Kickstarting trans*: The crowdfunding of gender/ sexual

new media & society

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DOI: 10.1177/1461444814558911

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Kickstarting trans*: The

crowdfunding of gender/

sexual reassignment surgeries

Megan Farnel

University of Alberta, Canada

Abstract

The crowdfunding of gender/sexual reassignment (G/SRS) surgeries is a recent and

controversial phenomenon on which there currently exists no academic commentary.

This article considers three particular G/SRS crowdfunding campaigns with a focus on

two primary elements: the aesthetic and commodified positions of trans* bodies, and

the role of the potential backers, the crowds of crowdfunding. Both, I argue, are shaped

by specific platform regulations as well as by broader social and political norms specific

to and beyond trans* bodies. At stake in these distinctions are the extent to which

trans* bodies are permitted to be defined as art and/or commodities, as well as the

conditions under which backers are compelled (or not) to provide emotional, financial

and political support for trans*-positive causes. Digital media, I conclude, is increasingly

playing a role in defining, producing and challenging the modes of normativity that

determine the livability of life for precarious subjects.

Keywords

Aesthetics, affect, Ashley Altadonna, crowdfunding, crowds, Donnie Collins,

embodiment, gender reassignment, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, publics, Shakina Nayfack,

transgender, YouCaring

Introduction

Although recent years have seen crowdfunding used for everything from the development

of a Veronica Mars feature-length film (Chin et al., 2014) to numerous restaurants (Goalen,

2011), there are few usages as controversial and complex as the crowdfunding of gender/

Corresponding author:

Megan Farnel, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, 3-5 Humanities Centre,

Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5, Canada.

Email: [email protected]

558911

NMS0010.1177/1461444814558911New Media & SocietyFarnel

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Article

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2 new media & society

sexual reassignment surgeries (G/SRS

). These campaigns have raised vigorous debates

regarding the benefits and limitations of crowdfunding as an approach, as well as broader

conversations about what constitutes a livable life. This article considers the crowdfunding

of G/SRS from two intersecting vantage points: the aesthetic and commodified position of

trans*

bodies, and the role of the potential backers, the crowds of crowdfunding. I suggest

that the former shapes and is shaped by both individual platform policies as well as broader

social and political norms. Specific crowdfunding platforms allow, even require, differen-

tial levels of access to the trans* subject; while some permit the direct funding of G/SRS,

others (such as Kickstarter, which prohibits all personal fundraising projects including G/

SRS) require the production of a formalized object that can be distributed to backers. At

stake in these distinctions, I argue, are considerations about the extent to which bodies

themselves are permitted to be defined as art and/or commodities, as well as particular

understandings of the politics and aesthetics specific to trans* bodies.

I similarly consider the ways in which backers are constructed in relation to various

modes of normativity. Many theorists (Ahmed, 2010; Borch, 2009; Butsch, 2008) empha-

size the link between crowds and affect, and I build upon these discussions, arguing that

the strength of crowdfunding is its potential to disrupt the affective conditions necessary

for transphobia and violence towards trans* persons. This is not to say we should not also

be critical of the necessity for trans* persons to generate this crowd and sustain this affec-

tive condition. Indeed, crowdfunding G/SRS not only places responsibility for medical

access on the shoulders of an intensely precarious population, but further serves to privat-

ize and isolate what are systemic issues of inequality. We might also locate this trend

within a broader body of online practices that several scholars refer to as the commodifi-

cation of difference (Light et al., 2008; Magnet, 2007). However, this article argues that

the crowds of crowdfunding play a dynamic role that cannot be neatly distinguished either

from the overtly political force of a public or from the consumptive position of audiences.

Part of the promise of crowdfunding, I argue, is an enhanced dialogue that foregrounds the

concerns of the crowd as necessarily public, political and aesthetic.

Method

This article focuses on three G/SRS crowdfunding campaigns: Ashley Altadonna’s

Kickstarter, ‘Making the Cut’, an Emerson fraternity’s Indiegogo campaign on behalf of

Donnie Collins, and Shakina Nayfack’s YouCaring project, ‘Kickstarther’.

The crowdfunding of G/SRS, while growing in popularity, remains a relatively lim-

ited trend.

Although my searches located dozens of active and expired G/SRS-related

campaigns on Indiegogo, the campaigns I discuss that are hosted on Kickstarter and

YouCaring were the only such efforts on each site at the time of writing.

The campaigns hosted on the latter two sites were thus selected largely due to my aim

to produce a comparative analysis of G/SRS on different crowdfunding platforms. This

cross-platform analysis is aligned with Light et al.’s (2008) related call for a comparative

approach to social media, and is particularly urgent, I will argue, because of the domi-

nance of Kickstarter in popular media (Barshad, 2013; Lawson, 2013) and academic

(Chin et al., 2014; Goalen, 2011; Gutiérrez, 2013) discussions.

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On Indiegogo, where there were more campaigns to select from, I elected to work

with Donnie Collins’ case because of the media attention it received. This publicity

allowed me to track not only how the campaign itself was presented, but also how it

circulated within popular media, and how that circulation influenced factors within and

beyond the campaign.

