Kathleen Hanna at Revolution Hall

Kathleen Hanna, punk rocker, performance artist and feminist icon, gives a talk on Riot Grrrl at Revolution Hall on April 28, 2015. (David Greenwald/The Oregonian)

(David Greenwald/The Oregonian)

Kathleen Hanna was here to be honest.

At Revolution Hall, giving a lecture rather than playing a punk show, the leader of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and now the Julie Ruin, the Riot Grrrl icon was many things on Tuesday night. Funny and vulnerable, self-deprecating and raw, wise and empty-handed; a gleeful musician and a burdened advocate. For many, she's a feminist role model: she also wanted us to know she wasn't Mother Teresa. "I've always thought of myself as a performance artist," she said.

But she never seemed less than truthful or open in her time on stage, in a talk dubbed "Riot Grrrl: Then + Now" that was mostly about Kathleen Hanna then and now -- not that the crowd, here to hero-worship, was expecting anything less. She could only speak to her experience, she explained, and rather than a survey course on the feminist punk movement of the 1990s that birthed Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and a zine-led culture felt across the country, the evening was more about Hanna's own inspirations, successes and failures, and the lessons drawn from them across 25 years.

The first thing she did was hand out a black-and-white flyer, that staple of Riot Grrrl communiques: on one side was her 1992 manifesto for Riot Grrrl, and on the other, resources and critiques for what the movement got wrong, namely its inclusion (or not) of women of color. Then she showed us a photograph, projected behind her: an Ansel Adams image of a tree, a vision of aesthetic perfection that had made Hanna, as a teenage photography student at Evergreen State College, feel nothing.

She wanted to express ideas about domestic violence, to find accessible forms that wouldn't wind up as four-figure fine art pieces. Inspired by Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger and others, she found them in flyer-making and, ultimately, punk rock. She talked about how to combine art and political passion, to break the arbitrary rules that trap people within preconceived boundaries of punk and art-making (or gender roles, for that matter): when she voiced the idea that existing only in opposition to the status quo still means letting the status quo control your direction, I wanted to stand up and cheer.

Perhaps the center of the talk was the push and pull between pleasure and sacrifice, of serving her own needs as a performer and person and being an advocate for others. Working with high school students as a crisis counselor, she "became addicted to that feeling" of transforming a room into a different space -- a safe space. Taking the lead, getting on stage, writing manifestos -- it wasn't just altruism.

And giving too much took a personal toll. She talked about the danger and exhaustion she faced as the leader of Bikini Kill, a band that made the transgressive call for girls to come to the front: "After I got pulled off the stage by my ankles in Italy," she said, she'd had enough. She half-joked about spending her time away from music in therapy. And while Riot Grrrl was anti-capitalist, Hanna also addressed the realities of living in a society ruled by money, where a rich-kid punk band could play a benefit for free but she'd had to take off work and struggle. There is a cost to making feminist art, she said, and it should be valued in return.

She also shared an anecdote about Riot Grrrl's struggles with intersectional feminism, recalling a gathering that devolved into white women wanting to be absolved of their racism by the few people of color in attendance. That was decades ago and yet, in pale Portland, a look at the diversity (or not) of the audience was evidence of the inclusivity barriers that still need to be broken. It was something that Hanna voiced a need for, if didn't actively embody: she wanted Riot Grrrl remembered for what it was, a progressive moment that didn't finish the job.

In the Q&A that closed the talk, many of the women who approached the microphones were deeply moved, wanting as much to share their experiences and acknowledge Hanna's inspiration as ask something. Two women did offer critiques for Hanna's contained multitudes but had trouble forming them into specific questions: Hanna answered them in kind, saying she didn't know how to properly respond to a line of thought about the evening's $30.50 ticket fee being exclusive, a classist barrier to entry.

Hanna also joked about Sheryl Sandberg-style leaning in, but she absolutely is: no one asks Ira Glass why he doesn't charge less for his stage show. Capitalism, like a huffing elephant, is not eradicated by ignoring it. There are two separate ideas here: intersectional feminism as something that should be available to everyone, and whether or not Kathleen Hanna ought to be its living delivery system, rather than a singer and a person with late-stage Lyme Disease and a life. How much is enough? How many events should Hanna charge $5 for, like Bikini Kill once did? Charging $12 with Le Tigre, she'd learned, also kept out her previous band's more hateful attendees, and self-care through community, too, was a Riot Grrrl tenet.

If I may mansplain for a moment, Hanna's lack of defense was the more important lesson: she accepted the critiques as dialogue, absorbed it, and moved onward.

"Start something smarter," she said earlier, giving Riot Grrrl a 20/20 approach. "The critiques -- it's more important than the fake memories of how awesome the Bikini Kill show you missed was."

-- David Greenwald