Grrrl Spark Turned Wildfire

Being utterly and hopelessly inspired by the book Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus (which I finished reading yesterday and am highly recommending to all riot grrrls and feminists out there), I decided to explore the parts of riot grrrl I’ve been neglecting or forgot about until I read the book.

The first is playing and writing music. As you may or may not know, my guitar skills are slim to non-existent. And the very few times I tried writing a song, I failed miserably or the song came out too cheezy, or too emo, or just plain boring. So I gave up writing songs and just stuck to covering other artists.

But after reading that book and seeing how so many young girls formed bands and wrote songs just by picking up a guitar and screaming their guts out, I thought “Shit, I can do that, too.” That was what these girls used to say at that time when they saw bands like Bratmobile perform live. And this is what the DIY culture encourages. So I went with it.

Last night, I managed to bang out a song without too much effort. The music and lyrics came all at once. Though it does sound rugged and simple as hell, and sounds like it was written and composed by a five-year-old (with a penchant for profanity), I absolutely love it! The song is also very catchy and was stuck in my head the entire night and today.

Being inspired by Girls to the Front, the song is appropriately titled with the same name.

I loved it so much and it made me so happy, I decided to write three or four more songs and record myself on an audio cassette; design a cassette sleeve with my rediscovered love for pen drawings, my cut & paste zinester style and my typewriter; and make a few copies to send out along with zine trades and orders from Etsy.

I want to write, compose and record these songs with the help of Nelly, my friend from Sweden, who is in a band and who has a great, powerful voice. She is coming to Israel in August, so I’ll propose this as one of the things we can do.

Another thing I started getting into was letter-writing. I had a couple of penpals several years ago but somehow it was discontinued for one reason or another. I think it may be because of the overseas postage cost or the fact that it takes so long for a letter to make it to and from the other end of the world. But whatever the reason, it stopped and I forgot about it.

Girls to the Front inspired me to write letters again and find penpals from around the world. There is a certain charm to writing letters and sharing fun packages with people who share your interests, that you can’t get through email, Facebook or even blogs. Whenever I come back home from a long day at work, and find an envelope with colorful stickers and doodles from Canada or the States, my heart does a little flip of joy and my inner child refuses to let me take a shower, eat or even take a second to rest before opening the package. Sometimes, if the package contains a zine, I collapse on the bed and read it all at once.

I am now open to invitations for penpal friendship. If you love feminism and riot grrrl, if you’re a punk zinester, if you want to share your crafts or words of empowerment with a fellow grrrl, drop me a line. Or better yet, write me a letter! You might just get your very own copy of my soon-to-come demotape!

Peace, love and inspiration abounds

Drawn and Quartered

I picked up a pen again. This time, not for longhand but for drawing.

I’ve been drawing for a long time, and did quite a bit of painting back in the day, but then I stopped because I found it easier to express myself with the written word.

Also, in my earlier days of drawing and painting, I did it without paying attention to any artistic conventions or guidelines. I never took any advanced art workshops, and even our art class in high school wasn’t mandatory. I took it mainly because I enjoyed it.

So when this one time, a professional artist came over to my parents’ house in Canada, she felt it necessary to criticise my work and say I have no artistic knowledge and therefore my paintings are crude, heavy-handed and bland. Basically, I suck.

I was rather pissed that this woman, who I don’t even know, thinks she can judge my work, just because she took some lessons that I didn’t.

“I don’t even use paintbrushes,” she said with a sneer. “I just draw with my fingers, like this.” And proceeded to demonstrate brushing on a canvas with the back of her fingers and her nails.

My love for DIY grew because of people like her who think they are better than everyone else because they are well-versed in classical techniques of drawing and painting.

I say, fuck the classics. DIY is the way to go. Art should not be restricted by rules and guidelines. Art should be based on freedom of expression and limited only by the creator’s imagination.

And so, I said “People can say my drawings suck ass and that my paintings are tasteless. But that shouldn’t stop me from drawing any more than people’s close-minded opinions stopped me from dressing the way I do and engaging in body modification.”

And I think I’m a pretty damn good artist. And that’s the only opinion that counts.

Peace, love and crafts.

One-Woman Riot

I remember how back in the day, when I wrote Fallopian Falafel, every once in a while, I would get an email from some person who wanted to interview me because they were writing an article/essay/thesis about riot grrrl in Israel. Every once in a while, I would have a journalist ask me about feminism in Jerusalem and Israel, how is it expressed, where can you find it, what groups am I affiliated with…

I never knew what to answer. And now I know why.

