The Thousands

To understand why Riot Grrrl mattered, you need to know that ’80s punk and hardcore shows were a major sausage fest. Mostly male bands played to mosh pits full of middle class white dudes with shaved heads. Girls stuck to the sidelines, and for an ‘alternative’ scene, it was distressingly misogynistic, homophobic, and even racist.

Kerri Koch’s documentary Don’t Need You shows how Riot Grrrls disrupted the patriarchy of punk, forming their own bands, starting their own record labels, running live music venues, and making zines, all with a pro-girl attitude and a variety of female perspectives. Their antics made audiences think about gender, from telling guys to move to the back of the audience so the girls could be up front for once, to charging entry fees of “$3 for boys, $2 for girls or boys who come wearing a bra”. The effect they had is still palpable in Ian Mackaye’s inability to describe just how awesome it was the first time he saw Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill. Ian and Kathleen feature prominently alongside Allison Wolfe (Bratmobile), Corin Tucker (Heavens To Betsy / Sleater-Kinney), and many more.

It’s disheartening to watch how the mainstream media portrayed the movement as a group of trendy, grudge-toting man haters. And it’s a bummer to think now about how rampant misogyny still is in other creative arenas (read Tina Fey’s Bossypants or the New Yorker‘s Anna Faris article, ‘Funny Like a Guy’). Recommended viewing for both girls and boys.