Feminist adventures?

[Jon_Dahl]

I have slight lack of creativity here, please help me.

I'm DMing superhero-game based on Marvel Comics and movies. One of the PC's has declared that she wants to defend women's right with her superpowers.

I really want to listen to players, so I need to think of something related to feminism as a cause for superhero adventure. My head is bit empty with this one, give me something to grasp please :-/

 

[Neonchameleon]

In a Superhero game? The human slave trade is good for villains and given the function of most of those slaves it's a good place to defend womens rights at the sharp end. And then there's the Superhero version of Take Back the Night.

What power level? Because if street level or slightly higher and you can't find pimps and rapists to fight you aren't trying.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Excellent suggestion! Muse's video for "MK Ultra" covers a lot of ground on the modern slave trade- so you can see it's an issue that's getting a bit more press these days.

I mean, there are other feminist issues out there, but few that lend them to direct action such as a superhero would take. A villain who bombs or otherwise attacks an abortion clinic or women's shelter would also get her attention, even if the villain's motive wasn't anti-feminist. (IOW, the location was incidental to the villain's motives.)

I would imagine she'd also do things like in-costume PSAs & making public appearances and the like when she's not actually crimefighting.

 

[delericho]

Are you up for an "Unsung Heroes" kind of game?

Your heroine could spend her time dealing with the collateral damage caused when (mostly male) superheroes fight (mostly male) supervillains, dealing with (mostly male) gang and drug culture and the problems that those bring to communities, or dealing the corruptions in City Hall, where the (mostly male) powers-that-be divert funds towards their pet projects over dealing with domestic abuse, women's health centres, and the like.

Part of the problem you'll have to deal with, though, is that feminism's "big fights" are now basically won - it's generally accepted that women should have equal rights, equal pay, and equal access to careers and education. What's left is a host of "little fights": husbands who expect their wives to stay in the home, fathers who won't support daughter's careers, domestic abuse, casual misogyny, companies whose pay structures somehow haven't caught up to their avowed equality, and so on.

There's still a long way to go, but it mostly seems to be a matter of millions of little fights rather than a few big fights. Which makes it a difficult topic for an action film!

(I suppose she could always tackle the exploitation of super-women, in that they seem to be expected to wear borderline-pornographic costumes when fighting crime )

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Find ways to involve sharia law in your campaign. Maybe set it in Dubai, maybe one of the PCs still has military ties and some of the missions/adventures take place in Afghanistan. The way that women are treated under sharia law is definitely worthy of a superhero fighting it. Take a look at the movies Fire, Ice, and Water (do I have those right? No time to look it up right now, sorry).

Even places where there is state law other than sharia law, such as Egypt, have practices like female genital mutilation and girls being treated as property. Heck, even in the US, there are dads who think "honor killings" are the right way to go. What if a supervillain also was going to do an "honor killing" on his daughter? Sounds like a pretty motivated fight to me!

(I hope this post didn't transgress too badly against the "no politics" rule...)

 

[S'mon]

I think Neonchameleon/Francis' idea of the slave trade is very good, it's nicely black & white - personally I would run a mile from Danny's abortion clinic idea, or anything else likely to spark a moral debate. It doesn't have to be just the sex slave trade, and if you want to avoid prurient-interest issues, depending on your players, you can downplay that angle. Women are also transported as domestic drudges and for factory work; children are also enslaved for all of these - in some countries men are still enslaved for hard labour, too. Slavers and their clients make great villains, they can be as nasty as you like, they are an eclectic bunch and can be of any ethnicity, and freeing the enslaved in a modern Western nation where there are in-place support networks for the liberated can probably avoid negative repercussions (unlike in say swords & sorcery).

Of course you *can* introduce morally grey areas if desired - where does voluntary people-trafficking merge into involuntary enslavement? Where does a domestic servant contract become slavery? But that would be your choice and you don't need to go there if you don't want to.

 

[S'mon]

I attended a seminar at my Univerity where the speaker discussed a successful 'hearts & minds' anti-female-genital-mutilation campaign. It involved a lot of sitting around talking, drinking tea with tribal elders, and really I don't think this is a topic that lends itself to beating up bad guys, nor do other Sharia-related issues - and the whole point of the anti-FGM campaign was that it's not required by Sharia. You can certainly do a "Liberate the peaceful Villagers from Al Qaeda" sort of super-hero adventure, but I don't think the genre lends itself to more subtle hearts & minds stuff. And in superhero-land the guy using mind control to make people think the way he wants them to is always the villain. Right?

 

[Starfox]

In general, superhero comics take a normal abusive situation and turns it into something that can be resolved with fists and power blasts. There is a tradition in superhero settings of strong, empowered women. Super powered or not. Gender issues are pretty rare. I guess that its because RL gender issues are NOT well resolves using fists (or power blasts). But of course you can set up such situations.


Male-chauvinist pig supervillains.

"Helpers" who act sexist respect a superheroine less, but can be shown the error of their way; police, journalists and such.

Female "helper" figures that need help getting the respect they deserve.

Female supervillains that are victimized and can be made to "see the light" by taking them out of an abusive relationship, probably with a male superhero.


The problem is that you need to avoid including sexist assumptions in what is "normal" and "the default" setting and try to include them only as aberrations to be confronted. For example, its ok to have pimps as the theme of an adventure, where they are clearly in the wrong. Its not ok to assume that the superheroine is the natural caretaker of the super-base while a superhero is the natural caretaker of the super-plane.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Excellent suggestion! Muse's video for "MK Ultra" covers a lot of ground on the modern slave trade- so you can see it's an issue that's getting a bit more press these days.

I mean, there are other feminist issues out there, but few that lend them to direct action such as a superhero would take. A villain who bombs or otherwise attacks an abortion clinic or women's shelter would also get her attention, even if the villain's motive wasn't anti-feminist. (IOW, the location was incidental to the villain's motives.)

I would imagine she'd also do things like in-costume PSAs & making public appearances and the like when she's not actually crimefighting.

I would avoid abortion clinics like the plague.

Women's shelters, on the other hand, would be a good possibility. However, you would need to come up with a reason for the bad guys to attack women's shelters... I don't think they're bastions of wealth & extravagance. Maybe some villain is destroying the women's shelters around the city looking for - his girlfriend or wife who has some important secret? Or, maybe some potential super girl was recently born in one?

 

[S'mon]

Female supervillains that are victimized and can be made to "see the light" by taking them out of an abusive relationship, probably with a male superhero.

Depending on the type of feminism though, some feminists really hate "all female villains are really just victims of male oppression". They would much rather see a strong, empowered, self-starting female villain who kicks some butt.