Cultivating Affective Digital Networks

This chapter explores how the increase in visibility, respect, and numerical representation for graffiti grrlz is due to the consistent cataloging of their graffiti art-making in various digital spaces that open their subcultural world to other graff grrlz across the diaspora. It traces how they have cultivated an affective network through the digital zine Catfight, the GraffGirlz.com website, the Chicks on Powertrips blog, the “Female International Graffiti” Facebook group, and the “Female Caps” Tumblr microblog. The chapter claims that because the performance of feminism is circulated through these digital places it creates a subcultural feminist sensibility akin to the results of consciousness-raising groups. Taking the risk of going public (by going online together) not only facilitated a solidarity inspired by shared experiences, but also ushered in a subcultural revolution with the potential to permanently change graffiti grrlz’ subcultural status.

Doing Feminist Community without “Feminist” Identity

This chapter attends to a significant tension built into the central argument of the book: graffiti grrlz provide an alternative perspective on the current state of transnational feminist movement and the potential in contemporary performances of feminism throughout the Hip Hop diaspora but the majority of the grrlz do not identify with the word feminist or as part of feminist movement. This chapter enters scholarship concerned with “the failure of feminism” by looking to the all-grrl crews created in Brazil (Rede Nami) and Chile (Crazis Crew, Turronas Crew). Graffiti grrlz in Latin America have been actively maintaining all-grrl crews and collectives for over a decade, affecting an extraordinary numerical surge in the presence of, and a noticeable shift in the relationships between, graff grrlz. The chapter argues that though graffiti grrlz generally disidentify with the word “feminist,” their performances of feminism offer a model of feminist movement based in action rather than identity.

Performing Feminist Masculinity in a Postfeminist Era

This chapter engages an ongoing conversation within Hip Hop Studies in regards to masculinity. Instead of asking what Hip Hop masculinity does to girls and women, whereby they become victims of masculine gender performance, this chapter asks what graff grrlz do with masculine gender performance. Examining the self-presentation, aesthetics of, and approach to graffiti art by graffiti writers Are2 (USA), Miss17 (USA), Motel7 (South Africa), Jerk LA (USA), EGR (Canada), and Ivey (Australia), the chapter proposes “feminist masculinity” to name performances of masculine gender characteristics that empower rather than subjugate. Rather than reproducing oppressive toxic masculinity at the center of Hip Hop’s discourse of “realness,” upholding hegemonic liberal feminism, or accepting a politically sterilized postfeminism, these grrlz fashion the traits of masculinity to demand equity on behalf of their graffiti grrl community.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes how the book has created the space for graffiti grrlz’ stories to emerge, demonstrating how they negotiate their belonging to, and visibility in, a hetero/sexist male-dominated subculture embedded in a patriarchal world. It traces how graffiti grrlz perform a different kind of standpoint epistemology, one structured less by knowing and claiming a location on the grid of identification and more by doing something that feels revolutionary. The conclusion states that by offering an analysis of how graff grrlz have made substantial, quantifiable, and qualitative changes in the subculture on a transnational scale, scholars and practitioners have a new way of looking at graffiti subculture. In one last intervention, the conclusion closes with a list of messages from the graffiti grrlz in the book to aspiring graffiti grrlz reading the book. The Hip Hop gesture of “passing the mic” amplifies the words and works of the grrlz taking public space across the diaspora.

Transforming Precarity at International All-Grrl Jams

This chapter considers the precarity of graffiti grrlz’ social and subcultural status. Graffiti subculture thrives on social relation; in this economy, aesthetics and peer recognition have value, but who gets to spend or accrue this value through their artistic labor differs based on gender conventions. Graffiti grrlz are vulnerable within this economy because their aesthetics and their bodies (thus, their peer recognition) are valued differently—often, their contributions do not “count.” By way of a comparative analysis of two annual, international all-grrl events—Ladie Killerz (Australia) and Femme Fierce (United Kingdom)—the chapter asks what the public collective performance of feminine identity markers does within spaces where heterosexist male masculinity is the valued convention. Through the strategic public performance of an undervalued gender identity, these “ladiez” and “femmes” claim their subcultural ownership, transform their precarious social belongings, and activate the social and political power of feminist collectivity.

Re-Membering Herstory and the Transephemeral Performative

This chapter examines how the relatively new phenomenon of graffiti subculture’s online activity affects graffiti grrlz’ “herstorical” presence in the production of the subcultural archive. Through the example of Brazil’s first all-grrl crew Transgressão Para Mulheres (TPM), the chapter interrogates the social and political potential of a digital existence for those who have literally been written out of history at the same time that it offers “transephemerality” as a conceptual tool describing the ontological condition of an ephemeral art form that remains present in the digital world. TPM’s “real life” inactivity is countered by their activity online, a digital presence that reaches across time and space. Without their graffiti images existing online as transephemeral objects the historical impact of TPM to graffiti history might be forgotten, whereas now it is made available to a wider public capable of re-membering TPM’s herstory despite their “disappearance.”

Introduction

This chapter introduces the stakes of the book by narrating two stories that illustrate how the dynamics of gender difference affect belonging for women who write graffiti on both an individual and a structural level. Briefly surveying the current state of Graffiti Studies, the introduction argues that without accounting for the dynamics of gender difference within graffiti subculture, graffiti grrlz (and the ways they develop strategies of resistance in order to thrive) remain invisible. The introduction then breaks into four sections: Writing Grrlz describes the interdisciplinary ethnographic method and major interventions to the fields of Graffiti Studies and Hip Hop Studies; Digital Ups introduces the importance of digital media as a mode for grrlz to connect across geographical borders, language barriers, and time zones; Hip Hop Graffiti Diaspora frames the book’s utilization of diaspora and performance to account for the multiracial, multiethnic reality of transnational graffiti subculture; and Performing Feminism “Like a Grrl” explains how and why these strategies are framed as feminist performance.