Riot Grrrl

Riot grrrl is the feminist punk movement that erupted from Olympia, Washington and Washington, D.C. in 1991, joining hardcore's directness to a politics of girl self-determination. Its bands, *Bikini Kill*, *Bratmobile*, *Heavens to Betsy*, *Excuse 17* and *Huggy Bear*, played deliberately unpolished, confrontational music, wrote about sexual violence, body politics and female rage, and built an infrastructure of fanzines, chapters and all-girl meetings around the records. *Sleater-Kinney* and *Le Tigre* carried its sound and politics to a far wider audience by decade's end.