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  1. #1
    Mighty Member Hybrid's Avatar
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    Default Does anyone else hate when people call mutant racism in the MU a "plot hole"?

    I've seen it many times before, and used as a justification for why they want X-Men in their own universe:

    "The bigotry/racism towards mutants in the Marvel Universe is illogical in a setting where other superpowered beings exist!"

    Yeah, you know what else is illogical? Bigotry in the real world.

    People hating on others for just the slightest of differences when we're all human is something that's been ongoing since forever and will be for the foreseeable future. That was the point, it was deliberately made to not make sense from the beginning in order to mirror how real-world bigotry works. I mean, some of the most heinous actions committed in human history were motivated by bigotry, even for the tiniest and superficial of differences.

    Also, it's been said there's no real reason this would even happen. Actually, there is a source for why they would hate mutants but not the other superpowered beings:

    Mutants are considered to be the next step in the evolutionary process, specifically because they were born with their abilities. They hate and fear them because they feel like mutants are there to replace them, and the amount of mutant supremacists set out to do just that lends credence to the idea. We all know what happened to the Neanderthals.

    Meanwhile, the mutates of the world don't have that kind of stigma. A mutate is someone born a baseline human, who got their powers later via a foreign element. In other words, people like the Human Torch, the Wasp, Spider-Man and She-Hulk still represent humankind as a whole, just enhanced, but not evolved. Not a truly justified reason, but that's how they see it, and I can at least see how they come to that conclusion.

    I've also seen people say "How would you even know if someone is a mutant or a mutate?". Well, that's actually factored into the universe as well. I've been consistently following the new Spider-Man run, and one instance stuck out to me:



    Here's a picture of people at a club running away from Billy, the son of Curt Conners aka the Lizard, because they think he's a mutant for his reptilian appearance. He's not. Billy is a mutate, from the same formula that mutated his dad. They had no way of knowing that, however, and assumed he was "one of the freaks". I'm sure I've seen other instances of this happening in Marvel as well.

    Anyways, has the portrayal always been perfect? No. I do wish to see the Avengers being more active in helping the X-Men, who they're supposed to be on good terms with. However, I do not think it's a plot hole, but an intended inconsistency to highlight the nature of racism in the real world, which doesn't adhere to any real logic.

    As a whole, I'm very much against the idea of the X-Men being jettisoned to their own universe because it speaks of them as though they were just a disposable offshoot of the Marvel brand. In reality, they're just as much Marvel as the Avengers, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, and should be treated as such. I mean, come on, separating them but treating them as "equals"? Sounds oddly familiar, and ironic...

    Thoughts?

  2. #2
    Ultimate Member Riv86672's Avatar
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    I’m w. you.
    Mutant bigotry makes sense even in a super powered reality.
    And no, the X franchise shouldn’t be separate (segregated) from the MU.

  3. #3

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    In societies, there's always going to be something that bigots latch onto as a "reason" for their discrimination. Race, sex and gender are the most common. But if you take those factors out, it'll be something else. Like money they make. Or where they were born. Or what job they work. Or their accent. The famous "brown eyes, blue eyes" school lesson was built off using relatively innocuous and meaningless differences in eye color to make this point.

    I don't watch the Supergirl show, but when I caught glimpses of it waiting for Charmed to come on, I noticed it has a theme of discrimination against aliens. Another CW show, iZombie, made zombies into this case once the public became aware zombies existed.

    Bigotry doesn't ask if bigotry is "logical." It simply is.
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  4. #4
    Astonishing Member Electricmastro's Avatar
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    I've seen it as harder and harder to say that the mutant racism is a close parallel to real life racism as of how it's written now, as opposed to how it was written in the 1960s-1980s comics, but that said, yeah, I still think it's well-written now in a way that it's not just mutants that suffer from unfair accusations of being some sort of enemy that will do harm.

