Kathleen Hanna: The Punk Singer

You mentioned Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus in there are there any females, whether it’s a pop star or an actress, are there any people that you personally would consider a great feminist role model? 

Well I think… I think Santigold is somebody who I don’t what her position is on feminism or whatever, but she has this one song called “Creator” and it’s so fucking… I don’t want to say powerful or empowering because I’m just sick of that language, but it’s like you listen to it and you want to fucking make something because she’s like ‘I’m the creator,’ that’s what I do I make amazing shit. I’m just like, it’s such a powerful message because she’s like I don’t have to do anything else, I can make my art and that’s enough, I make great art. I change people’s lives. This song is just so great and I feel like there’s a lot of women, whatever they call themselves, they’re like doing feminism in the world. To me that’s really powerful and she’s somebody who I look to as you know… a role model, musically.

You were talking about going out and doing talks, when you go out do you see a lot of younger girls who know a lot about everything that you did in the 90s?

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

That’s hard to say. I do talks all over… in Columbia, Missouri, I’ll do them in New Jersey I’ll do them in New York, I’ll do them in Massachusetts. I mean whoever or wherever asks me to come give a lecture, if I’m free and I’m feeling well I’ll go and do it, so I do them kind of all over, but it’s mostly college campuses that will ask me to do lectures. I see a lot of young girls who come who know either about Bikini Kill or Le Tigre, typically not both, but mostly Bikini Kill, and they’re like ‘oh my God this changed my life, my older sister gave it to me’ or ‘my friend gave it to me or so and so, or I heard about it in that Julia Stiles movie’ or however they hear about it, but they talk about it like it’s brand new and that’s what’s really interesting to me because it’s 25 years old. And they’re just finding it for the first time and I find that so exciting and it makes me feel like we really chose the right medium because music can go on forever and our kind of youthful arrogance can stay in play… even as we age. But I don’t know how much people know about Riot Grrrl actually. When Bust magazine did a thing on me a couple of years ago the editor said ‘oh I was talking about Riot Grrrl and all the interns didn’t know what it was so I decided we needed to do a piece about Riot Grrrl’ and I was kind of shocked, but kind of not really. So I always ask that question before I come to a college, like how much do people know cause I don’t want to go through the whole thing of like ‘and then we called a meeting and then’… you know, hopefully this film will make it so that I won’t have to do that. Typically the professors teach it before I get there, but I don’t think young people do know about it unless the teacher tells them about it or a friend gives them a Bikini Kill cassette – cause cassettes are back.

Rewinding a little bit, because I do know a good portion of the documentary was about your health struggle, how are you dealing with your Lyme disease now? 

I have good days and I have bad days, more good days than bad days and I was really really in bad shape before I got my diagnosis and I was just beginning treatment, that was really hard. I had two years of treatment, intensive treatment and I still have two more treatments to go through and that’s difficult you know to plan touring and press and stuff around, but I manage. I feel like I’m going to be kind of in a maintenance zone starting in February so, knock on wood, I’m doing much much better. I can’t believe I can play shows, it’s pretty intense, I didn’t think I’d be able to play a show ever again so just being able to do that is kind of enough for me.

I’m really happy for you that you’re doing better. I know that just getting a proper diagnosis is really difficult because it’s not something that comes to people’s minds. How did you go about getting the right diagnosis?

It was a weird thing that my doctor… I was telling him that my shoulder and neck were in total pain and he was already treating me for the illness but we didn’t know what it was and he was sending me to various specialists. And I said well one of my problems is that my neck and my shoulders just feel really weird… I might have not even told him, he might’ve just been doing an exam and he said you’re neck and shoulders feel completely messed up, like they’re just locked and that’s one of the symptoms of Lyme disease. He sent me to an ear, nose and throat guy to check out my neck and my shoulders and I went to him a few times and one time I went to him and was having a full on Lyme’s attack and I walked in really wobbly. Then I sat down and started talking and when I was speaking it was like I was drunk or having a stroke, which still happens on a more minimal basis, but he immediately got on the phone with my doctor and said ‘I think she had Lyme disease because I’ve seen a patient with long term Lyme present the same way in my office.’ So I got the more expensive test, called the western blot, and I had the spiral sheets or whatever you call it in so many bands of my DNA it was outrageous, I clearly had it. And that’s how I got my diagnosis because my neck was stiff and I talked like I was drunk.