So after months of speculation it appears that NBC will be running a new live action Wonder Woman television series after all. I’m really excited for this show and I think it will be great for young girls (and boys) and women (and men) to see such a powerful female role on television instead of the stereotypical damsel in distress. However, I do have some qualms about the new show. The fact that NBC is running it worries me deeply. I’m sorry, but NBC has been completely incompetent when it comes to debuting new shows and keeping them good. About a year ago a new show was premiered on NBC called Kings. Kings was a modern adaption to the Biblical story of King David and his rise to power. I watched the show and personally loved it. However, I noticed, as did many other fans, that the show was not advertised as widely as another cop show that NBC was premiering a month later, which also subsequently failed. Shouldn't NBC have invested more in a unique show with a creative storyline like Kings, and taken advantage of the religious audience that it could have had (which has never been successfully tapped into by NBC before), instead of pulling for ANOTHER generic cop show? Other popular shows like Law and Order: SVU (another favorite of mine) have also taken a dive in the ratings. Now in the last month or so NBC shook up its management and gotten a new person in charge of running the television programs. I certainly hope that the people in charge will plug this series and work to get it the ratings it should have. The last several attempts at a Wonder Woman TV series have all been massive failures and I think that a show like this is really needed on television given that all the prominent heroic roles are mostly male. And we know that female heroes can do well on television and in movies. Anyone who says that no one would want to see a female superhero is just wrong, because the Wonder Woman series of the 1970s was popular during it’s time. Furthermore, shows with primarily female protagonists such as Murder, She Wrote, Bones, and The Good Wife have proved to be very successful. So let’s hope that NBC has gotten it’s act together and won’t screw things up for the latest incarnation of Wonder Woman.
P!nk is fuckin' perfect! This new video of hers taught me a lesson that many think it cliche, but it's still true and valuable to learn. I've always loved P!nk and thought her to be a wonderful feminist and role model for the younger generations. After watching this video I realized just how cruelly I have been judged by other people, AND that I have done the exact same thing to other people I know. Being ugly or being a victim is a choice. And how you work what you've got is a lot more important than how much you've got to begin with.
Everyone says that you should only judge people for what’s on the inside instead of what’s on the outside. But I think that if you look closely enough you can see traces of the inside on the outside of any person. It’s like being at Wal-Mart (or any other store of your choosing) and examining an orange or a tomato. If the fruit is rotten on the inside you can sometimes tell by examining the outside. When you first see it, it looks just fine, but as you feel it and look it over you start to notice the soft spots, and the slight discoloring. I think the same thing can be applied to people. I think that personality has a lot to do with whether you come off as attractive or whether or not people will want to be friends with you, or have sex with you, or be in a relationship with you. I do know of one or two persons, who shall go unnamed, who first come off as fabulous people, but if you really look hard you find that they are actually as fake as a three dollar bill. For the most part, I think whether or not you are hot is very much dependent on what kind of person you are and how you work what you’ve got. This brings me to my next point. I am a horrible judge of character. I have hung out with so many guys that from first glance I thought were beautiful or ugly, and they turned out to be the complete opposite of what I thought. There have been men that I thought were so beautiful or amazing from the first time I saw them, but as I actually spent time with them I found that they were complete jerks, fakes, or just not who I thought they were or claimed to be. Then there are people who I have cruelly judged as being ugly on the outside, then after getting to know them, I find myself very much attracted to them based on the fact that they have amazing personalities and they end up being some of the nicest people I know. There was one person in particular that I was especially mean to. He and I hung out together one night and afterward I treated him like crap because he wasn’t the person I had wanted to spend time with. I even lashed out at him a few days later. I blamed him for me being miserable when we hung out. It turns out that this person turned out to be one of the most caring people I know. I also consider him to be one of the most beautiful people I've ever met. As it turns out, the person that I had been pining over him ended up being someone who doesn’t even care about me. But this person who I did hang out with and subsequently abused ended being the person who cares about me the most, and has shown that. And I am deeply sorry for how I hurt him. This is why I feel like I am an awful person. I am a horrible judge of character because I’ve let myself be walked all over and abused by men who I thought were beautiful at first glance, and I’ve ended up hurting and abusing people who I judged to be ugly but turned out to be the most trustworthy and kindhearted people I could have encountered. And I am an