Zines, Art Activism and the Female Body: What We Learn from Riot Grrrls

It was primarily the advent of the medical profession in the United States and the establishment of the AMA in 1847 that pushed doctors to be strong lobbyists against anyone who they considered “irregular” (Baehr, 1990).star (*2) Doctors wanted more control over abortions, therefor having more control over the medical profession on a larger level. It was the focus of male doctors to convince male politicians and middle-class public that controlling women’s bodies and reproductive choices was important to maintain social order (Baehr, 1990, p.2).star (*2)

The connection between the anti-abortion movement and the church has a relatively short history. It was not until 1869 that Pope Pius IX said abortion was wrong. Prior to this point, the relationship between the Catholic Church and abortion was a bit different. During the 1960s and 1970s, churches often became activists for the abortion rights movement. Among other examples, New York City clergy founded the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (CCS), an international group that assisted women in obtaining abortions—whether legal or illegal.*6 *(6)

Prior to the 1970s, The Rape Narrative as told in the United States was one of a young woman, alone at night, without a man to protect her. Attacked by an unknown assailant, she fails to protect herself. Usually, the woman is middle or upper class and white, while the attacker is black, making the narrative racially problematic and adding to longstanding cultural racism (Anderson, 2005). Poor women, women of color, and sex workers are often non-existent in the narrative. Yet, during the women’s movement of the 1970s, the rape narrative began to change. Women started to share their personal stories and experiences, addressing sexual violence at home and in the workplace and Susan Brownmiller’s ground-breaking Against our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975)star (*6)became the first comprehensive book on rape, changing the traditional narrative.

It wasn’t until 1994 that the United States passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAMA), and established the Rape Prevention Education Program (RPE). The creation of laws and programs designed to assist survivors of sexual assault as well as fund programs designed to educate and prevent rape and sexual violence made the discussion of rape culture more prominent throughout the United States. Through education at schools and throughout the workplace, RPE funds intervention programs and creates direct prevention efforts (Basile et al., 2007).star (*4) Federally funded campaigns such as “No Means No” also worked to bring more public awareness of women’s rights and society’s value of women’s decisions around sex and sexual choices (Lonsway, et al., 1998).star (*12) All of these laws and policies passed in the 1990s were influenced by the activism of young punk feminists who were making art through zines and defining themselves as riot grrrls.

Paralleling these movements and the rise of feminism throughout the United States came the women’s self-defense movement. Even in the early 1900s, women learned that police were not always willing or ready to protect them from harassment. Women started to discuss that they were more likely to experience violence in the home than from a stranger on the street. Along with the suffrage movement, women practiced self-defense as a way to defend themselves and build self-confidence. Once the first wave of feminism declined in the 1920s, women’s self-defense too was not as prevalent. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the rise of second wave feminism women’s self-defense practices re-emerged. Women started to teach each other self-defense as well as discuss broader issues around sexual assault and sexual violence (Rouse, 2017).star (*16) Self-defense in all its forms was a tool of activism and subversion by women and a way to protect against normalization of sexual violence.

As women addressed sexual violence, body politics, and reproductive rights, they took on different forms of feminist activism. Women have a rich history in activism through feminist art, especially as it is used to address social issues, especially those around women’s bodies and women’s rights. bell hooks (2012)star (*10) argues that “the function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what is possible” (p. 281) and with this feminist art becomes a space to open up discussion around topics and call for social change. Zines are one space in which women have been doing this in subversive ways for decades. In particular, riot grrrl zines, which are both personal and feminist in nature, are important platforms for feminist art as activism.

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Anderson, Michelle J. 2005. All-American Rape.  St. John’s Law Review: Vol. 79: No. 3, Article 2.

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Baehr, Ninia.1990. Abortion Without Apology: A Radical History for the 1900s. Boston: South End Press.

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Barton, David, and Mary Hamilton. 2000. „Literacy Practices.“ In Situated Literacies Reading and Writing in Context, by David Barton, Mary Hamilton and Roz Ivanic, 7-15. London: Routledge.

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Basile, Kathleen & Chen, Jieru & C Black, Michele & E Saltzman, Linda. 2007. Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence Victimization Among U.S. Adults, 2001–2003. Violence and Victims. 22. 437-48.

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Bellafante, Gina. 1989. „It’s All About Me!“ Time Magazine, June 29.

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Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Buchanan, Rebekah. 2018. Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics. New York: Peter Lang.

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Candy Ass Records. 1995. FREE TO FIGHT!: An Interactive Self-Defense Project. Portland, OR: Self-published.

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Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, LIfe, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. London and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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hooks, bell. 2012. Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge.

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Lai, K.K. Rebecca. 2019. Abortion Bans: 9 States Have Passed Bills to Limit the Procedure This Year. New York Times, May, 29.

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Lonsway, K. A., Klaw, E. L., Berg, D. R., Waldo, C. R., Kothari, C., Mazurek, C. J., & Hegeman, K. E. 1998. Beyond „no means no“: Outcomes of an intensive program to train peer facilitators for campus acquaintance rape education. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 13(1), 73-92.

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Marcus, Sara. 2010. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. New York: Harper Perennial.

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New London Group. 1996. A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review; Spring 1996; 66.1 (60-93).

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Riot Grrrl Olympia. nd. “What is riot grrrl anyway???” Olympia: WA, Self-published.

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Rouse, Wendy. 2017. Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement. New York: New York University Press.

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Street, B. 1995. Social Literacies. Longman: London

This article focuses on zines in the United States. Primarily, it looks at cis-gender women who identify as heterosexual or bisexual and their approaches to issues of sexual assault and violence. The majority of zine writers discussed in this article identify as white. There are many zine writers who identify as queer and other sexual orientations, zine writers of color, and zine writers outside of the United States who also use zines as a form of feminist activism. For my discussion on a wider group of zine writers, see my book, Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics (Peter Lang, 2018).

In 2019, 9 states passed laws limiting abortions, some as early as six weeks. These are a mix of abortion bans and fetal heartbeat bills, some of which have been struck down and others which have passed. (Lai, 2019).

For an overview of U.S. Rape Shield Law, see the Stop Violence Against Women website (http://www.stopvaw.org), I particular the Evolution of Sexual Assault Criminal Justice Reform (http://www.stopvaw.org/national_sexual_assault_laws_united_states).

Known today as the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), the CCS was formed in 1967 as a response to deaths and injuries through unsafe abortions. The CCS grew to 1,400 members within a year. For more information see the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice website (http://rcrc.org/history/).

I define punk feminists as individuals involved in punk subcultures who have feminist ideologies and apply them to their subcultural participation.

In punk, coat hanger is a negative term used to refer to girlfriends who just hold the coats of their boyfriends as the boyfriends participate in the mosh pit or other aspects of punk.

This is an extremely short version of riot grrrl. For a more comprehensive discussion on riot grrrl history please see my book, Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics (Peter Lang, 2018) or Sara Marcus, Girls to the Front: The True History of Riot Grrrl (Harper Perennial, 2010).

National Violence Resource Center.

Rebekah Buchanan ( 2019): Zines, Art Activism and the Female Body: What We Learn from Riot Grrrls. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 10 , https://www.p-art-icipate.net/zines-art-activism-and-the-female-body-what-we-learn-from-riot-grrrls/