Riot grrrl in Israel does not exist.

And I don’t know if it’s because the country is still too young to have reached a stage where such a movement is necessary, or if it’s because it has more important matters to deal with, or if being Israeli means being loud anyway so loud female punk bands are not getting the recognition they deserve.

What I do know is that with all the shit women are still going through in Israel, feminism is necessary and relevant as it still is everywhere else. So is riot grrrl, mainly because it appeals to a younger crowd.

So after reading Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus, I keep thinking how sad it is that I didn’t live in Olympia or DC around that time, and that I wasn’t a bit older in the early 90s. I would have no doubt been on Kathleen Hanna’s mailing list and gone to all the riot grrrl shows and gigs and meetings, and it would have rocked.

Then, I thought, if I missed it then, why not recreate it now? And what if it already exists?

I have been searching the internet incessantly, trying to find a lead, something that hints at some form of riot grrrl revival in Israel. The only thing I found was an underground riot grrrl/queercore gig that took place back in 2000-motherfucking-7. It was the same show I found several years ago, one or two days after it already happened, and I beat myself over the head because of that for a few good weeks.

The rest of the stuff I found include a WordPress blog about Ladyfest Tel Aviv, which also already happened back in the summer of 2011. I don’t know how I missed it. I was rather busy that summer, going to a metal festival in Belgium, a short vacation in Amsterdam, organizing Crafts for a Cause with my friend Deb, hanging out with my friend from Sweden, Nelly, plus switching jobs, and trying to figure out how to make ends meet with a severely reduced income and an insanely increased rent. I was completely out of the loop.

I also found a lot of feminist sites and forums in Israel where, except for the feminist element, do not appeal to me at all. Mainly, these sites are run by religious people who try to attract women by emphasizing the feminist rhetoric of Judaism. I think it’s cool and I agree with it, but that’s not the kind of feminism I am looking for, and it has nothing to do with riot grrrl.

The other kind of feminism I found was a radical left-wing feminism that fuses feminism with everything I am not: vegan, anarchist, peace activist, animal activist and queer. Again, I have absolutely no problem with people who fit these categories, and I admire their idealism, but this is still not what I am looking for. I’m looking for a place where I will feel at home. Where I will feel like I fit in. Where I will feel accepted despite the fact that I am not left-wing; that I don’t always obsess over products that were not tested on animals; that despite myself I’m as straight as an arrow; that despite the rampant corruption, I still believe in a democratic state; and that I do enjoy the occasional chicken leg.

And again, none of these sites even so much as mention riot grrrl.

All these journalists, students, and writers who contacted me about Fallopian Falafel are all from outside of Israel. I should have asked them if, while researching feminism in Israel, they came across anybody aside from me, who was more or less my age and who was enthusiastic about riot grrrl without pushing any other extraneous ideas about religion or about the plight of Palestine.

When my friend Deb moved to Israel, I was happy to find someone who I could hang out with and engage in some grrrl-related activism. Although Deb is also pretty left-wing, she accepts the fact that I am not, and when we’re together, we stay focussed on the thing that brings us together. I don’t push my ideas on her, and she doesn’t push hers on mine. And she accepts me as straight, just as I accept her as queer. Being raised in the States, the main difference between her and other Israeli feminists is that she knows how to separate feminism from other left-wing initiatives. Israeli-born feminists see them as automatically inter-related. If you’re a feminist, then you must be pro-Palestinian and vegan and anarchist and gay. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but none of this is true for me, and I consider it another kind of prejudice, just like when people think that if you’re a feminist, you shave your head and don’t shave your legs and you hate men.

I am a feminist, and the only other thing I would like to see being automatically related to that is riot grrrl.

Peace, love and my blog is not called “Riot Grrrl in Israel” for nothing.

Racism & Me

Israel is advanced in many ways. Scientifically and technologically, it’s probably one of the most developed countries in the world. On the other hand, I feel Israeli society is rather backward in many ways. I think it’s mostly the religious community that keeps Israeli society from complete liberation. Although it’s the only democratic country in the midst of the chaoticoracy currently controlling the Middle East, same-sex couples are not recognized, there are no same-sex marriages, the equal rights that people of all religions and nationalities are entitled to remain theoretical, women issues are discarded and their rights are suppressed from every angle.

