beatnik living: blurbs about power and evolution

The following are some cool passages I found on tumblr. I agree 100% with both. When I was first reading the Riot Grrrl one, I was like "WTF is this shit? How can we be expected to forget about a feminist movement that is awesome?" but then I read the last line, about Riot Grrrl being an evolution I was like FUCK YES. I think rather than obsessing over the Riot Grrrl of the 90s, we need to evolve it and make it valid for today. I encourage everyone to read both blurbs. I know some people consider reading a burden, but this is some cool fucking stuff that I'm sure you will find really interesting and eye opening. Feel free to comment with your thoughts and opinions!

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A reminder on why we need to focus on ourselves, rather than others. Written by Cassie.

No, for real. We do. I love riot grrrl as much as the next girl in a band who does the occasional Bratmobile cover. But let’s put that scene to rest. Let’s leave it in the ’90s.

There’s a whole different scene these days— with some of the old spirit, but with some new faces, the new forum that is the internet, new possibilities for gender expression, some new experiences (and not-so-new-experiences, like racism) that the old riot grrrls never really spoke to.

I think about this a lot, with my comic Riot Grrrl Problems, which I’ve hit a stand-still with. Because I, as a Latina, am really trying to wrestle with the idea of tackling race in what’s supposed to be a funny comic. I thought of revealing Katie as someone who had a brown mother, but I realized the whole point of the cartoon is “White Girl Problems” with a punk filter. I want my white protagonist to say something racist at a show. I want her to be confronted with brown punx in her precious white space, and I want her to handle it poorly, I want her to think about the stuff she’s never wanted to think about, I want her to grow the fuck up because at some point, all riot grrrls have to grow the fuck up, all of them are gonna have to face a world that they’re not familiar with, people who don’t care about their zines or their music or their circular discussions about how it’s perfectly a-okay to like sex.

Riot grrrls started their scene because they wanted it to grow and to evolve. So let’s do it. Let’s come up with something good.

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“In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to justgive him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!”