Kathleen Hanna Is Ready to Get Real

For the past 30 years, Kathleen Hanna has made a career unapologetically — and often uncomfortably — speaking truth. Whether fronting bands like Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and Julie Ruin; raising money for the education of young girls in West Africa by selling screen-printed tees of her and her friends’ bands under the banner of Tees4Togo; or speaking plainly about her decades-long struggle with Lyme disease in the  2013 documentary The Punk Singer, she has always been brutally honest. But in her new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk, out May 14 from Ecco Press, Hanna gets even grittier, deeper, and more heartbreaking. In it, she opens up about everything from the time she was raped by a neighbor she trusted, to the backlash she faced as one of the founders of the Riot Grrrl movement, to watching a jokey quip she wrote on her friend Kurt Cobain’s wall (“Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit”) be repurposed as the title hit of a global movement. 

Even if you’ve followed everything from her early 1990s releases on the Pacific Northwest indie label Kill Rock Stars to her recent string of sold-out reunion shows, there’s stunning new wisdom to be gleaned from the memoir. She starts with her childhood in Maryland, goes through her time at Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington and the formation of the feminist-forward punk scene there, and into her marriage to Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz, their adoption journey, and her fight against Lyme. Yet reading it, one gets the sense she’s grappling with each memory as it comes to her, working through why she made the decisions she did, the ways she could have reacted differently, while accepting and owning up to the choices she made.

It turns out that’s exactly what she was doing. “When you turn your life into a narrative, there’s a certain distance,” Hanna tells Rolling Stone. “I actually stood there and looked at them, and cried about them, and had a nervous breakdown about them, and then turned them into stories that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And walked away from it.”

When did you decide to write the memoir?
I started five or six years ago. I was at this transitional point in my life — it was before Bikini Kill and Le Tigre started playing again — and I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do next. I felt like I had to just write everything down that had happened, for myself, so I could move on. I really needed to do that in my life, to make it into the next step. I needed to leave the Nineties behind, and I was finally ready to grapple with a lot of the punk purity stuff that happened back then. I needed to grapple with the good, the bad, and the ugly of living in the Northwest, and just being a feminist in a band.

What was the process like for you?
I’m a first-time writer, so I just did the butt-in-chair method. I just got my butt in the chair and just wrote, and I was very lucky I didn’t have the blank page problem. I would just sit there and write. And some days the stuff I wrote was terrible, and some days it ended up being something I could use. But I just sat there, on the days that I had planned to work, I would just sit there and write and write and write and write. It was 600 pages, so I had to cut it down.

Did you go chronologically, or did you jump around?
I just wrote anything that I thought was important. I was like, here’s important moments of my life. [One] really big moment for me was when I was on tour, and I was in the back of our travel-all — which is like a van/Jeep hybrid — and we’re driving away from this horrible show no one showed up to, and I put my hand on the window, and just stared at my hand. And was like, “I’m so lucky. I’m on tour, this is the best thing in the world.” And I just remember that moment of putting my hand there, and thinking, “I can’t believe I found what I want to do.”

And it’s such a banal moment, but for some reason that day when I sat down to write, I was like, oh yeah, that was really important. And then, there’s other moments where it’s like, my dad’s running around the house with a gun.

Did you discover new memories as you were going?
Oh yeah. I have a really bad short-term memory — I can’t remember what I ate for dinner last night, but I can remember stuff from 20 years ago. And I didn’t know what a good memory I had for certain things until I started writing. But I also realized how faulty memory is because I would check things out with my bandmates. There was this thing that happened — I think it might’ve been briefly mentioned in the book — but I was on stage one time. The stage was a runway, and I went to the edge of the runway, and there was this group of guys, and one of them just reached out and grabbed my ankles, and just pulled me off stage, in this one motion. And it was really insane, because I didn’t just land on the stage on my back, I landed on the floor on my back. Then when I looked up, it was all these menacing guys staring down at me. It’s just this really visceral memory, and I was absolutely sure it happened in Milan, in Italy. And my bandmates were like, no, that happened in Sweden.