awful person because I have judged myself in the exact same way. I have spent a lot of my life feeling ugly and unworthy of other people's love and affection. There have been times that people have shown me affection and I have actually become angry and attacked them for it because I didn't feel like it was right for me to be loved or that I deserved it. More recently, even when I came to realize that I did deserve to be loved, I was still shallow enough to only accept it if it came from people I deemed to be hot or beautiful. I thought that being told I was hot or that I was something special only met something if it came from somebody who was popular and confident. As I awoke to the fact that many of the so-called "hotties" are fakes. Their personalities ended up being so repulsive that all the superficial attraction melted away to reveal something that couldn't be uglier. And a lot of the people who I first judged to be ugly ended up having the confidence and sweet personality that made them a hundred times hotter than I first thought they were. As I learned this lesson it also taught me a lesson about myself. In the end, I was the decided factor as to whether or not I was considered beautiful, whether it be inside or out, by other people. I quickly realized that I am in fact beautiful if I flaunt what I've got. How I act and how I treat other people has a lot more to do with whether guys are attracted to me than whether my teeth are straight or whether or not I wear glasses. This was inspired to learn this lesson about myself and other by watching P!nk's new music video for Fuckin' Perfect. It is a truly amazing song and I can not tell you how much I was affected by it. Not only did it help me realize that I'm fuckin' perfect, but that all the people I may have ignored or mistreated are also fuckin' perfect. So I choose not to be ugly anymore and I choose not to be a victim anymore. And I will never victimize other people like that again. Well P!nk, as usual you've taught me and everyone else something massively important through your music.
The Pentagon commission on diversity has recommended that the U.S. military end its ban on women serving in combat.
I fully support this, and I'd like to take an opportunity to refute some of the arguments that the 18th century sexists will soon start spewing.
1. Whenever anyone starts complaining about letting women serve in combat it usually sounds something like, "But women will get hurt! Don't you know what female POW's would go through?" Yes, we all know. And more importantly, they know. Women who go in the military know the risks of even serving non-combatant roles. Besides, that type of argument betrays ones hidden sexism, not toward women, but toward men. You say women will get hurt, well, so will men. Where is the concern for them? Men can be tortured, terrorized, and even raped as POWs. There is no reason to feel any more sorry for a woman than a man.
2. There will be those who say that women are not as capable as men in going into combat. True, some women may not be strong enough, but that doesn't mean all of them should be banned. Simply let the ones who are strong enough, and they do exist; serve.
3. Then there will be those who talk about sexual tension on the battlefield. Well, it's called discipline. Men need to stop blaming women for their own sexual misbehavior and learn to control themselves. And I have no doubt that the military can discipline men into behaving themselves on the battlefield, which it all ready does very successfully anyway.
I’ve got to admit I’m not the biggest fan of children and I don’t plan to ever have any biological children of my own. However, if one day far in the future I meet that Mr. Right, he and I settle down, and he says that he wants children: then I will consider it. We may adopt some or he may have is own and I will adopt them via a combination of thousands of dollars, a few donor eggs, a surrogate or two, and a very skilled lawyer. Regardless of how they are conceived, I would like a say in naming them. So last night my friend Ashley Richardson and I got into a conversation about what we would name our hypothetical children if we were to ever have any. Ashley a.k.a. "Annie" then proceeded to tease me about some of the names they chose. Let me be clear, I believe that the process of naming children should be a formal affair. As such, I like formal and oftentimes classical names. So anyway here is the list of 20 names for my hypothetical future stepson and 20 other names for my hypothetical future stepdaughter, should either of them come into existence.
MALE NAMES Alexander Andrew Antonius Ashley (No, I’m not kidding Ashley ;)) Cassander David Edward Jason Jonathan Julius Lawrence Marcus Michael Morgan Paris Phillip Ptolemy Sebastian Seth Troy
FEMALE NAMES Alexandria Anna Akilah Artemis Cassandra Chloe Elizabeth Gloria (bet you can’t guess where that one comes from…) Hasina Hera Jade Jacqueline Josephine Julia Marie Rebecca Rhea Roxanne Sarah Selene
Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is my hero, as are all congresswomen and female senators in the United States government. On January 8th, 2011 Rep. Giffords was at a shopping center in Tuscon, Arizona when she became the target of an attempted assassination by a deranged drug addict. Not only was Gabrielle the first to be shot, but she was also shot directly in the head. Six other people died after being shot, including a 9-year-old girl. But Gabrielle survived her gunshot wound to the head and is surprising everyone with the pace and progress of her recovery. Now it seems that every day I go on any news site I hear more and more about the progress Gabrielle is making.
