Mutants and fair employment among humans

[Sutekh]

I think little things like the Sentinels are exhibit A in the theory that 'mutant' is *not* on the EEO posters, along with race, age, sex, etc. in the Marvel Universe USA.

As for mutants using their mutations for work, I was thinking back on that loser team, Mutant Force, and how three of them, Shocker/Paralyzer, Lifter/Meteorite and Burner/Crucible, could individually run a power plant pretty much by themselves. Shocker can generate electricity. Lifter can move a turbine to generate electricity. Burner can replace all of the coal in a coal-fired plant. Depending on whether or not Peeper/Occult's eyebeams produce heat or force, he could perform either Lifter or Burner's functions. They wouldn't need to march into a pre-existing plant and get themselves hired, either, as some states have laws that power companies have to buy excess power generated by citizens solar arrays or whatever. The Mutant Force dudes would just need to buy a house and start selling power using Shocker's power, until they can increase their output by buying an old turbine (adding Lifter's contribution to the payday coming in).

But it's likely that they can't do that. Workers at power plants would resist the inevitable downsizing that would occur if electricity-generating mutants like Shocker/Paralyzer, or Bolt, etc. began selling cheap electricity. The power companies themselves would lobby to not have to buy their power, and that they couldn't incorporate and sell their 'dangerous' power (shades of Edison electrocuting pets to 'prove' that rival Tesla's current was deadly and shouldn't be used) without following all the safety procedures that an actual power plant has to follow (violating any concept of fair competition, in their legal briefs), etc. There'd be protests and they might find all sorts of violations thrown at them to shut it down, like operating a business out of a residence or whatever.

Various professions have ways of circling the wagons. Mystique would be the world's most amazing actress / model, able to take on any appearance. The Screen Actor's Guild would just throw out her application, muttering about her ability to fraudulently appear as various celebrities, and to shut down diversity by taking on roles for any ethnicity, freezing out members of those groups, and she'd be un-hirable, since anyone who *did* give her an acting job would then be pretty much blackballed from the industry. The AMA wouldn't grant people like Elixir or Triage a license to practice medicine, and ruthlessly come after them at first for practicing without a license, and eventually go after their clients as well (for participating in an unlawful procedure), so that even if they helped people for free, their 'patients' would come under fire.

The human-owned businesses of the MU would be pretty hostile to the idea of mutants competing with them, and the humans working for said bonuses would be angry-mob-with-torches hostile to any mutant who shows up with the power to steal dozens (or hundreds) of human jobs.

This might be a fertile ground to examine in the comics themselves, various mutants going out there and trying to monetize their mutations, only to find that the world resists them. Perhaps the Vanisher starts offering cheap trips to the Bahamas, using teleportation, and the airlines start lobbying for him to stop, and spreading rumors that people he teleports have been stranded in foreign countries (when he's overslept or whatever, and not arrived *exactly* at the moment he agreed to appear and teleport them home), or suffered somehow that they wouldn't if they'd used a plane (gotten mugged, etc. which the airline argues wouldn't have happened if they were in a secure airline terminal and not meeting 'their ride home' in a local bar or whatever).

Genosha ended up becoming a very dark exploration of what happens when a non-mutant government embraces the notion of using mutants to their full ability. I'd suspect that, to further the 'world that hates and fears them' schtick, most MU attempts by mutants to cash in would end similarly. It would perhaps be interesting to see how this sort of thing is handled in fantastic places like Latveria or Atlantis...

[Ricochet Rita]

Very good post, Sutekh.

I can't believe we haven't talked yet about Dazzler (and Lila)...

[JustAnotherFan]

That's the way I construe it. But I guess the most usual pattern in the comics is: a worker is revealed as a mutant -> his/her boss, scared, fires him/her -> (s)he looks for shelter with X-Men and starts a superhero career -> nobody cares about an ordinary job no more, neither thinks about making a claim for labor discrimination (where's the trade union when you need it?).

Pity, it would be a good plot.

The worker could try to sue the employer for firing him for wrongful reasons. And then the employer would probably try to argue that the mutant's powers either created a hazard or that his status as a mutant would have been bad for the company.

This would be a really good plot if it was explored! These are the types of stories x-books should try to tackle at times. So much potential for sociopolitical commentary and exploring different aspects of discrimination in our everyday society!

The question I have is why would all of this apply only to mutants, and not superhumans in general? What difference does it make if your competitive advantage is the result of a natural-born mutation, or granted by cosmic rays or what have you? Why should a mutant whose natural powers makes him a better lawyer be singled out, but not the random bum off the street who gained Super Lawyer Powers after being bitten by a radioactive lawyer?

If mutants were to be banned from certain professions or competitive sports or whatever because of an unfair advantage, it should apply to ALL superhumans.

It really ties back into the ridiculousness of how mutants are targets of persecution because mutant! while other superhumans get a pass, even though there's usually no logical way to tell the difference.

Well it would of course affect other non-mutant superhumans as well but the difference is that mutants are a naturally occurring phenomena so naturally the number of mutants should be much higher than the number of humans who got powers through some one in a million chance freak accident. And most of the superhumans who got their powers from freak accidents become full on superheroes unlike with mutants, many of whom just want to live normal lives despite their powers