In all cases, my analysis focuses on publicly available media, namely the text, images

and videos on campaign pages as well as some popular media discussions of the cam-

paigns. For reasons of both relevance and campaigner safety (given the controversial nature

of discussions surrounding G/SRS), I do not provide biographical information outside of

what is available within the context of the campaigns themselves, nor do I detail any

updates campaigners provided exclusively to backers or on personal blogs and websites.

Background

This article considers two separate but related questions concerning the crowdfunding of

G/SRS: what are the politics and aesthetics implied by how different platforms encour-

age and/or demand access to trans* bodies, and what are the roles and implications of

crowdfunding’s audience, public and/or crowd(s)?

My approach to the first is shaped by recent discussions in feminist theory and activ-

ism regarding the ways in which the aesthetic dimensions of trans* subjectivities are

inseparable from questions of gendered, racial, economic and sexual normativities and

resistances. Halberstam (2005), for example, depicts ‘transgender aesthetics’ not as a set

of decisions undertaken by and relevant only to trans* subjects, but as a component of a

larger interaction between queer embodiment and political struggles (p. 105).

Considering the representation of trans* bodies and G/SRS in crowdfunding cam-

paigns and their relationships to various forms of normativity also involves a broader

examination of the body as a site of aesthetic, technical and political knowledge. How

might attempts to crowdfund G/SRS, in other words, exist at the intersection between

what are called soma-aesthetics and somatechnics? The former, coined by Richard

Shusterman (1999), takes embodied experience as a crucial site of aesthetic knowledge

and creation. Somatechnics, meanwhile, emphasizes the inextricability of bodies and

technés, suggesting that ‘technés are not something we add or apply to the body’, but

rather a means by which embodied life is negotiated and experienced (Sullivan and

Murray, 2009: 3). By bringing these terms together in my analysis, I suggest that trans*

bodies in G/SRS crowdfunding campaigns function as sites of aesthetic, political and

epistemological signification, and thus that these efforts are critical indicators of how the

digital context can both challenge and reinforce normative standards.

Equally important to questions of technological intervention, and in most cases insepa-

rable from them, are the roles of affect and intersubjectivity. Crawford (2008) suggests that

affects are too often ‘recouped, tamed, and privatized’ (p. 133) in the service of understand-

ing the trans* subject as a bounded, liminal entity. The radical potential of trans* politics

and aesthetics, he argues, lies in a willingness to understand affects as forces of deterritori-

alization, which refuse to ‘add up to a fully formed and settled subject’ (p. 141). I attempt

to build upon Crawford’s analysis by considering how trans* and queer populations more

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generally might best use digital technologies to emphasize and enhance the interdependent

and intersubjective nature of queer life.

Moreover, the intersubjective role of affect emphasized by Crawford (and other affect

theorists, including Sara Ahmed) connects the role of the trans* body in the funding

efforts we are examining to its potential backers or donors: the crowd of crowdfunding.

Borch (2009) notes that crowds are often distinguished from other groups by an empha-

sis on the role of affective relationality. While Le Bon’s famous discussion of crowd

psychology depicted the strong affective ties between members of crowds as dangerous,

Borch contends attempts to refute these claims have gone too far in the reverse direction;

the ‘rational turn’ in crowd analysis, he says, risks neglecting how a crowd’s power is

often rooted in shared affective conditions (p. 276). So it is ironically in Le Bon’s con-

cerns about crowds, that they threaten the autonomy and rationality of the subject, that

Borch argues we can locate their most politically potent characteristics.

While many definitions of crowds (including the one offered by Borch) often rely on

the physical co-presence of bodies, however, Stage (2013) posits that in the age of digital

media, these distinctions, too, need to be reconsidered. Much like offline crowds, Stage

finds many online crowds to be ‘affectively synchronized’ (p. 212). And, he adds, due to

the near-instantaneous quality of contemporary digital communication, many online

crowds are able to share and express those affects with an immediacy that creates similar

conditions to those in offline environments.

Indeed, considering online crowds as containing a similar set of affective conditions

to those found offline complicates the very methods by which crowds are often deemed

political. Butler (2011) argues ‘for politics to take place, the body must appear. I appear

to others, and they appear to me, which means that some space between us allows each

to appear’. The political, then, is not contained within individuated bodies, but rather

comes into being ‘from the “between”’ (Butler, 2011). Written as the piece was, after a

summer of mass demonstrations in streets and squares, Butler’s emphasis is understand-

ably on non-digital alignments of bodies. However, given that seemingly public spaces

are often made unsafe for trans* persons and other precarious populations, it is important

to recognize that the ‘between’ giving rise to the political crowd might also be consti-

tuted by the space between a body and a computer, or between bodies accessing the same

digital space even as they are separated geographically to varying degrees.

Yet, Butler’s emphasis on bodies constituting space in and as publics also raises a

critical complication. For publics, Butsch (2008) suggests, are often considered the ‘cat-

egorical opposite of crowds’, their rational and deliberative counterparts (p. 11). This

conceptualization of publics has been critiqued by feminists and queer theorists (Fraser,

1990; Warner, 2002), and I build upon those efforts by considering how the already con-

tested and provisional term publics is further complicated by its relationship to not only

crowds, but audiences; all three, after all, are terms that can and perhaps should be

applied to those occupying the role of crowdfunding supporters.