On Wednesday night, President Obama was speaking at the Tuscon shooting memorial when he announced that Gabrielle had opened her eyes soon after he had finished visiting her in the hospital. This news brought cheers from the massive audience at the memorial and tears to the eyes of Gabrielle’s husband Mark Kelly, and it has highlighted the amazing recovery the Gabrielle is making.
Gabrielle herself may not know it, and many people may be oblivious to it, but was has happened to her may advance the Women’s Movement farther than any piece of paper or print in Congress could ever do. Sometimes symbols and profound events can change people’s hearts and minds more than laws can. I hear men and women who oppose feminism and the working-woman all the time saying that there are specific roles for men and women, or that women can’t do all the things that a man can do. They go on to rant that some jobs are just too dangerous for them. This has done a lot to hinder the progress of integrating women in the military. Today women are still not allowed to serve in combat roles and are segregated from their male comrades.
The conservative mantra used to justify this is that this must be done in order to “protect” women from harm, insinuating that a woman can’t withstand the same risks and trials that men in the military have to go though. The same argument is made for female police officers. In fact, a female opponent of feminism recently wrote an article on her website trying to cite reasons why women shouldn’t be allowed to be police officers. Is it really a coincidence that this article was written just a few days after a congresswoman takes a bullet to the head and survives?
What is especially sad is that this article came from a woman, and that there are women in America who advocate against allowing other women to serve in the military and police forces because they have embraced their own subordination and cowardice. They do not believe that they are capable of the same service as men in dangerous fields and they believe that their own fear justifies not wanting to serve in dangerous jobs. Yet, they don’t think that men who have the same fear or are under the same risk get to opt out like they do.
Gabrielle is not one of these women. Last March she received countless threats for voting for President Obama’s healthcare plan and her office was vandalized. The lunatic who shot her last Saturday had been stalking and threatening her since 2007. Yet, Gabrielle wasn’t afraid. She didn’t throw up her hands and say the job of Congresswoman was too dangerous from her. She didn’t try to hide behind her husband or receive special protection. She continued to her job and served her country through legislative action including upholding and protecting a woman’s right to choose, passing universal healthcare, and advocating for secure borders in the state of Arizona. She faced her threats, unlike certain other women, without tears or hysterics. She held an open meeting with her constituents the day she was shot. She had just won a third term to Congress, which she ran for after receiving numerous threats.
The reason that Gabrielle’s assassination attempt and survival matters is because sometimes the job of being a politician can be just as dangerous as being in the military, or being a police officer. This is why Gabrielle is my hero because she has once again proven that a woman can do anything that a man can do; including taking a bullet to the head and having the strength to survive it. And the most important thing is that Gabrielle knew the risks. She had been receiving threats for months and knew that someone might try to harm her. The same way those women who serve in the military or in the police forces know the risks against themselves by doing their jobs.
And in that same article that I cite above, the female anti-feminist tries to claim that all women aren’t physically capable of serving dangerous jobs with one example of one woman who happened to be weaker than her attacker. Never does she point out that not all women are shorter or weaker than men or that there are numerous women who are physically as tall or as strong as any man. Gabrielle proves this point. Very few people have survived a gunshot wound to the head. What makes Gabrielle extraordinary is that she is probably the first woman I have heard of who has done that. Simply by surviving her attack, Gabrielle has probably done decades worth of progress for all women who choose to serve in the military, police, or in their governments. Simply by surviving, she has proven that a woman can take on any risk with the same determination a man has, and can withstand a physical attack with the same strength and perseverance that a man has. That is why Gabrielle Gifford's is my hero.
Hey guys! Welcome to my blog! My name is Thomas Alberts and I am an aspiring author, journalist, and political activist. I'm starting this blog as an outlet to share some of my writing with my political friends an other like-minded people. I will express my opinions on various topics including, but not limited to, feminism, liberalism, gay rights, current events, and popular culture. I will also add in short excerpts from my own life from time to time. I hope you guys enjoy reading my future blog entries. :)
