Kathleen Hanna Quotes

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Kathleen Hanna

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 12, 1969

In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonald's to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15.

Kathleen Hanna

It's really funny - when I'm depressed or I'm having a hard time, I'll write really fun stuff. And then when I'm really happy, I write really depressing stuff.

Kathleen Hanna

I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Kathleen Hanna

While everyone's experience of oppression is different and complicated and often overlapping, I really believe that if you have privilege, you need to learn as much as you can about the world beyond yourself.

Kathleen Hanna

Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes.

Kathleen Hanna

I'm totally into Taylor Swift. I think she has super-clever lyrics, and I love that she writes her own music. Some of the themes she writes about are stuff I wish was there for me when I was in high school, and I'm so happy she really cares about her female fans. She's not catering to a male audience and is writing music for other girls.

Kathleen Hanna

There's just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world.

Kathleen Hanna

I'm not that interested in female superheroes.

Kathleen Hanna

You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything: You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.

Kathleen Hanna

When I watch myself on camera, in any capacity - being interviewed, performing, 20 years ago or yesterday - there's a part of me that really doesn't grasp that it's me.

Kathleen Hanna

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Kathleen Hanna

I have late-stage Lyme disease. I was misdiagnosed for many, many years and told I had lupus, MS, Crohn's disease, even degenerative arthritis. And finally in 2010, I got the correct diagnosis, because on the last Le Tigre tour, I was having several seizures a day and at times not being able to brush my own teeth.

Kathleen Hanna

You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.

Kathleen Hanna

I felt it was really, really important, not just in the vein of feminist erasure or whatever but also just as an artist that I honored my work.

Kathleen Hanna

What happens tomorrow is going to happen tomorrow.

Kathleen Hanna

Women didn't want to be on the stage with other women because they didn't want their bodies to be compared. They didn't want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.

Kathleen Hanna

I especially don't want men coming up to me and asking if sexism still exists. It's like, I'm seriously gonna barf a McDonald's salad on the next person to do that.

Kathleen Hanna

So many women have experienced horrific forms of male violence throughout their lives, and why isn't there a song about how you get depressed because of it?

Kathleen Hanna

To make riot grrrl move into the future in a new way with a bunch of new names and a bunch of new energy, younger people have to learn about it and apply it to their own lives and own modern conversation. And they are.

Kathleen Hanna

I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don't have any talent, 'Well, neither do I.' I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers.

Kathleen Hanna