How much were you going back to your old friends and talking through these memories?
Well, a lot of people didn’t want to talk to me.

Oh yeah?
I had ex-boyfriend who just didn’t write me back, let’s say. But for good reason. But I was really like, look, this is my memory and my perception, and if there was ever anything I was like, “I’m not sure about this,” that’s when I would start writing to people. But a lot of it is interior stuff, where it’s like, well, this is how I remember it. And whether it happened on a Wednesday or a Thursday really is beside the point.

And I changed almost everybody’s names just so if I got anything wrong, nobody’s embarrassed. But yeah, I went back to them towards the end of the process, and I did change some stuff, and I took out a whole chapter that was completely wrong. But there’s no composite characters, these are all real people that did exactly the things I said.

How is writing memoir different than writing songs?
It’s so much less collaborative, it’s a very lonely thing. And it’s not like everybody around you wants to hear about what you’re writing. And you feel like a total egomaniac constantly talking to your friends and your family about your life. I started to feel like I just have to put the wrap on this book because I’m really making everybody hate me in my life.

And also, there’s no one to decompress with, there’s no Kathleen clone that I could be like, “Oh, my God, can you believe that happened to us?” I’m glad there’s not a Kathleen clone, although I would like to make out with her and see if she’s a good kisser, but other than that, I have a feeling she would drive me absolutely up the wall. But during the book writing process, if I had one or two Kathleen clones to just decompress with, and be like, “Oh, do you think it’s OK, we’re sharing this story?” That’s what you get in a band. You play a show, and there’s some weird thing that happens, and you all get to talk about it afterwards.

You’re so vulnerable and open in the book, particularly about the times you were sexually assaulted. Are you nervous about all that being out there?
Not really. It’s not my problem, the people who did those things to me, they can have it now. That’s their mess, I’m not cleaning it up anymore. I’m not going to hold their secrets for them anymore. I really worked through a lot of self-blame, and I think, hopefully, that’s a part of what people see in the book, is that you can be someone who everybody’s like, oh, she’s this really “badass” — I hate the phrase badass so much, you have to put this in some kind of ironic quotes, please, if you use it.

But you know what I mean? It’s like this whole women-in-rock — she’s a badass, she kicks down the doors, blah, blah. But also, I’m 55 years old, and up until last year, I was taking responsibility for many of the sexual assaults I’ve experienced, as a way to take control, to say I had agency. It wasn’t about me feeling shitty about myself, it was more, “Well, if I did this or that or this or that different, then this or that wouldn’t have happened.” And that was a way to keep me feeling like, “Hey, the world’s not some awful place that anything bad can happen.” But hey, guess what? The world’s an awful place, anything bad can happen at any time.

In the book, you write about your struggle with Lyme, and how you discovered that you had it since you were a kid. In The Punk Singer, you said that you thought you had it only since 2005.
There was a lot of denial around my illness. I was a professional patient for many years, and I had a notebook that I would keep all of my lab tests in. I was like Tracy Flick from Election, but as a patient. I would go into every doctor’s office with a written summary because my memory was bad, and I felt horrible, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to explain it.

And part of what I started discovering was that I had actually been having Lyme symptoms since I was a child. There’s a certain kind of Lyme disease called Remitting Fever, and that’s the kind that I have. And that kind is from the East coast, and specifically from Maryland, where I grew up. I only lived there until I was 13. And it actually made me feel a little better, because I was like, “Oh, well, no wonder it got so bad, it was never treated. We didn’t even know about Lyme disease then.” But I did get the right treatment, and I’m doing really, really well.

That’s great.
I can tour, it’s bananas. Who thought that was going to happen?

