Black Grrrl Riot: Brazilian Riot Grrrl from the margins
Not differently in different countries, the Brazilian punk rock scene is more commonly associated with whiteness. However, there has been an increasing number of people of color reclaiming their place as fans and artists in the scene. Our goal is to discuss precisely how some Brazilian riot grrrls deal with matters such as intersectional feminism and the issues that come with being women of color inside a punk rock scene. Focusing on an intersectional feminist approach, we propose the introduction of two contributors to this scholarship: Priscilla Silva and Debby Mota, both coming from different regions of Brazil and having different trajectories inside punk rock and Riot Grrrl. Hence, their lives narratives as punk rockers present as divergent and not homogeneous, even if both are non-white feminists.
- This text was produced together with Melina Aparecida dos Santos Silva. We thank Priscilla Silva and Debby Mota for their collaboration with us.
- The original Portuguese version of this text can be found in the book: “O Rock Errou?”
Introduction
Through interviews, reviews of music productions, and academic research (see, e.g., Elisa Casadei 2013; Sara Marcus 2010; Mimi Thi Nguyen 2012; Gerfried Ambrosch 2018), we can assume that the movement Riot Grrrl can be associated with many mottoes: Girls to the front. Girl Power. Girl Love. Do It Yourself. Feminist fight. Inclusion. Tolerance. Sisterhood. However, the own history of Riot Grrrl is filled with clues that point out to a less heterogeneous and much more complex constitution of this social event led by girls and women in the rock scenes of the world.
Riot Grrrl came to life in the early 1990s in Olympia, Washington, United States. The movement was mainly envisioned by white, college-educated, middle-class girls who aimed to demonstrate with punk rock the fury and anger at the patriarchal limitations imposed on women or people who identify with the female gender (Marcus 2016). Even with — or because of — its punk rock roots, Riot Grrrl[1] was not limited to music-making. Round tables, conventions, and lectures were widespread practices in the music networks, including the debate on topics such as abortion and women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. The movement also encouraged political engagement from segmented publications such as fanzines[2] to promote ideas and incite ideological debates (Facchini 2011). However, to paraphrase Charlotte Briggs (2015), there are reasons why not every girl is a riot grrrl regarding issues of race, class, and social status.
The low awareness of punk rockers to matters concerning race and racism and the silencing of people of color was already pointed out in scholarships on the punk and Riot Grrrl movements in the Global North. In an initial mapping on the academic dissemination platforms JStor and Google Scholar,[1] we observed that punk music and Riot Grrrl scholarships tend to follow an Anglophone tradition, hampering a decolonial approach. Authors Sara Marcus (2010), Mimi Thi Nguyen (2012), Marisa Meltzer (2010), and Kristen Schilt (2005) have highlighted the contradictory relations of Riot Grrrl when the subject is race and racism. However, their works address little in the artistic expressiveness of female vocalists and instrumentalists of punk rockers from the Global South.
Standing out exceptionally are works like those by Karina Moritzen (2020) and Romina Zanellato (2020). Moritzen discusses the erasure of Black women in favor of an overrated idea of a homogeneous sorority within Riot Grrrl and how Black feminists, including those from the Global South, deal with issues of intersectionality inside the movement. She demonstrates how these actions can drive what she argues for as intersectional and decolonial Riot Grrrl, incorporating the narratives of feminists from the margins. Zanellato (2020), on the other hand, when talking about the history of the Argentinian queercore band Las She Devils, demonstrates that the Riot Grrrl scene can also be a creative space for trans and queer people. In the same book, the author highlights that the Argentinian Riot Grrrl has, since its beginning, agendas much more connected to popular demands — of working-class women from rural areas, for example — precisely because of the typical tendency of Latin American feminism (Alvarez et al. 2003).
We aim to discuss precisely how some Brazilian riot grrrls deal with matters such as intersectional feminism and the issues that come with being women of color inside a punk rock scene. Not differently in different countries, the Brazilian punk rock scene is more commonly associated with whiteness. However, there has been an increasing number of people of color reclaiming their place as fans and artists in the scene. Thus, it is crucial to engage in a decolonial debate that gives centrality to women of color[2] inside punk rock scenes and their subcategories. Focusing on an intersectional feminist approach, we propose the introduction of two contributors to this scholarship: Priscilla Silva and Debby Mota, both coming from different regions of Brazil and having different trajectories inside punk rock and Riot Grrrl. Hence, their lives narratives as punk rockers present as divergent and not homogenous, even if both are non-white feminists.
