Kathleen Hanna quotes
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“I don't need to convince men that feminism is important, that just isn't a goal of mine. I can't even have that conversation of whether or not it's important, because if someone asks me that... I don't want to have a conversation with them until they grow up.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I know that's really horrible, but that's how I do it in my head. I'm going to die. It doesn't matter. I don't matter. I'm a grain of sand. As a grain of sand, I may as well go out and relate to people and enjoy my short time on this planet that I have. Who knows what's coming next?”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I would much rather be the obnoxious feminist girl than be complicit in my own dehumanization.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Part of being in a band, being a painter, or starting a nonprofit is that you're going to make horrible mistakes and look like a total idiot, but you're never going to create that thing that really connects with people if you don't fail over and over and over again.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“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 it's a lie.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I don't want to waste the precious moments I have, and I've felt that way since I was 17. I have to take risks because why else would you be alive? Put your pirate patch on and go on an adventure because you only have one life to live.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : Interview with Nina Corcoran, allstonpudding.com.
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“Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I was lucky enough to go to college for four years. At what was supposedly a hippie school with no tests and no grades, blah blah blah, I wasn't learning that. I was taking photography classes. That stuff just wasn't talked about. It was like, "Does this picture have the right about of grey in it?" It wasn't even an art school. It was a state-run school.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I kind of decided that doing music is enough because I'm already running a couple small businesses. I'm a part of Bikini Kill Records, Le Tigre Records, and Digitally Ruined Records. In dealing with my health and everything, my ability to do that? I wouldn't be good at it.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I am possibly thinking about doing an Internet show in the future that will highlight political organizations that I seek out to let people know about them, volunteer opportunities, and donation opportunities.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I feel like what I'm best at is being a musician and a performer. I want to use that to help people who are good at starting nonprofits.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“If you really hate me, you should at least have the courtesy to take out a piece of paper and write it down and mail it to me. If you're a worthy nemesis, I want to see your handwriting. I want to see your name and your address, and if you don't have the guts to give me those, then you're not a worthy nemesis.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Younger feminists actually care about stuff that came before them, the same way that I totally cared about and loved and felt so lucky to have access to the feminism that came before me. To have younger people take what me and my friends have done, and to say 'We have access to that, but we're going to put that through our own Internet generation filter and we're going to make it into something that speaks to us and is a lot smarter.'”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Kathleen Hanna And Sini Anderson On SXSW’s THE PUNK SINGER". Interview with Meredith Borders, birthmoviesdeath.com. March 20, 2013.
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“I didn't go to high school, I didn't go to college, I didn't have women's studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it's still growing.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I am not Lyme disease, that's not who I am, I'm still a feminist artist, but this is a part of my story too, and I'm not going to keep it out to look cooler.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I saw a video on YouTube of a girl who had very similar reactions to late-stage Lyme disease as I did. And I thought it was crazy. And when I saw her basically have a seizure on camera that looked very much like my seizure I felt, "Oh my god. That's me." And so it was really important to me, and I said to Sini, 'We have to find some way to not just talk about Lyme disease, but to show it.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Badass Interview: Kathleen Hanna And Sini Anderson On SXSW’s THE PUNK SINGER". Interview with Meredith Borders, birthmoviesdeath.com. March 20, 2013.
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“It takes falling down a bunch of times before you start running.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Kathleen Hanna And Sini Anderson On SXSW’s THE PUNK SINGER". Interview with Meredith Borders, birthmoviesdeath.com. March 20, 2013.