Recently, there are also reports of severe racism sprouting up like springtime ragweed. Aside from the African refugees infiltrating the country from Egypt and Jordan, the Ethiopian community is also feeling the heat.

When I was little, living in Beit Shean, I learned about tolerance and respect for minorities. Being a Jew in Montreal later on, I was also considered a minority, even a visible one, because people could always tell I was from somewhere in the Mediterranean region – Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, even Spanish. So I never considered myself racist.

But a few years ago, I discovered that while speaking Hebrew, I’ve been referring to black people as niggers, all this time. Ever since I was little, black people were always referred to as “kooshim.” Nobody told me that was derogatory. Our family never calls a chocolate cake by the main ingredient. Ever since I was little, it was called “uga kooshit” – nigger cake.

Even today, out on the streets, and even on TV, it’s completely PC to call a black person a nigger in Hebrew. That’s how we were brought up. And supposedly, it doesn’t make us racist.

But I feel it still makes us ignorant. I was ignorant before I found out that “kooshi” means nigger. But now that I did, I want to change that. I wouldn’t want people calling me a ”kike” just because that’s how they were brought up. Being brought up one way or another does not justify prejudice and bigotry. And if an adult, who has reached a level of intelligence and freedom of expression, still uses the pejorative vocabulary they learned early in life, that makes this person a racist. Plain and simple.

At times, I still find myself using the word “kooshi” in Hebrew. Even more disturbing is when I catch myself asking my mom to make a nigger cake.

Just as I have enough self-discipline to say “black person” or “Ethiopian” or “African-American” in English, I should do the same in Hebrew. The first step is to acknowledge that I have been a racist all this time – ignorant or not is irrelevant. Whether or not my family continues to use derogatory words should not affect my efforts to break this ignorant vocabulary.

Deep down, I know I am not racist and I want my vocabulary to reflect that.

Peace, love and R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Eilat Adventures

Ah Eilat! A rather underrated Israeli city unless you live in Israel. The only reason you don’t hear (much) about Eilat is because there are no terror attacks there (actually there was one, but only one, that I know of).

So my boyfriend and I planned this trip a few months ago, but apparently we didn’t plan it well enough because every once in a while, we found ourselves thinking “We should have done this, it would have been better,” or  “If we would have gone there, it would have been nice.” But since we didn’t do this and we didn’t go there, we settled with whatever we had and made mental notes for next time we want to go to Eilat.

Thursday Evening/Night

We got on a bus on Thursday evening and drove almost five hours to the little southern town. We got there at around 10:00 p.m. And being the Jerusalemite I am, when I see darkness, I think cold. So I was dumbstruck when I stepped off the bus and was hit by the city’s typical stiff, dry heat. It reminded me of Las Vegas dry weather and I was pleased.

From Eilat’s central station, we walked to our hotel. Turns out we picked the perfect spot, right next to the pedestrian mall, the beach, the central station, cafes and restaurants, and the airport. But the perfect spot turned out to be a perfect disaster since the hotel we took sucked ass. It was crummy, with ceramic floors instead of wall to wall carpets (which are good in silencing the footsteps of people who drag their feet or who walk in high heels), our room was on the ground floor with a huge window and a curtain that barely covered it. Even the bedsheets were too small and didn’t entirely cover the bed, so they had to spread two sheets over the mattress. The faucet in the bathroom sprayed water in all directions, and the flush button of the toilet was broken.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. That night, while my boyfriend and I were trying to sleep, a large group of Arab and Israeli kids kept walking around the halls, laughing, fighting, talking – being the typical Arsim they are. And from across the hall, we heard people fucking. The girl, being particularly vocal, must have been faking it because I think that after three hours of constant screwing, the vulva is not a happy camper. Yet the screaming continued.

While my boyfriend and I also took our shot at romance, both me and him had to suffocate ourselves because, unlike the people across the hall, we don’t like to broadcast our lovemaking to the entire world. Unfortunately for me, vocalizations are part of the pleasure, and getting the orgasm of a lifetime is kinda hard when you’re concentrating on keeping your voice down.

“How late at night are we going to be back in Jerusalem?” I asked him after settling for an average orgasm. “Because when we get back, I’d like to have sex like a normal human being.”