  5. #5
    Formerly Assassin Spider Huntsman Spider's Avatar
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    And in the older comics, Spider-Man was occasionally mistaken for a mutant by the public because, "He has creepy powers and covers his entire body and face, so he must be some hideous mutant freak under that costume!" Hell, somebody even tried to sic the original X-Factor (the original five X-Men, who were posing as mutant hunters to endear themselves to the public while secretly protecting the mutants they tracked down and "captured") on him at one point. Then back in the early 1990s, later revisited as an entire event in the original Civil War of the 2000s, certain governmental authorities tried to force everyone and anyone with superhuman abilities or attributes, not just mutants, to register. That would parallel what has been said by some about how bigotry and prejudice are ultimately exploited to push totalitarian and authoritarian policies by starting with "acceptable targets" so that the general public will be more inclined to look the other way, certain that they or their loved ones won't eventually be targeted themselves --- until they are.
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  6. #6
    Astonishing Member Electricmastro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Huntsman Spider View Post
    And in the older comics, Spider-Man was occasionally mistaken for a mutant by the public because, "He has creepy powers and covers his entire body and face, so he must be some hideous mutant freak under that costume!" Hell, somebody even tried to sic the original X-Factor (the original five X-Men, who were posing as mutant hunters to endear themselves to the public while secretly protecting the mutants they tracked down and "captured") on him at one point. Then back in the early 1990s, later revisited as an entire event in the original Civil War of the 2000s, certain governmental authorities tried to force everyone and anyone with superhuman abilities or attributes, not just mutants, to register. That would parallel what has been said by some about how bigotry and prejudice are ultimately exploited to push totalitarian and authoritarian policies by starting with "acceptable targets" so that the general public will be more inclined to look the other way, certain that they or their loved ones won't eventually be targeted themselves --- until they are.
    Yup, even bigotry and scapegoating can be used as deadly tools for influence, power, and personal gain. McCarthyism is probably one of the more well-known, specific examples of making accusations towards someone being bad without proper regard for evidence.

  7. #7
    BANNED Killerbee911's Avatar
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    It is a gigantic plot hole in which people defend with a paper defense of "hate is illogic" no humans hate what they don't understand and is different.

    1. Robots would be hated and feared. Robot have taken over and nearly destroyed the world
    2. Aliens would be hated and feared. Aliens have taken over and nearly destroyed the world
    3 Superhumans would be hated and feared. Superhumans have taken over and nearly destroyed the world
    4 Magic would be hated and feared. The supernatural have nearly destroyed the world

    You can't sell me that people who are irrational hating mutants are going I hate mutants but "aliens from another planet" those guys are cool. Racist behavior is pretty uniformed I know that when a hear people talking reckless about Mexicans and Muslims, I am pretty sure they don't like me as a black person too. Hate is more consistent than people are giving credit. And they would have every reason to apply the same logic to other fantastic elements in the world. Hulk is doing an amazing job of making Human feel comfortable about superhuman. All those supervillains are doing a good job of making humans feel great about superhumans. The Stamford incident made people really comfortable about superhumans. It doesn't take much for another group to get add to the hate list.

    It is not a surprise that Sentiels never stop at mutants
    Last edited by Killerbee911; 09-06-2019 at 06:53 PM.

  8. #8
    Astonishing Member Grey's Avatar
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    Yes

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    Your favorite superhero- the one you visit these forums to talk about. Would they talk to others the way you do on this message board?

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Killerbee911 View Post
    It is a gigantic plot hole in which people defend with a paper defense of "hate is illogic" no humans hate what they don't understand and is different.

    1. Robots would be hated and feared. Robot have taken over and nearly destroyed the world
    2. Aliens would be hated and feared. Aliens have taken over and nearly destroyed the world
    3 Superhumans would be hated and feared. Superhumans have taken over and nearly destroyed the world
    4 Magic would be hated and feared. The supernatural have nearly destroyed the world

    You can't sell me that people who are irrational hating mutants are going I hate mutants but "aliens from another planet" those guys are cool. Racist behavior is pretty uniformed I know that when a hear people talking reckless about Mexicans and Muslims, I am pretty sure they don't like me as a black person too. Hate is more consistent than people are giving credit. And they would have every reason to apply the same logic to other fantastic elements in the world. Hulk is doing an amazing job of making Human feel comfortable about superhuman. All those supervillains are doing a good job of making humans feel great about superhumans. The Stamford incident made people really comfortable about superhumans. It doesn't take much for another group to get add to the hate list.

    It is not a surprise that Sentiels never stop at mutants
    Ever met someone who likes a gay person who “doesn’t parade it around”, or calls certain brown people “well-read and educated”? Their bigoted behavior is directed at certain subgroups no doubt.

    Someone like this may indeed be bigoted towards all superheroes but would likely be nice to more “respected” and “publicly sanctioned” superheros such as the avengers.

