Riot Grrrl vs. Sista Grrrl: White Feminism in Punk Music Spaces
Image Description: A Riot Grrrl Convention poster from 1992, decorated with stars and cartoon girls, is advertising for feminists to attend a three day event of music, art, zines, and more in Washington, DC.
Punk music is well known for providing a community for those who deviate from the norm. Riot Grrrl was a feminist movement in the ‘90s that created a definitive subculture within punk that immersed the community in a collaborative, creative, loud, smelly, sweaty, personal, hating, loving environment with the goal of fighting for women’s equality. This community of homemade items, independent zines, eccentric fashion, and raw lyricism became undeniably important in its role of emphasizing governmental critique and preserving the value in being an individual. This movement was a fundamental part of the ‘90s punk scene, providing a community for young women opposing the patriarchy.
However, the women at the forefront of this movement, like both the previous two waves of feminism, were primarily white upper class women who had the privilege to take certain risks because they might not experience the same social retaliation, such as verbal abuse, physical abuse, and death, that a person with intersecting identities might face, such as people of color, queer people, and disabled people. This feminist movement focused primarily on sexism, neglecting to address the various forms of oppression existing within the punk community. While intending to empower women, the proclaimed feminism within the Riot Grrrl subculture simply lacked intersectionality.
Due to the nature of Riot Grrrl shows being mainly attended and run by white women, minorities felt excluded from a movement that was supposed to uplift voices to oppose oppression. Riot Grrrl exhibited many traits that relate closely to the efforts of the suffragettes during first wave feminism in the early 1900s, where the issues that were being identified and brought to public attention are struggles that many people face, but are contorted to only fit the needs of privileged women. Riot Grrrl was many decades later, but ignorance on intersectional feminism remained prevalent and made white women’s issues the face of struggle once again.
First-wave feminism had many trailblazers who provided the space and community for women to exude personalities and actions that had been suppressed into silence. Colonists instilled binary social systems to produce power structures to enforce oppression and silence marginalized communities. These social hierarchies play a role in gender, race, sexuality, and more. The colonialist-informed binary system enforced the hierarchical role of the white, straight man having the most power, in which anyone who possesses differing identities exists lower on the hierarchy. These social systems informed foundational constitutional powers that implied that, for example, if you are a white woman, you are less than a white man, but more than a black woman. Colonialism created a system in the United States where you are either right or wrong in the context of the straight, white man. Any shift from this standard forces you to be systemically robbed of your abilities and rights as a human being on a hierarchical level.
This binary structure trickled down and informed first-wave feminism, where women fought for their rights by existing within this context. Existing within this hierarchical system made having the right to vote a better possibility for white women, rather than any women of color. Due to being the opposite binary of the power structure in which whiteness holds, the exclusion of women of color is an undeniable part of history that is still influential in its impacts today. First-wave feminism allowed women of color to contribute, but the movement’s emphasis and intention on whiteness excluded women of color within the achievement of voter equality in the United States. Although first-wave feminism was influential in progressing the fight for women’s rights, it was ultimately a movement for white women. It is crucial to understand the exclusionary aspects within first-wave feminist movements in order to avoid the possibility of perpetuating the image and privilege that white feminism holds.
White privilege was preserved within mainstream American feminism in the ‘90s by transforming within something irresistibly dominant in Euro-American culture: music. The effects of the suffragettes in first-wave feminism influenced the efforts to achieve equal pay and reproductive rights in second-wave feminism. These efforts impacted third-wave feminism, which focused on destroying the patriarchy and deconstructing heteronormativity to affirm individuality. The prevalence of primarily male-dominated industries influenced the activism of third-wave feminism, where women opposed succumbing to the gendered role that the binary structure played in determining success. It was a defiance of accepting that the only way to be a functional member of society was to fit into the ideal feminine image that had been perpetuated through the gendered binary social system. The system suggests that a masculine woman would be further down on the hierarchical list and experience an increase in societal and cultural consequences like prejudice, hostility, and violence that accompany diverting from what the binary suggests. Riot Grrrl was able to create a space where women could proudly exhibit the more masculine traits (as predetermined by the binary system), but white feminism still prevailed.
