Last modified on Sun 30 May 2021 14.17 EDT
Alix Dobkin, who has died aged 80 from a brain aneurysm and stroke, was an American folk singer and lesbian activist who coined the term “women’s music,” which morphed into its own genre.
A performer in the New York folk scene of the 1960s, Dobkin had come to feminist activism after hearing the writer Germaine Greer interviewed in 1970 by Liza Cowan, then a radio host, during a pivotal moment in the women’s liberation movement. As a result, Dobkin began talking with other feminists in consciousness-raising groups about male supremacy and women’s oppression.
Alix Dobkin, Who Sang Songs of Liberation, Dies at 80
She broke new ground in 1973 with her album “Lavender Jane Loves Women,” recorded and distributed by women for women, which sketched out a lesbian separatist utopia.
The singer and lesbian activist Alix Dobkin in 1975. This image of her exploded on social media 40 years later and introduced Ms. Dobkin to a new generation of young women.Credit.Liza Cowan
May 28, 2021, 1:53 p.m. ET
Long before K.D. Lang transformed herself from a country artist into an androgyne pop idol and sex symbol, smoldering in a man’s suit on the cover of Vanity Fair being mock-shaved by the supermodel Cindy Crawford; long before Melissa Etheridge sold millions of copies of her 1993 album, “Yes I Am,” and in so doing came out as a gay rock star; and long before the singer-songwriter Jill Sobule’s “I Kissed a Girl” hit the Billboard charts, the folk singer Alix Dobkin chopped her hair off, formed a band and recorded “Lavender Jane Lov