I am a child of the Riot Grrrl movement

It’s something I didn’t recognize until late into my college years. After trying to listen to Nirvana- and repeatedly failing- I switched over to Sleater Kinney. A perfect switch, I thought. I didn’t know it would change how I listened to music.

I began culling a collection of woman-friendly music. I started slowly, with Ani DiFranco and Le Tigre. But as soon as I started, I found that I couldn’t stop. I heard the sweet sounds of Tegan and Sara. I listened to Peaches on repeat. Sarah Harmer, Brenda Weiler, Lisa Loeb… I couldn’t get enough of female vocalists.

So as the Celebration of Women and their Music kicks off Saturday at the Fargo Theatre, I decided to take a closer look at the academia behind the guitar riffs;  the patriarchal lens in which we’ve been instructed to view pop culture. Here are my findings.

The Riot Grrrl movement, which began with post-punk enthusiasts Bikini Kill, L7, and Sleater Kinney, sought to reclaim a section of musical freedom from the tight-fisted grip of masculine culture. It became apparent that music was proliferating myths about women in society, so Riot Grrrls took over. Some of the myths associated with pre-feminist music include women are inherently feminine; women are OK with attacks on their body; and that heterosexuality is a given. Bikini Kill and other female-friendly bands were trying with gusto to deconstruct those myths. As a queer-identified feminist, I was all over their interpretation of music’s bondage over women.

Sexuality aside, for many women, growing up meant hearing fairy tales of what a girl should be like. As we got older, we heard more of what women should be like. If we weren’t lining up with those ideals, we felt guilt and shame. If we were, we felt a strange sense of success – but never a sense of acceptance.

Music has turned into a political platform for many feminists. Throughout the decades, female singer-songwriters have campaigned for women’s rights, whether it was the right to vote or the right to equal pay for equal work. Songwriters wrote about the need to address societal stereotypes. To be a woman meant to be a member of society, no longer the perceived victim or “bitch” or “ho” that their musical counterparts labeled them.

The sad fact remains that when you flip your radio dial, you’ll hear that outrageous language of the patriarchy: calling women out for their slutty nature, as being violent becomes a sort of sad chorus.
Women as sex objects dot the music scene. The Pussycat Dolls are the new Spice Girls. Talk of expensive cars, jewelry, and other material objects show that women can be had for a price. It’s less obvious than it once was- since most women won’t stand for “Stand by Your Man,” but it’s still present in our earbuds as we turn our iPods on.

Thankfully, we have good feminist music to turn to—everything from Kate Nash to Bjork to Regina Spektor and back again. We’ve been inundated with positive messages since the Riot Grrrl movement began. It’s a good place to be.

So as the Celebration of Women and their Music takes on its 12th annual concert, we can sit back, relax and enjoy some unfiltered music from local women, while simultaneously understanding the rocky road they had to take to cross the stage.