My Ode to Riot Grrrl & Olympia in the 90’s
The foundations of my feminist consciousness.
These past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about the origins of my feminist consciousness and my hometown, Olympia, Washington. As both the state capitol and a liberal college town, Olympia has a deeply rooted activist culture and a progressive political consciousness that I haven’t encountered in any of the other cities where I’ve lived.
Olympia is tiny but mighty. My 78 year-old mother told me over the weekend that she turned out for a 50501 protest last week with thousands in attendance.
Olympia was an exciting place to grow up. I was coming of age just as grunge was blowing up, 60 miles north in Seattle. We all loved Nirvana. They were hometown heroes, especially with their ties to the Olympia punk scene. But, by the time I hit high school, they were already famous and far away. Which was fine with me because we had plenty of other local rising stars, two homegrown record labels, and a thriving youth culture.
A few months ago, Chickfactor Zine published a two-part oral history of the 1994 Yoyo-a-Gogo Festival, which is the best encapsulation I’ve seen of the zeitgeist at that the time. If you were a teen in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, love fourth wave punk, or want a glimpse into what thriving culture you can create when you put a bunch of highly creative, politically-progressive kids together in a rainy town without cell phones or social media, I recommend taking some time out of your day to read Part 1 and Part 2.
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Today, I’m sharing the first chapter from new Feminist Flourishing Framework with paid subscribers. It tells of my own feminist awakening and the influence of Riot Grrrl on my feminist consciousness.
Exposure to feminism, as a teenager in the punk scene, changed the trajectory of my life.
Riot Grrrl made feminism desirable. I wanted to be a part of it. It looked smart, fun, funny, wildly creative, and alive. But mostly, it looked powerful. Feminism held the promise that I could have authority over my own life (which was intoxicating, as a teenager), and awakened a fierceness within me to protect myself and others from harm.
It wasn't a moral imperative or inclination for social change that pulled me into feminism and altered the trajectory of my life. It was the pulsing vibration, the rich aliveness I felt when I was in the presence of other young, brash, and impassioned feminists. I wanted to live in a feminist world, surrounded by feminists, because it felt amazing.
FEMINIST FLOURISHING FRAMEWORK is a theoretical autobiography that tells the intertwining stories of my feminist and healing journeys over the past three decades. The chapters alternate between autobiographical narrative and feminist theory. The book comprises a guidebook for an embodied social change strategy, rooted in lived experience, and culminates with my specific recommendations for what actions to take in this pivotal historic moment.
1. Feminist Awakening
Reprinted from Feminist Flourishing Framework
I have been feminist for 32 years. My feminist awakening began in the early '90s, during my freshman year at Olympia High School, when I started going to all-ages punk shows with my friends. This was the height of the Riot Grrrl movement, and I was right there, in the heart of it, by sheer luck of my parents having settled in Olympia before I was born. I was inspired by the Riot Grrrls’ brash feminism and scrappy musical stylings.