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“I think that's such an important message, especially for younger women, to know, 'I don't have to come out of the womb painting like Frida Kahlo. My very first thing that I make isn't going to be an around-the-world sensation.' You have to paint a hundred really ugly, barfy, diarrhea paintings before you come up with that one where you start to really get into your groove.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“There are more people who are not straight, white males going to shows.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I'm not that interested in female superheroes.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“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.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I'm lucky enough to have been in the age before the internet and now during the internet. I'm grateful to be a witness to that. It's horse and buggy versus car. To see how quickly things change has given me a renewed sense of optimism. Does that make sense?”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“It's so crazy because kids that wrote to me when they were 14 years old are still in my life. A lot have gone on to become musicians and artists in their own right who inspire me now.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I always knew she was being funny, but when I tell my therapist that my mom played the trust game with me and let me fall on the ground, my therapist does not find that funny. She's like, "That's the reason for everything! That's why you have such a hard time with trust!" And I'm like, "I don't really have a hard time with trust. I thought it was funny."”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I get emails every day from people saying, "I never heard your music. I don't know anything about you. I just happened to watch this on Netflix. I hope you're feeling better. More power to you." It just shows you, I don't know, how generous and wonderful people can be”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“There's comedians who I consider extremely punk rock who I've seen do very political stand up in places where nobody wants to hear that. It's uncomfortable and scary and you realize it's the punkest performance you've ever witnessed.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Everybody wasn't always wasted. Why is punk rock about getting wasted? Isn't it punk rock to be sober and change the world? I thought it was about challenging capitalism? How are you going to challenge capitalism if you're wasted?”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Johnny Rotten isn't punk. Maybe that's punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : Interview with Nina Corcoran, allstonpudding.com.
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“My vision of punk rock was these dudes who were spitting on the audience and moshing. That's why I kind of left that scene. Then I see all these people around my same age or between 17 and 25 that were making music themselves in their own town. They weren't just singing, but creating. I see them putting out this music where there are tons of women involved in the scene and involved in the bands.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I didn't even know what the word lesbian meant until I was called one... and then I had to look it up in the dictionary.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I'm living in a world where there are LGBTQ straight alliances at high schools. I feel pretty psyched on that.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“The more people, as you know, are able to be on whatever spectrum of femininity and masculinity they are on at that moment, that opens the door for women to not have to be the opposite of what the supposed traditional male is.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Gay marriage! That's a huge change and a huge win-win for feminism.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“People are actually having conversations about "Is this sexist?"”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Internalized sexism that makes us feel like we can't show ourselves not being perfect.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Kathleen Hanna And Sini Anderson On SXSW’s THE PUNK SINGER". Interview with Meredith Borders, birthmoviesdeath.com. March 20, 2013.
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“It's the idea that we as people can control our own destinies. The government and the corporations, more even than the government, can't dictate what artwork we're supposed to like or what comedy we're supposed to laugh at.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn't think we were stupid, that we didn't think we needed feminism to be explained to us.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“Every time I get sexually harassed, I'm supposed to turn around and yell at the person, but there are safety issues. Sometimes the best thing you can do it just walk right past that person and have a great day. But sometimes you feel like you really need to say something.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Kathleen Hanna on Bikini Kill, growing up, and being a feminist icon". Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. November 20, 2012.
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“I'm more interested in a feminism that ends discrimination for all people. It's not just about a woman becoming the CEO of a company or something. It's connected to racism and classism and gender issues that go beyond the binary.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I guess my definition of feminism changed from the time I was 9 to the time I was 20 just because my idea of feminism when I was 9 was, "Girls can do anything!" I had a T-shirt that said, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I think that the Internet is really cool because a lot of young feminists don't feel like they have to reinvent the wheel.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“The cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I think that feminism is in cycle. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“What I've heard from younger women and women my age is that the albums changed their lives or it was the first time they had heard feminism that they could relate to. So that's great.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“The exciting thing about getting a label together and doing press for it is that hopefully some 15-year-old girl who is the only feminist in her junior-high class will hear about it and be like, "Oh, cool, I hadn't heard of that, I'm going to check it out."”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“There are people who view their feminism in different ways. I used to beat myself up if I didn't react to things like I was supposed to.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“When you're a musician and you go out onstage, and you're someone who loves attention, you are going to become a role model to some extent.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“People can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“If I were a supervillain, I would end capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia... but I guess that's a little too obvious and not villain-y enough. Because that's actually being a superhero. I would break down poverty with my machete; I would end world hunger.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I'm a big proponent of open adoption, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you." Not just the parents who are raising you on a day-to-day basis, but also to have contact with your birth mother and hopefully your birth father. So that you can be like, "Oh, they love me too, and they love me so much that they knew they couldn't take care of me but they're still in my life to some extent."”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I was never trying to be the voice for anybody else. I was just trying to sing about what I was going through, and was singing about those things specifically because I knew there was an audience not being served.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“My original goal in the '90s, after I found feminism and I was the first generation in my family to go to college, was to spread this information that feminism was still very much alive, and that you can't believe the media telling you that it doesn't need to exist and that it doesn't exist.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I'm so language-based and I'm so about communicating, and my art has always been very audience-based, and very about being functional and communicating something, and about feeling like I have to be heard.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“Don't get down on yourself that you can't run a 4K or dance all night long at a fun club. Give yourself a break.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Find something that makes you happy, like looking at beautiful pictures, or, if you're able, listening to beautiful music, or sitting by the window and looking outside - small things like that can be absolutely huge.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Taking care of yourself is the most important thing.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Think of something that you can do as opposed to all the things you can't do - and do that.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Feeling Myself: Kathleen Hanna Gets Back to Work". Interview with Laura Snapes, pitchfork.com. June 5, 2015.
