How much has the X-Men as a reflection of real life minorities changed overtime?

[Zelena]

I suppose also worth mentioning is that in issue 4, Professor X basically explains his overall goal with the X-Men, in that he wishes to not only save mankind, but also use their powers to bring about a golden age on Earth, side by side with ordinary humans. Despite mankind's flaws, shortcomings, and the wrongs mankind has done, he definitely gave me the impression that mankind still has the capability to get better, and that while prejudice doesn't completely go away overnight, it's also not impossible to achieve any sort of progress in regards to combating against it.

I don't think the humans are able to progress, per se… But to me, a real "Homo superior" would be able to understand theirs brothers "Homo sapiens" and would know how to deal with them in a decent, satisfying way. Cleverness would be the real superpower. And I wouldn't mind if they could help us with the climate change (and other trifles) because I really don't know how we will manage…

[The tall man]

No, people want to see actual minorities portrayed in their comics instead of having their stories told by the placeholders that are the X-Men. Mutants as an allegory for oppressed minorties largely stems from a time when it was difficult to feature these minorities in mainstream media, so the X-Men served as the mostly cis, white, straight placeholders to make these topics more palatable to the general audience and the censors. That's no longer needed, and Marvel doesn't really have any excuse any more not to feature minorities in their books if they want to tell their stories.

Just look how Rahne's death was received by the trans community (spoiler: overwhelmingly negative). I have no doubt Rosenberg had only the best intentions when telling a story that was supposed to call attention to the danger of violence faced by trans people at the hands of transphobic bigots, but Marvel was still rightfully called out for essentially exploiting the struggle of minorities to pat themselves on the back for how progressive they are without having to bother actually giving minorities any representation in their books.

One could argue that mutants as a metaphor for minorities not only has become unnecessary, but outright detrimental to getting actual representation.

100% agree! The idea that a bunch of white mutants (Cyclops, Emma, Kitty, ect..) Suffer more racism, prejudice and bigotry over actual minorities is a complete joke. Is Scott being called a mutie more offensive than Sam Wilson being called the N word? Is Emma Frost more discriminated against than Monica Rambeau? There are real minorities in the MU who can be used to tell stories of oppression and bigotry but Marvel insists on pushing them aside in favor of majority white mutants. Even minority X-men are pushed to the side or are wallpaper characters, so the mutant metaphor for minorities has to be done away with.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Kieron Gillen said once that the X-Men work best as a metaphor for being an outsider and being marginalized but they collapse as soon as you try to apply any one real life parallel to it. I think that's succinct.

In different times the X-Men stand in for different stuff:
-- In Claremont's run, X-Men was a romantic expression of being persecuted and marginalized and a stand-in for the oppressed. Whether it's racism, homophobia, sexism and so on and so forth. You had Genosha, a mutant apartheid state, and Claremont said that Israeli politics and so on was an influence.
-- In Bryan Singer's X-Men, being a mutant is about being gay.
-- In Grant Morrison's New X-Men, being a mutant is about being an outsider, about challenging middle-class society, and overturning norms and so on. It was about challenging and expanding the idea of normal. So you had Emma Frost as a bohemian a--hole challenging the stuffy bourgeois couple of Scott/Jean, you have weird mutants like Beak and Angel Salvadore, you have even weirder stuff like sentient viruses and of couse the U-Men, dudes who want to be mutants but are in fact Sublime.
-- In James Mangold's LOGAN, mutants are about fear of enclosure and automation, with corporations taking over the X-Gene and putting a price-cap on it and making the X-gene a corporate-owned IP (which also works as an allegory for Mangold working on a Marvel licensed property, hence the comic books discussed in the movie).
-- In Hickman's HoX/PoX, the X-Men are a mix of Morrison and Mangold. They challenge and expand on the idea of normal but there's also a fear of an oncoming singularity that would lead to a natural environment being displaced by a technological one.

