I was making stickers for guys' bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn't even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.

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 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.

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.

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 kind of decided that doing music is enough because I'm already running a couple small businesses. I'm a part of Bikini Kill Records, Le Tigre Records, and Digitally Ruined Records. In dealing with my health and everything, my ability to do that? I wouldn't be good at it.

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.