As you know, we launched this website last Friday, and it was a very big moment for Nicolette and I. But when I realized that the blog wasn’t able to be pulled up, I was so bummed out, and had to make a few changes to get it to work. I guess when you DIY things, you can expect some bugaboos. But, aside from that, the site got a lot of attention and it made us so happy.
Last Saturday, I went to the 60 Miles East exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum. It was a small, but very cool exhibit highlighting the Riverside punk scene from the late 1980s through the early 2000s, and it brought back so many memories. It even made me a little emotional. It took me back in time to when my husband — who was my boyfriend back then — and I were young, and child free, and could spend our weekends going to places like Spanky’s, Harry C’s, and The Barn (The Showcase was another venue, but we actually never went there to see a show–weird) to see bands like Voodoo Glow Skulls, The Skeletones, and Guttermouth.
Yet, as I walked through the exhibit, something I hadn’t noticed back in the day, but clearly stood out to me now, was that almost all of the bands in our local punk scene were dominantly male–just like the punk scenes in Washington D.C. and Washington state, which ultimately lead to the Riot Grrrl movement starting.
We women truly were underrepresented.
I’m not going to be critical of this, because it’s in the past, and the exhibit took me back to a really happy and fun time in my life. I’m seizing it as a moment of joy. The guys who curated the show — Zach Cordner and Ken Crawford — honestly, did a really great job. What I am going to do, though, is take something from it, because like the philosopher George Santayana once said, “those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and I want to help break the cycle of non-inclusion and underrepresentation.
Another perfect example of why we are doing this is comes from the bullshit that took place in the USA men’s hockey team locker room this week. If you hadn’t had a chance to hear about what happened–in a nutshell, Herr Trump called the guys to congratulate them on winning the gold (not the women’s team, though), then managed to disparage the women’s hockey team by saying he should probably invite them also, in a sarcastic tone, and the guys laughed at his tasteless remark. Oh, and the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, was partying with the guys, drunk off his ass, on our dime.
Unlike the rest of the internet, I hold the hockey team less accountable for what happened (unpopular opinion, I know, but hear me out) than I do Trump. But the men’s team is still responsible for their behavior. Trump is the fucking president, and should have acted professional and presidential when he called the men’s team to congratulate them, and when he said he should also invite the women’s team. Instead, the expert on locker room talk showed us, once again, how incapable he is of acting presidential and running our country by mockingly telling a room full of young, drunk men, that he should probably also invite the women’s team–who also won a gold medal–otherwise they might impeach him, and the team laughed at his joke.
Mr. ‘Grab ’em by the pussy’ couldn’t care any less that the women’s team won, or that the women’s team is actually the more consistent and dominant in winning Olympic medals. They have won medals in every Olympics since women’s hockey was introduced in 1998, and three of those medals were gold. The men’s team have also won three golds, their first being won in 1960. So the women’s team has technically set the standard by winning three goals in a quarter of the time the men have.
But that’s not surprising. We know what kind of man he is.
While it was very disappointing and disheartening to watch the men’s team laugh at the president’s joke, the truth is that we don’t know if every guy in the room actually laughed. We assume they all did because the video shows them laughing, but to throw the entire team into a basket and slap a ‘deplorable’ label on it is a bit presumptuous. If you listen closely, there were guys in the background who quickly cheered at the mention of the women’s team, and even shouted things like “two for two,” about both teams winning gold. But sadly, their laughter at the sexist joke drowned most of that out. And now they are under scrutiny.
Am I defending the men’s team? No way. But I’m not one of those people who is quick to jump to conclusions before I have the whole story, nor do I believe everything I see and read online. The Ravenclaw in me wants truth and knowledge, so I’m always doing research. And my research on this incident lead me to two conclusions: One, our men’s team should have shown more restraint when it came to inviting the FBI director into the locker room and drinking beers with him, and then laughing at the president’s offensive remark, and two, this incident is a symptom of a bigger problem. And by bigger problem, I mean the racist, sexist, rapist, pedophile in the white house.
Trump brings out the worst in people. Yes, people are responsible for their actions, but it doesn’t change the fact that Trump is known for saying whatever he wants, regardless of how stupid, insensitive, or unfactual his words are, and he called a group of young men who were drunk and celebrating their win, and disrespected the women’s team over a speakerphone being held by the director of the FBI which incited their laughter. It very well could have been one of those “this is fucking awkward, the president just made a pretty fucked up remark, and I don’t know if I should laugh or not because he’s the president, and despite what a douchebag he is, I was raised to be respectful, but I’m also drunk and everyone else laughed so I need to laugh too” moments, but just because we make a stupid choice when we’re drunk doesn’t excuse us from the fallout of our actions. This incident is going to forever be a stain on our men’s hockey team.
THE MUSICAL
Nicolette posted some cute bios of the main characters in the musical on our Instagram stories this week. Hopefully you got to see them.
She got stranded in New York due to a blizzard earlier this week, and due to her delayed travel plans, we missed our scheduled meeting on Tuesday, so we’re going to be meeting on Zoom today for a writing session.
THE ZINE
Volume 1, Issue 1 of Breaking The Grrrl drops on Sunday, March 1. If you want to receive the zine, you will need to subscribe to this blog. I would like to take a moment to give a shout out to Shameless, Anna Hazel, & Alicia Nichols for submitting stuff that will be featured in the upcoming issue of Breaking The Grrrl.
Remember, we are always accepting submissions, and we want to hear from our readers!
That is all the excitement I have for you right now. Have an awesome weekene!
–Sirena ♥︎
riotgrrrlmusical.com 
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