Tobi Vail

The band was often met with resistance and misunderstanding due to their chaotic live performances, controversial lyrics, and political zines which dealt with various activist-punk topics like anti-racism, vegetarianism, anti-corporatism, anti-capitalism, anti-heterosexism, and in particular feminist issues such as rape, incest, domestic violence, abortion, sexuality, body image and eating disorders, stalking, patriarchy, sexual assault, and sexism in general - all with a strong emphasis on community and DIY culture.

Vail recalls:

When Bikini Kill first started people reacted to what we did very strongly - either they really loved it or they really hated it, and a lot of times that was kinda hard to deal with, especially just starting out. I thought we would just be asking questions, and people saw us as 'dogmatic' I didn't see it that way. Maybe our presentation was sort of dogmatic because every show we played was like a war, cos guys would try to beat us up and stuff, it was really violent we had a lot of fans and we didn't have any crowd control, we didn't have a manager, we'd just play these crazy places like bowling alleys and then cram like 600 people in there, you know, no security. Despite frequent mainstream media misrepresentation and serious violence at shows, they continued for several years and today are largely credited (along with Bratmobile) with starting Riot Grrrl, a movement that merged Do It Yourself punk culture with feminism. Read Less