Top 33 Kathleen Hanna Quotes

It’s really funny – when I’m depressed or I’m having a hard time, I’ll write really fun stuff. And then when I’m really happy, I write really depressing stuff.

It’s unexpected for women’s issues to be brought up in places other than women’s centers on college campuses or crisis places.

I’m not that interested in female superheroes.

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.

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

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.

Singing is my life, and I have to do it, or I’m going to go totally bananas.

Popularity is totally overrated.

Art revolves around creating something that isn’t there.

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!’

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.

I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don’t have any talent, ‘Well, neither do I.’ I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don’t have to have magic unicorn powers.

I just write what I want to write.

Women didn’t want to be on the stage with other women because they didn’t want their bodies to be compared. They didn’t want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.

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.

To make riot grrrl move into the future in a new way with a bunch of new names and a bunch of new energy, younger people have to learn about it and apply it to their own lives and own modern conversation. And they are.

Teachers are performers, just like I am.

I think as a culture, we don’t like conflict or looking at icky stuff – especially in our downtime.

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.

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!

I like loud snare, and I like really treble-y guitars, and that’s just never going to change.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 especially don’t want men coming up to me and asking if sexism still exists. It’s like, I’m seriously gonna barf a McDonald’s salad on the next person to do that.

I really like to talk about my work in a way that is complicated.

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.’

Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn’t be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.

In terms of men being feminist allies, it’s just important to speak from your own place. I’d love to hear men singing about masculinity and the damage it does to them.

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