We were really angry, and we decided to write a song about it.
The Linda Lindas Talk About “Racist, Sexist Boy”
We love The Linda Lindas. We’ve been following their work since “Racist, Sexist Boy” hit big online.
We include their music, lyrics, and interviews all over our website to help us tell our story of punks creating accepting community, together. Below, we’ve gathered sections from our website that cite The Linda Lindas. Enjoy a musical journey through punk history and ethos, with a disability lens. The Linda Lindas epic tagline, “We rebuild what you destroy”, resonates with the work we do in the neurodiversity and disability rights movements.
If You find Your imagination cannot stop itself from churning out the scripts of the Death Machines, pull its plug. Dismantle it. Reprogram it. Dream Daylight. Manufacture Daylight. We are the Magicians. Make Magic.
—Krista Franklin, “Call”
We rebuild what you destroy.
The Linda Lindas
🏗️ We Rebuild What You Destroy
What is Riot Grrrl?
BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-hierarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.
RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO
BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.
band Bikini Kill and lead singer Kathleen Hanna.The riot grrrl manifesto
was published 1991 in the BIKINI KILL ZINE 2.
What is Riot Grrrl?
BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.
BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.
BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings.
BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.
BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.
BECAUSE we want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can’t play our instruments, in the face of “authorities” who say our bands/zines/etc are the worst in the US and
BECAUSE we don’t wanna assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.
BECAUSE we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary “reverse sexists” AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCKSOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW we really are.
BECAUSE we know that life is much more than physical survival and are patently aware that the punk rock “you can do anything” idea is crucial to the coming angry grrrl rock revolution which seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, according to their own terms, not ours.
BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.
BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.
BECAUSE we see fostering and supporting girl scenes and girl artists of all kinds as integral to this process.
BECAUSE we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits of being cool according to traditional standards.
BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.
BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousism and self defeating girltype behaviors.
BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.
We rebuild what you destroy.
We can take turns taking the reins
Lean on each other when we need some extra strength
We’ll never cave or we’ll never waver
And we’ll always become braver and braver
We’ll dance like nobody’s there
Wе’ll dance without any cares
We’ll talk 'bout problеms we share
We’ll talk 'bout things that ain’t fair
We’ll sing 'bout things we don’t know
We’ll sing to people and show
What it means to be young and growing up
Growing Up by The Linda Lindas
What Is Punk?
The definition of punk is to subvert the dominant paradigm, through art or culture, through music.
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution
Punk could be defined as a philosophy of disagreement, derailment, constructive deviation, and relentless rebellion against habitually or timidly accepted social norms.” Being in fundamental conflict with imposed social structures is a prerequisite for seeing your failures acutely.
Vuk Uskokovic, 2016
…the central tension of punk rock: it was built on individualism and an anti-hero ethos, yet expressed itself as a community. The motivation for punk was individualistic artistic expression, but the glue for the subculture was the experience of finding like-minded misfits.
We accept you, one of us?: punk rock, community, and individualism in an uncertain era, 1974-1985
What is punk?
- Making friends and having fun.
- Eating cookies.
- Doing it yourself.
- Supporting your scene.
What does punk mean to you?
The Linda Lindas – “Why” – YouTube
- Going for it without being perfect.
- Describing about how you feel, and describing your emotions.
- It means persisting to me.
- I think punk means being free.
Keith Morris: The word “punk” has all of its connotations. We didn’t care about any of that. We were just doing it.
Alice Bag: It was not just a musical genre. It was really a way to question your way of living.
Gary Lachman: It’s a spirit of DIY. If you’re creative and take the risks involved, you can do it yourself.
Louis Jacinto: It’s the philosophy that we just get to do this, period.
Penelope Spheeris: Punk rock was anti-establishment, and the
minute we stop questioning the norm, then we’re stuck.
John Doe: Punk rock is just freedom.
Chinatown Punk Wars | Artbound | Season 14, Episode 1 | KCET – YouTube
What is a punk band, after all, but an affinity group with guitars?
CrimethInc. : Punk—Dangerous Utopia : Revisiting the Relationship between Punk and Anarchism
We’re a Feisty Group of Disabled People
This isn’t just a story that disabled children will love; it’s a story about what is possible when we fight for ourselves and each other. It is a story about how tenacity, strength, the power of community, and the willingness to fight for what matters can start a revolution.
