Top 100 Kathleen Hanna Quotes
#1. I wanted to say to myself as much as anyone else that we made art.
Kathleen Hanna
#2. 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
#3. I've always talked a lot on stage - I really wanted to communicate my ideas and when you're playing at a lot of shitty punk clubs they don't have good PAs and so no one knows what you're singing about.
Kathleen Hanna
#5. I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don't have any talent, 'Well, neither do I.' I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers.
Kathleen Hanna
#6. 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
#7. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. And the cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history. Part of the problem before the Internet was that we didn't know which books to read. Someone had to tell you.
Kathleen Hanna
#8. 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 Hanna
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. I never thought that someone would be teaching one of my fanzines. I never thought I'd be off to lecture at a college. It's still shocking to me.
Kathleen Hanna
#12. I wouldn't want to play Miss Hannigan. I'm not a villain. She's mean to little children! I can't do that. That would disrupt my brand.
Kathleen Hanna
#13. In the '90s, people wore scrunchies, but it was very uncool in the punk scene.
Kathleen Hanna
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. I'm really annoyed by the wave of country music that's just a list of stuff. It almost sounds like L.A. people writing country music, because it's just a list of stuff: 'My pickup truck and my cowboy boots and my Levi's jeans and my girlfriend with the short shorts.' It's so boring!
Kathleen Hanna
#20. For whatever reason I just remembered being six years old and my parents leaving the house and trusting me to be alone. I had an older sister, I think she was supposed to babysit me but she immediately ran across the street to her friend's house.
Kathleen Hanna
#21. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything: You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.
Kathleen Hanna
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. I especially don't want men coming up to me and asking if sexism still exists. It's like, I'm seriously gonna barf a McDonald's salad on the next person to do that.
Kathleen Hanna
#25. So many women have experienced horrific forms of male violence throughout their lives, and why isn't there a song about how you get depressed because of it?
Kathleen Hanna
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. I don't consider myself a divining rod whom God is speaking through or any kind of crap like that.
Kathleen Hanna
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. It's so important for people in political groups to learn the difference between productive criticism and not. When it's about something you can change, it's productive. But if it's just like "You are an evil person", you can't change that. There's no way around that.
Kathleen Hanna
#33. I belive power can be used for good, I don't think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that's why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.
Kathleen Hanna
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. But see, my idea on the whole thing is, hey, it's not the responsibility of marginalized, oppressed people to educate everyone. I personally wouldn't put myself in that position and go out there and do my schtick in front of the Red Hot Chili Peppers fan guys ... because, you know ...
Kathleen Hanna
#38. 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
#39. Gay marriage! That's a huge change and a huge win-win for feminism.
Kathleen Hanna
#40. Just because you're wearing a goofy hat doesn't make it performance art.
Kathleen Hanna
#41. 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 Hanna
#42. I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.
Kathleen Hanna
#43. While everyone's experience of oppression is different and complicated and often overlapping, I really believe that if you have privilege, you need to learn as much as you can about the world beyond yourself.
Kathleen Hanna
#44. Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes.
Kathleen Hanna
#45. I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.
Kathleen Hanna
#46. 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 Hanna
#47. What usually happens with me [is that] I start with one idea in mind and then something else happens.
Kathleen Hanna
#48. I watch videos on YouTube of bands that I've heard of that I want to check out. And sometimes I don't even finish the video. And that's really sad, because maybe I'd like that song. I think that we don't give stuff a chance to really sink in.
Kathleen Hanna
#49. I'm in a really lucky position where people will be interested in whatever I do, but what I do is sing.
Kathleen Hanna
#50. 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
#51. As I've gotten older, I've realized that things are a lot more permeable. It's not so black and white: not every journalist is a jerk.
Kathleen Hanna
#52. I don't want to be a historical action figure or treated like I'm dead. Like one of those people where they go, 'Oh, isn't she dead?' And then I walk up, and they're like, 'Whoa.' I can't really complain ... because I've made myself into a historical action figure. I was like, 'Yeah, come on in!'