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“I'm a very binary person in a bad way where it's like everything is either totally great or totally awful.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I think the [fan] access is complicated, because it brings wonderful things into my life, and it brings really negative things into my life. I just try to keep the negative stuff at arm's length. Laugh at it and walk away.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I do have personal relationships with a lot of "fans," in quotations. I answer all my mail, I get emails from fans, and I try to answer them all. That's important to me, but occasionally there's the thing where people basically ask me to write book reports for them, and I don't have that kind of time. I feel like there's a certain sexism involved, like because I'm a woman I'm supposed to constantly be like giving to everybody.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : Source: www.aboutfilm.com
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“I have no clue. I just know I would want to play the least amount of shows that the most people would be able to come to.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it's all you talk about.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Feminism is something you do. It's a verb. It's what you are. It's an activity; it's something you're actively engaged in.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Kathleen Hanna on Bikini Kill, growing up, and being a feminist icon". Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. November 20, 2012.
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“I felt like going out on the road and mixing it with music - which is something young people are always really interested in - would be a good way to proselytize. It was like feminist evangelism.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I'm not a goddess, for crying out loud. I'm a regular person who took feminism - which I have a deep connection to - and mixed it with music, which I really love to do.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I'm sure if you see things you wrote when you were 19, you cringe. I saw stuff like angry poetry that I wrote when I was mad at my father, or photos I took where I smeared period blood on myself. It's embarrassing.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I need to see my friends or I'm gonna go crazy. I'm not gonna stay home and work.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“Sometimes, being a feminist artist, there are times where I'm in a position where I just want to feel like I'm saying all the right things politically, or I feel like I have to mention my own project over other people's projects.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I don't like being in the service industry and having to deal with people yelling at me all the time. McDonald's was the hardest job I ever had - so I have a lot of respect for people who work in the fast food industry. Because it's a hard job.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I think my biggest fear is dying. Although sometimes my biggest fear is not dying. But yeah, I think health stuff for me is more what I'm afraid of.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I know what a good question would be for an actor. What's your least favorite thing that you've ever heard an actor say about acting? Or about being in a movie?”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“If people are like, 'Oh, you're an icon,' then whatever. But who thinks of themselves like that? It's not like I have posters of myself on the wall.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“If I had to choose between the band or the friendships, I'd choose the friendships at this point.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“While sexism hurts women most intimately, it also damages men severely.”
-- Kathleen HannaSource : "Fierce, Funny, Feminists: Gloria Steinem and Kathleen Hanna". Interview with Celina Hex, www.feministezine.com.
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“I'm in a really lucky position where people will be interested in whatever I do, but what I do is sing.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“It's unexpected for women's issues to be brought up in places other than women's centers on college campuses or crisis places.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you're told that you're overreacting, you're too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“There's still a lot of misogynist pop music out there, and I think that hearing something that's so explicitly feminist and so angry - when we're still growing up in a culture where girls and women are not supposed to be angry - is a real revelation for young women.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I feel so lucky that I met the love of my life. You know somebody's in it to win it when...you're having a seizure and they're holding you...”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“Women didn't want to be on the stage with other women because they didn't want their bodies to be compared. They didn't want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I wanted to say to myself as much as anyone else that we made art.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
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“I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing.”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“I wanna be a legend; I wanna be a cult hero. I do!”
-- Kathleen Hanna -
“It's really funny - when I'm depressed or I'm having a hard time, I'll write really fun stuff. And then when I'm really happy, I write really depressing stuff.”
-- Kathleen Hanna
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