Girl Germs: A Theological Heremenutic of Riot Grrrl (original) (raw)

The Riot Grrrl movement of the early 1990s began to manifest itself among small communities of young women who gathered together to discuss and process their experiences within their specific social locations and the issues of oppression and violence they experienced. These small gatherings often provided a creative outlet for various women using a do-it-yourself ethic (DIY) for self-expression primarily through the media of zines and bands. Within a few years, this so-called movement spread around the United States and to the United Kingdom, and the DIY punk bands that emerged were categorized as Riot Grrrl. Mainstream media began to pick up on this and labeled it as protest and rebellion, and marginalized their efforts as merely a musical sub-genre of punk, while eclipsing it’s significance with the emerging Grunge genre. Liberative work, both individual and collective, was being done within their contexts. In retrospect it has been classified as one of the beginning markers of a shift in feminism from second-wave to the third-wave, acting as an on-the-ground grassroots social movement that echoed new trends in academic feminist work from around the same time period. These women used elements of the hermeneutical circle, developed by liberation theologians and ethicists to seek their own liberation from patriarchal oppression, outside of a Christian context. This paper studies methodologies the Riot Grrrl movement in the United States used in an attempt to further their own liberation in a context of patriarchal, intersectional oppression. The purpose of this research is to examine the Riot Grrrl movement from a theological lens. Many social scientists have studied this movement, and its implications for feminism in the broader sense, but few theologians have done much work in this area. By examining this movement, I hope to conceptually help my reader understand that secular movements are taking up the quest for human liberation that the many within the Christian church understand themselves to be called to undertake, particularly in the absence of faith communities of dominant culture being in solidarity with them. The paper introduces the movement and gives timelines and basic introductions of the Riot Grrrl movement, briefly discusses Riot Grrrl’s place in its context and culture, highlight certain contemporary works of feminist theology and liberative work using the hermeneutical circle, and investigates intersections between the two, particularly in terms of the methodologies used by Riot Grrrl and their stated aims and goals. I investigate the particularities of the movement’s more political and individual growth areas among young women. I also will briefly look at current trends related to and identified with Riot Grrrl. Finally I will speak to the importance for the church of understanding the movements for justice that young sub-cultures strive for, and why we need to pay attention and act in solidarity, which can be highlighted in the recent interactions between Pussy Riot and the Russian Orthodox Church.