Riot Grrrl's Lost Potential

I have somewhat a love/hate relationship with the riot grrrl subculture. I think I like the idea of riot grrrl more than I actually like riot grrrl. When I first learned about the riot grrrl culture I thought what they were doing was great, and I still think what they did had a largely positive impact overall, but as I read more about certain behaviors of people of the subculture and looked more into the validity of the critiques others had about the subculture, the more I came to dislike some of the riot grrrls. I guess my problem with the culture isn't so much with the fans of the culture as it is with the artists who created the subculture. I think my particular problem just happens to be with Kathleen Hanna, the woman who had the idea to make riot grrrl an actual subculture; her views seem wildly inconsistent and in retrospective pieces she seems to be re-writing a bit of riot grrrl's history by stating herself and her remaining friends as the only true riot grrrls and by negating any impact any other female artists who were not part of the big 4 riot grrrl bands (Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear) had. I understand that riot grrrl is her big contribution to society and so she would want to pump up her own role and the roles of her friends, but I feel that by excluding the importance of other female artists aligned with riot grrrl she is contradicting one of the most important aspects of the riot grrrl manifesto - that any girl can be a riot grrrl. I am certainly not the biggest Courtney Love fan in the world, yet if you read past comments from Kathleen Hanna and music journalists who actually were friends with the riot grrrls (pre-1992), they acknowledge that Courtney Love and her band Hole were riot grrrls before they made their major label debut album, Live Through This. However, in any interviews past 1994 (which is the year that Hanna and Love stopped being friends) Hanna consistently denies Love ever being a riot grrrl. While Courtney Love may not have been an actual member of the riot grrrl subculture after 1992, past accounts would indciate that she was a part of the movement for at least 2 years. When I was looking at blogs from riot grrrls though, all these blogs seem to be emphasizing the importance of Courtney Love and highlighting her as an influential figure of the movement though. I just wonder why Kathleen Hanna wants to remove certain former members of the riot grrrl subculture from written history even though the fans, members, and journalists involved with the subculture want them so badly to be a part of it? Do these actions imply that only riot grrrls that conform to Hanna's standards can truly call themselves riot grrrls? Unfortunately, I feel that one must have the same brand of feminism as Hanna in order to be considered a member of the community. I guess that happens though when you allow a subculture essentially center around only one person's ideology. I feel like the riot grrrl subculture had more potential and got bogged down the same way that many other subcultures do; the riot grrrl subculture decided to start defining itself by its exclusive qualities rather than its inclusive qualities. Essentially, the riot grrrls started to promote a certain brand of feminism that emphasized that all women have a certain number of identical qualities and that aside from different anatomical parts, women and men have some inherently different qualities solely because of their born gender and not social constructs. This to me, is irresponsible because it still puts women in a gender box; riot grrrls say that all women are equal, yet different to men. While this is not the worst perspective one can have on gender relations, I feel that riot grrrls could have brought a new perspective to gender relations. I just wish that the riot grrrls would have promoted the position that people are not different because of their gender, but rather from the combination of experiences and influences they have come in contact with over their life. Instead of saying that women are men are different, they could of said that women and men are perceived as being different because every single person is different from every single person because every single person does not have life experiences identical to anyone else (people of different sexes, gender, races, sexual orientations, or classes are not inherently different). They could have transcended the idea of gender and showed the people of any marginalized group how to go outside of the box they put themselves in by focusing on the aspects that bond all humans together rather than focusing on the aspects that divide humans into sub-groups and then make people question their worth (since most humans have a fear of the unknown, including "unknown" peoples of different classes, races, sexualities, and genders). I guess transcendence can only happen gradually though (like any other aspect of total human progression) and riot grrrls were only meant to be a stepping stone to this eventual transcendence. This will just have to be the job of some other humanist (not necessarily feminist) group.

And don't even get me started on the hypocrisy of certain riot grrrls who made males pay more to see their shows and made males stand in the back of the venues....