouted the famous slogan on stage: "Girls to the front!" She invited all the women in the room to move forward.
NME magazine now also hosts a series of women's performances, named after Kathleen Hannah's slogan, and judging by the many performances to date, we still need as much space as possible to call more women to the front of the stage.
Singer Glorie, who served as the finale of a tour in March 2019, said: "Women in the music industry need to make rules that apply to themselves, rather than relying on others. ”
Glowie
With organizations like Girls Against and the efforts of musicians themselves, people are constantly making performances safer.
Many bands, from Milk Teeth to The Scout School, now require that when they tour, all the restrooms in the venue be converted to gender-free toilets; Speedy Ortiz has a hotline during the show, and any fan who feels unsafe during the performance can turn to them for help.
More and more bands are becoming alert to harassment at the show scene, and they will even shout out on stage if necessary.
Milk Teeth
Feminism is going mainstream
In the mid-90s, feminism became one of the slogans of mainstream pop music (the word Girl Power was originally just the name of a bikini killing enthusiast magazine).
For most women, they may not be the feminist rights they have been exposed to through the violent women's movement, but the hot girl group that has made Girl Power known to the world. When Jerry Halliwell used former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her source of inspiration, it attracted a lot of attention.
At the same time, the press began to report on the bands of the violent women's movement, but many of the key bands in this wave were frustrated to find that the media coverage of them was often mixed with false statements.
The Spice Girls
A new wave
As the 1990s progressed, the major bands that once dominated the violent women's movement began to disband and split, and went their separate ways. Carrie Bronstein and Colin Tucker left their respective bands, Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy, respectively, and together they formed Sleater-Kinney in 1994, a new band that still clings to the Tyrannosaurs point of view.
In 1998, Kathleen Hannah turned her attention to the electronic rock band Le Tigre, whose views changed to advocating feminism and LGBT equality, which was the pulse of popular music at the time. She went on to form The Julie Ruin.
The Julie Ruin
Over time, the last bands formed in the late 1990s began to slowly die out, and the most successful bands at the end of the violent women movement were probably Gossip, which was formed in 1999.
At the time, Beth Dito moved from Arkansas to Olipia, the birthplace of the violent women's movement, and released their debut album, "That's Not What I Heard," which they entered mainstream music in 2006 with "Standing In The Way of Control," an album about protesting the U.S. government's crackdown on gay marriage.
《Standing In The Way of Control》
20 years later...
In 2011, the violent women's movement came to its 20th anniversary, but on some level, the feminist movement never disappeared.
While much progress has been made in many aspects of gender equality over the past 20 years, the need to combat sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and racism has not disappeared.
Perhaps because of nostalgia, or perhaps a new generation of music fans still love these sounds, over the past few years, many of the bands representing the violent women's movement, including the bikini killing, have regrouped and begun to spread their music and ideas to the younger generation of fans who are eager to listen.
Bikini Kill
In 2015, baby band Toy City performed at the Shepherd's Bush Empire Theatre in London, and it rained tampons in the Mosh pool, and on the same night, Kathleen Hannah and her The Julie Ruin also happened to perform in London at the same time.
For the teenagers on the scene, they may still be the same bands they heard from Spotify, but that didn't stop them from raising their fists and shouting "Girls, come to the front" and rushing to the stage.
Dream Wife
But the revival of the violent women movement is just a reshuffle of these old bands, as the Dream Wife is a good example of how they will summon all the bad bitches on stage to rush forward and regularly raise money for the London branch of the Girls' Rock Camp Alliance — and they have invited some of the best graduate bands of the rock camp to join their 2018 autumn tour.
Today, there's also a big band that binds their spirits to violent women, including Petrol Girls Big Joanie, Deap Vally, Skinny Girl, dream nails, and so on.
Yes, the violent women's movement may have ended in the 90s, but the spirit it carried has never disappeared.
references：
https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/brief-history-riot-grrrl-space-reclaiming-90s-punk-movement-2542166
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Keyword list: Violent Women's Movement Dream Man Wife