Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna is an American musician, feminist activist, and punk zine writer. In the early-to mid-1990s she was the lead singer of feminist punk band Bikini Kill, before fronting Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1998, Hanna released a lo-fi solo album under the name Julie Ruin and since 2010 has been working on a project called The Julie Ruin...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth12 November 1968
CityPortland, OR
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
I feel like there's this weird thing that as a feminist band you get put in this role as ambassadors.
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.
I just write what I want to write.
I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.
I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing.
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.
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.
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
I don't consider myself a divining rod whom God is speaking through or any kind of crap like that.
I am such a bossy producer and such a control freak that there's a part of me that really longs to be bossed around.
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.
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.