ROLLING WARRIOR: THE INCREDIBLE, SOMETIMES AWKWARD, TRUE STORY OF A REBEL GIRL ON WHEELS WHO HELPED SPARK A REVOLUTION
That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood She's got the hottest trike in town That girl, she holds her head up so high I think I wanna be her best friend, yeah Rebel girl, rebel girl
We’ve all got to end oppression against all people.
Kathleen Hanna
We were really angry, and we decided to write a song about it.
The Linda Lindas Talk About “Racist, Sexist Boy”
We have protests to stage, driven by the fuel of our righteous anger. We have speeches to make, written from the soaring pleas of our individual and collective trauma, and our wildest dreams of joy and freedom and love. We have cultural narratives to rewrite because they really do hate us and they really will kill us, and if we’re going to rewrite the narratives, then there’s no reason to hold ourselves back from our most radical and defiant rewritings. We have autistic children who need us to support them as architects of their own liberation against the schools and clinicians and institutions and police and prosecutors who would crush and destroy them.
We’re going to need our anger and our public celebrations of stimming and our complicated, imperfect, messy selves for this long and hard road, because we need all of us, and all of our tactics and strategies, to keep a movement going and ultimately, to win.
Autistic Hoya — A blog by Lydia X. Z. Brown: The neurodiversity movements needs its shoes off, and fists up.
I wanna see a feisty group of disabled people around the world…if you don’t respect yourself and if you don’t demand what you believe in for yourself, you’re not gonna get it.
Judith Heumann
You’d like me better if they didn’t stare
You’d like me better if I grew out my hair
You’d like me better if I wasn’t a mess
You’d like me better if I’d put on a dress
I don’t got no obligation
Just brush off all expectation
I ask you how you are and you’ll never tell
They like you better when you keep to yourself
They like you better when you’re shoved along
They try to tell you just where you belong
You don’t owe no demonstration
Who cares bout their validation
I don’t got no obligation
Just brush off all expectation
The Linda Lindas – “No Obligation” – YouTube
It is also important to recognise that autistic people inevitably change the structures they inhabit in a unique way because they are autistic and despite any neurotypical attempts to kerb their tendency to do that. If their autistic disposition were not what it is, the neurotypical world would not try to manage and control it. Existing as an autistic person, therefore, is almost a forceful demonstration in agency.
We are marginalized canaries in a social coalmine and Rawlsian barometers of society’s morality. It is deeply subversive to live proudly despite being living embodiments of our culture’s long standing ethical failings.
Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us. But since a great number of things that harm us are not harmful to most neurotypicals, we are viewed as untamed and in need of straightening up.
Punk Was Created by All of Us
Punk music is alive because there’s a need to belong and to not be marginalized.
Jessica Schwartz, Chinatown Punk Wars | Artbound | Season 14, Episode 1 | KCET – YouTube
Punk was created by women, people of color, and queers. And without all of us, it would be nothing.
Alice Bag
Maybe that is the punkness of being a woman.
Marina Muhlfriedel
There have always been, like, women in it, and queer people, and people of color.
That community is also something really cool about punk.
Eloise Wong of The Linda Lindas
When you’re black, you’re punk rock all the time, you’re a target all the time.
Sacha Jenkins
We have been pushed to the margins, but we create in those margins. It doesn’t get more punk than that.
Shawna Shawnté
People, incorrectly, view punk as this angry, white, urban male genre. Black culture is really the source of punk, and a lot of people don’t recognize it – or don’t want to recognize it.
Kenny Gordon
In the early aughts of punk, queerness was actually inherently tied to the movement.
The Story of Trans Punk Pioneer Jayne County – YouTube
But before all of them, was a man who inhabited punk in all its definitions. A queer, Black man, who played his music loud and fast and with a defiantly masterful un-polish. Little Richard set the stage for everything that punk would become while inhabiting every sense of the word with pride. John Waters once declared Little Richard “was the first punk.”
QUEER PUNK HISTORY: 1575 – PRESENT
“I went through a lot when I was a boy. They called me sissy, punk, freak…”
Little Richard
Punk has never not been queer.
QUEER PUNK HISTORY: 1575 – PRESENT
I was gay. It’s nice to be happy. I was happy, and I wanted the world to know I was happy. And I wasn’t ashamed. I had been that way all my life, and I didn’t know nothing else but that. And so I told everybody that: I am gay.
“I told everybody I am GAY” Little Richard 1932-2020
He was certainly queer in all of the senses of what that term means.
