Kathleen Hanna Quotes

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.

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.

Johnny Rotten isn't punk. Maybe that's punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is.

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 do sometimes think what outfit will make me happy. It's one of those self-care things. If I don't have time to do yoga in the morning, then I have a certain sweater/shirt combination that makes me feel put together.

It's so important for people in political groups to learn the difference between productive criticism and not. When it's about something you can change, it's productive. But if it's just like "You are an evil person", you can't change that. There's no way around that.

I was in a band in the '90s called Bikini Kill, and we were so freaked out about documentation then, and there was the whole thing, not just about the male gaze, but that people were going to misrepresent you... a kind fear of the mainstream that a lot of us had.

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

I belive power can be used for good, I don't think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that's why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.

Every band I've been in, it's just become my total life. I feel like a child star - I've missed out on so much.

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.

I watch videos on YouTube of bands that I've heard of that I want to check out. And sometimes I don't even finish the video. And that's really sad, because maybe I'd like that song. I think that we don't give stuff a chance to really sink in.

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

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've always thought that "punk" wasn't really a genre. My band started in Olympia where K Records was and K Records put out music that didn't sound super loud and aggressive. And yet they were punk because they were creating culture in their own community instead of taking their cue from MTV about what was real music and what was cool. It wasn't about a certain fashion. It was about your ideology, it was about creating a community and doing it on your own and not having to rely on, kinda, "The Man" to brand you and say that you were okay.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 felt like going out on the road and mixing it with music - which is something young people are always really interested in - would be a good way to proselytize. It was like feminist evangelism.

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.

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.

Popularity is totally overrated.

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

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

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

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.

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 felt it was really, really important, not just in the vein of feminist erasure or whatever but also just as an artist that I honored my work.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Every band I've been in, it's just become my total life. I feel like a child star - I've missed out on so much. I never got to play Grand Theft Auto and get stoned every day. I figure at 45 I should probably start doing that.

When I first started out I actually was trying to use music to promote feminist ideas and at certain points, anti-violence against women and girls-type causes I was involved in.

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.

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.

Young girls getting into feminism.

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.

You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.

No one's female and male, we all have so many different traits. It's just a lie that these certain traits are male and these certain traits are female.

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.

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!

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.