Modern Day Riot Grrrrl Manifesta

[Via: International Girl Gang Underground]

BECAUSE independent record shops, bookstores, and magazines have died. We are losing our indie communities one big box store and online shopping cart at a time.

BECAUSE girl hate, girl jealousy, girl fear and girl resentment keeps us silent, segregated, and dislocated.

BECAUSE we’ve disrupted the status quo but our efforts were lost to commercialization, privatization, and appropriation.

BECAUSE alternative weeklies, queer magazines, feminist journals and ‘zines have been replaced with blogs, wordpress sites, facebook groups, twitter updates and tumblr accounts which leave us girls alone with our computer screens.

BECAUSE riot grrrl isn’t something that’s dead, over or obsolete.

BECAUSE we are confident, secure, and resilient in our politics. We still struggle to make art, music and literature that is seen, heard, and considered.

BECAUSE boys, bois, butches, femmes, dykes, lesbians, two-spirited, bi-sexual, straight, black, white, Chinese, Native American, Asian, European, Indian Australian, Mexican, Brazilian, Icelandic and so forth, don’t care what’s cool, we care what’s real.

BECAUSE rape, violence, oppression, hate, bullying, anxiety, anti-depressants keep us scared, alone, and unable to fight back. We feel robbed of our creativity.

BECAUSE the riot grrrls before us worked too fucking hard to be lost forever, contained only within the framework of textbooks and academia.

BECAUSE gender and women’s studies departments throughout North America are closing and our safe places are shutting down, made obsolete.

BECAUSE eating disorders still exist and the diet industry is the only lucrative business where we blame the poor results on ourselves and not the product.

BECAUSE our bodies are commodified, objectified, and questioned if we don’t fall within the gender binary system.

BECAUSE we have not arrived, we are still in limbo.

BECAUSE feminism isn’t over.

BECAUSE we still blame ourselves.

BECAUSE language is always evolving and discourse is never-ending.

BECAUSE cell phones and text messaging has silenced our voices. We have become muted horns.

BECAUSE we need more girl scenes, artists, and thinkers.

BECAUSE I believe wholeheartmindbody that girls are changing the world with their revolutionary acts at any given moment of every single day.

By: Shannon Webb-Campbell