Materials and methods
The first contributor to this discussion is Priscilla Silva (figure 1), 30 years old at the interview, bisexual, resident of Fortaleza, capital of Ceará, and vocalist of the hardcore band Fuck Nasmastê. Priscilla is also a collaborator of the project União das Mulheres do Underground (transl.: Underground Women’s Union, UMU)[3] and identifies herself as a Black cisgender woman. The second contributor is Débora “Debby” Mota (figure 2), 23 years old at the interview, pansexual, originally from Belem, the capital of Para, and now a resident of Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais. Débora is the former vocalist and drummer of the punk band Klitores Kaos and self-identifies as a Black Indigenous cisgender woman. Both Priscilla and Debby have experienced — and still experience — multiple forms of marginalization (geographical, cultural, sexual, class, and ethnic) as participants of color in Riot Grrrl in Brazil.
Conversations among riot grrrls: methodology foreword
The challenge we set in this work is confronting the cultural dynamics of the Brazilian Riot Grrrl from intersectional and decolonial perspectives, as proposed by Moritzen (2020). The structure of the argument was sectioned according to the questions addressed by Priscilla Silva and Debby Mota in the interviews conducted by the authors, respectively, on May 3 and 6, 2021.
The interview with Priscilla Silva was done through email interactions between the authors and the riot grrrl from Ceará. The interview with Debby Mota happened synchronously through WhatsApp, an instant messaging exchange app. Her answers, for the most part, were given in audio and were later transcribed by the authors. As we could talk synchronously with Debby, the questionnaire previously designed was unfolded into new questions to understand her life experiences as a (former) riot grrrl of the Belem’s music movement.
The questions made to the participants were:
Topic 1: Profile.
‘Fact sheet’ (name, age, place of residency, sexuality, if music is the main job — if not, what is).
Topic 2: Music materiality.
When was the first contact with the musical instrument you play? Did it happen because of influences from a band/artist or close relations (family, friends)?
Topic 3: Riot Grrrl.
What is your relation with the Riot Grrrl movement?
Do you feel safer in Riot Grrrl environments and scenes in opposition to other rock spaces (festivals, music stores, nightclubs…)?
Did you meet new artists or bands connected with Riot Grrrl during the pandemic because of the online dynamics?
Topic 4: Representation.
Do you feel there is a lack of representation of non-white female artists in rock music? And inside Riot Grrrl? In case of a positive answer, how do you understand your importance (as a woman of color) in these spaces?
Did you experience any racist or sexist situations in the music scene? Can you talk about them?
Debby Mota told us that she met the Riot Grrrl after joining Klitores Kaos as a drummer — Debby’s first role in the band; later, she took over the vocals. Today, the feminist punk band embodies the movement and is one of the most significant representations of Riot Grrrl in Pará. Her experience is also a first clue that demonstrates the movement is not so easily accessible for girls and women residing outside Brazil’s big urban capitals.
It is worth mentioning at this point that our own experience as members of the underground rock scene — a scene that ranges from punk, heavy metal, and hardcore — had great importance, both for the initial contact with Priscilla and Debby, as for the very elaboration of the questions addressed. We worked for five years as journalists and editors of the website and YouTube channel Metal Ground, where we mainly conducted interviews with heavy metal bands, wrote releases for albums and music videos, and covered concerts and other events of the underground rock scene. Although we were part of the Rio de Janeiro and Niteroi scenes, two central cities with a large amount of population traffic,[4] we can see how the underground rock wave in Brazil tends to homogenize spaces, leaning toward the white and male majority.
Therefore, more than a movement itself, Riot Grrrl appears in this framework as an ideology followed by bands like the band Klitores Kaos from Pará and cultural spaces and collectives, such as the Motim in Rio de Janeiro (Polivanov and Medeiros 2020). The Riot Grrrl seems to be a response to this homogenization of spaces. Still, we wonder if it can provide a pluralization that goes beyond gender problems, covering other identity-related issues.
Data discussion: “I understood it’s important to bring these women in.”
Although the historiography of rock sub-genres points to the non-existence or the low presence of people of color due to the focus of scholarships on recorded music, when we turn our attention to the margins of the recording industry, we realize the relevance of these creative minds to the expansion of rock’n’roll culture (Small 1999).