Butsch (2008) notes that like crowds, audiences are often presented in opposition to the

aims of successful publics, existing as a ‘mass of isolated individuals … vulnerable to

manipulation or distracted from their responsibilities as citizens’ (p. 1). Yet, he goes on to

remind us, the popular understanding of publics as dispersed means that they require com-

municative media (p. 12). Publics, in other words, are often necessarily audiences. So

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while this conceptualization of publics as audiences is by no means new (if still counter-

intuitive to some), it is the alignment of these roles with the third term, crowds, that is of

ultimate concern for the purposes of this article. How do particular crowdfunding plat-

forms and campaigns require and produce specific kinds of backers, and how are those

potential backers asked to manage and value the affective, political and consumptive

demands of crowd, public and audience-member, such that the three categories, though by

no means either identical or devoid of meaning, are even further intertwined?

Ashley Altadonna ‘Making the Cut’ (Kickstarter)

In November 2012, Ashley Altadonna reached her US$6000 target for a film project

entitled ‘Making the Cut’. The piece is a meta-analysis of trans* identities, particularly

the economic and social realities of transitioning. Altadonna’s synopsis describes the

film as a documentary about ‘not only the financial and social issues facing transgender

persons, but also what it means simply to be female/male bodied in our culture’. The

campaign offered backers rewards ranging from the appearance of their name in the

credits of the film (for those contributing US$5) to Altadonna’s video editing services on

a short project of the backer’s choosing (for those contributing US $500 or more).

Having raised a cumulative total of US$480 million in 2013 (Kickstarter, 2013), includ-

ing the nearly 6 million generated by the previously mentioned Veronica Mars movie pro-

ject (Chin et al., 2014), Kickstarter is perhaps the most ubiquitous crowdfunding platform

currently operating. In return for financially supporting artists who are making projects like

films, games and music, backers are promised rewards related to that project. Typically,

these rewards increase in value and rarity the larger the donated amount becomes, a struc-

ture that the site’s ‘What is Kickstarter’ page likens to a patron/subscription model, and

which others (Gobble, 2012) refer to as a new form of venture capitalism.

The site’s self-description also emphatically rejects any association with charity, not-

ing that Kickstarter is ‘more than just giving someone money’, and is a means by which

backers are helping to create objects they ‘want to see exist in the world’. Backers are thus

encouraged to support campaigns not based upon the artist as an individual, but according

to whether or not they want to own specialized version of a particular project.

The very requirements of the site thus necessitate that a trans* person seeking G/SRS

support position their body and/or experience as an aesthetic commodity. Altadonna’s

approach thus far has both enforced and challenged these parameters. The title of both

the Kickstarter and the documentary gesture, with playfulness and severity, to the dual

meaning of the term cut, a reference to both Altadonna’s upcoming surgery and the edito-

rial cutting of her film. In aligning the alteration of her body with the production of her

documentary, Altadonna is by no means the first to liken trans* aesthetics to film.

Steinbock (2012) suggests that Benjamin’s observations about the ways in which cinema

acts as ‘a form of surgery’ (p. 162), with film being cut apart and rearranged, are particu-

larly relevant to trans* populations. The effect Benjamin identifies with the cut, she

writes, is ‘a therapeutic and aesthetic change’, an experience of vitalization and renewal

(p. 162). In centring her campaign on the cut(s), I read Altadonna as drawing attention to

the conditions of possibility produced by the cut(s)’ intervention, and the interwoven

aesthetic and embodied potentials of trans* lives more broadly.

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Moreover, the play she makes on the dual nature of the cut also places pressure upon

the boundaries of Kickstarter itself. That is, while it is the film Altadonna is raising funds

for, and while she would in fact be forbidden by the regulations of Kickstarter to attempt

to directly fund her GRS, the title of the film and the campaign gesture to the inextrica-

bility of Altadonna’s body from the movie, the ways in which her trans* embodiment is

being (re)constructed by and through the process of composing the documentary.

At the same time as resisting or complicating Kickstarter as a structure, however, the

technological affordances of the site, especially its permitting of imbedded video onto

campaign pages themselves, are crucial. Raun (2014) draws our attention to the fact that

this use of video is a larger trend within new media, which has seen trans* persons

employ video as what he calls a ‘vehicle of self transformation’ (p. 2). Raun tracks the

use of vlogging by trans* persons, noting that video is a particularly important tool for

those transitioning, allowing them not just to document and share their experiences, but

to shape the terms under which that transition is witnessed by others (p. 16).

The latter aspect of vlogging is particularly important in Altadonna’s case, because

very little visual emphasis is placed on her transitioning body, a move that complicates

what, precisely, is being aestheticized and sold, and why. As noted above, the film docu-

ments Altadonna’s attempts to fundraise the nearly US$20,000 required for her GRS.

