Music

MRAs think Boston's Riot Grrrl Day is a sign of the SJW apocalypse

by Tyler Munro

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s political career has not been without its controversies, but he finally did something even many of his critics can get on board with when he declared today, April 9th, “Riot Grrrl Day” in Beantown.

Walsh wrote in an official proclamation that he was inspired by Kathleen Hanna’s “Riot Grrrl Manifesto,” and aims to “inspire grrrls everywhere to shake up the status quo and create.”

Kathleen Hanna is lecturing in Boston this week.

Mayor Walsh writes that “the next Kathleen Hanna may be a young girl in a Boston bedroom fearful that she has no community to belong to,” and that girls need to see other girls picking up instruments, paintbrushes and pens because “our young women can’t be what they can’t see.”

Aimed to inspire young women to feel safe to create incredible art, Walsh’s proclamation is by any logical stretch a good thing. Here it is in full:

Unfortunately, Mens Rights Activists do not operate under any logical pretense, and quick as the news went public they rushed to their Cheetos-stained keyboards to complain about how unfair the whole thing is.

While some made lighthearted, if not still offensive jokes in light of the announcement, like joking about “so, when is skater boi day,” the worst reactions appeared, unsurprisingly, on reddit. The /r/TumblrInAction community is a cesspool of angry dudes screaming about SJWs like their lives depend on it, and Mayor Walsh’s announcement seemed to have sent some of them into a spiralling rage.

A user named pokemon_fetish wrote in response to Walsh’s assertion that “the riot grrrl philosophy has never felt more relevant, with misogyny still rampant in many cultural spheres,” that Hannah had better “check the misogynist threat climate” before “heading out to her lecture.” It spiralled into insanity from there.

“Yup… ‘riot grrls’ are just you’re [sic] average, ‘run of the mill’ SJW’s,” replied Claude_Reborn. “They pretty much killed any sort of “anti authority” punk music in the 90’s and replaced it with shit that no one liked, and pretty much killed the scene.”

Yes: These people think Bikini Kill ruined punk rock.

Another user joked that the Boston Bruins will now be known as the Boston Grrrlls, and that when they miss the playoffs, it will be the result of affirmative action.

But yes, it gets worse!

On Facebook, on articles on the day published by Pitchfork, Stereogum and more, bitter dudes not worried about anonymity made comments about “the feminazis winning” and other such bits of irony; horrible as their remarks might be, they prove, definitively, that days like this are absolutely necessary.

Even this, a seemingly harmless remark on The Punk Singer, drives Walsh’s incentive home:

Although I really liked the film, in retrospect it was almost like, as a male viewer, I was waiting for the final seal of approval from the great Ian McKaye until it was a totally legitimate documentary.

Surprisingly, though, the general reaction, whirling above the bitter blur of misogyny in the internet’s underbelly, has been positive. Boston’s SunTimes did a quick round-up of Twitter hits earlier today that saw Bostonians celebrating Walsh’s decision. And in the wake of the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev verdict, that’s a city that needs something to be proud of.