The debate around rock’n’roll and race/racism becomes more complex when the issue of gender is included. Rock’n’roll music is still a space where the representation of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2013) — or hypermasculinity — is still a norm compared to other notions of gender and even masculinity. Authors such as Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie (2005) have discussed this matter. Still, we reinforce that the idea of “hegemonic masculinity” is exchangeable. The notions of “real manhood” differ depending on time, context, and social construction, as noted by Connell and Messerschmidt (2013). This metamorphosis aids the attachment of rock sub-genres with the conception of masculinity and shuns constructions of femininity in some of its scenes (Bilbao 2015; Barrière 2019; Guerra 2020).
The Riot Grrrl was not the first nor the only movement emerging from the rock underground in which women positioned themselves against the patriarchal norms of society. Regina Facchini (2010) recalls that before the riot grrrls, the anarchic-feminists and straight edges were already speaking out against patriarchy in favor of feminine and feminized bodies and on behalf of LGBTQI+ rights. All-female bands like The Slits and The Raincoats and feminist musicians like Poly Styrene, Suzi Quatro, and Siouxsie Sioux were already proclaiming that women not only existed in rock’n’roll — and mainly inside independent scenes and underground subcultures — but they were also fundamental to the creation of music networks through poetry, performances, and acts. Hence, it is imperative to focus on the actions that women in underground rock take to sustain themselves in these musical dynamics (Strong 2011), given that “[f]emale artists have learned to be ingenious, devising a multitude of strategies to confront or bypass” the problems associated with low representation and the questioning of their quality as creative and active professionals (O’Brien 2010, 194).
Priscilla Silva,[5] for instance, had her first contact with Riot Grrrl cultural events in Fortaleza as a teenager — she was not yet a vocalist in the band Fuck Namastê (figure 3). According to her, meeting other girls who shared the same musical tastes and life prospects changed her outlook on rock music practices:
In the sense that I could be getting together with other women to gather thoughts and actions that would meet our needs.
In other words, Riot Grrrl made it possible for girls to go to the front and thus disrupt the delimitation of social gender roles in rock music — i.e., groupies and girlfriends. The movement demonstrates that female interest and production are as significant and, often, more subversive than male action in genres like punk and hardcore (Bilbao 2015). However, Riot Grrrl was not free from reproducing the logic of hegemonic feminism. As Meltzer (2010) points out, the segregation between outsider and insider members of the movement from its conception was validated by popularity level as social capital. This validation by popularity was circumscribed by the social hierarchies of class, sexuality, and ethnicity. A girl who dressed like a riot grrrl, walked like a riot grrrl, talked like a riot grrrl, was usually white, and with knowledge befitting a complete formal education.
According to Priscilla, in her position as a Black woman, the underground movements have always had the support and participation of women of color in their music-making. However, in her opinion, there are hardly any advertisements for women of color in the media. Their productions are forgotten in both small and large media publications, and Riot Grrrl tends to reproduce this behavior:
I don’t see a lack because since the beginning there have been black women in the underground movements. What may have happened was that these women did not receive the required attention and ended up being erased or forgotten, just as other white women had more spotlight, protagonism, and recognition. It is of utmost importance that there is a plurality of people in this [scene] because that is the only way to achieve equity in advances within the movement.
Even though punk rock culture presents critiques against white hegemony in its musical practices and broader social contexts, “the fact remains that it exhibits an ethno-demographic imbalance in favor of white people” (Ambrosch 2018, 915). Much like punk rock, “Riot Grrrl [also] failed to position discussions of class and race at the centre of demands, which was one of the reasons for the dissolution of the initial music scenes” (Moritzen 2020, 5, emphasis in original).
Former vocalist and drummer of the band Klitores Kaos (figure 4) Debby Mota[6] talked about how the override of faults hinders Riot Grrrl. The statement by Debby that follows problematizes the different experiences of women of color in society, as the Belém riot grrrl identifies herself as Black and Indigenous:
Sis, I can say that, yes, there is a lack of women, but not only women. Because in Pará, more than 25% of the indigenous people occupy this territory, right? More than 60 thousand indigenous people are living here with; I don’t know, 55 different ethnicities here in Pará. And there is a lovely, very interesting mixture of the indigenous people with other ethnicities. We are ethnically confused. I believe that, maybe, there is this lack of representation because we are not people who are going to leave, for example, a village and like [not mix] (…) or [it is difficult to find] a person with only an African family tree, who comes and represents the scene as a Black man or woman in that space. I think what is missing for us is for more of these people to not only occupy spaces but [also] to understand their importance. And it is also important that we spread this knowledge to other people in the punk scene.
