Publishing, Girl Power, and Raising Money Online

My son in law, Ben Aldrich, co founder of SatYuga Studios, thought that I would be interested in Kickstart, an internet-enabled way of raising venture capital, donation by small donation. He linked me to Wollstonecraft, a “pro-math, pro-science, pro-history and pro-literature adventure novel for and about girls, who use their education to solve problems and catch a jewel thief.”

The project does seem to combine everything we love:  publishing, entrepreneurship, girl power, the internet, and a fun dollop of steampunk to leaven it all.  And Kickstart is an interesting project, especially for women.  Women’s projects, we are told, get only 3% of existing venture capital.  This entrepreneurial approach to raising money might be a godsend for independent women publishers.

Has anyone tried it?  I’d love to hear your stories.

Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke: Women in Media Take Notice

Today is the day that will decide if the GOP will remain relevant or go spinning down into infamy, joining the wall of shame that features Joe McCarthy, ‘I am not a crook’ Nixon, and other self-protecting ideologues who lost the thread of what it means to be in public service–or in the case of Rush Limbaugh, the voice of many of those in public service. Will the leaders of the Republican party speak up? They haven’t as yet. Or will they remain, silent and terrified, and allow their party to be co-opted, marginalized, made ridiculous.

I am not a ‘lefty’. Full disclosure–I am from New Hampshire, the ‘live free or die’ state where it is very respectable to hold independent political views. Nor is this a political site, or a political association. EWIP embraces women in media from all political viewpoints.

But the words of Rush Limbaugh about Sandra Fluke is a media issue–an issue to which women in the media must rise to respond.

I am old enough to remember the 70’s, and even much of the 60’s, rather well. I remember the beginnings of modern feminism, and the vitriol that greeted it that came from many quarters. And the vision of a panel of aging white men making decisions that affect women’s health and reproductive choices brings those days back to me vividly.

Today I know many young women who see no need to take a political position on women’s health and safety. I see their point. We have grown past so much of it. But listening to Rush Limbaugh reviling a young woman who dared to testify before Congress, in language that surely would have lost him his job if he had been speaking of a racial or ethnic minority, made me remember that yes, there are men out there who truly do hate women.

Why? I really don’t know. But the hatred and fear of a woman taking control of her own life, her own reproductive choices–or, in this case, having a voice in Congress–was evident in attack of Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke. To someone like me, who remembers when this kind of misogyny informed policy, who sees it seeping in–actually, tidal-waving in–to our current discourse, it’s a little scary.

Women in media, this is an issue. We don’t have to scream or curse back. But we need to say something. And here is what I say:

Rush (I think at this point we’re on a first-name basis, don’t you?), look at a map of the world. Overlay the countries in which women have access to contraception, where they have the power to delay conception, where they have control over their reproductive choices. Now look at the countries in which poverty, infant mortality, and illiteracy prevail. I won’t spoil the surprise…it will be a surprise, won’t it, Rush? To you, anyway.

What you see you may find remarkable. Or you may not. But Rush, something you need to learn if you are to live in our world as a civilized person: using that kind of language about another human being? It’s not OK.

Rush Limbaugh Disses Sandra Fluke. Is He Crazy?

Is the right wing out of touch? Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke is beyond out of touch–it’s out of control. The overt attack on women needs to be answered by women in the media. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/02/10562831-president-obama-calls-georgetown-student-fluke. This has been astounding. It is really a war on women that the right wing media permits. Check out this is the freedom and protection of women mean anything at all to you.

Susan G. Komen versus Planned Parenthood? Really?

My godfather, the Reverend Carl Flemister, was the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood in New York City in the years when I was growing up. His association with the program seemed to me then, and still seems to me, such an honorable and altruistic use of his considerable talents and connections. I remember growing up with the understanding that “Uncle Buddy” would make sure that, in his city at least, women were supported; that women in New York would have important resources at their disposal; and that it was considered important that women have a voice in the direction of their lives.

Mostly, I grew up with the understanding that caring for women’s health was on the radar, and that Planned Parenthood was a part of this.

It was a child’s understanding, of course, based on a child’s view of the world. Still, it felt like a slap to hear that the Susan G Komen for the Cure foundation–leaders, as they have been, in raising awareness of breast cancer, pink ribbons everywhere–had decided to cut off all funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening and education programs. What could the foundation be thinking? And whatever infighting it is succumbing to, why should the women who need these services be the ones to pay the price?