Jason King, “Little Richard: I Am Everything”
Jimmy Alvarado: Punk rock has been represented by the media as a straight, white, male thing, and that was never the case.
From the very beginning, there were people of different ethnicities, of different ideologies.
Punk rock was always an inclusive kind of thing.
Louis Jacinto: The punk scene reflected the city of Los Angeles, which is extremely diverse, so everybody was there.
Penelope Spheeris: It also changed what women were allowed and expected to do. All of a sudden, women could shave their head, put on some combat boots, drink a lot of beer, and swear with the dudes.
Alice Bag: In the early punk scene, there was diversity of gender, also sexuality. So many people bringing in different flavors from different communities really kept it fresh and quirky.
Jacinto: Back then, to see Nervous Gender was really putting to the fans that, “We’re queer, and we’re punk, and we’re singing about being queer and being punk.”
Jessica Schwartz: Punk music is alive because there’s a need to belong and to not be marginalized.
Chinatown Punk Wars | Artbound | Season 14, Episode 1 | KCET – YouTube
Rock and Roll History and Queer History Are Intrinsically Entwined
Swipe for my dissertation on the intersection between rock and roll history and queer history…
This is a hyperfixation of mine just so you know ty 🤘 🌈
@sammyraemusic, This year’s Pride passion-project, and tbh all I talk about at the bar 🍸 Pride Month is for learning, rock and roll is for everyone. 🤘 🌈… | Instagram
THESIS STATEMENT: Rock and roll history and queer history are intrinsically entwined.
As a counterculture movement in popular music, rock and roll has always screamed at (and for) angsty and misunderstood young people. Its bedrock is “come as you are”, “it’s cool to be anti-establishment”, and “don’t tell me what to do.”
The conventional image of a rockstar’s lot in life is making noise, creating art, and being fabulous. (Sounds pretty queer)
Rock as a lifestyle and music genre was pioneered by many brave, queer artists and iconic allys, who did the heavy lifting of expressing their most authentic selves through their artistic expression. They inspired the youth to break molds, push barriers, and be themselves.
Rock was born of the blues very much in thanks to Black trailblazers, including Black queer folks. Gay pop and disco have early roots in rock and roll, very much thanks to queer (primarily femme) artists, who declared that you could still be anti-establishment… even if you covered everything in glitter.
Rock and roll is pretty camp, and camp is pretty rock and roll.
In the average All-American, God-fearing household of the 1960s and 1970s, the first drag that lots of people saw was on the covers of rock and roll vinyls in record shops.
Lots of public-facing, heterosexual rockstars have also been important voices in the fight for LGBTQIA rights, especially during the United States AIDS epidemic. (Tina Turner, Frank Zappa, Whitney Houston…) They used their songwriting and press relationships to advocate for the LGBTQIA community. That’s called allyship!
Straight identifying members of rock’s legacy also did a great deal of normalizing the de-gendering of clothing and costume.
(Glam rock is about as gay as it gets, but that never bothered Ozzy.
@sammyraemusic, This year’s Pride passion-project, and tbh all I talk about at the bar 🍸 Pride Month is for learning, rock and roll is for everyone. 🤘 🌈… | Instagram
Punk’s for everybody. No matter what age you are.
Punk’s, you know, it’s part and parcel of… no racism, no sexism, no homophobia at the club. It’s all ages. It’s because… it belongs to everybody.
Paul Curran, Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk – YouTube
To be a queer person is inherently a very punk thing. I think to be a punk person is also inherently a queer thing.
Lorne, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube
There’s a lot of really vivifying overlap there between those two things for me.
That Could Be Me: Inspiring Constructionism
Whatever you do just go for it. Do it. Don’t wait to be perfect. Don’t wait to like have mastered it. When we started, we were terrible.
Eloise Wong of The Linda Lindas, The Linda Lindas: KCRW Live from HQ – YouTube
For her 19th Birthday, she took a chance on seeing a London band with a provocative name.
That band was the Sex Pistols.
At the time, The Pistols were merely support for obscure Welsh metal outfit Budgie, they were mostly playing ramshackle rock’n’roll covers and there was barely anyone there.
They were just a bunch of kids playing music with no pretensions of professionalism.
But that was key: Like many others after first seeing the Sex Pistols, Elliot was hooked and realised that she could do this too. “That’s why I formed X-Ray Spex.”
