Kathleen Hanna Quotations | Page 2

For whatever reason I just remembered being six years old and my parents leaving the house and trusting me to be alone. I had an older sister, I think she was supposed to babysit me but she immediately ran across the street to her friend's house.

I stood in the bay window at our house and I sang Away In A Manger. It was my first time on stage, but there was nobody watching. I just remember it was so natural and it was such a secret - like masturbating. I felt like I had to wait until everybody was gone. So I guess six years old would be my most important age, 'cause in that moment, I just knew what I wanted to do.

In the '90s, people wore scrunchies, but it was very uncool in the punk scene.

I don't appreciate it when women - or men - bandy about these stupid stereotypes about feminism that are age-old, and that are meant to keep people turned off from it. It's like, "All you have to do is Wikipedia feminism to know that it's not about man-hating - so shut up." That makes me annoyed.

I think open adoption is a great idea, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you."

Sexism and racism and homophobia and classism are so naturalized. All these stereotypes make people think it's just normal that straight white men are getting all the breaks.

I made the decision that my contribution needed to be more musical than political. My music was enough, politically. Art matters. Art was enough. My music was enough to say what I had to say.

I never thought that someone would be teaching one of my fanzines. I never thought I'd be off to lecture at a college. It's still shocking to me.

A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it's really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that things are a lot more permeable. It's not so black and white: not every journalist is a jerk.

It takes your mind off things when there's a cat in your lip and he's purring while you're petting him.

Most of my records are never going to be commercial successes, and I don't expect that. It's just all a learning process to me. If something appears as a failure, fine. If there's success, fine. I like the record, and my friends like the record, and that's kind of all I can really care about.

I don't like every other musician's work. The same way that filmmakers don't like every other filmmakers' work. Just because I'm a feminist doesn't mean I'm gonna say that I like every other woman's work, or that I appreciate another statement that another woman publicly made.

When you're the person who's kind of in charge of everything a lot of the time, it's sometimes nice to get bossed around. It's sometimes nice to have somebody say, "This is what I want you to do" and to stretch your abilities.

I am such a bossy producer and such a control freak that there's a part of me that really longs to be bossed around.

I really love that I'm giving myself the opportunity finally to not have the pressure of every single song you do having to be "political" or whatever. I'm just making what I wanna make.

The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.

I think that the Internet is really cool because a lot of young feminists don't feel like they have to reinvent the wheel.

I'm more interested in a feminism that ends discrimination for all people. It's not just about a woman becoming the CEO of a company or something. It's connected to racism and classism and gender issues that go beyond the binary.

I do have personal relationships with a lot of "fans," in quotations. I answer all my mail, I get emails from fans, and I try to answer them all. That's important to me, but occasionally there's the thing where people basically ask me to write book reports for them, and I don't have that kind of time. I feel like there's a certain sexism involved, like because I'm a woman I'm supposed to constantly be like giving to everybody.

I don't like being in the service industry and having to deal with people yelling at me all the time. McDonald's was the hardest job I ever had - so I have a lot of respect for people who work in the fast food industry. Because it's a hard job.

If I were a supervillain, I would end capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia... but I guess that's a little too obvious and not villain-y enough. Because that's actually being a superhero. I would break down poverty with my machete; I would end world hunger.

I think my biggest fear is dying. Although sometimes my biggest fear is not dying. But yeah, I think health stuff for me is more what I'm afraid of.

I think the [fan] access is complicated, because it brings wonderful things into my life, and it brings really negative things into my life. I just try to keep the negative stuff at arm's length. Laugh at it and walk away.

The cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history.

I think that feminism is in cycle. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest.

What I've heard from younger women and women my age is that the albums changed their lives or it was the first time they had heard feminism that they could relate to. So that's great.

I'm a very binary person in a bad way where it's like everything is either totally great or totally awful.

Taking care of yourself is the most important thing.

Find something that makes you happy, like looking at beautiful pictures, or, if you're able, listening to beautiful music, or sitting by the window and looking outside - small things like that can be absolutely huge.

Don't get down on yourself that you can't run a 4K or dance all night long at a fun club. Give yourself a break.

I'm so language-based and I'm so about communicating, and my art has always been very audience-based, and very about being functional and communicating something, and about feeling like I have to be heard.

My original goal in the '90s, after I found feminism and I was the first generation in my family to go to college, was to spread this information that feminism was still very much alive, and that you can't believe the media telling you that it doesn't need to exist and that it doesn't exist.