But before realizing we got ripped off at that hotel, we went out, had dinner, and walked around the boardwalk near the beach. Every shop had a different trance tune bursting the speakers. It didn’t seem to bother us at the beginning, but as time went on, it got to be utterly annoying. When we finally decided to head back to the hotel, I picked up a drum beat that sounded too sharp to be a playback.

“I think there’s a live show somewhere,” I said. We followed the sound, and sure enough, there was a live cover band playing on a porch outside an Irish bar. We sat on the porch relishing the good vibes and the obvious talent the musicians displayed, while savoring the drinks we ordered – my boyfriend with his beer, and me with the yummiest milkshake in the world. This bar was the first positive thing in our trip.

Friday

The next day, we left the hotel room, heading for breakfast. When we walked down the hall, my boyfriend stroked the walls and said “These walls are an illusion.” True enough. Whenever we heard people walking in the halls, it sounded as if they were inside the room. We tried to fill our days up to spend as little time in the hotel as possible.

After breakfast, which was surprisingly good (probably the only good thing about this hotel) we went to the beach. The beach, called Zion Beach, was positive thing number two. In a stark contrast to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea is beautiful, clean, clear blue, with the occasional little fish swimming around your legs. There were no jellyfish, no dirty plastic bags and plastic cups and moldy unidentified blobs of something you can do without floating around you as you swim. Our only problems with the beach involved the population (still made up of annoying Arsim) and of course, the music which alternated between loud trance or boring experimental with vocalists who sounded like they were singing in their sleep.

“Whatever happened to, oh I don’t know, GUITARS?” I asked. “And this wonderful little invention called PERCUSSION?”

My boyfriend expressed his agreement with a feigned snore.

The day was boiling hot, and no matter how many layers of sunscreen we had on, we felt like we were roasting. But the water was freezing cold. I managed to immerse myself only after a series of gasps and screams, as I was walking deeper and deeper. After swimming around with my boyfriend for some time, we went back to our chairs and had a fruit shake.

I noticed two guys and a girl sitting across from us. They were all speaking to each other in broken English. One of the guys had an Israeli accent, and the other guy and the girl had a distinct French accent. I assumed the French guy and girl must be a couple until the Israeli guy started getting awfully friendly with the French guy.

Since I don’t get to see any homosexual activity in Jerusalem, I smiled inside at this refreshing change of scene and told my boyfriend “We have a nice interesting couple next to us,” and jerked my head towards the two guys who were making out in intervals on their chair.

That’s when it hit me that we made it to Eilat during Pride week. That explained all the rainbow flags hanging around the streets and shops. We had just missed the march and the marchers were now flooding the beaches and boardwalks with their costumes, rainbow colored accessories, drag clothes, and flags.

Later on, we walked around a little, exploring the shops, restaurants, bars, passing by street musicians and high society hotels. They looked like fortresses. So I made another mental note that I must get rich so that next time I can score a suite in one of those.

We planned on going scuba diving, so we went to a tourist information center to find out where that can be done. One thing that I know about Eilat is that it’s the only city in Israel where you don’t pay taxes. So obviously, you’d expect everything to be cheaper. Right. That wasn’t happening. Anything we bought cost a fortune, and scuba diving was no different. It was something around 200 NIS per person for an intro session. So instead, we inquired about the underwater observatory park where we can check out the underwater world without getting wet. It was a bit cheaper, so we got a full package for the following day – touring the underwater park site, a short boat ride, a movie and lunch, all included.

That night, we went to the Three Monkeys pub, where they had another live show. They spun some pretty good music before the show, including Smells Like Teen Spirit, and the band was also pretty decent. But the show ended after no more than five songs, and then the bar started spinning horrid old school songs like Ricki Martin and shit, plus some Middle Eastern music. We ran out of there faster than you can say “bleeding ears” and spent the rest of our time sitting on rocks near the beach, still suffering from Middle Eastern and trance music blaring from the boardwalk shops nearby.

“Enough…” my boyfriend whimpered. The poor guy had to suffer the same kind of music during three events he had to attend the past week (two weddings and a bar mitzvah), and now he had to stand it during the weekend.

With no other option, we finally went back to the hotel and tried to sleep. Luckily the group of Arsim were gone, and the fuck marathon seemed to be over. But we still heard people walking around the halls. Some girl passed by our door singing yet another Middle Eastern song. I laughed at the irony and my boyfriend sighed heavily.