[tuck frump]

So people who criticize the X-men use as a metaphor are racists who hate books about minorities. Nice.

Well it's a little suspicious don't you think? Why would anyone want the franchise that has historically been known to be an allegory for minorities struggling against oppression and has a large fanbase made of women, lgbtq+ poeple and people of color to stop talking about and to these people? There's plenty of regular superhero comic books out there, they can go read that. If they love the X-Men aesthetic, they can read early 90s Image book which ripped that off, if they want an edulcored version of the themes and stories, they can read Bendis Avengers. X-Men holds a pretty unique place in the media landscape, I fail to see the legitimacy behind wanting to strip it off what makes it so special. Unless, again, people claimoring for that have a problem with stories dealing with minorities.

Its a fairly common take. If groups are supposed to see themselves as the X-men then the current status quo is kind of wonky, because its not like black people/gays/Muslims can expect to start an island nation that's instantly an economic powerhouse. But its a comic, so its really not supposed to be realistic all the time, and its trying hard to be an allegory for Israel, so.....eh. *shrug*

It's an escapist fantasy. We can't move to a remote island but we sure are happy that the heroes we identify with get that opportunity.

No, people want to see actual minorities portrayed in their comics instead of having their stories told by the placeholders that are the X-Men. Mutants as an allegory for oppressed minorties largely stems from a time when it was difficult to feature these minorities in mainstream media, so the X-Men served as the mostly cis, white, straight placeholders to make these topics more palatable to the general audience and the censors. That's no longer needed, and Marvel doesn't really have any excuse any more not to feature minorities in their books if they want to tell their stories.

Just look how Rahne's death was received by the trans community (spoiler: overwhelmingly negative). I have no doubt Rosenberg had only the best intentions when telling a story that was supposed to call attention to the danger of violence faced by trans people at the hands of transphobic bigots, but Marvel was still rightfully called out for essentially exploiting the struggle of minorities to pat themselves on the back for how progressive they are without having to bother actually giving minorities any representation in their books.

One could argue that mutants as a metaphor for minorities not only has become unnecessary, but outright detrimental to getting actual representation.

This is a different argument altogether. There should be more diversity in comics, including the X-Men but the X-Books are not holding back representation. I'd be happy having a book about black and brown superheroes dismantling white supremacy or super women taking down the patriarchy but even if the X-Books increased representation of these groups tenfold, their stories would still be about mutants struggle to be accepted in human society. Unless you want to denature the book which again, why, and Marvel would never go for it.

If it's case, the question remains: "what kind of stories will he tell?" You can see the history of Israël and there are a lot of heroic and harsh stories and you can be inspired by that…
Or you can tell stories like I heard few days ago about Jewish volunteers that help Palestinians:
https://rhr.org.il/eng/2019/09/press...t-to-kick-off/
It depends on the writer and what kind of person he/she is and what are their beliefs… it's not journalistic work.
I personally don't like Machinean stories and prefer the ones that shows the complexity of the human heart.

There was an interesting article posted a couple days back highlighting the parallels between HoX/PoX and Isr*el. It posited that Krakoa is essentially what Isr*el was aspiring to be when it started, minus the ethnic cleansings and human rights violations. Make of that what you will.

[useridgoeshere]

I think that the lack of evolution and nuance of the 'metaphor' is the problem, not the foundational concept. Creators have lacked perspective, so it really has only become a metaphor for the bad parts of being a minority. That leads to everything being about oppression and bigotry, and how it's different and how one group's experiences are worse than another's. The conversation goes to this weird place where we're comparing victimization to say one is legitimate and another is not. All focused on negativity of the minority experience.

High cultural attachment is a positive. It leads to cultural openness. If they truly wanted Mutants to be a metaphor, you'd see the positives of that identity, too. The pride, culture, community, strength, values, etc. But the rare times that starts, it gets wrecked and forgotten then we're back to victimization stories. I'm hopeful Hickman is shifting that a bit.

