Rebel Girls

At 5:30 p.m. I was told that I was scheduled to interview seminal riot grrrl punk band Bratmobile at 6:30. I had just gotten home from my unbearable temp job at an investment bank firm after getting three hours of sleep the night before, but the prospect of interviewing the feisty band excited me and I tore off my embarrassing clothes, threw on a comfy t-shirt, grabbed my tape recorder and dashed over to the Westbeth Theater. Bratmobile had just reunited after like, eight years and I was totally psyched about their new album (Ladies, Women and Girls, on Lookout! Records). Plus, on a more personal level, I was looking forward to seeing Erin and Alison again, as they had crashed at my house a bunch of times a couple years ago when they were doing a band called the Cold Cold Hearts. I was singing "Reunited, and it feels so good!" as I walked there and I felt really good. When I got there I first spotted Erin and snuck up behind her, tapping her shoulder. I hopped around excitedly and then we hugged and she quickly said "Hold on, let me go get the girls." I met their drummer Molly and their publicist Tristan and we were all standing there when I suddenly noticed an uncomfortable kinda vibe. "Listen," Molly said, "we gotta talk to you about this interview, or more specifically, about the magazine you're doing it for." VICE Magazine. You probably know where this is going. VICE is notoriously extreme in its un-PCness, and nothing or nobody is above VICE's policy of "a good joke is a good joke." I'm not even going to bother justifying VICE. All I can say is that I don't agree with everything VICE prints, but I do write for them and they have never censored me and my oh-so-radical ways. "We just don't know if we want to be in the context of a magazine like that," said Alison, "but when we heard you were the writer, we wanted to talk to you about it and try to decide if we should do it or not." I chuckled nervously and went on my usual spiel of, "Yeah, people are always getting pissed at VICE and I've got my issues with them too, but on the whole I think some of the shit they write is actually pretty subversive and interesting, not to mention hilarious. Their biggest problem is that they're operating in an ideal fantasy world where you can poke fun at every kind of stereotypical 'identity' group and it's just all in good fun, like how you can call your buddies faggots or niggas or retards or hos and you know they mean it as some kind of twisted term of endearment. 'Entitlement' and all that, uh, you know?" The girls each began to list the various affronts they'd either read firsthand or just heard about. Advertisements for skater clothes featuring porn models were mentioned, as well as an article where girls tell of their experiences of being raped. I could come up with defenses or explanations for those things but I wasn't sure how much I wanted to stand behind them. I was so put on the spot that I started rambling on about "subverting from within." I'm sure my cheeks were beet red. I went on and on, my voice getting higher and faster, about how I (a LESBIAN who studied QUEER THEORY, fer chrissake) have written totally girls-kick-ass articles about bands like Chicks on Speed and Lolita Storm for Vice, and how Bratmobile should know that I'm on their side, how there's no way I'd ever write anything not 100 % from a feminist angle -it's who I am! I was rambling. The girls were very nice about making sure that I knew it wasn't about me personally. They apologized for dragging me down to the club, and even suggested that I interview them for another magazine, like maybe index. In turn, I offered to have the interview be about issues of sexism or about the very problems they have with VICE, in VICE. That would have been a kick-ass piece! Instead I was just like, "Look I'm not gonna force you to do something you're not comfortable with. I just feel really bad and embarrassed about the whole thing." The band decided that it was cool if I had found a way to resolve my personal conflicts with the offensive material, but they had not. I understood, we hugged amiably, they told me I should stick around and enjoy the show, and went off to do band stuff. I left the club in a daze. Halfway down Bank Street I was sobbing hysterically, feeling so humiliated and just plain BAD (bad girl, bad girl) that I seriously considered never writing again (actually, I consider that all the time). I mean, what went wrong? We have the same basic philosophy: Women rule and men drool. So how, all of a sudden, are we divided? Isn't this precisely the divide-and-conquer self-defeatism that tore apart the riot grrrl community in the first place? The pointing fingers and all these new rules? The bottom line is, I know it was their choice to make and I have to respect that. The last thing I wanna do is propagate the retarded "feminazi" stereotype, but I just wish they hadn't handled the situation in such a way as to put me in the awkward position of having to justify the way I make my living, or to doubt my own commitment to feminism. I hate me.