None of us come out of the womb feminist. While I am unquestionably a feminist now, there were times during my youth when I resisted the title, buying into the persistent stereotype of feminists as bra-burning man haters. Earlier in the pandemic, when asked how I came into my feminism during a Zoom workshop, I struggled to remember when I was first introduced to a version of feminism that I resonated with. I knew it wasnt through reading bell hooks or Gloria Steinem, or a gender studies course, political movement or mentor these avenues werent quite accessible to me as a kid. Turns out, my entry point to feminism was through Riot grrrl .

Riot grrrl, for those unfamiliar, is a feminist movement and subculture founded in the early 90s by young women artists, activists and rockers in bands including Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile. Riot grrrl creators made music and art that loudly criticized misogyny and heteronormativity, and challenged patriarchy in male-dominated punk spaces by demanding girls to the front .

My formative years were all spent in Texas, and my public school education didnt exactly direct me to feminism. But as an angsty Asian girl coming of age in predominantly white suburbs in the South (and whose adolescence fell between the late 90s and the mid-2000s), I was always going to find my way to riot grrrl. Like all other riot grrrls and feminists, my anger stemmed from my experiences with and extreme disdain for patriarchal violence in its many forms and an understanding that speaking out made me an outsider to polite society. I recognized how wrong it was for girls to be abused, and I relished the way riot grrrls screamed these unpleasant truths into microphones and refused to be silent.

Im really interested in a punk rock movement an angry girl movement of sexual abuse survivors, Bikini Kill singer and riot grrrl co-founder Kathleen Hanna told Sara Marcus, author of Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. I seriously believe that the majority of people in this country have stories to tell that they arent telling for some reason. I mean, with all that energy and anger, if we could unify it in some way.