Proclaimed feminist movements like Riot Grrl fall victim to misunderstanding the first-wave feminist hierarchy, perpetuating influences of white feminism amongst the punk scene. However, the quintessential punk trait of resistance and challenging social systems persisted with ardent authenticity with the creation of Sista Grrrl. Honeychild Coleman, Simi Stone, Maya Sokora, and Tamar Kali contested their exclusion from Riot Grrrl as black women and created a new movement: Sista Grrrl. As pioneers of the Afro-punk genre, they hosted multiple shows together and created a new environment that emulated the true meaning of punk — intersectionality. The stories of women excluded within first-wave feminism are lost, erased by the movement’s white-centered focus. However, the members of Sista Grrrl are alive and able to tell their stories and we cannot afford to let time pass without preserving their efforts.
The Sista Grrrl shows, or as they were labeled on the fliers, riots, started happening after they met each other through mutual friendships, and decided to put their resources together in a combined effort to play more shows in New York. Tamar Kali in an interview described that the four of them creating these shows together inherently attracted groups of people who at other places would have felt “not safe or comfortable,” and Simi Stone followed up by saying, “We were really pushing that our shows be safe spaces.” Putting on rioting punk concerts around 1997 in venues like CBGBs, The Cooler, Brownies, and more, these women created an intersectional atmosphere that defied all the limitations Riot Grrrl inherently had. Many of these women are still creating and performing their music, and their stories are being preserved in films like “Afro-Punk: The Rock” released in 2003 by James Spooner, where Tamar Kali made an appearance, and books like “Black Punk Now” released in 2023 by Chris L. Terry and James Spooner.
Systemic oppression in the United States exists to suppress marginalized voices, which is evident in the unknown history and minimal media about Sista Grrrl. This suppression of voices is not just harmful in the context of each movement itself, but regarding the effects of this dangerous exclusion on people and women of color, it perpetuates a cycle of only teaching white history by suppressing the truth. The preservation of history documented by the successor resulted in systemic injustices that disproportionately represent different people of color, sexual orientation, gender, religion, and more. These injustices are ingrained in America’s history in such ways that marginalized communities are still experiencing the detrimental effects of misrepresentation.
As history is erased under past governmental administrations, which is only escalating with the current one, it is more important than ever to preserve narratives of the past in order to truly understand the context of where we are now and where we will be. Analyzing first-wave feminism provides context into why some activist movements, like Riot Grrrl, have been considerably exclusionary. These acts of exclusion lead to misunderstandings of feminist history, which persist into narratives of feminism today. Passive comprehension of Riot Grrrl’s intentions could lead to efforts of activism similarly becoming exclusionary. Feminism that existed within the context of a colonialist, heteronormative, binary society had dangerous, detrimental effects that can be traced throughout the waves of feminism, and the prevalence of white feminism persisting within the narratives of these feminist movements must be critically analyzed to share the stories of those left behind. Stories like Sista Grrrl.
The history of Sista Grrrl is commonly unknown, but its story of intersectionality being lost to mainstream white feminist narratives is still painfully relevant. Americans are experiencing tremendous losses under the current government and harrowing acts of racially targeted exclusion with libraries being threatened, books continuing to be banned, and proposed cuts of funding to media like PBS and NPR, that all help combat the educational discrepancies that occur in marginalized communities. Class and white privilege is heavily prominent within these fascist pushes to dismantle precious amenities, and the activist movements to combat such horror must be intersectional. No one can afford to be excluded in the fights for equity as they were in the previous waves of feminism.
The strategic silencing of marginalized voices and communities in America is preserved through prejudiced interpretations of history, and this tainted image of American history perpetuates ignorance. This continued ignorance allows for movements like Riot Grrrl to be widely accepted and considered as highly regarded feminist movements. When ignorance exists on a social level from trickling down from the systemic level, the silencing of marginalized voices continues to be in a preserved cycle. If no one talks about Sista Grrrl, they will also be lost to this cycle.
