Kathleen Hanna Quotes

I’m not a goddess, for crying out loud. I’m a regular person who took feminism – which I have a deep connection to – and mixed it with music, which I really love to do.

There’s just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Defining art is huge; I feel like it’s such a subjective thing. It’s more like what’s not art. You know what I mean? I think there can be an art in the way people live their lives, and art can be a gift someone gives to somebody.

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!

Not to rag on myself, but when people say, ‘What does it feel like to be an icon?’ I’m like, ‘My dog does not think I’m an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.’ I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don’t think about it.

I know I love sexy surf guitars, I know I love loud snare. I love really simple repeating bass lines, and I love weird mad scientist keyboard sounds.

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.

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.

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.

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

Popularity is totally overrated.

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’m just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don’t know what’s going to happen, and I’m letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.

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!’

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

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

I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.

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.

I can’t constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.

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.

Certain people are like ‘Oh, here come the Feminazis!’ You end up acting 10 times nicer than you even need to be, to be the opposite of the stereotype like ‘You’re the man haters!’ We’re always bending over backwards being extra nice. And I don’t know if being nice is my legacy.

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

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.’

Teachers are performers, just like I am.

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.

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

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.

If people are like, ‘Oh, you’re an icon,’ then whatever. But who thinks of themselves like that? It’s not like I have posters of myself on the wall.

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

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