Hello, I would like to report a crime.
This morning, the Daily Beast ran an article about Kathleen Hanna’s new memoir (Wonkette commission link!), which comes out today. That’s great! I, for one, am very excited to read it, as I am a huge fan of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and just her as a person.
What was not great, however, was the headline on that article: “The Riot Grrrl Who Named Nirvana’s Biggest Song Tells All.”
I want to be clear, first, before jumping into this, that I am very forgiving of headlines — especially because, in many cases, the people who write the articles are not writing the headlines themselves. Having freelanced for some time, there have been more than a few instances in which a headline I did not write absolutely made me want to die in my face. So this is not about the article itself, it’s just about that damn headline.
That being said, it is an absolute punch to the gut to see Kathleen Hanna of all people defined in terms of her relationship to a man. There is just something so insidious about taking one of the most important feminist musicians … ever and reducing her own life story to a side note in a story about a man. A man who, despite being quite feminist in his own right, has ironically often been used in some ways as a cudgel against women in music.
I think it makes me angry, especially, because I know the thought process behind something like that. I’ve been through thought processes like that. I know that someone saw it and thought, “Oh, no one’s going to know/care who this woman is, but they do care about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, so let’s lead with that. Maybe they’ll think she’s ‘telling all’ about that and not, you know, her actual life.”
Even the subhead didn’t mention her actual name: “The Bikini Kill rocker’s searing new memoir, ‘Rebel Girl,’ tells intimate stories of trauma, sexism, fame, and everything in between.”
Yes, sexism sure does suck, doesn’t it?
I was kind of wondering if this was just a fluke, so I took a look at some of the other headlines in their music section. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was. In cases where a man’s name might not be immediately recognizable to people, his name was included in the headline. In cases where a woman’s name might not be immediately recognizable to people, they mostly were not. Of course, I would personally argue that Mel B/Scary Spice, identified only as “Spice Girl” in the headline, is probably a lot more known to people these days than is Steve Lawrence, who was identified as “Steve Lawrence.” I know who Steve Lawrence is because my old boss at the vintage store I worked at dated him at one point (pre-Eydie) and made sure we all knew it, but I don’t think that most people these days do.
I had to go all the way back to January to find an instance in which a male musician’s name did not appear in the headline of an article about him — Singer Clashes With Noisy Concert Goer: ‘Who Raised You?’ — the singer in question being Richard Marx (who, we might note, was far more popular among women than men in his day).
Curiously, in many cases, the metadata headlines, the ones that appear on the tabs, often do include their names, which suggests that they were there at one point and then removed. The metadata headline, for instance, on the Kathleen Hanna article, reads “Kathleen Hanna’s ‘Rebel Girl’ Book: Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and Riot Grrrl.” It’s still not a headline I would have chosen, but at least it has her damn name in it.
I don’t think this was done on purpose by someone who hates women, I think it was done by someone who just genuinely thought “Oh, people won’t click on this if the see a woman’s name they don’t know.” However, there is a phenomenon I have noticed working on the internet all these years, which I call “the woman threshold,” and I can’t help but wonder if things like this are a byproduct of that.
Some people, you see, only have a small brain capacity they can devote to knowing who women are — so they flip the fuck out whenever they learn of a new woman they don’t like, they seethe over women they imagine are “drawing attention to themselves” (truly the worst crime one can commit as a woman), they, at the very least, roll their eyes at any female-coded pop culture.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t men people don’t like and “don’t want to hear/know about,” but there is less vitriol, less anger behind it.
Part of the reason I got so into Bikini Kill and similar bands as a teenager was because the people I knew at the time — the ones who were “serious” about music, including other women — were very anti-female singer. Women who sang about love were disparaged as only singing about their exes, women who sang about social issues were bitches, women who sang happier songs were “annoying,” women who sang pop were stupid, and women who played instruments were, of course, all overrated. No other criticism? “I just don’t find them relatable.” It stung. On some level it always felt like being told that none of us mattered. It felt like being put on mute. I fucking hated that shit. I loved Kathleen Hanna.
I loved Kathleen Hanna because she was fucking loud and she took up space and she wasn’t afraid of looking angry. The same reasons why so many other women have loved her through the last few decades — during which, may I remind you, she’s been a hell of a lot more active musically than a lot of male musicians who came out around the same time she did. Bikini Kill and Le Tigre have both been on tour in the past few years. She’s important in and of herself, right now, at this moment, and not because she came up with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” 30 years ago.
Anyway, go out and buy Kathleen Hanna’s book (Wonkette commission link again, but it’s Kathleen Hanna, so you really should go to an indie bookstore, if you are able) and also watch this documentary about her if you feel like it.
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