    This is all never mind the fact that there are multiple reasons people hate mutants besides their superpowers, including the fact that they’re born that way makes them “not natural” “freaks” “disgusting” “not how god intended”, but people who talk about the “plot hole” never seem to acknowledge this angle of mutant hatred.
    Your favorite superhero- the one you visit these forums to talk about. Would they talk to others the way you do on this message board?

  10. #10
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    Hate might be irrational, but irrational doesn't mean hate doesn't follow a pattern.

  11. #11
    Ultimate Member WebLurker's Avatar
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    I do think it's a plot hole of sorts; while bigotry is never logical, there is usually a method to the madness, an underlying pattern to the subjects of the hate. There is no such pattern in X-Men.
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  12. #12

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    I'd say at least part of the reason mutants get singled out is because the fear of the unknown other being inside your own home, at your table, or in your womb is a really easy one to leverage. It makes mutants spectacularly easy to scapegoat, and is useful to MU politicians in a way that, say, picking on the Avengers or general AI isn't. We've been seeing "do you know what your children are?" Marvel ads that play with that notion since the 80's. In-story, we've seen quite a few politicians and social leaders lean hard on the whole "mutant menace/mutants hiding among normal humans" schtick - Stryker, Kelly, Graydon Creed, what's-her-face from Gugg's X-Men: Gold run - to leverage the public's fear into a power base for themselves. With mutants, I'd wager it's not just a matter of people being scared of what's different; there's a pretty good chance those flames are being actively, continuously fanned by those who benefit from it.
    Last edited by Anduinel; 09-06-2019 at 08:24 PM.

  13. #13
    BANNED Killerbee911's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grey View Post
    Ever met someone who likes a gay person who “doesn’t parade it around”, or calls certain brown people “well-read and educated”? Their bigoted behavior is directed at certain subgroups no doubt.

    Someone like this may indeed be bigoted towards all superheroes but would likely be nice to more “respected” and “publicly sanctioned” superheros such as the avengers.

    This is all never mind the fact that there are multiple reasons people hate mutants besides their superpowers, including the fact that they’re born that way makes them “not natural” “freaks” “disgusting” “not how god intended”, but people who talk about the “plot hole” never seem to acknowledge this angle of mutant hatred.
    People never want to talk about how mutants would also be highly liked and loved. And they are mutants in the Avengers, New Warriors, and FF. There is enough cases in the real world to show that a large number of people who are not mutants would be fighting for mutant rights. They were more counter-protestors at straight pride than people in the parade. The next time hate groups tried to rally after Charlottesville the counter-protest where in the thousands, the hate group had less than 100 people. Mutant shouldn't be as hated as they are in Marvel. That is angle played up for drama in stories. They aren't trying to accurately reflect the world just make fun and interesting stories to read.

    Real-life has thought me that asshats strongly hate people tend to hate dam near anything different and a lot more people would be defending mutants rights in Marvel. Superhumans have done too much screwed up things for them not to be getting the mutant treatment from those "rational people". Beside Superhumans have a high rate of producing mutant children which would lump them in the same group. In Alien nation the Alien population is hated, In Bright, the Orc population is hated, In supergirl the alien population is hated, In blade runner robots are hated. Fiction has shown us over and over that the strange group would be hated. Superhumans are a strange group.

    People can disagree but my two points are

    1. Pretty much any minority group would be hated or do people not see Gay, Black, Latino, Jews, Muslims, Asians, Mexicans, etc getting hated/discrimination by the majority
    2. Overtime in developed countries relationship would get better hate would still exist and injustice would still exist but large amount of people get would learn to get along better with minorities and rules would be put place to help minorities.

    Marvel is flawed to me because a wider selection of people should be getting the irrational "the mutant treatment" and as a reflection of the real world, they don't show the progress that is being made in race relations. I can accept the fiction if they say it is that then that what it is , I just don't accept it as an accurate depiction of what would happen in the real world.

  14. #14
    Deadly Bee Weapon coveredinbees's Avatar
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    Why can't they all be like this guy?

    Last edited by coveredinbees; 09-06-2019 at 08:31 PM.

  15. #15
    Astonishing Member Electricmastro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by coveredinbees View Post
    Why can't they all be like this guy?

    Because Chris Claremont doesn't have as much of an influence in the writing anymore.

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