You write in the book about your friendship with Kurt Cobain, and how hard to lose him, but also to see it become a national story. How has it been for you to see Nirvana continue to be such a cultural force, even 30 years later?
You cannot walk three feet in any country, any city, without seeing a Nirvana shirt. That’s pretty amazing for two guys from Aberdeen to do that. And also, I like that kids are listening to good music. I think the whole mythology and the conspiracy theories are creepy and weird, but I don’t really pay that much attention. I just see kids all over the world wearing Nirvana shirts, I see 80-year-old women wearing Nirvana shirts, and it makes me smile. I am like, that’s kind of cool, a band that was practicing in the garage a few blocks from where I lived, they’re just still everywhere, and people love their music. And I feel proud of them.

It must be very exciting to see art that meant something to you continue to be meaningful to generations of people.
I just really wish that Kurt could have enjoyed it. And that’s the hard part, just being like, “Wow, I wish that he would’ve seen us live past the stupid Nineties, you’re-a-sellout thing.” I was very much a part of that and feel horrible. I think he probably — I have no idea if he got past it in his own head or what — but I wish he could just still be here, and making stuff, and whether it was music or not, just be here.

In the book, and in your life in general, you use the word feminism a lot. How do define feminism, and how has that changed for you over the years?
It’s always been kind of similar. I’ve always thought of it as a movement to end oppression against all people. It’s a movement for equality, and that means for all people, not just for white women. But I’ve always seen feminism as connected to class oppression, and race oppression. I still define it that way, I think it’s a movement that is bent on challenging all oppression.

For a long time, you’ve been an advocate for what we now call intersectional feminism. What it’s been like for you to see that conversation open up more in the mainstream over the last few years?
I have these two conflicting opinions about what I’m seeing in the world of media around intersectionality. One, representation is massively important, and two, representation is not the same as legislation. We can put as many Black female judges on TV as we want, but in reality, the majority of judges are not Black women. And until we actually make that a reality, it’s important to know the distinction between the two.

What are some ways this representation has affected you?
Billie Eilish got me to wear baggy clothes for the first time in my life. Literally, I was always wearing tight clothes, and I was like, this is really comfortable, and Billie Eilish told me it was OK. I’m over 50, and I’m wearing baggy pants and a baggy shirt, and running my errands, and having a lovely day, and I’m like, thank you Billie Eilish. But even something like that, the representation of a woman on stage, a performer on stage, whose music I happen to really like, wearing baggy clothes, which seems like not a big deal. It trickled down into my life, and it made me be like, “Why am I wearing tight black jeans every day? I don’t have to do this.” So, yeah, thanks Billie Eilish for making that cool.

You write in the book about doing photography and screen printing in college. What do you think visual art allows you to express that music doesn’t?
Oh, God. If I had the answer to that, I wouldn’t have to make visual art anymore. I still make visual art for myself, on my computer. I make stuff in Photoshop just to make myself happy. That’s what I will be doing in my hotel on tour to relax, is taking beautiful stuff I find on the internet, or pictures I take, and goofing around with them on Photoshop. There’s something about just color and beauty that is poetry to me, and I can’t put it into words.

Since 2019, you’ve done several Bikini Kill reunion tours, and you’re getting ready to do another one. What’s it like bringing those songs back on the road?
You write a bunch of music in your twenties, and then you’re in your fifties and you’re playing the music again, and people are like, “Well, how do you relate to that? Are you putting on the Nineties Kathleen outfit in your head?” I was very pleasantly surprised to find that these songs that were written at a very specific time, in a very specific place, really have legs, they can really move into what’s happening now. A lot of them [are] more relevant now than they were back then, which was horrifying. But also, I found things in the songs that I didn’t know were there, that I could focus in, at my age, that I really related to now, that wasn’t maybe the main part of the song to me. There might’ve been half a verse that became very important to me that wasn’t as important to me in my twenties, if that makes sense.

