why do humans discriminate against mutants and not mutates?

[JudicatorPrime]

Because they fear mutants will replace them.

This is basically what it comes down to, if we're trying to grasp a logical reason behind something as irrational as fear. The hatred stems from the fact that mutants are the next stage in evolution. It's not a question of if, but when normal humans will be on the endangered species list. Mutates drive that point home to an extent, but not nearly as much as mutants.

[skyvolt2000]

Because they fear mutants will replace them. Unlike other supers who get powers from random accidents or aliens, mutants aren’t a one time thing. People don’t fear the The Fantastic 4 because they are limited in number. Mutants aren’t like that.

People don't fear the FF because they went public with who they are.

[Midnight_v]

all I know is if a group of pretty people suddenly developed: psychic power, magnetism, super strength, super speed, weather manipulation and whatever other universal destroying power the X-men have. The last thing any sensible person would do is try to publicly ostracize or exterminate them. Unless they've gotten Sentinels already geared up and ready to go it would be subtle.

I.e. Logan movie. Put the magic mutant elimination stuff in the high fructose cornsyrup... and/or just like adding the floride to the water.

BUUUUUTTTT.......

Something IS bugging me. Take what Micheal here says and then consider this:

The reason is that hate is fear, and fear isn't rational.

It doesn't matter what the explanation about just hating mutants is, its not logical and in this world we wouldn't make a difference between X-Men and Fantastic Four when it comes to love or hate.

Vs.

all I know is if a group of pretty people suddenly developed: psychic power, magnetism, super strength, super speed, weather manipulation and whatever other universal destroying power the X-men have.

All fear isn't irrational. Hell MOST fear isn't irrational. . .

I know its probably oft repeated in modern era... So the way we express the abject fear/disdain for "HATE" is to label it a fear and try out best to tuck it away....

But thats because metaphorically we in modern society have killed the boogeyman...

Nothing is going come out of the woods and snatch you away in the night. The government (and more often the threat of our science warriors) promises to make sure that the bad guys aren't going to come
and take you away from your nice, comfy, computer chair, or phone.... Invade and burn your home, rape your women and children, enslave and/or eat you. Or at least they promise they won't get away with it when they
do.

That isn't to say that fear and hate aren't related. Hate is one of the things that allows humans to get it within themselves to overcome our natural laziness, and actually EXTERMINATE whatever the source of the fear happens to be.
YMMV.

TL;DR; Its not irrational to be afraid of mutants. It ISN'T like hate and fear in real life. (Not that its all irrational IRL either.)
The fact that freaking Magneto came down and in NO uncertain terms said "The human era is over, the mutant era has began". Humans in that world really should be afraid, deathly afraid. Hating them enough to might motivate people
to allow a leader to actually genocide the mutants as opposed to the opposite.
The opposite... what magneto represents.

[Agent Z]

it was that first issue of Civil War, if you're talking about Johnny. he was out on a date. some people started lumping him in with the new warriors. Johnny (and it made him look real bad) started trying to distance himself from the Warriors and got hit upside the head with a glass bottle.

Given what those morons did and the repercussions it had for everybody in the Marvel Universe, I don't completely blame Johnny for not wanting to be associated with the New Warriors.

[Digifiend]

People don't fear the FF because they went public with who they are.

Yeah - think about how many people believed Jonah's bile about Spider-Man. Lots of people hate him even though he isn't a mutant. Part of the reason for that is that he has a secret identity.

[Gamma Irradiated Being]

I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing for sure, Marvel's Universe's politicians sure as hell don't. They don't trust either one.

[Ichijinijisanji]

Different races on earth are racist against each other, even though from a genetic perpective there is little real difference, or rather it is quite minor to the point many academics consider it a somewhat social construct in how much importance is put on it and how much hate and bigotry has been based on relatively minor differences.

It's a typical fear of something they consider different, or that the different group will replace them. They're dangerous for xyz reason, but the bigots don't apply the same reasoning consistently to themselves.

If that makes sense.

[JudicatorPrime]

I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing for sure, Marvel's Universe's politicians sure as hell don't. They don't trust either one.

It's usually a power thing with Marvel's politicians. Having mutants with their own abilities running around makes it difficult to maintain their power/control over the masses. Even from the most practical point there's no way to establish laws and rules of societal conduct when you literally have reality warpers being born into existence at an alarming rate. Hate to say it, but anyone seeking to impose order and a system of government ought to be very, very concerned.