“You can’t escape it!” I said. But we slept better that night.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, we went to breakfast and then inquired at the reception at what time we needed to clear the room. They said at noon the latest, which meant that we couldn’t keep our stuff inside the room until we get back from the underwater observatory, and we surely can’t take a shower, change our clothes and get ready for our flight back to Jerusalem, as we had planned.

Crappy thing number 176 about the Red Sea Hotel: You pay for two crummy nights, then it’s “fuck off, sucker.” And if you wanna leave your things in a locker, you have to pay 10 NIS, and you can only open the locker once. Which means that if you want to keep your things locked there, you have to pay another 10 NIS. Ten sheks for every turn of key.

Whatever, we were in too much of a hurry to make it to the observatory on time to whine some more about the hotel. We had no shortage of complaints about it as it is and it was obvious it would be our last time there. So we put our stuff in a locker and left.

We took a cab to the observatory, and on our way, we passed by a tall, dark brown building with blue and orange balconies. It was the Prima Music – the hotel where my cousin and I stayed seven years ago on our trip to Eilat. Not only was it cheaper, it was beautiful, comfortable, included breakfast and dinner, and the walls were not an illusion.

Although I’m sure that during the past seven years, this hotel had increased its prices significantly, I told my boyfriend “This is where we’ll go next time.”

The observatory – enter third positive thing. It was absolutely fascinating and a great educational experience. The arrangement, the decorations, the large tanks and the wide variety of creatures was breathtaking. We walked around the park checking out all the different underwater creatures they had – sharks, catfish, enormous sea turtles, rare species of fish, reptiles, sea horses and a shy squid hiding in the corner of its tank. There was also a tank full of jellyfish, which my boyfriend and I (and any Israeli who’s ever encountered a jellyfish in their life) cringed at. But the cylinder shaped tank was illuminated a gentle blue in the middle of a pitch black room, and the jellyfish dancing around in it made it look like a lava lamp and gave the room a hypnotizing psychedelic appeal. It was the first time I was actually fascinated while looking at jellyfish.

Then, we took a boat ride. My sea sickness wasn’t too bad but the rocking boat made both me and my boyfriend dizzy and high. We sat in the lower part of the boat with underwater windows. We saw some more fish, jellyfish and even saw a sea turtle swimming by in their natural habitat. The guide on the boat explained that the jellyfish in the Red Sea are different than the ones in the Mediterranean in that they’re purple and that they don’t sting.

After the boat ride, we had some time until the screening of the movie we signed up for, so we went for a quick milkshake.

The movie was an exciting documentary about sharks. We sat in the front rows which were on moving platforms, so it felt like we were actually inside the movie, moving around with the water, tilting with the angle of the shot, crashing with the waves. It was much better than expected.

Then, we wanted to go have lunch but there was a long line at the cafeteria and neither of us was too hungry because of the milkshake. So we went back to the sea turtle tank for a while and watched them eating pieces of fish.

Then we had lunch, and left the observatory at around 2:00 p.m. We walked around a bit, looking for a camel ride. Although we saw parked camels near the entrance of the observatory, we didn’t find the program my boyfriend was looking for. So we dropped the idea and went to a nearby beach. This beach, called Almogim, was different and better because it was smaller, there were more families with kids than Arsim, and the music was appropriate reggae. They also served Goldstar from a barrel, which greatly pleased my boyfriend.

It also seemed like the water in that beach was warmer than the one we were in the day before. We were upset once again at the locker at the hotel situation. Had we known about it earlier, we could have taken our bathing suits. But as it was, we could only sit on the seaside, getting our feet a little wet, and head back.

At around 3:30 p.m., we took the cab back to our lockers, and changed into our bathing suits in the hotel public bathrooms. At least they weren’t assholes aboutthat.

We went back to Zion Beach with the annoying music, carrying all our luggage with us this time instead of leaving it in the lockers, and tried to find a shaded spot furthest away from the speakers, but we only found a shaded spot right under the speakers. We put our stuff down and went swimming. After a while, we went back to our chairs, had another fruity shake, and fell asleep with the boring music. At 7:00 p.m., we washed the salt off our body, being the only kind of shower we could take without normal public washroom facilities at the beach, and without a hotel room, and went for a final snack and drink at the Irish Bar nearby.

Our flight was scheduled for 9:25 p.m. and it was probably the shortest airport and flight experience I ever had. We didn’t need passports because we weren’t crossing any borders. We didn’t need to check in our luggage because we only had our backpacks. We quickly passed through security, waited at the gate about half an hour, and the flight left on time, for a change!

