E-Zines: Riot Grrrl

The (under)groundswell of a movement that is now commonly referred to as “Riot Grrrl” had its origins in two cities simultaneously: Olympia, Washington, and Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s. Contextually, the movement began forming just after the riots in the Mt. Pleasant area of Washington, D.C., where bystanders witnessed a man being shot in the back by police and later heard police claim that the man was resisting arrest. After seeing this injustice, many started rioting. One of the “founders” of the Riot Grrrl movement, Kathleen Hanna, remembers how Jean Smith, a fellow feminist writer and musician, declared (after the Mt. Pleasant riots), “We need a girl riot, too.” Thus the Riot Grrrl spirit was born. The shared vision at the time was that everyone should be rioting and rallying to free herself from the discrimination faced on a daily basis. Black, white, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, or otherwise, Riot Grrrl writers saw the need for women to come together to form communities and consciousness-raising groups in order to share and disseminate their ideas. They sought to spread their messages, not through the mainstream media (which are thought by many of the Riot Grrrls to commodify and colonize women, minorities, and their messages), but instead through zines that the Grrrls independently produced.

The reason these young women called themselves Grrrls is twofold. First, following Gloria Steinem and their second wave feminist foremothers, these women objected to being labeled as “girls” once they hit puberty. Like many feminists both before and after them, they see the word girl as a pejorative term when applied to teenage and adult women. However, since the Riot Grrrl movement grew out of the third wave of feminism, these young women were also starting to reclaim terms. They thought grrrl would be an interesting play on the word girl. By changing the spelling from “girl” to “grrrl,” they were labeling themselves as angry young women who were fed up with the existing system and who were ready and willing to riot and roar.

In academic circles, feminist Riot Grrrl zines are often cited as examples of outsider journalism. Outsider journalism can be defined as comprising [Page 83]oppositional expressions of meaning. It is a type of alternative media created by groups that are not only overlooked by mainstream media but also marginalized by society. This form of journalism often emerges from populations with a dramatic sense of alienation who see themselves as pariahs or outlaws. Outsider journalism creates alternative public spheres and forums to help give these marginalized people a voice. It helps people make sense of common experiences of adversity and outlaw status and is a form of feminist consciousness-raising. It insists on its own value, even though the mainstream may not value it. It privileges the lived experiences of its participants over other forms of knowledge. Outsider journalism, like zine production, offers its writers and creators a sense of agency and self-determination in the form of oppression and a collective or shared identity, as well as a connection to a similarly situated audience.

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