“But out of the punk rock subculture sprang a group of teen girls and young women who embraced these punk sensibilites and changed the face of popular feminism. They called themselves riot grrrl.”
“But as with most idealistic and liberating subcultures (groups that identify themselves as being outside the norm and thereby threaten established way of society), it was not long before the influences of mainstream cultures stared to make their mark on the new movement. By the mid-1980’s, men once again took over the punk music scene. The music has become “hardcore”. To quote Pretty in Punk: “Once again, girls were edged out of the burgeoning (growing) new hardcore punk scene. Never again would they occupy a central role in the punk subculture.”
“Then, states Pretty in Punk author Leblanc, “in the early 1990s, punk underwent yet another “revival”, largely due to the popularity of “grunge”…Punk had survived the conservative ‘80”s, and in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s renewed itself in a variety of offshoots such as…Riot Grrrl.” If women were no longer accepted as part of the group as they had been back in the late 1970s, they would nonw just create their own scene. The time had come for “Revolution, Grrrl-Style.”
“The marginalization that these feminists faced only served to make them stronger, louder, and more confrontational, and purposefully united. Slowly they created a network of like-minded angry and outspoken women. Empowered by punk’s DIY philosophy, they created a place for themselves by themselves. In a 1992 article for the Chicago Reader, Emily White observes: “Riot girl (which these women would eventually call themselves) was started by a group of musicians and writers and friends who decided to aggressively co-opt the values and rhetoric of punk, fifteen years later, in the name of feminism.”
-Cherie Turner. 2001. Everything you need to know about the Riot Grrrl Movement. Rosen Publishing Group
By Sarah Gill
