As per usual, this analysis is not meant to incite but to inform. Feel free to voice your concerns about inaccuracies in the comments or on Twitter

This is mostly just a look at some of the connections of the parties involved with the Ordinary Women crowdfunding campaign. As far as I can tell the connections I will elaborate on have enough evidence to back them up forming a coherent picture. My knowledge of American Tax Law is too limited to make any concrete statements about the legality of the connections described here but I’m going to err on the side of innocent until truly proven guilty.

Emily Best

While the official statement only mentions Emily Best (the Founder and CEO of Seed&Spark) as having worked with the Producer Elisabeth Aultman

The earliest interactions I could find were from 2013 where Emily Best and Anita Sarkeesian attended #TheConf and appear to have spent some time together over the span of a couple of days.

(Following tweets/instagrams are in chronological order)

Best went on to follow and support Sarkeesian following that event.

From these (and other) tweets I think it’s quite obvious that Best at least hinted at hoping to collaborate with Anita Sarkeesian/Feminist Frequency.

The fact that Sarkeesian and Best appear to have a friendly history does make the fact that Sarkeesian would not mention this anywhere a little bit odd. This could have for example been mentioned in her statement regarding why her crowdfunding campaign was hosted on Seed&Spark instead of Kickstarter

The acquaintance to the CEO of Seed&Spark would have in my opinion belonged here but was omitted.

Elisabeth Aultman

As mentioned earlier the only mention of Best with regards to the campaign was her cooperation as Executive Producer with Elisabeth Aultman as the Producer in a project titled F*ck Yes!

The additional names I highlighted are of other people from the Seed&Spark team that were involved with that project.

Interestingly enough, while this project would have been a perfect fit for the business model advertised by Seed&Spark, they did not fund this project on their platform. Despite having funded projects on their platform with the same people involved.

The reason I bring this up is because it had initially confounded me why the project was listed on Aultman’s LinkedIn profile as a Seed&Spark project but was nowhere to be found on the platform itself.

This leads me to believe that the project was probably a personal collaboration. (which makes sense seeing that they also run a company together and their social media accounts also paint a picture of friendship)

While Aultman has worked as a producer on a failed (to be) Patreon-funded Social Media campaign titled Rape Joke.

which would thematically fit with the feminist ideology of Feminist Frequency there was never any mention on Aultman’s account mentioning Feminist Frequency or Anita Sarkeesian before the start of the Ordinary Women campaign.

Given that Aultman had just worked with Best on the F*ck Yes! campaign in December 2015

and was then hired a month later as the Producer for the Ordinary Women campaign does make more sense if one assumes that Best was involved.

Obviously it’s mere speculation on my part but seeing that Best has known Sarkeesian since at least 2013 and has worked with Aultman on a personal project a mere month before Aultman started working with Sarkeesian on a project that would then go on to be crowdfunded on Best’s platform does appear all too coincidental.

Maya Felix Kramer

It’s pretty well known by now that Sarkeesian works as an Advisor for SilverString Media.

What fewer people know is that Maya Felix Kramer worked for SilverString Media in 2014 (overlapping with Sarkeesian).