Debby highlights the ethnic confusion of the people from Pará, connected with the colonial process undergone in Brazil and the consequent miscegenation. Although our interlocutor approaches mixing from a positivist lens, it is necessary to highlight that miscegenation, as one of the components of colonialism, is based on the colonizers’ violence towards the native populations. Even in this context of colonial brutality experienced by indigenous people and Africans, these indigenous people created strategies of continuity from their forms of knowledge, habits, and daily cultural practices amid attempts to erase their existence by the colonizers (Lugones 2008).
In other words, ethnic erasure is part of a process of global colonization constituted by “the categorial separation of race, gender, class, and sexuality” (Lugones 2008, 1). The colonial process and violence are responsible for fissures between men and women of color and between women of color and white women. After all, whiteness is the element that overshadows other ethnicities, taking over, from Eurocentric and global domination, the privileges of domination. By denouncing the process of collective hegemony, the idea that everyone is the same, erasing the individualities or processes of identity constructions — such as the mestizaje (see Anzaldúa 2012) — Debby Mota highlights a failure in the rock scenes of Brazil.
The discourse of the construction of a collective mind in Brazilian national history is too close to notions of toxic patriotism and nationality feelings. It prioritizes hegemonic whiteness, nullifying diversity and hindering the space for ethnic plurality. Meaning, for her, there is not only urgency in the debate about race, class, and gender in Riot Grrrl dynamics but also about colorism and mestizaje in Brazilian racial identification:
I, for example, do not identify myself only as a Black woman. But I identify as a Black and Indigenous woman because my family tree was built from these two ethnicities, from these two peoples, you know? So, for me, and I believe for other women there as well, it was tough to stand and affirm something because of this confusion of ethnicities. For example, if I go on the stage and say: “Oh, I am a Black woman,” a sister with more melanin than me will come up and say: “But you are not Black!” And if I say that I am Indigenous: “Oh, but you don’t look Indigenous!” So, because of the lack of this knowledge, because of the lack of this content being there, right? People interested in studying and talking about this issue end up losing these places where we can establish ourselves. And to be able to, based on this, bring other people to reaffirm themselves. Now, other women in the scene are still doing this work. I believe that here, in Belém, some women are, yes, working, but not necessarily within punk. So, in the end, I can say that yes, there is a lack [of people of color in the scenes].
Alessandra Devulsky (2021) argues that colorism affects the life stories of women and men differently, increasing their inequality regarding access to fundamental rights and affective relationships. For Devulsky, although the creation of the category “Black” — encompassing brown and mixed-race people — has been a significant achievement for Black movements in the civil rights struggles, the modes of racial exclusion in Brazil continue to marginalize Black people and erase the native populations to the racial constitution of Brazilians:
(…) the cleavage promoted by racism evidenced one more cruelty of this highly violent system: selecting a standard closer to whiteness, considering markers such as hair types (the famous curly hair) and skin color, producing more exclusion within the exclusion, further marginalizing people with dark skin and coily hair. Moreover, it provoked political embarrassment when analyzing and highlighting the way this process of exclusion has been shadowed, hindering the debate that is the order of the day: racial hierarchization among black people, which, in turn, causes more vulnerabilities for black people (Devulsky 2021, 28).
Devulsky also points out the urgency of political collaboration to end the silencing of Indigenous agendas in the actions and public policies advocated by Black movements. For Debby Motta, the coalition between women of color in the social dynamics of Riot Grrrl is one of the possible actions for the transformation of its social — and musical — environment:
I initially also passed through the adaptation process of understanding that I am a Black woman but also an Indigenous woman. I went through all these processes and understood my role within the scene. I understood that it is important to bring these women. And, with time, it was very nice because other women embraced me and saw me as a Black woman, as an Indigenous woman, (…) and being able to talk about [music] playing, you know? But there are still many sisters in the scene that still don’t see themselves as Black, don’t see themselves as Indigenous, and not only this harms Black people, but also the LGBT community, you know? (…) So, we end up being a minority in there, compared to white people, classists, and everything, you know?