The trailers reflect this aim, featuring several shots of Altadonna hosting various fund-

raising events. There is perhaps surprisingly little focus in either of the trailers on her

body itself; while the longer of the two opens with a montage of images from Altadonna’s

life, beginning in her childhood and leading into the present moment, there is otherwise

minimal emphasis on showcasing her body at present, or the changes it will undergo.

The ‘making’ of the title thus refers not only to surgical and filmic interventions, but

also to the generation of capital that is the necessary precondition for both cuts to take

place. At the same time as the trans* body is an aesthetic commodity in the crowdfunding

campaign, then, the economic violences faced by trans* subjects are at least equally,

perhaps even moreso, the focus of the narrative. By seeming to limit audience access to

her body in favour of emphasizing the problematic ways in which economic and medical

structures demand this access, Altadonna presents the trans* body as a source of aes-

thetic, political and social knowledge, but also suggests that such knowledge is not con-

tained solely within any individual body. If vlogs have historically functioned as a kind

of ‘mirror’ (Raun, 2014: 2) for the trans* body, Altadonna’s use of imbedded video func-

tionality on Kickstarter turns that mirror partially upon her audience. In so doing,

Altadonna reflects a trans* soma-aesthetic and somatechnic that emphasize the con-

stantly unstable and intersubjective relationship of trans* bodies with other bodies, as

well as broader economic, social and political structures.

This complex relationality is also reflected in the role of the crowd called into being

by this campaign, though perhaps not in the ways one might expect. Interestingly, despite

our earlier attention to crowds as embodying a shared affective condition, there is very

little emphasis on affects, negative or positive, on the Kickstarter page. While the first

trailer briefly discusses how Altadonna came to question her gender during puberty, this

is stated as a biographical fact without an emphasis on any feelings that may have accom-

panied it. Likewise, Altadonna’s (2012) description of her upcoming GRS describes the

experience as ‘a real-life struggle’, but then turns discussion quickly back towards the

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film by noting that ‘making sure [her] crew is able to travel … with [her] and properly

document [her] experience is vital’. Again, this is partially a question of ensuring that the

project, which is the film and not Altadonna’s surgery, remains in line with Kickstarter’s

rules and regulations. However, this lack of affective appeal is also important for reasons

beyond the platform, for it raises the question of what type of crowd Altadonna is creat-

ing and addressing in her use of a crowdfunding service.

While it might seem tempting to claim that she is addressing backers purely as a pub-

lic in the somewhat stereotypical ways they are often understood (measured, active and

rational), this would do a disservice to both Altadonna and the decades of important work

that has critiqued such understandings of publics. Rather, given Ahmed’s (2010) reminder

that crowds are not so much defined by a universal affect as by a willingness to be

affected, to follow ‘suggestions that in turn direct sentiments in a particular way’ (p. 43),

we might read the project itself as attempting to generate this willingness to be affected

by trans* bodies and narratives. That is, perhaps what Altadonna’s work is attempting to

crowdfund is the very idea of a trans*-positive crowd itself, one which is both able and

willing to feel collectively with and for trans* subjects. While Butsch (2008) critiques

those who neglect the political power of media consumers by reminding them that pub-

lics are often necessarily audiences, Altadonna seems to perform the reverse operation:

her work reminds her audience that they are also members of publics that uphold the

legal and medical restrictions so heavily impacting trans* bodies.

The restrictions of Kickstarter as a platform thus permit a partial break with the demand

for affective transparency in other online settings. Marwick and boyd (2011) emphasize

the critical role of ‘authentic’ self-presentation on social networking sites such as Twitter.

Authenticity is a conflicted concept in such spaces, one that the authors note often requires

strategic deployment of affective, personal information (p. 124). It is not, of course, that

there is no need at all for such a balance on crowdfunding sites – in some ways, crowd-

funding explicitly mobilizes affect towards supporting what is often a more implicit ele-

ment of social media, the way that users ‘strategically [appeal] to followers’ in order to

‘market [themselves] as … commodit[ies]’ (Marwick and boyd, 2011: 119).

However, we might read Altadonna’s project as strategically deploying Kickstarter’s

emphasis on product and consumer benefit over the personal in order to refuse demands

for affective self-presentation that characterize other platforms. The crowdfunding plat-

form itself thus participates in the demand for the bulk of the affective labour in the cam-

paign to be undertaken by the crowd/audience, rather than Altadonna herself. That such a

break with social media conventions occurs in a campaign hosted on a site that includes,

as another of its affordances, embedded ‘share’ buttons for easy Facebook and Twitter

integration suggests, too, that despite cross-platform compatibility, crowdfunding users

may already be determining a set of protocols that are somewhat unique to those spaces.

Donnie Collins, ‘Brothers of a Boston Fraternity’

(Indiegogo)

In many ways, the story of trans* student Donnie Collins could not be more distinct from

that of Ashley Altadonna. While Altadonna’s campaign successfully raised the funds she

had requested for the production of her movie, the campaign undertaken on Collins’

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behalf by his fraternity brothers from February to March of 2013 garnered national and

international attention (Epstein, 2013; Pow, 2013; Winter, 2013), produced over twice

the total amount Collins thought he would require for his desired top-surgery, and led to

a reversal on the part of his insurance company regarding its coverage of trans* patients.

