Very early in the 1990s, Kathleen Hanna was frontwoman of Olympia band Viva Knievel. They released an EP and embarked on what Hanna described as "the craziest two-month North American tour ever".
At the same time, the concept of “post-feminism” had become popular, insinuating that sexism was dead and feminism was no longer needed.
But there was a backlash against this idea. It grew into a new wave of feminism - one that not only sought to empower women, but to make it cool to do so. Riot grrrl was a big part of that, using songs to highlight the issues that women faced.
"I sang about rape and domestic violence because I worked at a rape and domestic violence shelter at the time," she told Natasha Mitchell on Radio National last year.
"I needed a way to get out my fury and all the feelings I had about what I was seeing at that shelter. So many people were telling me sexism doesn't exist anymore and I was seeing the shelter fill up over and over again and answering the rape crisis line."
After Hanna returned from that tour, she hooked up with drummer and zine-maker Tobi Vail to form the zine and band Bikini Kill. They wrote the initial Riot Grrrl Manifesto, developed in direct reaction to the male-centric indie and punk rock scene of the 1980s.
While the hotbed for riot grrrl activity was Olympia, Washington – a university town an hour out of Seattle – it actually began in Washington D.C. in the American summer of 1991. Issue two of Bikini Kill zine tells the story of riot grrrl's beginnings when Olympia bands went to Washington D.C. and "connected with this radsoulsister Jen Smith who wanted to start this girl network and fanzine called Girl Riot. (This was also inspired by the Cinco de Mayo riots occurring in her neighbourhood at the time.)"
"So that summer a bunch of us Olympia kids (Bratmobile and Bikini Kill) lived in D.C. to make something happen with our friends there. Tobi [Vail] (Bikini Kill, Jigsaw) had been talking about doing zines in the spirit of angry grrrl zine-scene, and then one restless night, Molly made this little fanzine stating events in the girl lives of the Oly-D.C. scene connection - and Riot Grrrl was born."
The manifesto focused on empowering women in the punk rock scene, calling for women to be free to express themselves, and to be acknowledged as equally talented and as powerful as their male counterparts.
This manifesto was put into practice at rock shows, where the bands would tell women to come to the front of the stage and own the room.
"We want the girls to come up front and watch how easy it is to play our instruments," Hanna said. "That's what made me feel confident about playing in a band was watching other women who were really learning in public."
In a 1993 interview, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon told Richard Kingsmill about the then-burgeoning riot grrrl movement.
"These pretty-young girls who come out of Olympia, Washington and model themselves somewhat on bands like The Nation Of Ulysses as far as their political stance," she said. "A lot of their mothers were radical feminists so they sort of grew up with that and it's second nature to them."
But, while her mother did have feminist tendencies, Hanna says they were largely held in secret.
"There wasn't a lot of feminism in my house," she told Natasha Mitchell. "My mom read one feminist book and my dad proceeded to take it out of her hands and tried to explain it to her. So she had to be secretive about doing anything feminist because it brought up problems between the two of them."
Watching other girls get it was what really validated me. Even if it was only two girls who got it and the rest of it was guys who were throwing eggs at us, I knew we were on the right side of history and I knew that two girls was enough.
Kathleen Hanna
Not all feminists believed what Hanna and Bikini Kill were doing was right, which made the movement more nuanced and perhaps more powerful. Gordon was a supporter, but admitted Hanna's antics were extreme.
"Kathleen, the singer of Bikini Kill, she's pretty sensationalist," Gordon said. "She works as a stripper and she likes to take her shirt off and write 'slut' on her stomach and sing songs about how she was abused by her father's friend and stuff like that. There's a lot of contradictory things. It's not like 'wait a second, if you're a feminist you're not supposed to do that', it's more punk rock, it's more anarchistic."
"I like it when feminists argue, because that means something's happening," Hanna told Mitchell. "We had women who were telling us that we were messed up and sexist towards men and that we were man haters and we had men tell us the same thing. We had a lot of things thrown at our heads."
But Hanna felt change happening in those early days and was buoyed by the small amount of support that women would give her and her band mates.
"Watching other girls get it was what really validated me," she said. "Even if it was only two girls who got it and the rest of it was guys who were throwing eggs at us, I knew we were on the right side of history and I knew that two girls was enough."