The flight itself lasted 30 minutes. But what did take long was the ride we had to take from the Tel Aviv airport to Jerusalem. So we got home at 1:00 a.m.

It was a great experience despite all the mishaps, very satisfying and very necessary after seven years of not being in Eilat. It was also a learning experience, and the lessons can help us in our next trip to Eilat.

Lesson 1: A city that pays no taxes rips you off in everything else.

Lesson 2: Never go to the Red Sea Hotel, and when choosing a hotel, pay more attention to the actual place than the prices. It’s always helpful to get recommendations and suggestions from people you know.

Lesson 3: Have a paper map handy. If you go digital, keep in mind that there isn’t always a wireless network.

Lesson 4: Have a set plan, within your budget, before leaving, and bring your own food. You can save a lot of time and money.

Peace, love and here are some pictures!

Female Musicians Are Women Too

I just started reading an awesome book called Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus, that I got from my friend, also named Sarah.

I can safely say that since I got into Riot Grrrl about 11 years ago, I know enough about it that whatever book I read about it will not add any earth-shattering discovery that I didn’t know beforehand. But what I like about this book is that it’s not a static historical account of the Riot Grrrl revolution with boring dates, anecdotes and events. But it really recounts the history of the movement as a story with color, characters, emotions, and descriptions.

Besides that, it does add some points of view by the author – things that I didn’t think about, or that I thought about in one way until someone would express a different point of view and I would start questioning my own understanding of the issue.

For example, one of the most striking points the book makes from the very beginning is how the early riot grrrls came into contact with some female musicians who didn’t think that being a woman in a male-dominated scene made any difference.

Personally, I always thought that being a woman in music does make a difference. It does affect the music as well as the musician, regarding her experiences, her thoughts and feelings, because the general audience responds differently to an all-female band or a female-fronted band than it does to a male band. Plus, a woman, in any area of her life, does need to consider the fact that she is a woman in a male-dominated world. You can’t just ignore that.

This was my opinion until I had an online discussion with Angela Gossow (which I published in issue 5 of Fallopian Falafel). First, Angela stated that she is “not a feminist, but an equalist.” If I were talking to anybody else, I would have been extremely annoyed by that comment and would have expressed that irritation by responding with the same words I did when my cousin expressed similar sentiments as Angela (see Stolen Word – which, by the way, was published in issue 1 of Fallopian Falafel).

But because I was talking to Angela, and because she remains my ultimate role model despite our disagreements over feminism, I chose to ignore that statement feeling a sense of defeat. I started thinking “Was I wrong to refer to any strong woman as a feminist? Was I wrong to think that ‘equalism’ is a weak substitute for ‘feminism’? Should I change my self-proclaimed status and start calling myself an ‘equalist’ as well?”

I’ve been doubting myself until this past week when I read the following passage in Girls to the Front: “It was reported…that only 33 percent of women considered themselves feminists. People felt either that feminism had completed its work or that its goals had been misguided in the first place, leading only to more unhappiness for women who had been duped into thinking they could ‘have it all’ or brainwashed into wanting to be like men.”

But with all the rape still going on, the humiliation, the disdain for women’s causes left and right, the ongoing fight for abortion rights, women’s freedom of choice, fighting for control over women’s bodies, clothing style, slut-shaming, sexual freedoms, queer issues… saying that feminism has achieved its goals is ignorant, and saying that all it does is encouraging women to be like men is destructive to whatever women have been trying to achieve through all waves of feminism.

True, physically, women will always be different from men. But that’s the whole point of feminism – showing that a woman is still a human being and is entitled to the same rights and privileges as anyone else, regardless of whether she can roll up a frying pan with her bare hands, or if she’s a myotonia-inflicted, 163 cm tall, 43.5 Kg girl like me. 

Besides that, Angela has taken part in initiatives for the benefit of women, such as support breast cancer research organizations, supporting and giving suggestions to girls who want to start a band, as well as mass-produce t-shirts that fuse the Arch Enemy symbol with the mirror of Venus with the inscription “rebel girl” on the bottom, or wearing a shirt that reads “strong aggressive female,” and a tank top with the same words in Latin.

That, my friends, is a feminist.

