badgerbag

A couple of quotes for you from some of my Riot Grrrl mail from 1993, from Eulalie of Rude Girl in San Antonio — a parody newsletter of Witchy Women’s News called Bitchy Women’s News.

The WWN/SA-RCG would have all goddesses crammed into one grand goddess-over-all. All they have managed to do is force a sex change on the Christian God, and at that, the New Testament good-sweet-and-kind God. This is not the goddess, particularly not the triune goddess they appear to be speaking of… The WWN/SA-RCG has managed one thing — they have disarmed the goddess. What was once a huntress, creatrix, crone, is now a mockery; the sweet kindly woman whose only role is that of figurehead idol around which women gather to moan of their mistreatment.

oh also from the introductory paragraph, a harsh shot,

The Witchy Women’s News has, for some time, “envisioned the raising of a cone of energy.” So, they formed a council. Why a council? Because “Board of Directors” was too “patriarchal” I don’t think “council” is any less patriarchal; call it an Inner Circle and be done with it…

And then from an actual issue of Rude Girl, an advice column called “Ask Brother Prick”, critiques of critiques from Off Our Backs, anti-NAMBLA ranting…

and tiny stickers and paragraphs clipped out of newspapers

“I used to be something of an iconoclast, but now when I see signs of that in my son, I try to squash it immediately,” he noted with a rueful laugh.

What does it mean – it is kind of a poem, there on its own – was it carefully chosen – I think so.

Also in the envelop – a separate, fantastic, typed zine called Do-It-Yourself. Thanks Eulalie and Alison! (Zine credits: Alison Wonderland, Eulalie Fenster-Glas, Aleister Grumb, Tiajuana, Bobek, and Tiana!)

I was thinking that this was really the feminist press explosion where we all took our CR sessions to a public forum – more public than closed discussion groups anyway. We didn’t have a lot of continuity other than in snip & pieces of history or writing – not a lot of public talk about feminism that we could understand as us or ours, anyway – and just said, collectively, fuck it, we’ll talk about whatever it is, fast as we can come up with it, and send it out like dandelion seeds, not worrying if it’s good enough or done enough or what it’s for.

The media representations of us were so horrible – compared to the wit & punk charm and fuck you ishness of people trying to figure out what societal structures to undermine and how (graffiti and putting glue on top of one’s postage stamps being the tip of the iceberg) reduced to cute belly buttons, well — beyond annoying and into horrible.