I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it's all you talk about.

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.

My vision of punk rock was these dudes who were spitting on the audience and moshing. That's why I kind of left that scene. Then I see all these people around my same age or between 17 and 25 that were making music themselves in their own town. They weren't just singing, but creating. I see them putting out this music where there are tons of women involved in the scene and involved in the bands.

It's not like somewhere along the way I decided to be a total formalist in terms of music and to not care about content; the content is going to be there whether I try to make it be there or not, and I can have fun and see what happens.

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.

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

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