I was never trying to be the voice for anybody else. I was just trying to sing about what I was going through, and was singing about those things specifically because I knew there was an audience not being served.

The exciting thing about getting a label together and doing press for it is that hopefully some 15-year-old girl who is the only feminist in her junior-high class will hear about it and be like, "Oh, cool, I hadn't heard of that, I'm going to check it out."

I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.

I'm a big proponent of open adoption, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you." Not just the parents who are raising you on a day-to-day basis, but also to have contact with your birth mother and hopefully your birth father. So that you can be like, "Oh, they love me too, and they love me so much that they knew they couldn't take care of me but they're still in my life to some extent."

Younger feminists actually care about stuff that came before them, the same way that I totally cared about and loved and felt so lucky to have access to the feminism that came before me. To have younger people take what me and my friends have done, and to say 'We have access to that, but we're going to put that through our own Internet generation filter and we're going to make it into something that speaks to us and is a lot smarter.'

People can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.

I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes.

My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn't think we were stupid, that we didn't think we needed feminism to be explained to us.

My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.

I was lucky enough to go to college for four years. At what was supposedly a hippie school with no tests and no grades, blah blah blah, I wasn't learning that. I was taking photography classes. That stuff just wasn't talked about. It was like, "Does this picture have the right about of grey in it?" It wasn't even an art school. It was a state-run school.

I am possibly thinking about doing an Internet show in the future that will highlight political organizations that I seek out to let people know about them, volunteer opportunities, and donation opportunities.

I feel like what I'm best at is being a musician and a performer. I want to use that to help people who are good at starting nonprofits.

Me and my friends in high school were the only girls who went to hardcore shows. It was three of us, and the rest of the audience was male. We didn't really think about it. We weren't thinking we were alienated or whatever, but eventually, as there started to be violence in the scene we were in during high school, we started to be turned off by the violence.

Gay marriage! That's a huge change and a huge win-win for feminism.

I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.

Internalized sexism that makes us feel like we can't show ourselves not being perfect.

I think that's such an important message, especially for younger women, to know, 'I don't have to come out of the womb painting like Frida Kahlo. My very first thing that I make isn't going to be an around-the-world sensation.' You have to paint a hundred really ugly, barfy, diarrhea paintings before you come up with that one where you start to really get into your groove.

I am not Lyme disease, that's not who I am, I'm still a feminist artist, but this is a part of my story too, and I'm not going to keep it out to look cooler.

I'm not that interested in female superheroes.

I know what a good question would be for an actor. What's your least favorite thing that you've ever heard an actor say about acting? Or about being in a movie?

I didn't go to high school, I didn't go to college, I didn't have women's studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it's still growing.

I was like, "Oh my god, I hope you're secretly grossed out about everything that [Donald] Trump has been doing." But why is it such a shock to anybody? He's said so many things that show who he is and how ignorant he is from the beginning.

You have these Stepford wives who are negating other women. But that's their job. [Donald] Trump is the one who is to blame, no matter how much I enjoy watching his surrogates fail massively.

But see, my idea on the whole thing is, hey, it's not the responsibility of marginalized, oppressed people to educate everyone. I personally wouldn't put myself in that position and go out there and do my schtick in front of the Red Hot Chili Peppers fan guys... because, you know...

I hate the attitude of, 'oh we already have a Lydia Lunch, so we do we need a Bikini Kill.' Well, there's like 2 hundered million all-male bands writting 'baby baby I love you, let me drag you around on my ankle.' Is that enough already? Duh!

I won't stop talking. I am a girl you have no control over. There is not a gag big enough to handle this mouth.

I think one things that's really important in the boy community or whatever, or the boy things, is like, to realize that oppression is a two-way street. You know what I mean? That it's like, white men are really missing out - I don't wanna say white men are oppressed but...

Just because you're wearing a goofy hat doesn't make it performance art.

My mom was a housewife, and wasn't somebody that people would think of as a feminist, and when Ms. Magazine came out we were incredibly inspired by it. I used to cut pictures out of it and make posters that said, "Girls can do anything", and stuff like that, and my mom was inspired to work at a basement of a church doing anti-domestic violence work. Then she took me to the Soidarity Day thing, and it was the first time I had ever been in a big crowd of women yelling, and it really made me want to do it forever.

We support Hillary [Clinton]. We're saying that strongly. "I'm with her," I don't think that we can be any less strident. She's the best person for the job.