[capandkirby]

Writer's prerogative.

[brettc1]

Superheroes are the huge minority and the basically just do hero things.

Mutants would eventually according to Xavier become the majority. They wouldn’t just be fighting Galactus and stopping earthquakes, they would be using their extraordinary abilities to get everyday jobs. Essentially people with only human skills and knowledge would be competing at a disadvantage.

Xavier, for all his high ideals, never addressed this fundamental reality.

The other problem of some powers being the equivalent of walking around with a machine gun is also legitimate. Yes, superheroes do that to, but would you want to live on a whole street of people like that?

And the only people a non-mutant could rely on to protect them would be ones with powers. Homo-sapient would have little to no ability to determine their own fate.

[Blind Wedjat]

I guess it's the same way hardcore nationalist and far right leaning people would hate immigrants: the fear of being replaced by them. In this case, it's humans fearing mutants replacing them, either by being at the top of the food chain, or wiping out humanity entirely.

Nationalists would dislike immigrants because they think they'll take their jobs away, take up land and space, reduce food supply, threaten or change their culture etc. Humans would hate humans by replacing them in the hierarchy of power. Think about how powerful humans feel over plants and animals because they're smarter and have built weapons. Now compare that to a mutant. A human being can shoot a wild dog, but a mutant can stop a bullet, convince the human to shoot themselves, teleport behind them, instantly heal from that gunshot, or electrocute them with a hand gesture. That upsets the natural order.

I think another thing to consider is that while mutates or extraterrestrial beings are many, they don't belong to a 'race' so to speak, while mutants do (because they all have a different gene). This gives off the impression that the mutants prioritise themselves first over humanity. Spider-Man doesn't fight for the mutates because they aren't a 'race'. He's a human kid who was in an scientific accident. Therefore humanity can still see him as one of their own. Wolverine however, is a mutant, was born one, and is a member of the X-Men which are a mutant supergroup fighting for their mutant rights. Of course, they defend humanity all the time, but that won't matter to some humans, similarly to how a prejudiced person will not judge someone of another race by their good deeds but of their race. Humanity already can't get along with the individual races within themselves. Now the mutants are here being a whole different race that isn't even human.

There's also the fact that there are a group of mutants who do believe themselves to be superior, and are therefore a source of terror to the humans, i.e Magneto and his Brotherhood, as well as other evil mutants. If humanity teaches us one thing, it is that we often judge an entire group separate from our own by the negative actions of a few within that group. The entirety of humanity does that against the entirety of mutants. The mutants are often referred to as the next step in evolution (I believe by both Xavier's and Magneto's opposing parties). Whether or not it is true, it's an idea that both humans and mutants share and naturally, humans oppose that.

Which brings me to my question for those who know about mutants in the MU and the X-Men: are there other political ideologies within the mutant race, other than Professor X's coexistence and Magneto's superiority?

[Huntsman Spider]

I guess it's the same way hardcore nationalist and far right leaning people would hate immigrants: the fear of being replaced by them. In this case, it's humans fearing mutants replacing them, either by being at the top of the food chain, or wiping out humanity entirely.

Nationalists would dislike immigrants because they think they'll take their jobs away, take up land and space, reduce food supply, threaten or change their culture etc. Humans would hate humans by replacing them in the hierarchy of power. Think about how powerful humans feel over plants and animals because they're smarter and have built weapons. Now compare that to a mutant. A human being can shoot a wild dog, but a mutant can stop a bullet, convince the human to shoot themselves, teleport behind them, instantly heal from that gunshot, or electrocute them with a hand gesture. That upsets the natural order.

I think another thing to consider is that while mutates or extraterrestrial beings are many, they don't belong to a 'race' so to speak, while mutants do (because they all have a different gene). This gives off the impression that the mutants prioritise themselves first over humanity. Spider-Man doesn't fight for the mutates because they aren't a 'race'. He's a human kid who was in an scientific accident. Therefore humanity can still see him as one of their own. Wolverine however, is a mutant, was born one, and is a member of the X-Men which are a mutant supergroup fighting for their mutant rights. Of course, they defend humanity all the time, but that won't matter to some humans, similarly to how a prejudiced person will not judge someone of another race by their good deeds but of their race. Humanity already can't get along with the individual races within themselves. Now the mutants are here being a whole different race that isn't even human.