Before Riot Grrrl: X-Ray Spex & “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” | New British Canon – YouTube
Pretty much immediately Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex’s influence was felt. Just like seeing the Sex Pistols had convinced Styrene that getting onstage without much musical grounding was possible, a generation of punk and new wave women saw X-Ray Spex and thought “That could be me.” Her left of centre look also helped in that, not being the traditional male fantasy of many other women that had appeared on Top of the Pops. “The idea that just anyone could (start a band) was really big to me. That people in your neighbourhood could start a cassette label or a record label, that you could see people who were making records walking down the street. And they didn’t necessarily have to be in a glossy magazine, and they didn’t have to weigh 90 pounds and have blonde hair down to their ankles or whatever was the fashion of the day.”
Before Riot Grrrl: X-Ray Spex & “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” | New British Canon – YouTube
I would argue that the ability young women and girls now have to embrace the DIY approach to music would not be as prevalent as it is now had Riot Grrrl not busted down the door back in the 90s.
The 90s DIY feminist art punk scene in the Pacific Northwest gave us Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, and Sleater Kinney. And the list of bands in the Riot Grrrl legacy goes on.
Riot Grrrl: The Story of Feminist DIY Punk
I can fix my bike up (Do it yourself) I can grow a salad (Do it yourself) I can start a punk band (Do it yourself) Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it yourself I can make peanut butter (Do it yourself) I can walk myself home (Do it yourself) I can make the rain come (Do it yourself) Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it yourself Do it do it yeah x3
I can make the first move (Do it yourself) I can fight my own corner (Do it yourself) I can put it back together (Do it yourself) Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it yourself I can put shelves up (Do it yourself) I can give a hair cut (Do it yourself) I can heal a broken heart (Do it yourself) Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it yourself Do it do it yeah x6 You are good enough (Do it yourself) You are strong enough (Do it yourself) You are smart enough (Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it, Do it yourself) x3 You are good enough (Do it, do it, do it) You are strong enough (Do it, do it, do it) You are smart enough (Do it, do it, do it) x2 Do it yourself
DIY by Dream Nails
Appropriate Space
The spaces where we belong do not exist.
Gayatri Sethi, Unbelonging
We build them with radical love and revolutionary liberation.
Two of the most important developments that began in the 1990s, and continue to thrive today, are the staging of house shows and the establishment of volunteer-run community spaces. Both materialize DIY in important ways, but each has a unique historical trajectory.
In the face of such struggles, the creation of house spaces, volunteer-run spaces, and other punk- specific locations truly materialize DIY in powerful ways that also model what it means and feels like to do DIY together.
The emergence of the house as a DIY venue explicitly and implicitly challenges conceptions of the home as cut off from public life. Houses are transformed from somewhat isolated private spheres to pseudo-public spaces when punks decide to host shows in their homes. House show spaces are now standard locations for punk shows and are considered important options for DIY punk bands touring the U.S.; however, this contemporary awareness among punks that houses can function as venues did not develop uniformly. The contemporary DIY touring network is very much a product of efforts made in the 1980s but shifted and changed throughout the 1990s because of some limitations with the more common spaces used for shows during the ‘80s. Punk bands have played at houses since the music began.
Underground: The Subterranean Culture of DIY Punk Shows | Microcosm Publishing
There is, however, a major difference between these other uses of the home for collective music experiences and punk house shows. The people who live in the house and book the shows are enacting a DIY philosophy and politics, as are the bands that play and many of the people in attendance. The home space has in effect been appropriated to shift from a container for standard domestic practices to a pseudo-public place that offers an alternative venue option for many DIY punk bands that are often excluded from more official (or legitimate) live music venues.
Underground: The Subterranean Culture of DIY Punk Shows | Microcosm Publishing
There’s space for you.
Bela Salazar of The Linda Lindas, The Linda Lindas: KCRW Live from HQ – YouTube
Do you ever feel unsafe? Do you wanna take up space? Do you (Take up space) Wanna? (Take up space) Do you Oh, do you wanna? Ooh, ooh Ooh, ooh Sha-la-la-la-la --Take Up Space by Dream Nails
I think the key here is space.
“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
The Denny’s Grand Slam
Few concerts have captured the imagination of the internet more than the Denny’s Grand Slam.
There were so many kids there. It was so much fun.
“The real thing that people like about this is the whole DIY aspect of throwing your own show wherever the fuck you want to do it.”
When Denny’s Became A Mosh Pit – What Was The Denny’s Grand Slam? – YouTube
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