Bookforum hosted a conversation between Lisa Darms, editor of the recently-released Riot Grrrl…

Lisa: I thought this one was interesting (reading) “Have your attitudes about sex and power and women changed since that time? Can you delineate a few areas in which your ideas about sex relations and power relations and women’s place in culture and society and women and sex, etc., have changed most dramatically? Are there things you see and know now because of experiences you’ve had in the world that weren’t apparent then?”

I think this question appeals to me because everyone had their own way of being excited about Riot Grrrl, and for me — even before I ever heard of Riot Grrrl — it was something that I got more from the L7 strain of punk. I mean, I remember the first time I heard of or saw L7 it was like: What. The. Fuck. Holy shit, dude. This is what I want and need. Because I had come from this punk scene where I was a “slut,” but I was a feminist, I was raised as a feminist and so it was really confusing for me to try to reconcile these different parts of my experience. So the way that I tried to access that was through the concept of power and, again, this was before I heard of Riot Grrrl. It was: “I can be a powerful and sexy woman.” I think what I really like about Riot Grrrl is that it also acknowledges that a really big part of being a young woman — or a woman of any age — is the experience of danger and sexual violence.

Bookforum hosted a conversation between Lisa Darms, editor of the recently-released Riot Grrrl Collection, and contributors Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman, featuring a series of really great questions from Hairpin pal Sheila Heti.