Section II Water Cooler: Thereās 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, āā¦show(s) the results of genuine searches, highlighting popular opinions across the worldwide web.ā These āAuto-Completeā prompts are meant to insinuate how womenās 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 itās not just because of what the real Google search results revealed.Ā I donāt 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. Ā Whatās demoralizing is that the opposite of this abhorrent trend in worldwide searches wouldāve had just as much virality and generated just as much buzz for as many (wrong) reasons as this one did. It wouldāve been just as newsworthy to think that people around the world think positive things about women.Ā
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 āLesbians."
While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompaniedāand to some extent overshadowedāby elevated and inspiring ideas about the future. Lesbian issues are inherently womenās 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. Itās time to define our own narratives. After decades of struggle we have something thatās as valuable as the progress that got us here: a blank slate.
Itās an opportunity we canāt forego.Ā
Weāll all have different ideas about how to capitalize on 2013 and the gay experience, but Iām convinced itās about quality over quantity. Itās not about making films that show we exist.Ā Itās about films that were borne out of our existence. Itās not about telling stories about issues we face because weāre queer women. Itās about stories that speak to queerness in all its formsāabout relating to each other based on the shared experience of watching films and series that are exceptional. Itās about discovering an exceptional storyteller, because that in itself is an experience. This chance we have right now is something to celebrate and showcaseāitās not something to hashtag and aggregate.
Thereās 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. Weāre all in this together.Ā
Over the past half century, we've won the right to serve in the armed forces. Weāve made strides towards marriage and employment equality. Weāve 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