One way that Free to Fight! shows feminist art activism is in the way it presents tools and tips for their readers. Image #3 shows two girls in bed having what looks like a sleep over. The one girl is whispering to the other suggestions for how to be safe if you feel uncomfortable when someone ask you directions—chew Alka Seltzer and blood capsules and the same time and answer their question. The other responds with ways to mix different liquids together to spray at someone’s eyes as an irritant. With the use of image and text as a way to confront assault through art, riot grrrls are creating activist spaces through the formation of their own rhetorics and arts.
Image #3: Tips and Tools Sleep Over. Free to Fight!
The combination of image and narrative as a way to confront sexual violence and educate readers continues throughout FREE TO FIGHT! There are a mix of contributors’ stories both hand-written and typed, facts about sexual assault and rape, definitions of terms that are used throughout the zine and terms they feel are valuable for readers to know, and radical art. Combined, they’ve created an interactive project that called on women’s self-defense projects of second wave feminists, but added punk ideologies and art.
Another example focuses on the use of comics as a way to inform as well as share a narrative. Myth-Information (Image #4) uses graphic images to address the traditional rape myth that perpetuates American culture. Using a long panel on the left to show the dark alleyway that women walk through at night, the artist makes the myth to be a smaller and longer portion of the larger truth. Two-thirds of the page are used to present information. The Fact that most women are raped by individuals they know is presented with four panels, the first with no image and just two rows of word bubbles showing a conversation, the next two showing different ways that men approach who look like younger women who they are attempting to assault and the last with a woman yelling, “what part of NO don’t you understand, Bob?” with the “ow” coming from off the panel, making the reader feel as though Bob has been injured in some way for attempting to assault the women telling him no. This use of comics as a way to inform the reader gives a quick visual that can reinforce the facts that are being presented in the text. Although this information is stated throughout the zine, the comic emphasizes the message of Free to Fight! for the reader and gives imagery behind the facts.
Image #4: Myth-Information. Free to Fight!
Conclusions
Riot grrrl was a way for young women to take up space in the punk scene. Riot grrrls chose to confront larger social structures that normalized the rape myth through their zines. They created spaces to discuss sexual violence, women’s rights, and body politics. In particular, the use of personal narratives and self-defense and self-help aspects of riot grrrl zines contribute to the larger feminist sites of art as resistance. Riot grrrls paved the way for discussions of the body and the ways in which young women’s bodies are perpetually objectified, commodified, and not allowed to be their own.
Through challenging victim blaming, something we see often today, and reimagining local spaces as safe places for discussion and women’s bodies, riot grrrls were able to create a culture of resistance during the early 1990s. They worked to make a space where young women might not be fearful to live in their bodies without the fear for retribution and abuse. The zines tell a story that is still relevant today, one that we need to listen to, representing feminist activism that uses art to empower and educate.
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