I post mostly in Marvel forums so there's probably a bit of difference there, it's a big enough board there are lots of little sub-communities. The Tea Party thing happened when Fox News discovered there was a reference to the Tea Party in an issue of Captain America, it might not have been 100% positive, and so a bunch of Fox News people flooded the forums with complaints. Yep! The end result being that I got told I wasn't grateful enough to the white people who freed my slave ancestors. (I'm not black, fyi, so the whole experience was considerably less personally traumatizing.)

Yeah. I think superheroes natural vehicles for feminine empowerment. It's kind of the ultimate liberation fantasy— who doesn't want to zap the patriarchy with laser vision??

My LCS is owned and primarily staffed by a woman! It's very nice and I get a good discount.

I agree though that it is hard to see things changing. Those in charge kind of feed of the existing fanbase, it's very cyclical.