There's also the fact that there are a group of mutants who do believe themselves to be superior, and are therefore a source of terror to the humans, i.e Magneto and his Brotherhood, as well as other evil mutants. If humanity teaches us one thing, it is that we often judge an entire group separate from our own by the negative actions of a few within that group. The entirety of humanity does that against the entirety of mutants. The mutants are often referred to as the next step in evolution (I believe by both Xavier's and Magneto's opposing parties). Whether or not it is true, it's an idea that both humans and mutants share and naturally, humans oppose that.

Which brings me to my question for those who know about mutants in the MU and the X-Men: are there other political ideologies within the mutant race, other than Professor X's coexistence and Magneto's superiority?

To answer your question, the closest to a third way would be Emma Frost and her erstwhile colleagues in the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle infiltrating and manipulating human economic and political power structures to build wealth, connections, and resources that could be used to ensure that mutants survive and thrive despite humanity's best efforts against them. However, it should be mentioned that Emma was really the only one in the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle who wanted to use her position at all to protect and nurture other mutants; the others were all drunk on power and elitism and thought themselves as much above other mutants as they did above humans, and they didn't share Emma's sense of noblesse oblige, a fancy way to say, "Those who have more must do more for those who have less."

As for how the team-up between Spider-Man and the X-Men in the 90s animated series got off to a rocky start, while Spider-Man associated his advancing mutation with something that would eventually turn him into a monster (he turned out to be right a few episodes later, but still), he did still express shock and horror at a classmate of his who expressed anti-mutant sentiments in front of him while he was in civilian guise. The issue for him wasn't so much mutants in and of themselves, but more his fear of himself and what he could (and did) turn into, and he still worked with the X-Men to ultimately stop a genocidal plot by a former friend of Beast's who'd taken Beast's research in "curing" mutation during his self-loathing phase and perverted it into an anti-mutant bioweapon --- that ironically (and karmically) mutated him into an electricity-absorbing monster when he accidentally exposed himself to it.

Going to the overarching question of this thread, I'll cosign everyone here who said that naming themselves "homo superior" did mutants no favors with the human race, though I would also add that Magneto wasn't necessarily making a preemptive strike in his first appearance. The governments of the world had already been aware of mutants for decades, well before Magneto went public, and Weapon Plus, the umbrella program that the more infamous Weapon X splintered from, was deliberately intended to create weaponized lifeforms that could be fielded against them even as far back as World War II and the transformation of Steve Rogers into Captain America, a.k.a. Weapon I (One). Still, I do agree that Magneto's attempts to strike a blow in defense of his own people ultimately made things worse for them, as he gave the human authorities the excuse they needed to demonize mutants as innately inimical to human survival and thus to be neutralized at any and all costs.

[ARkadelphia]

Claremont!

[PCN24454]

It depends on the story.

Civil War partially happened because people distrusted people with superpowers, not just mutants. It’s just that they’re less likely to be discriminated against.

[MaximoffTrash]

I don't quite get the replacement angle since unlike other Human Subspecies like Inhumans, Eternals, Atlanteans, etc.
Mutants and Humans basically share the same gene pool, they just pop out out of regular humans.
This supposed " replacement" only ever take time, no violence needed really. (I would be scared if I am told there is a future where Inhumans/Atlanteans taking over Earth, since that would mean actual war and genocide.)
Also unlike Inhumans and Atlanteans who have their own culture, religion, government, etc. Mutants are just humans born with certain power, otherwise they are still a citizen of a certain nation, a person raised in a certain culture, etc.(Which set them from immigrants since really the majority of Mutants come from inside, namely newborns.)
Basically if my offspring will likely be Mutants like everyone else in the future and my culture and Civilization won't get wiped out by an alien force. There could be a tough transition when the Mutant/Human ratio reach a certain number but it's not like everything you know or your legacy will get destroyed by Mutants.

It's like fearing " Humans being replaced by Cyborgs", people may hate/fear Cyborgs when they first show up, but there is really nothing stopping humans growing warm to Cybernetic treatment/enhancement.
While Mutants work differently individually from "Cyborgs", in a grander scale they are similar, they are born from humans and essentially just humans with some extra traits.