Feminist adventures?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I would run a mile from Danny's abortion clinic idea,

I understand this- I really do- and whether or not you could use it depends upon your players. Ever play in an RPG campaign involving slavery...with a black gamer? While I haven't had a problem with it, I don't doubt some might.

While abortion is a hot-button issue, the bombing itself- especially if passersby are injured- is something most heroes would find repugnant. And like I said, there's the plot-twist: the clinic may not have been the target.

But overall, I don't think this would be any more problematic a target for a bomber story arc than someone going after churches, temples, mosques or synagogues (if the person were violently atheistic); or targeting gov't buildings & military recruitment sites (as a violent anarchist). Indeed, if the bomber a misogynist, he may just be targeting places where women are likely to gather.

If he's insane, he may have picked it because the aliens from dimension x told him to.

 

[jonesy]

How about a female supervillain who has pretty much the same goals, but who goes about it way more extreme? Think Professor X vs Magneto, if they were women, and concerned with women's rights as opposed to mutant rights.

 

[Herobizkit]

Human trafficking is a valid hotspot. How "gritty" are you aiming for? I would suggest watching seasons 1-3 of The Shield and think about how super-heroines might deal with the issues presented in each episode. GREAT writing in that series. Steal liberally.

Edit: Season 4 deals with the the replacement of the department head with a woman. Might be some mining to do there, too.

 

[billd91]

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 agree that this is one of your major challenges. Core feminist issues in most industrial societies aren't easy to translate into the super powered slugfests of the superhero comics. They're fights over hearts and minds and for long term individual behavioral changes. This may make good fodder for certain side-light stories you see in the comics as, for example, Daredevil takes on a guy who violently assaults women while advising his legal secretary Becky to testify against the man who crippled her. But it's kind of hard to involve a whole super team of guys in tights and capes, powered armor, whathaveyou in that story.

I'd ask her what kinds of fights she would expect as a superhero defending women's rights. Does she expect to do PSAs for television, tour the country making speeches, and setting up foundations to support women's health clinics as a side job to exercise her superhero cred and influence? Or does she actually hope to beat up guys whose nefarious plans stand in the way of women's equality?

 

[NewJeffCT]

I'd ask her what kinds of fights she would expect as a superhero defending women's rights. Does she expect to do PSAs for television, tour the country making speeches, and setting up foundations to support women's health clinics as a side job to exercise her superhero cred and influence? Or does she actually hope to beat up guys whose nefarious plans stand in the way of women's equality?

I would agree that this is the most important thing for the GM to do in this situation - ask her what she expects to be doing, both in the short-term (the next several sessions) and the longer-term (an overall goal for down the road)

 

[Umbran]

As others have suggested - ask the player what kind of things the hero is going to try to do. What the player thinks counts as feminism and defending women's rights matters a whole lot more than our opinions on the matter.

If some of the major corporations in game (Roxxon is a standard Marvel bad-guy corp) have sexual discrimination or harassment issues, the hero can try to bring down the corp.

Others have suggested dealing with the slave trade, which isn't too bad an idea. Also note that modern prostitution may fall short of outright slavery, but still be a good target for the character.

There are, of course, still any number of women victimized by the men in their lives - there are ugly fathers, boyfriends, and husbands all over the place, but taking on normal humans is not usually a superpowered hero's job.

If you are not stuck too solidly to the modern day, you can place your game in a different time, either past or future, in which women are in a much different situation: a variant on the now classic Marvel "Days of Future Past"

 

[triqui]

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?

Just to point: Sharia and/or Islam are not related to genital mutilation. It's something that is related to sub-saharian african cultures. Arabia Saudi is muslim, and has no mutilations, while Gabon is catholic, and have genital mutliations. There are mutilations in Eritrea (christian koptos), Egypt (muslims), animistic tribes in Congo, etc. I'm not sure, but I think it's relatively common among jews in Ethiopy too. In Nigeria, where half the country is christian and the other half is muslim, the mutilation is more extended in the christian half than in the muslim half. One of the most known cases is the Pullitzer awarded photograph work about Kenya's mutilations, and kenya is not a muslim country

This is a common misconception becouse Somalia is a muslim country, one of the places where this abhorrent tradition is more common, and the best known for it becouse Waris Dirie, the UN embassador against this practice is somalian.


That does not mean you could not use Al Qaeda as the evil guys. Extremist muslim and Sharia have enough things against women's right (like Burkhas or lapidation).

EDIT: a link http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001524.html

 

[the Jester]

You might look at the old Ms. Marvel series from the 1970s- IIRC she was sold as a feminist hero. "Ms." and all.

 

[S'mon]

How about a female supervillain who has pretty much the same goals, but who goes about it way more extreme? Think Professor X vs Magneto, if they were women, and concerned with women's rights as opposed to mutant rights.

Yes, that's the kind of thing I think can work very well. The heroine and the villain can have lengthy discussions about women's rights while kicking each other's butts.

This can work in other cases two, where both sides share the same moral premises but are conflicted on the means, rather than the ends. This can work with politics, race, religion and many other things we're not allowed to discuss here.

 

[S'mon]

I understand this- I really do- and whether or not you could use it depends upon your players. Ever play in an RPG campaign involving slavery...with a black gamer? While I haven't had a problem with it, I don't doubt some might.

While abortion is a hot-button issue, the bombing itself- especially if passersby are injured- is something most heroes would find repugnant. And like I said, there's the plot-twist: the clinic may not have been the target.

But overall, I don't think this would be any more problematic a target for a bomber story arc than someone going after churches, temples, mosques or synagogues (if the person were violently atheistic); or targeting gov't buildings & military recruitment sites (as a violent anarchist). Indeed, if the bomber a misogynist, he may just be targeting places where women are likely to gather.

If he's insane, he may have picked it because the aliens from dimension x told him to.

I think this would only work if the PC Hero (and, presumably player) was strongly ANTI abortion, ie they agreed with the villain's ends, but not his/her means. 99% of the time I'd think this scenario should definitely be avoided.

The slavery parrallel would be something like an anti-hero vigilante who is murdering sex traffickers, maybe he's called Travis Bickle... ...and the PC has to take him down.