Therefore, I reiterate my claim in Stolen Word – equalism is a poor and hypocritical substitute for feminism. Feminism is not insulting, it does not condone sexism targeted at women AND men, and it does not make you a man-hater. Feminism makes you an equalist who is not afraid to hide behind the seemingly harmless mask of “equalism,” and makes you a proud self-proclaimed feminist.

Later on in my discussion with the metal-queen, Angela, who is a feminist despite all her claims to the negation, she stated that she is a musician first and a woman second. Again, because I was talking to Angela, I tried to express my thoughts in a way that would not offend her, so I said “yes, but being female should still come second.” Meaning it should still count for something.

All the other bands I interviewed expressed some sort of identification and support of feminism and feminist causes. Female band members expressed how being a female musician had affected them and how feminism is a strong part of their lives and influences much of their musical endeavors. Alissa, lead singer of The Agonist, even said that at the beginning, people weren’t taking her seriously and stereotyped the band because they kept referring to The Agonist as a “female-fronted” metal band. She also said how having Angela as a role model and close friend helped her get through those prejudices.

In the book I’m reading, it recounts how Kathleen Hanna would interview female musicians and would get the same answer when she would ask “How does being female affect your work?” Many women answered “Oh, it doesn’t matter than I’m a woman; I’m a musician first.” It later goes on to saying how “One musician admitted that her male bandmates pressured her to wear a tight dress and lipstick at shows while the guys dressed more casually. Yet she insisted she had transcended gender.”

Tobi Vail also wrote “The thing that really gets me is ‘We want to be taken seriously, not as all-girl.’ What does that mean? That girls aren’t serious about their music?” In a world where Viva Knievel (Kathleen’s band before Bikini Kill) opened ”for a band in Ohio whose singer blurted, between songs, ‘Incest is best, put your sister to the test’,” gender could not be ignored.

And gender still cannot be ignored. Your experiences and your art are affected simply by the fact that you’re a woman. It’s almost automatic, but it needs to be recognized and it needs to be addressed. This is what feminism is here for. Say “I am a woman, an artist, a musician, in a male-dominated scene and in a male-dominated world, and I demand to be taken seriously, because I am serious about my work, despite what people may think.”

Again, Angela remains my top role model. If it weren’t for her, I doubt I would have still been here today. But it needs to be noted that the reason I started listening to Arch Enemy in the first place is BECAUSE they have a female vocalist in the lead. The way I saw it, she was living proof to the male-dominated metal scene that women can do it, too. They could growl too, they could scream too, and they could lead a metal band to the top of the metal charts, because they are serious about their work, and they don’t need to expose their breasts to do so.

Peace, love and “Every girl is a riot grrrl.”

Back in Black and Blue

This past week, I’ve managed to get my left nipple piercing infected (for the 700th time since I got it over two years ago), a strained back, and a pregnancy scare.

I finally got hold of my tattoo artist so she can tell me why my piercing is being such a pain in the tit. I never touch it or play with it. The only time I do is when I’m in the shower. And that’s only after my hands have been rinsed, soaped, and rinsed again. I spin it around a bit to clean it from whatever dirt I can’t see.

I don’t even let my boyfriend touch it, or go anywhere near it. But somehow, it gets infected once every month or two, and I try to treat it with alcohol and antibiotic cream twice a day for about a week. It goes away, then comes back again a few weeks later for no apparent reason. Maybe my piercer can give me a clue.

I woke up this morning at around 6:30, and while I was doing my regular ritual of disinfecting my nipple piercing, I suddenly felt a sharp pain stretch from the back of my neck, down my back to my right shoulder-blade. And the pain has been there ever since. I can’t move without feeling excruciating pain. I called Ariella to let her know I would not be able to babysit her son today, and went back to sleep.

I woke up again at around noon thinking the pain had subsided, but when I got up, it came back again. So I set an appointment with a chiropractor and hope for the best.

Last night, my boyfriend and I had an accident. We were probably at an odd angle which caused his condom to slip off and burrow itself inside me. Though I don’t think it was anything to worry about, I didn’t want to take any chances. My boyfriend gave me cash and I got the morning-after pill this afternoon while I was still suffering from this utterly paralyzing pain in my back.

Now I’m at work, still unable to move anything that requires the use of my upper back muscles. I seriously hope it’s not related to my condition because that would suck ass. If the chiropractor can snap a few joints up there and set me up straight again, that would rule.

Until then, I’ll groan and hiss with pain at every wrong move.

Peace, love and did that odd angle last night have anything to do with it?