The structure of Indiegogo as a platform is also part of what made this campaign

unique. In contrast to Kickstarter’s aim to focus on artistic production, Indiegogo’s

(2014) ‘About’ page touts its lack of application process, arguing that this inclusivity

‘empowers ideas and enables people to donate funds easily’. While campaigners are still

expected to provide a budget breakdown, this is framed in terms of accountability and

honesty to backers. Rewards for backers are similarly less regulated; it is suggested that

fundraisers provide backers with ‘perks’ (Christine, 2013), but the scaled structure of

Kickstarter, with increasingly valuable rewards offered for greater monetary contribu-

tions, is not a requirement. Rather than emphasizing the role of backers and their com-

mitment to ensuring particular projects are produced, as Kickstarter does, Indiegogo

ultimately foregrounds the affective force and commitment of the organizer. The cam-

paigner’s passion (a word used four times in the site’s short ‘About Us’ page) is framed

as the distinction between a successful and unsuccessful campaign.

Interestingly, the passion that shaped the campaign I consider in this section did not

emanate directly or visibly from Donnie Collins himself. Instead, what made the story

unique to so many was that several members of a fraternity at Emerson, to which Collins

had pledged, led the crowdfunding effort. The video on the campaign page (‘Brothers of

a Boston Fraternity-FTM: Top Surgery’, 2013) features three of Collins’ brothers, who

explain that after learning about Collins’ insurance provider refusing to accept his claim

for top-surgery, they wanted to try to assist him. No images or representations of Collins

are featured in this video, nor did Collins know that the fraternity was going to attempt

to raise money on his behalf. The ‘mirroring’ (Raun, 2014: 2) in this video, then, does not

reflect the trans* person to himself and the crowd, but rather visualizes a set of normative

subjects who are already socially and politically recognized as subjects.

What is made visible in this campaign, then, is not the body of a trans* person, but

rather a set of allied bodies using their gendered, economic and racial privileges in a very

particular way. The implications of this approach for our conversation around the soma-

aesthetic and somatechnic roles of trans* bodies are complex and somewhat ambiguous.

There is certainly a power implied in refusing to succumb to demands to see the trans*

body in order to ‘verify’ the subject’s suffering or authenticity. The ‘perks’ of the cam-

paign (‘Brothers of a Boston Fraternity-FTM: Top Surgery’, 2013) achieve a similar

effect; those who fund the project are offered cards, videos and songs from active mem-

bers of the fraternity rather than any access to detailed information about or representa-

tions of Collins’ transitioning body. In sharing many of Kickstarter’s technological

affordances and regulations, such as imbedded video and perks for backers, while also

permitting those strategies to be used in less restricted ways, Indiegogo thus participates

in the construction of campaigns that can simultaneously emphasize and de-centre the

trans* body as the literal site of funding.

So if the aesthetics and passions that matter most in this campaign are those of the fra-

ternity members rather than Collins, can we deem this a case that exemplifies what Heyes

(2007) refers to as the need to ‘reconstitute ourselves through … a[n] intersubjective ethics’

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(p. 116)? Well, yes and no. Certainly, the fact that it is the alliance between trans* and

(presumably) cis-gendered subjects which is ultimately central makes visible certain

aspects of trans* struggles using bodies which face less potential for violence as a result of

that visibility. The campaign thus manages both to foreground a trans* body and set of

experiences while also complicating the requirement to produce that subject as a saleable

aesthetic commodity.

At the same time, there are limitations to this approach. Specifically, the campaign

does not escape the system described by Stryker and Sullivan (2009), where trans* sub-

jects are required to appeal to more privileged populations for the right to surgical inter-

vention, while also being asked to demonstrate that they are not ‘a radical threat to the

very power’ being solicited (p. 59). Indeed, the success of this campaign seems to rest

heavily on the fact that Collins has already been integrated into this fraternity, whose

membership is willing to speak in his favour. Both the text and video material on the

Indiegogo page, for instance, stress that Phi Alpha Tau hopes ‘less to raise money, and

more to tell a story … of transformation … self-discovery, and … brotherhood’. Although

we neither hear nor see any direct accounts of Collins’ early interactions with his would-

be brothers, even in his absence the successful funding of Collins’ surgery seems predi-

cated on his ability to demonstrate that though seeking to be ‘dismembered in one

Sullivan, 2009: 59) which are more normative and recognizable to a general populace.