Kathleen Hanna
#53. Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.
Kathleen Hanna
#54. There are more people who are not straight, white males going to shows.
Kathleen Hanna
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. Singing is my life, and I have to do it, or I'm going to go totally bananas.
Kathleen Hanna
#60. 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
#61. There's just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world.
Kathleen Hanna
#62. I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing.
Kathleen Hanna
#63. A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it's really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.
Kathleen Hanna
#64. I felt it was really, really important, not just in the vein of feminist erasure or whatever but also just as an artist that I honored my work.
Kathleen Hanna
#65. Every band I've been in, it's just become my total life. I feel like a child star - I've missed out on so much.
Kathleen Hanna
#66. It's really cool that Miley Cyrus said she's the biggest feminist ever. I was like, 'That's the sound of 200,000 eight-year-olds Googling the word feminist!
Kathleen Hanna
#67. I think music can definitely be art; I also think music can be crap and not be art.
Kathleen Hanna
#68. 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
#69. I won't stop talking. I am a girl you have no control over. There is not a gag big enough to handle this mouth.
Kathleen Hanna
#70. While sexism hurts women most intimately, it also damages men severely.
Kathleen Hanna
#71. I'm living in a world where there are LGBTQ straight alliances at high schools. I feel pretty psyched on that.
Kathleen Hanna
#72. In terms of men being feminist allies, it's just important to speak from your own place. I'd love to hear men singing about masculinity and the damage it does to them.
Kathleen Hanna
#73. 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
#75. I always thought that putting tons of reverb on my voice was kind of the equivalent of airbrushing. And I wanted other girls and women to hear a real female voice that wasn't completely manipulated.
Kathleen Hanna
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. I feel so lucky that I met the love of my life. You know somebody's in it to win it when they're changing your IV bag or you're having a seizure and they're holding you. And helping you to the bathroom. You know that they love you.
Kathleen Hanna
#80. 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
#82. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm the same as every other female singer.
Kathleen Hanna
#83. I really like to talk about my work in a way that is complicated.
Kathleen Hanna
#84. People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer.
Kathleen Hanna
#85. 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
#86. I don't appreciate it when women - or men - bandy about these stupid stereotypes about feminism that are age-old, and that are meant to keep people turned off from it. It's like, "All you have to do is Wikipedia feminism to know that it's not about man-hating - so shut up." That makes me annoyed.
Kathleen Hanna
#87. 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
#88. I made the decision that my contribution needed to be more musical than political. My music was enough, politically. Art matters. Art was enough. My music was enough to say what I had to say.
Kathleen Hanna
#89. If I had to choose between the band or the friendships, I'd choose the friendships at this point.
Kathleen Hanna
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. I feel like there's this weird thing that as a feminist band you get put in this role as ambassadors.
Kathleen Hanna
#93. When I watch myself on camera, in any capacity - being interviewed, performing, 20 years ago or yesterday - there's a part of me that really doesn't grasp that it's me.
Kathleen Hanna
#94. 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
#95. I really love that I'm giving myself the opportunity finally to not have the pressure of every single song you do having to be "political" or whatever. I'm just making what I wanna make.
Kathleen Hanna
#96. I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.
Kathleen Hanna
#97. I'm just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don't know what's going to happen, and I'm letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.
Kathleen Hanna
#98. I think one things that's really important in the boy community or whatever, or the boy things, is like, to realize that oppression is a two-way street. You know what I mean? That it's like, white men are really missing out - I don't wanna say white men are oppressed but ...
Kathleen Hanna
#99. It's now taken for granted that women are in bands and you can say feminist things in your songs. But back in the early '90s, there was a lot of violence at Bikini Kill shows that people don't realize happened.
Kathleen Hanna
#100. I think that it's so powerful for me to go see someone like Bridget Everett at Joe's Pub and watch her weave her songs in and out of these funny, tragic stories - you can talk and sing and it's not this horrible offense, you're going to get thrown in artistic jail.
Kathleen Hanna
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