[Triniking1234]

The books get the paranoia of the masses part right sometimes but the superpower aspect kinda dulls it.

I remember reading X-Men: Omega recently where a mutant gets beat to death by some people in a diner cuz they suspect he's a mutant even though he was still in human form. That was pretty good.

[BroHomo]

The books get the paranoia of the masses part right sometimes but the superpower aspect kinda dulls it.

I remember reading X-Men: Omega recently where a mutant gets beat to death by some people in a diner cuz they suspect he's a mutant even though he was still in human form. That was pretty good.

Really going heavy on the metaphor eh? .... putting the GORE back in allegory

[LordUltimus]

I remember a scene where a Black Power member calls Kitty "mutie" and she responds by calling him the n-word.

[Triniking1234]

I remember a scene where a Black Power member calls Kitty "mutie" and she responds by calling him the n-word.

Good stuff/10.

[PwrdOn]

I suppose it is somewhat admirable that X-Men writers are trying to inject social commentary into their stories, but frankly they've always portrayed a bougie white people version of oppression which just feels really fake and forced. Most of the main cast are indistinguishable from regular people, and seemingly never have to work yet are able to live in a big mansion filled with high tech gadgets. Yes there are plenty of hate groups that try to attack them, but that's sort of the case in every superhero comic because you need to have bad guys for them to fight. And while there are plenty of visibly deformed mutants living on the margins of society who do struggle to get by, these are usually portrayed as one-off or joke characters who are rarely the focus of stories. A lot of times the mutant oppression angle just comes off as people of extreme privilege complaining about wanting even more special treatment than they're already getting, especially these days when you have all these fascist groups calling for racially pure ethnostates you have a lot of troubling parallels.

[BroHomo]

I remember a scene where a Black Power member calls Kitty "mutie" and she responds by calling him the n-word.

lol it was another college student.... then Stevie Hunter.... then the whole crowd at a funeral she loves it :/

[The Kid]

Mutants have never really worked as a direct metaphor for minorities and a lot of the attempts to make it so far come off as really tone deaf (not surprising considering most of the writers historically have been white). I think they work best as a general view of oppressed people but any direct comparison will always be done poorly. Black and brown people in the real world aren't mutants (who legitimately can be major security threats without even wanting to be) and it's borderline offensive to make that argument

[BroHomo]

Mutants have never really worked as a direct metaphor for minorities and a lot of the attempts to make it so far come off as really tone deaf (not surprising considering most of the writers historically have been white). I think they work best as a general view of oppressed people but any direct comparison will always be done poorly. Black and brown people in the real world aren't mutants (who legitimately can be major security threats without even wanting to be) and it's borderline offensive to make that argument

I think Mutants are as good as any other metaphorical group

[Agent Z]

The mutant metaphor worked in a time when writers for the most part didn't want to tackle actual problems that disenfranchised groups were facing but now it's run its course. Hell, the mutant metaphor was already going into sketchy territory when Claremont had Kitty compare the word "mutie" to the "n word". To a black woman's face no less.

In a world where Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Kamala Kahn, Batwoman and so many others are discussing real prejudices that real life groups face the mutant metaphor doesn't feel needed.

[tuck frump]

Mutants have never really worked as a direct metaphor for minorities and a lot of the attempts to make it so far come off as really tone deaf (not surprising considering most of the writers historically have been white). I think they work best as a general view of oppressed people but any direct comparison will always be done poorly. Black and brown people in the real world aren't mutants (who legitimately can be major security threats without even wanting to be) and it's borderline offensive to make that argument

On the contrary, mutant powers work perfectly as an allegory. Mutants blow up city blocks and take over countries? So do muslims. Black and brown people are invading tradionally white coutnries and will replace their inhabitants. Jews control the world. Gays are ruining the sanctity of marriage and traditional family values and will lead your children to hell. None of it is true but every oppressed minority is perceived as a threat and demonized by their oppressors. Their mutant power is that they will change society by doing nothing but existing.