Given these tensions, as well as the scale of media attention the campaign was given,

how might we characterize the role of backers and others who followed and shared the

story without donating? In some ways, this is an instance in which funding and broader

discussion relied on the crowd as we initially understood it: that is, based heavily in a

shared affective condition or orientation. Many comments and news reports, including a

February 2013 article in Out (Lindsay, 2013), stressed the fact that this narrative is ‘par-

ticularly heartwarming’ because it is so unexpected for a fraternity to mobilize in favour

of a trans*-positive cause. Again, Ahmed’s (2010) emphasis on direction provides a help-

ful means of considering how and why affect functioned so strongly in relation to this

particular crowdfunding effort. While my reading of Altadonna’s project suggested that

she seems invested in creating the conditions for a trans*positive crowd, one willing to be

oriented or directed in ways that allow particular affects to circulate around or ‘stick’

(Ahmed, 2004: 23) to trans* bodies, this campaign uses the positive affects which often

stick more easily to normative bodies in order to achieve a reorientation towards the trans*

person who is the object, but not subject, of the crowdfunding effort. It is, in other words,

the crowd’s feelings of surprise, appreciation and joy about the fraternity’s affective ori-

entation towards and in solidarity with their trans* member that seem to have created the

conditions required for their efforts to reach and effect such a substantial population.

The role of affect in this case is also shaped by Indiegogo as a platform, the influence of

which is particularly interesting in comparison not just to other crowdfunding sites, but to

other forms of new media. In a (2012) discussion of Twitter, Papacharissi argues that affect

is a central structuring force of the network (2000). Performances of affect on Twitter, she

notes, are a component of how meaningful bonds and interactions are generated, exceeding

the restrictions of Twitter as a form, particularly its 140-character limit (2000). Indiegogo

has by contrast very few technical and policy-based restrictions. The site offers 12 broad

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categories in which to situate campaigns, including art, community and health. Indiegogo

also not only allows for the inclusion of a variety of media, but actively encourages it; a

collection of suggestions for campaigners notes ‘campaigns that use video raise 115%

more money than campaigns that do not’ (‘Creating Your Campaign’, 2014).

Rather than creating bonds through a purposefully restrictive structure, affect in this

case seems to have managed to both overcome and enforce particular forms of online and

offline structural inequality partially because the platform itself was not competing with

or restricting those bonds in any way. While emphasizing the importance of affect in its

own self-presentation, then, Indiegogo ultimately encourages a form of relationality that

is in some ways distinct both from other crowdfunding sites and from other forms of new

media that emphasize sociality.

We might even argue that the openness of Indiegogo allowed for the boundaries of the

campaign itself to ultimately be exceeded. On 6 March, Collins’ fraternity brothers

shared the news, via their Indiegogo page (‘Brothers of a Boston Fraternity-FTM: Top

Surgery’, 2013), that his insurance provider had reversed its position regarding his top

surgery. All excess funds were then donated to the Jim Collins foundation, a nonprofit

that aids trans* persons seeking G/SRS. Indiegogo’s relatively open and flexible struc-

ture is crucial here, particularly its lack of emphasis on the need for a stable final product

or service. This structure, I argue, facilitated a smooth shift from a campaign centred

around Collins and his embodied specificity to aiding trans* persons more widely. Given

that, as noted earlier, the vast majority of G/SRS crowdfunding campaigns are currently

occurring on Indiegogo, the question then becomes whether trans* bodies and experi-

ences not mediated through privileged representatives will be able to exploit the plat-

form’s freedoms and achieve similar levels of success.

Shakina Nayfack, ‘KickStartHer’ (YouCaring)

My last case study examines Shakina Nayfack’s YouCaring campaign, ‘KickStartHer’.

Nayfack (2013), a ‘theatre director, writer, and performer’ is attempting to crowdfund

her goal to travel to Thailand for SRS. Unlike the previous two examples, Nayfack’s

efforts are still ongoing, so my ability to speak to both its earnings and any long-term

impact it may have is obviously more limited than in previous examples. However, the

campaign, as well as the platform on which it is hosted, is already provoking aesthetic,

political, and affective questions that are closely related to those central to this article.

YouCaring is a unique platform in several respects. First, it is the only one of the three

sites examined in this article that does not receive commission from the campaigns it hosts.

The site is fully funded by donors, so the only expenses paid by campaigners come from

credit card processing charges (‘Fees’, 2014). YouCaring also has strong religious affilia-

tions. The ‘About Us’ section notes that the founders met on mission trips, and while reli-

gion is not listed anywhere on the site as a factor prohibiting certain campaigns, it shapes

the types of campaigns the site publicizes and, as I will explain later, became important in

Nayfack’s case.

Furthermore, while Kickstarter emphasizes aesthetic projects and Indiegogo aims to

work as a general fundraising platform, YouCaring’s main page describes the site as

dedicated to raising funds towards ‘medical expenses, memorials and funerals … [and]

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funding for mission trips’ (YouCaring 2014). The site thus moves entirely away from the

requirement that campaigners generate a product to distribute. Those who provide fund-

ing for particular causes are referred to not as backers, but as donors, and there are also

no rewards or perks offered for different levels of donation.

While YouCaring does not require that this be the case, however, KickStartHer is none-

theless an intensely aesthetic representation of trans* embodiment and subjectivity.

