Julie Ruin

“Even though I did punch her, I thought she was a genius,” Courtney Love said of Kathleen Hanna in 2002, while attempting to explain riot grrrl to The Strokes live on MTV. Twenty years later, and about 30 since the movement’s inception, trying to define it still feels fraught. Riot grrrl was always a nebulous concept, a label intended to be adopted and personalized by young feminist punks globally. But by the early aughts, once the revolution had become FUBAR from in-fighting, unwanted media attention, and accusations of racist and transphobic exclusion, it already felt like a dream of the past. In that sense, riot grrrl was a specific movement born out of a specific moment in time, and a handful of specific places (usually Washington, state and D.C.). It is not a catch-all label for ...