In the discussion regarding whiteness in Riot Grrrl and how the participants in the music movement have introduced intersectional debates, Moritzen (2020) claims that many actions happened to include non-white women. However, the low integration of queer people is still a problem that has not been tackled.
Priscilla and Debby provide evidence of the importance — and urgency — of reflecting on the musical practices of Brazilian Riot Grrrl by articulating them with discussions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, colonial representations, and geographic location. Ochy Curiel (2018) highlights that these categories impact not only the life stories of Caribbean and Latin American women but also the historical displacements and oppressions faced by native peoples.
Furthermore, for Curiel, the dialogue between theory and political practice builds social transformations and new forms of re-existence that break from the Eurocentric logic of separation between the two spheres. We illustrate this discussion by Curiel (2018) with Debby Mota’s testimony:
Because what happens inside the underground scene… You get there, and it is very difficult for you, for example, to look at yourself and look at your neighbor and say: “Man, we have a difference, but this is very interesting because… It is beautiful, you know?” No, we have a group of people who are there initially without a focus. The only pleasure is to be in an open space to listen to music, drink, mosh… However, it is a space with little interest in talking about these politics, about these plurals that are part of this scene. And as long as there is this lack of interest in studying, talking about, address these issues, there will be this absence.
Both research interlocutors mentioned their discomfort with the ‘punk rock revolution’ and the girl/girl affectivity as the major focus of activism within Riot Grrrl. With the excuse of maintaining collectivism and notions of the sorority — ironically exclusionary — the race factor is put aside and treated as an obstacle to the collective experiences of the music movement (Nguyen 2012, 179). From their experience, riot grrrls of color rarely manage to criticize the racism inside the movement, reproduced by white riot grrrls.
Beyond the difficulty for white feminists in the music movement to assume and review their privileges, we also perceive there is a long way to transform the Riot Grrrl in Brazil. Especially for Riot Grrrls out of the big urban cities where the rock scenes are usually more homogenized. Accordingly, the life stories of Debby and Priscilla — and other girls of color — in the Brazilian Riot Grrrl demonstrate that race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and geographic location shape multiple forms of oppression experienced and felt by women of color, as already addressed by decolonial feminists such as Carla Akotirene (2019) and Luiza Barros (2020).
(…) you are a woman, you are Black, you are LGBT, you are Indigenous… These are points that add up, right? Each point you include adds a little more prejudice, [and] a little more machismo[7] within these situations. What happened since I entered the hardcore scene (…)? If we are talking only about this scene, this place, yes, I suffered a lot with machismo; I suffered a lot with racism.
Violence against non-white women in these spaces is not over. Moreover, even if the movement is worrying now with an anti-racist positioning, it can still not promote awareness or protection for these women. Such is a more significant problem; feminists not necessarily connected to the Riot Grrrl need to review their anti-racist positions — and if they have them. In other words, ignoring what makes us different is what weakens the Riot Grrrl, as pointed out in Debby’s testimony — and also evidenced in other words in Priscilla’s interlocution.
“(…) an environment that will be occupied by more women than men.”
Despite the little intersectionality in the dynamics of Riot Grrrl, the movement is more inclusive for women than mainstream rock in historical terms. Male predominance in cultural production, and specifically in music, has been problematized in a range of gender studies. Rebekah Farrugia (2012), Helen Reddington (2021), Tara Rodgers (2010), and Paula Wolfe (2020) demonstrate that the female presence and representation in the music industry are challenged by patriarchal norms that dictate their access and the evaluations of their works.
We brought this issue to our research interlocutors to evidence their difficulties when they need to dialogue with men in live events and other musical productions. Priscilla Silva, for example, told us that the situations of machismo experienced and/or witnessed by her did not occur blatantly:
(…) I went through veiled situations [with other men], of [them] prejudging me as incapable, congratulating my male band mates, and not me. It also happened one day when I asked the guy at the sound table to lower the microphone’s volume because I already knew it was loud, and he would not lower it, telling me it was the ideal volume for me. But how could he know if he hadn’t heard me sing? Well, when I sang, and I did guttural, he lowered it very quickly, surprised by the volume of my voice.