Nayfack’s (2013) central fundraising page features several videos of her in performance

as part of a project titled ‘One Woman Show: A Work in Progress’. Their inclusion in the

campaign is, of course, made possible by the fact that imbedded video is a technological

affordance on the site, despite YouCaring’s lack of emphasis on the need for aesthetic

production. Certainly this is partly due to the relative ubiquity of video online, as well as

the statistics cited in my discussion of Collins regarding links between video and success-

ful crowdfunding campaigns. However, returning to Raun’s (2014) article, I argue

Nayfack’s use of it is also distinct from the other two cases in a way that may reflect upon

YouCaring as a platform.

Unlike Collins’ case, which omitted his body and direct experiences altogether, and

Altadonna’s campaign, which featured her but placed more stress upon socio-political

conditions impacting all trans* people, the emphasis in Nayfack’s footage is largely upon

her as an individual. Her campaign thus in some ways more closely resembles the vlog-

ging tradition, ‘connecting and interweaving fleshly transitioning bodies and informa-

tion technology’ (Raun, 2014: 12). Yet, Nayfack complicates this trend as well, because

the videos capture her performance of femininity through music rather than the biomedi-

calized transition process itself. The campaign, likewise, does not promise backers visu-

alizations of Nayfack’s transition should she raise enough money to undergo the

procedures she is seeking. The only access potential backers are afforded to the trans*

body is thus a pre-operative moment in which Nayfack is already embodying a female-

identified subject position. That she is able request funding for SRS at the same time as

complicating a linear narrative about pre- and post-operative trans* life suggests that

YouCaring’s lack of demand for either aesthetic commodities or backer rewards opens

up a space in which video can be deployed by campaigners in unique and complex ways.

Given YouCaring’s structure, however, an equally pertinent question is not only how

these performances function and how the site’s structure facilitates them so much as why

they are such a prominent element of a page that does not require their presence. Certainly,

much of the answer lies in the fact of Nayfack’s own personal and professional invest-

ments in performance and aesthetics. But there also seems to be other factors which both

complicate distinctions between crowdfunding platforms and suggest that the require-

ments for trans* persons using these pages are not always aligned with the general regu-

lations of the sites themselves. The title of the campaign, for instance, invokes Kickstarter

in what is obviously a playful way. However, we might also read the accompaniment of

Nayfack’s campaign with performance footage as a pre-emptive response to accusations

that she is using crowdfunding for personal matters in an inappropriate way, precisely

because Kickstarter and its requirements are most familiar to many people. And indeed,

despite the fact that many news stories discussing Nayfack’s efforts clarify the nature of

the site, she is using, comments on several of them (Berg, 2013; Evans, 2013) critique

her for not providing donors with a product, and for asking for charity on a site (per-

ceived to be) designed to promote artistic and/or commercial innovation.

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12 new media & society

The playful nature of the campaign’s title thus comes into direct tension with calls for

a literal alignment of Nayfack’s efforts with Kickstarter’s policies. Such a tension is

significant not only in the context of this particular campaign, but in relation to broader

discussions of new media as well. Papacharissi’s (2012) discussion of Twitter empha-

sizes the importance of ‘playful practices’ (1991) of self-presentation on that site.

‘Reordering’, or an alteration of words, syntax and grammar, is identified in the piece as

a ‘dominant performative strategy’ (1997), and Nayfack’s substitution of ‘her’ for ‘er’ at

the end of Kickstarter would seem to stand as a successful importing of this tendency

into a crowdfunding space.

However, the negative reactions I have cited above suggest that this sense of play, so

critical to self-presentation in other spaces, is perhaps at odds not only with transantagonis-

tic readers unwilling to embrace the joke, but also with the current dominance of Kickstarter

as a crowdfunding platform. Even though, like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, YouCaring

includes social media sharing integration on all campaign pages, it currently seems to be

Kickstarter’s centrality in the crowdfunding market shaping understandings of what crowd-

funding is and how it should operate moreso than conventions on spaces like Twitter.

That this demand for an aesthetic product persists even on a site where one is not

required of other campaigners should also give us pause because it also speaks to a

broader trend Irving (2013) identifies as the normalization of trans* bodies through

alignment with a capitalist ethos. Recent work in trans* studies, Irving argues, has pro-

duced narratives in which the ability of trans* populations to make social and political

advances is positioned as dependent upon the ability of trans* bodies to ‘constitute …

productive working bod[ies] … capable of participating in capitalist production pro-

cesses’ (p. 17). Perhaps Kickstarter’s requirements exert such dominance over Nayfack’s

crowdfunding efforts not only because of the popularity of that platform, but because

Kickstarter is the site which most easily aligns itself with capitalist values of meritocracy

and productivity, and because demands for proof of a ‘productive’ life are enforced par-

ticularly harshly upon precarious subjects such as trans* people.

In some ways, then, the case of KickStartHer embodies what is more implicitly at the

heart of all three campaigns: the conditions under which groups composed primarily of

cis-gendered individuals are deemed not only capable, but righteously able to define life

and life-saving for trans* populations based on normative value systems. While

YouCaring’s name foregrounds affective relationships between crowds and campaign-

ers, Nayfack’s (2013) use of aesthetic representation suggests that much like in

Altadonna’s work, there is a need to first create a crowd, a ‘you’ that is capable of caring

for a trans* body prior to being appealed to for donations. Unlike Altadonna’s campaign

on Kickstarter, the space I just suggested above is most aligned with a capitalist ethos,

however, Nayfack has thus far not mobilized the affective crowd nor its distance from a

venture-capital model in ways that ask them to consider the broader systemic implica-

tions of why she must request financial assistance in the first place.