There’s this song “Little Red,” and there’s this part that’s like, “You are not the victim, though you’d like to make it that way, pretty girls all gather around to hear your side of things.” And that part just became really important to me with what’s currently going on in politics, and I feel like a lot of these right-wing white supremacists are always trying to make themselves the victims. They think everybody thinks about them, and they think everybody’s trying to do all this bad stuff to them.

I’m always thinking about when people make excuses for these men who do such horrible violence: They lost their job, or they were teased in school, and it’s like, you don’t know how many of my friends were fucking raped, gang raped, and they don’t get a fucking gun and go shoot up a bunch of people they don’t know. Fuck you, that’s not an excuse.

You have a nonprofit called Tees 4 Togo. How did that come about?
It was really by chance. I went to this clothing store, and they were having an event there for Peace Sisters, an organization in Pasadena, California, run by Tina Kampor. She was a teacher in Dapaong, in Togo, [West Africa]. Tuition was like $40, and a lot of parents couldn’t afford to send their sons and their daughters, so they were just sending their sons. And so when she moved to the States and got a job as a nurse in Pasadena, she started sending money home to cover a couple girls’ education, and then it became 100 girls a year. And then she started a nonprofit, and they were doing a tiny event in a local store, and me and my family walked in, and I was incredibly moved.

It came from this individual, but it ripples out into so many people’s lives. Just providing solar lamps to a group of kids in school so they can study at night because they don’t have electricity, meant that the whole family could do things after sundown. They could do dishes; they could write, or read, or play a game. And that’s the model of the program, is that if you just provide the simple small amount of money that’s needed for young women, it ripples out into the whole community, and lifts everybody up.

I was always seeing bootleg T-shirts of myself, and I was like, what if I bootleg a shirt myself? And then I made them $1,000 [selling $40 shirts], and their whole budget for the year was $5,000. And then, I sold a couple more shirts, I called different friends, and I was like, “Hey, can I do a shirt of you?” And then, it just started organically growing.

How has your idea of activism changed as you got older?
Well, just because I started a business with a goal of raising money for a nonprofit, doesn’t mean that I think that social-justice capitalism is sustainable. I have a lot of problems with social-justice capitalism. That’s not where I see the future of activism going, because if we keep filling in financially as citizens, GoFundMe and stuff like that, for things that our taxes should be going for, instead of, let’s say, genocide. I think we need to find a solution to this two-party system, I think we need to radically change everything.

You have less than 20 percent of the population holding the rest of us hostage. They’re taking Black history out of schools, and there wasn’t even barely any Black history in schools. Roe being overturned was absolutely a nightmarish thing in my life, but it wasn’t as nightmarish as I thought, because it’s already a nightmare. I married someone with a lot of money, and I have a hard time getting the healthcare that I need. So, I can’t even imagine what somebody who is working two jobs has to deal with, trying to call an insurance company and beg them to pay for a medical procedure that they desperately need. We’re one of the richest countries in the world, and we are completely keeping anybody middle class in this state of constant survival mode, and I think partially by design, because how can you protest if you’re on your way to your third job so that you can pay for your biopsy?

What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?
I guess just, prioritize your mental health. If you’re not enjoying your life, then something’s got to change. We’re only here for a very short amount of time, and you are not put here to have a shitty sucky life. If there’s things that you enjoy, run towards those things. Have fun. And have a lot of sex.

What advice would you give to a girl who wanted to start a band now?
I guess I would say find a friend that you really enjoy spending time with, and ask them if they want to make music with you. Then just start with whatever you have. If you have a piano, your band is you, your friend and the piano. If you have a computer with Garage Band on it, and you can clap your hands into Garage Band, and then do just singing over the clapping, that’s your band. It doesn’t have to be guitar, drums, bass, keyboard, or manufactured beats. You don’t have to be a genius.

Make whatever you feel like making, and be OK sounding crappy. Your first 20 songs are going to suck, but that’s part of the process. You have to make your first shitty songs so that you can make your first good song, that you’re like, “Oh, this is it. This is my first good song.”