Priscilla’s account refers to the constructions of mistrust women undergo, or are submitted to, by the masculinized gaze of the music industry. The situation described by her demonstrates the reproductions of gender identities that shape stereotypes created in the constitution of male and female roles. In this scenario, women sing lower and cannot perform a guttural technic — recognized as a more ‘masculine’ intone. As evidenced by Susan McClary (2021), the stereotype circumscribed over women in music is the role of vulnerability “both on and off stage” (50).
Thus, it is very likely that the sound technician — a male, in the case, but a male-dominated occupation — doubts a woman’s ability to perform gutturals as high as other male vocalists. In other words, evaluating vocal technique domains is usually not as ruthless among men. This is discussed by Julian Schaap and Pauwke Berkers (2014), who point out the dynamics of women’s presence in extreme metal scenes under the lens of tokenism, which is “part of a numerical and symbolic minority, making them more visible than men” (102). They are more aggressively scrutinized and evaluated because of the smaller numbers they represent in extreme metal scenes. Women are also more tested, and their authenticity as scene members is often questioned. Accordingly, in a music scene where gender is hierarchized, the situations range from questioning their musical abilities to more explicit forms of violence, such as those suffered by Debby Mota and her bandmates:
My first performance on stage was very difficult since the band started, you know. When I played in Klitores [Kaos], we already suffered a hater attack on the internet telling us to wash dishes, telling us to go back home, that we wouldn’t be successful in the hardcore scene because the band’s name was stupid, because the girls wouldn’t be successful (…) And what completed this first attack was our performance; when we went on stage we found ourselves in a row (. …) on one wall I saw a line of hardcore guys in front, the metal guys [behind], all of them with their legs wide open, with their arms crossed, making ugly faces at us, like, that attack like, “Get out of here!”, you know? “You are not welcome here!” And [we were] a Black-Indigenous woman on the drums, right, an independent sista’, and [a band of] leftist women, [with] a pregnant vocalist, the guys wanted to kill us!
The event mentioned by Debby, and also Klitores Kaos’ first gig, was the Noite das Calcinhas do Metal (transl.: Metal Panty’s Night), a festival that took place on March 7, 2015, in Belem. This festival aimed to bring only female/feminist underground rock bands on stage. However, the predominance of extremist men in the audience occasioned the overwhelming situation described by the interviewer.
Violent situations are not dominant. There is also much resistance, and both Priscilla and Debby point this out. They make evident in their comments a critical strategy for strengthening women’s participation in the underground rock scenes: creating safer and more welcoming environments for women to perform their musical practices. Priscilla Silva puts it bluntly:
I am looking for bands that have women in the formation all the time. I think it is important that these bands are noticed.
In this scenario, representation matters because it increases the number of women engaged in the scene and the sense of security and acceptance felt by these girls:
If it is an environment that more women than men will occupy, it makes me calmer.
Cultural spaces with a more prominent female presence are also seen as safer spaces of circulation in Debby Mota’s perception:
Yes, I feel safer because (…) We are there in an event where we all have the same interest, right, which is to talk about machismo and these plurals that involve machismo. (…) the Riot Grrrl scene is very cool! Because it’s the girls that are involved in the underground, feminine, lesbian scene. (…) And in a girl’s event, you see the Black girls, the transgender girls, you see the LGBT community inserted… And even though it is an event only [organized] by women, for women, you see the mothers; you see the gays there… Because it is a space where there will be no violence (…) So, yes, absurd how beautiful it is to be at an event for women only and how apprehensive we are to be at an event for men.
As is also observed in other studies, such as those by Paula Guerra, Luiza Bittencourt, and Gabriela Gelain (2021), in events organized by women or feminist collectives, there is a more prominent presence of plural people — or divergent identities. The creation of these more comfortable spaces for women on the margins — and even based on the Riot Grrrl logic — is a trend, as previously discussed (Beatriz Medeiros 2020). This seems to remain a solution to female-exclusive spaces, despite reinforcing gender divergence and presenting situations of a particular sorority, as Debby points out:
Now, if I have witnessed toxic situations in one of those spaces, sure. I have. I have been shunned by some radical feminists who believe that trans women are men in skirts. I have been persecuted for speaking [in favor of trans women], even though it was not my place to speak.