One possible reason for this is that Nayfack has already faced critique from the opera-

tors of the platform itself. After learning about Nayfack’s campaign, YouCaring CEO and

co-founder Brock Ketcher stated that he was ‘disturbed’, and that he and the other found-

ers ‘never intended for the site to be used for causes such as this’ (Evans, 2013). An update

posted on Nayfack’s campaign page noted that she had since received a ‘thoughtful and

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supportive’ email from Ketcher. The two sides thus seem to have reconciled in this case,

largely due to their shared religious convictions. However, this moment of tension remains

significant. For while the removal of the requirement for an aesthetic ‘reward’ on a crowd-

funding platform does not have to equate to charity in the religious sense of the term, the

fact that the site mostly clearly earmarked for funding necessary requirements of life

articulates itself in such a way suggests that many trans* persons seeking to use crowd-

funding may be faced with a choice between positioning themselves as aesthetic com-

modities, or under the similarly normative and restrictive heading of the ‘good’ subject of

religious tolerance and charity.

Conclusion

In this article, I have examined three instances in which crowdfunding has been used to sup-

port, both directly and indirectly, G/SRS procedures for trans* identified persons. I have

foregrounded affect and crowd theories as a means of conceptualizing the impact of these

crowdfunding efforts on both campaigners and backers, and at systemic and individual lev-

els. The affective force of the crowd, I contend, is both amplified and restricted by particular

platforms, such that these sites act both as a space for the generation and mobilization of

affect and as a set of structures that affect periodically overcomes or exceeds.

While each campaign reflects the wide range of trans* bodies and experiences, I have

suggested throughout that these efforts are shaped by the differing policies and norms

governing individual crowdfunding platforms. The noted popularity of Indiegogo as a

space for crowdfunding G/SRS might be related, I suggest, to its occupying a kind of

middle-ground between the poles of Kickstarter’s venture capitalist ethos and YouCaring’s

religiously inflected, charity-based model. However, individual campaigns, particularly

Ashley Altadonna’s, have also used the more restricted types of crowdfunding platforms

in ways that are politically compelling, placing pressure on the aesthetic role and valua-

tion of trans* subjects.

The aim of this article has not been to suggest that the crowdfunding of G/SRS, nor any

particular platform, can or should be termed wholly progressive or problematic. For those

who have hosted successful campaigns, crowdfunding has often had no less than a dramati-

cally life-altering effect, and to dismiss the significance of this for even one trans* person

would be a profound enactment of violence. I have attempted instead to indicate that sus-

tained attention to the aesthetic, affective and technological conditions defining both cam-

paigners and backers is a critical means of understanding the always-already political

implications of involvement with particular sites and campaigns. Given that crowdfunding

has already demonstrated an ability to have intensely material effects on subjects experi-

encing conditions of precarity, Butler’s (2010) title question ‘when is life grievable?’ cur-

rently seems, for better or worse, intertwined with the question of when lives are [un]

fundable. An understanding of how new media increasingly defines, produces and chal-

lenges normative understandings of life and livability is therefore not a fringe or tangential

aim, but an imperative for progressive political movements and organizations.

I raise Butler here not only because her emphasis on grief is aligned with the focus on

affect that has been central to this article, but also because Frames of War’s attention to

the grievability of racialized bodies in particular signals a critical future direction for this

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14 new media & society

project and efforts like it. Each campaign I have examined in this article is undertaken by

a trans* person who does not explicitly identify themselves within the campaign as a

racialized subject. My initial research has in fact located no G/SRS crowdfunding cam-

paigns currently being undertaken by a self-identified person of colour. Without neglect-

ing the many barriers and challenges faced by all trans* people, future work on

crowdfunding and on G/SRS-related campaigns in particular should consider how such

sites, like many online feminist spaces, are able ‘maintain whiteness as normative’ even

while challenging other modes of normativity (Magnet, 2007: 596).

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or

not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1. I maintain the G/SRS terminology in general discussion to avoid the implication that one

version is more or less correct. Later, I defer to the language used by campaigners during

discussion of particular crowdfunding efforts.

2. The use of an asterisk after the word trans is a recent attempt to increase the term’s inclusivity.

* is a Boolean operator used in online searches, which instructs the computer to search for

the term preceding the symbol and to include any potential variants afterwards (Killerman,

2012). During the discussion of specific case studies, I again defer to the language preferred

by the campaigners.

3. Because there is no academic literature examining this topic, my research used a combination

of search engine queries, queer/trans*-positive media outlets and searches on crowdfunding

platforms themselves. For the latter, I used the search terms ‘gender reassignment surgery’

and ‘sexual reassignment surgery’.

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Author biography

Megan Farnel is a second-year doctoral student at the University of Alberta. Her dissertation

focuses on affective labor within crowdfunding and fan spaces.

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