#sectionii

[pathsofmarriage]

Our subscription service, the Section II Spotlight Series is now available for preorder: spotlightseries.sectionii.com #ItJustGotBetter

Check out the video to Section II's new Spotlight Series. The Paths of Marriage will be the first book in the Series. More details and exclusive content to come!

[officialserenaarmstrong-blo-blog]

Self-Directed Achiever - Work Sample #4 - Interest Finder

[ Click Here ] Interest Profiler PDF

[ Click Here ] Matching Careers PDF 

Matching Colleges:

This site would not allow me to download the PDF on both computers that I used, so I included the screenshots.

[officialserenaarmstrong-blo-blog]

Self-Directed Achiever - Work Sample #6 - Essay

[ Click Here ] College Visit and Starbucks Training Essay

[sectioniiblog]

Thank You!

I realize that last week was Thanksgiving and that would've been the appropriate time to say how grateful I am for your early support and enthusiasm.  But there's never a bad time to feel humbled, encouraged, or grateful-- or a bad time to convey those feelings. Also, I went to Alabama for the holiday and even though I don't come from Stereotype City, I did find myself without an Internet Connection and without a phone signal for most of the three days I was there.

Thanks to a reblog from LezBeHonest, we got some new followers yesterday and we got on a lot of other people's radars for the first time. We've said hello and explained who we are and why we are here before, but today I just want to Thank You and invite you to stick around. We are a young company with ideas that will allow us to grow into an established company, and it all started this Fall.

We also invite you to give us your thoughts and opinions about what we've got going on and how we're doing. This is a company for queer women, for content creators, and content consumers. Section II will be a destination and an ally for all of the above, and we want to make sure we have what you want when you arrive.  

Anytime you have a thought, a request, or an idea, please share it with us! Message us here or send me an email directly: [email protected].

We'll have another update about our big pitch, the new website, and the JULIE GOLDMAN COMEDY SPECIAL later this week.

Take care and thank you again,

Allie Esslinger, Founder

[sectioniiblog]

[sectioniiblog]

Section II reimagines action-packed throwbacks for Thursday

Follow Section II’s “Reimagined” series here.

[sectioniiblog]

That the same 35 lesbian-related films are available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime–which is only about 20 percent of the overall “Gay and Lesbian” Genre tag–is frustrating because we’ve made so much progress offline.

Section II Founder Allie Esslinger guest blogs for Bitch Flicks, thanks to Seed&Spark. Check it out, it's great! --> http://bit.ly/bitchflicks

[sectioniiblog]

Section II Water Cooler: There’s no Auto-Complete Truth

The UN Women campaign from Ogilvy and Mather uses Google to show how gender inequality is a global condition. According to the Creative Director Christopher Hunt, the campaign, “…show(s) the results of genuine searches, highlighting popular opinions across the worldwide web.” These “Auto-Complete” prompts are meant to insinuate how women’s roles are perceived and conceived around the world. They highlight the demeaning truth about what people are typing and/or looking for online when they are looking up women.

The results are obnoxious, to be sure. But it’s not just because of what the real Google search results revealed.  I don’t doubt that these auto-fill prompts are genuine. What I doubt is whether or not there would be any less shock had there been positive predictive search leads instead.  What’s demoralizing is that the opposite of this abhorrent trend in worldwide searches would’ve had just as much virality and generated just as much buzz for as many (wrong) reasons as this one did. It would’ve been just as newsworthy to think that people around the world think positive things about women. 

My second reaction to this campaign-- my first reaction was banging my head against a wall-- was to see what comes up when you re-enact similar searches with “Lesbians."

While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied—and to some extent overshadowed—by elevated and inspiring ideas about the future. Lesbian issues are inherently women’s issues, but where we see women as a whole facing these obstacles, stereotypes, and belittling policy hurdles, we see queer women with an unheralded opportunity to carve out a story for ourselves. This is our chance to put out into the world exactly what we want to fill in those searches, and what better way than with Better Characters and Better Stories. It’s time to define our own narratives. After decades of struggle we have something that’s as valuable as the progress that got us here: a blank slate.

It’s an opportunity we can’t forego. 

We’ll all have different ideas about how to capitalize on 2013 and the gay experience, but I’m convinced it’s about quality over quantity. It’s not about making films that show we exist.  It’s about films that were borne out of our existence. It’s not about telling stories about issues we face because we’re queer women. It’s about stories that speak to queerness in all its forms—about relating to each other based on the shared experience of watching films and series that are exceptional. It’s about discovering an exceptional storyteller, because that in itself is an experience. This chance we have right now is something to celebrate and showcase—it’s not something to hashtag and aggregate.

There’s no such thing as an Auto-Complete Truth. There are mission statements and follow-through. There are communities and networks working to make changes. There are trailblazers (the women who have been making films in this space since even before the Code took effect); there are super fans (us at Section II who love these films and the people who make them), and there are people like you giving us a chance to launch our platform. And there are the people who come onboard as the efforts start to crystallize. We’re all in this together. 

Over the past half century, we've won the right to serve in the armed forces. We’ve made strides towards marriage and employment equality. We’ve won Cannes. But we still need a community commitment equal to this unparalleled moment of possibility, so I invite you to fill in your own Google Search and send us a photo of how you want to define what lesbians should and should not do, be, and become as we continue to make progress and fill in the blanks. Email your photos to us at [email protected], tweet them to us, or share them with us on Facebook or Instagram.

- Allie Esslinger, Founder