Young girls getting into feminism.

It was one of the first things I did on my own; I worked at McDonald's, raised the money and did it. I'm really, really passionate about pro-choice, because I wouldn't be here talking to you right now if I'd had a kid at 15.

I got hit up for a tampon commercial and so I asked [JD and Jo] if they had anything. Jo sent that over and I was like, "I love this track. Oh my god. It's so upbeat. It's so positive. It would be so great for a tampon commercial." That commercial never came through, so then I just had it. I was like, "That would be great for a Hillary [Clinton] song." I think it's so funny that it could be a tampon commercial.

Popularity is totally overrated.

You guys are seriously missing out unless you all start listening to girls.

Obviously, we're really upset about the state of the election. It's horrifying, as everybody knows, that we could have a totally fascist president.

Clearly, gay marriage is on the top of the agenda right now. It's pretty amazing, considering where stuff was at when I was in high-school, when there were no LGBT Gay-Straight Alliances or any of that stuff. Am I a huge Lady Gaga fan? No, but I think some of the stuff she does that helps LGBT kids is amazing. And it's great that that's mainstream. It's fantastic that there's a pop star who's willing to put herself out in that way.

I feel like there's this weird thing that as a feminist band you get put in this role as ambassadors.

I think this whole Billy Bush thing just pushed women over the edge because it's so visceral.

Every day it gets worse and worse and worse. We just want to get everyone to vote and be a part of the noise. I can't do phone banks because I have to save my voice for stage, so the least I can do is a song.

Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm the same as every other female singer.

Every time I get sexually harassed, I'm supposed to turn around and yell at the person, but there are safety issues. Sometimes the best thing you can do it just walk right past that person and have a great day. But sometimes you feel like you really need to say something.

I always get ‘What’s wrong?’ or ‘Lighten up.’ Half the time, when guys tell me to smile, I’m not even frowning, I’m thinking! Then I’m like, Oh! Some men don’t want women to think! Do they all have walkie-talkies? Are they all in this together? Like, ‘OK, she’s thinking, someone say something. She’s reading, go distract her.’ It starts feeling like that sometimes, doesn’t it?

What (some) bands do is go, 'It's not important that I'm a girl, it's just important that I want to rock.' And that's cool. But that's more of an assimilationist thing. It's like they just want to be allowed to join the world as it is; whereas I'm more into revolution and radicalism and changing the whole structure. What I'm into is making the world different for me to live in.

I don't want to waste the precious moments I have, and I've felt that way since I was 17. I have to take risks because why else would you be alive? Put your pirate patch on and go on an adventure because you only have one life to live.

I almost wish we would've filmed a whole fake tampon commercial around ["I'm With Her"].

There's still a lot of misogynist pop music out there, and I think that hearing something that's so explicitly feminist and so angry - when we're still growing up in a culture where girls and women are not supposed to be angry - is a real revelation for young women.

While sexism hurts women most intimately, it also damages men severely.

It takes falling down a bunch of times before you start running.

I search the phrase "Kellyanne Conway fails," and I'm just watching that Scottie [Nell Hughes] woman smirk all the time.

I saw a video on YouTube of a girl who had very similar reactions to late-stage Lyme disease as I did. And I thought it was crazy. And when I saw her basically have a seizure on camera that looked very much like my seizure I felt, "Oh my god. That's me." And so it was really important to me, and I said to Sini, 'We have to find some way to not just talk about Lyme disease, but to show it.

When you're a musician and you go out onstage, and you're someone who loves attention, you are going to become a role model to some extent.

Jason Mraz, and the new James Blunt song is the worst thing that has ever been created on the face of the earth.

Well, part of the thing is, like, what's the difference between censorship and social responsibility? I sometimes find that the whole censorship argument is used as a way for people to avoid the fact that they're like...

Think of something that you can do as opposed to all the things you can't do - and do that.

Feminism is something you do. It's a verb. It's what you are. It's an activity; it's something you're actively engaged in.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

When I get stressed out my de-stress default is - not cat videos - but I just watch his surrogates. They're so entertaining. It's like escapees from the Nordstrom cosmetics counter.

When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you're told that you're overreacting, you're too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.

I would much rather be the obnoxious feminist girl than be complicit in my own dehumanization.

I don't need to convince men that feminism is important, that just isn't a goal of mine. I can't even have that conversation of whether or not it's important, because if someone asks me that... I don't want to have a conversation with them until they grow up.