Love In Abundance: A Guide To Women's Music

If the first time you ever heard the phrase "women's music" was during the episode of the Amazon Original show Transparent in which the main character, a transgender woman, attends a music festival and finds herself enmeshed in a debate about gender and the right to inclusion, you know something about one aspect of a larger story. Women's music is its own genre, with a history that goes back more than 50 years. It was founded and has been carried on by artists who, in their own way, are constantly bucking against the patriarchy — whether singing about non-heteronormative love, or not being quiet and instead singing out about injustice, or doing all of the above while refusing to abide by antiquated "feminine" beauty standards. Its story is complicated and it continues to change. While its historical controversies could fill a '90s-style feminist zine, today — as trans women and more women of color begin to share the stages at its many festivals — those ideas remain its bedrock. And it deserves recognition for opening so many doors across multiple genres.

In May of 1969, a self-proclaimed "big loud Jewish butch lesbian" named Maxine Feldman wrote about the very injustices and indignities that, one month later, would lead to the , the uprising credited with kickstarting the modern LGBTQ