Quotes by Kathleen Hanna

“If your best friend gets it, thats all that matters.”

“What (some) bands do is go, Its not important that Im a girl, its just important that I want to rock. And thats cool. But thats more of an assimilationist thing. Its like the just want to be allowed to join the world as it is; whereas Im more into revolution and radicalism and changing the whole structure. What Im into is making the world different fo me to live 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 its a lie.

It can be really painful to have to face how fucked up shit is and how scared people are…of being alive. Scared of things that are amazing. Scared of things that aren’t like television or aren’t dead. A lot of people can’t deal with three-dimensional human beings, they only know how to deal with other products — they see themselves as other products. When the world only treats you like a dot on a marketing scheme, you can learn to treat yourself and other people like that.

Women didnt want to be on the stage with other women because they didnt want their bodies to be compared. They didnt want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.

I like art with a sense of humor. I dont have a huge art education to understand everything. I dont think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I dont think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesnt take itself too seriously.

In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonalds to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15.

Theres just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world.

While everyones 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.

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.