From this account, we also observe another gap in the Riot Grrrl: the insertion of people with identities and sexualities divergent from those imposed as ‘natural.’ Judith Butler (1990) points out that considering women as a homogeneous category is one of the mistakes of hegemonic feminism since it does not allow us to think, for example, of trans and queer women as part of the group’s categorization. This attitude reinforces a naturalistic ideal that is effectively unrealistic and exclusionary. As a complement, and following Paul B. Preciado (2014), this process of naturalization of cisgender bodies and heteronormative sexualities happens precisely by exclusion or defining what is and what is not. This exclusion accompanies the historical process, the construction of narratives, and even the cisgender-cantered gaze adopted by transphobic feminism.
Accordingly, trans women have little or no presence in the history of Riot Grrrl. Debby demonstrates this discomfort in her account, even though she is not a trans woman. Moreover, by advocating for these women’s (re)existence, she suffered a backlash from feminists. We deliberately use the term ‘backlash’ with irony since it was first coined by Susan Faludi (2001). Here we observe the persecution of one woman by a group of women that defend the naturalization of constructed gender. Thus, as Louise Barrière (2019) notes in her studies of queer feminist punk festivals, these places can be “less safe spaces for all minorities or marginalized people than they sometimes claim to be” (71).
Despite some debates, including those in the punk scene, actions for inserting LGBTQ people still need more effort and support. Furthermore, as we observed in the responses of the interlocutors of this research, white and elitist feminists need to review their privileges and social values, especially those inserted in counterculture scenes.
In the present article, we brought the perspective of two women of color active on the fringes of the Riot Grrrl scenes in their respective locations. The experiences of Priscilla Silva and Debby Mota reveal that people in the underground rock scenes, especially white riot grrrls, need to review issues regarding identities, such as the privileges of their whiteness, cisgenders, and elitism. These problems did not start with rock or Riot Grrrl; instead, they can be considered colonial legacies of western society.
Together with our interlocutors, we highlight that issues of intersectionality need to be viewed carefully and can no longer be ignored. In this sense, the increase of female representation in music, in general, can help the expansion of women’s participation in different musical sectors (Wolfe 2020), including rock underground. Offering space, visibility, and especially a voice to women in music — and we highlight, rock music — is a valuable strategy for them not to be erased from the annals of history (Strong 2011). The goal of this article was to shed light on the experience of these women, problematizing them, when necessary, to highlight the creative potency of their ways of re-existing.
Although at our core, we hoped that intersectional feminism would be more prevalent in the musical practices of Riot Grrrl, we had to face the reality that white, cisgender, middle-class privilege persists in the values of the music network. To this end, we assume that there is a need for more interlocutions about sexuality, gender identity, class, geographical position or place of origin, and schooling to avoid possible reductionisms of what it is to be and what a riot grrrl faces in Brazil. There is no way we can ignore the future developments of this paper as a form of political engagement, valorisation, and survival of the riot grrrls of colour that have been erased from the hegemonic historiography of the music movement by the predominance of whiteness in cultural spaces.
[1] The mapping was made throughout the writing of this paper between May and June of 2021. The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
[2] Agreeing with Lugones (2008), the choice of the term “women of colour” follows the US logic stemming from “women victims of racial domination, as a term of rallying against multiple oppressions.” The term is not meant to hold an ethnic definition or a racial label; rather, “women of colour” serves as a cross-cultural identifier of women with multiple and plural ethnicities who suffer colonial victimization because they are non-white.
[3] UMU is an independent web project and collective that focus on offering a visibility space for women working in the underground music of Brazil. They are responsible for the promotion of events and the publication of news, interviews, and reviews.
[4] The estimated population of Niteroi is 515,317 people. Rio de Janeiro has an estimated population of 6,747,815 people.
[5] Her email interview happened on 03/05/2021.
[6] Her instant exchange message interview happened on 06/05/2021.
[7] We chose not to translate the term ‘machismo’ because we believe it is a different perception of gender violence and colonial violence together with misogyny that also affects men in Latin societies. Machismo is not only a danger for women; it is also a problem for men, non-binary people, and LGBTQI+.
[1] The spelling ‘Riot Grrrl’ is used to name the movement or ideology, the epistemological concept around this affluence of feminine and feminist punk people. Talking about the members of this group, we use the spelling ‘riot grrrl.’
[2] The name Riot Grrrl is derived from a zine conceived by Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman, Erin Smith, and Kathleen Hanna. Wolfe, Neuman, and Smith formed the band Bratmobile, and Hanna stood in front of Bikini Kill. Both groups were huge references in the Riot Grrrl scenes and are still considered precursors of the movement (Marisa Meltzer 2010).
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