The amazing Alien She show that has been traveling* around the United States just opened at the Orange County Museum of Art. In reading an article about the show, which is stupendous and I highly recommend seeing, over at Fast Company (this article), I clicked over to the link for the Riot Grrrl Manifesto, which is here.

Then I wrote this over on Facebook, which also belongs here, too.

The original Riot Grrrl manifesto by Kathleen Hanna from BIKINI KILL ZINE 2, 1991 [is] good reading and mega inspiring. Although I saw (and had some) a lot of early RG stuff, I hadn’t read this until today.

While some of it is on the angsty-side, there’s a lot of good points, which were much more needed 20 years ago. This is my favorite:

“BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.”

I kind of feel like we did that with craft, y’all. I know we differ on whether the craft resurgence came from RG origins, but we created a very inviting scene once upon a time, one that still exists. We showed up for each other and collaborated and owe a lot to what RG fought for and sweated over. (Well, them, and thousands of other feminists prior!)

I am proud to be in a community that helps others grow and succeed, one that celebrates the good fortunes of others, instead of taking them down. I feel lucky to have found craft when I did and know I owe a lot of what I have due to timing and little else. I am grateful to have met some incredibly awesome people down this road, people whose work I greatly admire and am lucky enough to call friends and peers.

So, I guess my next question is, what are we going to do next? xx

*You can see me in the show if you go! I was one of the people the incredible Faythe Levine interviewed for Handmade Nation. While my interview didn’t make it to the film, I was well chuffed to see that my photo pops up in the related photostream, yeah!