What would a feminist payment/funding site look like?

We’ve had several discussions here over the years about what a feminist social network would look like, most notably Social Networking Requirements and The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. In a similar vein, and in light of the recent problems with Gittip, I’d like to open discussion about what a feminist payment/funding site would look like — a feminist alternative to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, or to micropayment/ongoing support like Gittip or Patreon.

I’ll start:

• The system helps bring the most marginalised and most in need to the forefront, rather than the most popular.
• Policies that don’t automatically shut down accounts for “offensive” content when those accounts are, for example, documenting abuse or educating about sexuality.
• It doesn’t require you to create a video to launch a campaign (pet peeve! but see Photography on the GF wiki for some ways in which photos/video can lead to harassment for marginalised people).

For further background/points of discussion, some resources around this are starting to form on the GF wiki. See for example:

• Fundraising mechanisms for activists
• Feminist reviews of payment processors

Ideas, thoughts? What payment/fundraising needs do you have in regard to feminist/activist work?

The linkspam is in another castle (2 April 2013)

• Dress Made Out Of Magic: The Gathering Cards
• Releng of the Nerds: Thoughts on being a second generation geek
• Gaming In Color: Kickstarter for a documentary exploring the queer side of gaming and LGBTQ presence in the game industry.
• romero’s wives: “on friday, i decided, i would close GDC with my friend cara ellison’s poem, romero’s wives.”
• What If Everyone Involved in the Adria Richards Incident Was in a Union? | RH Reality Check
• Donglegate: Why the Tech Community Hates Feminists | Wired Opinion | Wired.com
• sexuality and sexism: “Part of that life is sexual, and how wonderfully, playfully, rightfully so. But the world as a whole would be better if we kept sexuality out of programming and other male-dominated pursuits.”
• Ten Tips Guaranteed to Improve Your Startup Success: “1. Be raised with access to clean drinking water and sanitation.”
• The Narrow-Mindedness of the ‘Accepted Wisdom’: “How a game is marketed is incredibly important, because it heavily influences what types of games get made.”
• Most recent example of violating the Finkbeiner Test when writing about technical women:
  • Yvonne Brill, Rocket Scientist, Dies at 88 – NYTimes.com: Annoyingly the article opens with and emphasizes her good mom and wife skills.
  • NewsDiffs | Diffing: Yvonne Brill, a Pioneering Rocket Scientist, Dies at 88: NYT’s unnoted edits to the “mean beef stroganoff” rocket scientist’s obituary
  • Family Man Who Invented Relativity and Made Great Chili Dies : The Last Word On Nothing

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

I used to be an adventurer like you until I took a linkspam to the knee (23 October, 2012)

• Engendering Change | Atomic MPC: “Katie Williams looks at how gamers and game developers are tackling sexism, and how some of us are just making things worse…”
• Meaningful Adventure | Share Your Story: A game design project that “seeks to raise awareness of the positive and negative treatment women face in the gaming community by building a digital game. We are seeking help from both men and women to get a better grasp on what real women experience while playing games.” Looking for you to share your stories. “Within one or two weeks, the anonymized, edited collection will be posted on the project website at meaningfuladventure.wordpress.com.”
• ‘As a woman’: Misconceptions in the diversity discussion | Gamasutra: “Our panel’s now available to view for all those who have a GDC Vault pass — and meanwhile, I’ve aimed to crystallize and illuminate some common misconceptions about diversity issues in games that we joked about.”
• A Factory for Scientific Heroines at the Royal Society of London | Huffington Post: The doyenne of British psychology, Professor Uta Frith DBE, has written an article for the Huffington Post calling for more recognition of female scientists. She says that one way to do this is through creating and editing Wikipedia entries about inspiring female scientists past and present, and the Royal Society (of which Frith is a Fellow) has begun an edit-athon to do just that. One example of a glaring omission on Wikipedia at present, mentioned by Frith, is the lack of an entry for cognitive neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of UCL, despite how hugely influential her work has been. Frith also has a related article in the Daily Telegraph, Shining a light on our science heroines.
• Gender and Swag | MISinformation: “Each year when the Grace Hopper Conference happens, there is the inevitable discussion about the swag (the freebies in registration packets) given out. I have to confess that the first year I heard that companies gave out nail polish and “girlie” things, I was totally offended, but that was before I attended Grace Hopper. After attending, my whole attitude changed. Engaging in this year’s debate made me stop and think a bit more about the phenomenon.”
• The point of calling out bad behavior. | Adventures in Ethics and Science: “And, I’ll level with you: while, in an ideal world, one would want the perpetrator of sexist behavior to Learn and Grow and Repent and make Sincere Apologies, I don’t especially care if someone is still sexist in his heart as long as his behavior changes. It’s the interactions with other people that make the climate that other people have to deal with. Once that part is fixed, we can talk strategy for saving souls.”
• Two GF related projects with Kickstarters:
  • Articulate: “Articulate aims to raise the profile of women speakers in the technology and the creative industries by offering public speaking training, developing partnerships with event programmers, and giving better access to talented female speakers.” (Kickstarter coming later in October)
  • Mothership HackerMoms | Projects. Friends. Inspiration. With Childcare.: “We are a new kind of playground and workspace for creative mothers. Fun to us is not mani-pedis at the mall, but making, breaking, learning and hacking our bright ideas. These creations are our children, too, and deserve a chance at life. Our mission is to give mothers the time and space to explore DIY craft and design, hacker/maker culture, entrepreneurship, and all manner of creative expression – with childcare.”
• Two GF related Tumblrs:
  • Academic Men Explain Things to Me | Tumblr: “Are you a female academic, researcher, or graduate student? Has a man tried to explain your field or topic to you, on the assumption that he must inevitably know more about it than you do? Share your experiences as a mansplainee here.”
  • Gender and Science: Gender and Science Tumblr: photos of and quotes from female scientists.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

and you will know us by the trail of linkspam (22nd May, 2012)

• Gaming As Women’s wundergeek explains why she is a woman who games, not a gamer “girl”
• Gina Trapani at CNN: In war for talent, ‘brogrammers’ will be losers
• Why we need to keep talking about women in tech: coverage of sexist comments by the emcee at a Dell summit
• Legos, spaceships, breasts: another difference between Lego sets marketed towards boys and girls – complex construction
• Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency has a Kickstarter for here new project about Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. She met her initial goal of $6,000 in under 24 hours and has now expanded the project by 5 episodes and the goal is $15,000.
• The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Genius: a profile of evolutionary biologist Margie Profet
• Follow up links to Straight White Male, The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
• Life’s ‘Lowest Difficulty Setting’: John Scalzi Explains Privilege to Nerds – an interview with John Scalzi
• “Lowest Difficulty Setting” Follow-Up – follow up from John Scalzi with some comment rebuttals
• “So What if Privilege is the Lowest Difficulty Setting?” A Response to Scalzi’s Post – addresses the “but so what should I DO???” questions being asked (whether in good faith or not.)

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

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Featured Image Credit: ‘Abstract’ Chainmail – Uploaded by UCL Engineering on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)