Your Unpopular/Controversial Opinions on the X-Universe

[Kingdom X]

The problem I always have with people asking why mutants would want to change or getting offended when people ask why there even have to be mutants is that most mutants aren't born mutants. They're not raised as mutants. For all intents and purposes, they're human up until they hit their teens.

The fact that people are perfectly fine with NOT being mutants until they hit highschool and then completely redefine their lives as being mutants makes them a bit harder to take seriously.

And yes, I know that scientifically un-powered mutants are still mutants, but if nobody knows they're mutants and they don't look like or have powers of mutants they might as well not be mutants. I also understand some of them show signs of being mutants since birth, such as Nightcrawler.

That also makes me wonder, have we ever seen a group of mutants that were proud of themselves for being "Mutants Since Birth", possibly even looking down on other mutants that "grew up human"? I know there's the Morlocks who (in some stories) where proud of being "ugly" but that's not quite what I'm thinking of.

You kinda just described what a lot of LGBTQ kids go through. Many don’t realize that they’re not straight until puberty and then once they’ve gotten a grasp of their identity start to deeply care about it. No child comes out the womb waiving a PRIDE flag.

[nandes]

Ironically, seeing arguments defending eugenics and that people should change who they are to fit into society in this thread shows exactly why the mutant metaphor is still needed despite all its flaws

[SpiderClops]

Let's look at some other fictional racism and discrimination.

Harry Potter. Muggle borns, house elves, centaurs, werewolves, goblins all face some or other kind of discrimination and/or racism from pureblood supremacists. But here the analogy works because all of those are magical beings. They are discriminated because of their ancestry and looks, not because of their abilities.

That has a much much better analogy than X-Men, where one group has superpowers and other... doesn't.

I'm not saying Harry Potter is the best at this or handles these themes perfectly, but inherently as a concept it is definitely far better.

[Havok83]

I wonder if you would be upset to have to change your religion to be able to marry. Some people do it. Eventually it’s a personal choice… Losing something to gain something.

The fact is, lately, the mutants are identifying themselves to their powers. The “older” mutants had other talents. Nightcrawler was a gymnast and a swordsman, Logan knew Japanese culture… Having a power was an addition and not everything like for Quicksilver that was completely lost without his super-speed.

That is not the same thing at all. A person can choose their religion; they cant choose their race. Im not a highly religious person so personally I its not tied to my identity nor what I was born with. The mutant metaphor does not work with religion at all

The problem I always have with people asking why mutants would want to change or getting offended when people ask why there even have to be mutants is that most mutants aren't born mutants. They're not raised as mutants. For all intents and purposes, they're human up until they hit their teens.

The fact that people are perfectly fine with NOT being mutants until they hit highschool and then completely redefine their lives as being mutants makes them a bit harder to take seriously.

And yes, I know that scientifically un-powered mutants are still mutants, but if nobody knows they're mutants and they don't look like or have powers of mutants they might as well not be mutants. I also understand some of them show signs of being mutants since birth, such as Nightcrawler.

That also makes me wonder, have we ever seen a group of mutants that were proud of themselves for being "Mutants Since Birth", possibly even looking down on other mutants that "grew up human"? I know there's the Morlocks who (in some stories) where proud of being "ugly" but that's not quite what I'm thinking of.

Alot of gay people dont realize they are gay until adolescents. Many go on to further redefine their lives when they come out especially if that happens later in life. I dont find it that hard to understand

[Zelena]

You kinda just described what a lot of LGBTQ kids go through. Many don’t realize that they’re not straight until puberty and then once they’ve gotten a grasp of their identity start to deeply care about it. No child comes out the womb waiving a PRIDE flag.

I suppose it depends on what is essential to your well-being and sanity and what is accessory.

At puberty, we become… hairier too. We tend to cut it. And no one has ever marched to have the right to keep his/her hair which is something, after all, natural.

[SpiderClops]

Thats asbolutely terrible and sends a poor message. As a black man, I would never take a pill that would make me wake up as white regardless of the discrimination and racism that I face on a regular basis. You are literally stripping away your identity at that point. The problem isnt the person that's different; its with those that hate them for being different. A person should not have to change who they are in order to not be persecuted. Thats highly offensive.

If you had Hypertrichosis, also known as 'Werewolf Syndrome', which could make you look like this:



and let's just assume that a 100% certain cure exists that could remove all those hair and make you look normal. Would you do it? If you do decide to go with it, does it send the wrong message to other people who has the same syndrome who decided not to take the cure?


What some of us are trying to say is mutation as a 1:1 analogy for racism and/or LGBTQ community just. doesn't. work. And all you guys are doing is taking it as a 1:1 analogy if you think taking the mutant cure is same as turning a black person white.

[Alan2099]

You kinda just described what a lot of LGBTQ kids go through. Many don’t realize that they’re not straight until puberty and then once they’ve gotten a grasp of their identity start to deeply care about it. No child comes out the womb waiving a PRIDE flag.

I actually thought about that, but felt that since we were talking mostly about race, not to mention it. The X-men (or mutants in general) does make a better metaphor for homosexuality than race, even if race seems to be the more popular analogy in the books.

Thats asbolutely terrible and sends a poor message. As a black man, I would never take a pill that would make me wake up as white regardless of the discrimination and racism that I face on a regular basis. You are literally stripping away your identity at that point. The problem isnt the person that's different; its with those that hate them for being different. A person should not have to change who they are in order to not be persecuted. Thats highly offensive.

That is.

However with mutants there's often another layer to it.

Suppose you were born a white man and didn't become a black man until you hit 15. The question of whether or not you want to remain a black man is now quite a different one.

[Havok83]

If you had Hypertrichosis, also known as 'Werewolf Syndrome', which could make you look like this:



and let's just assume that a 100% certain cure exists that could remove all those hair and make you look normal. Would you do it? If you do decide to go with it, does it send the wrong message to other people who has the same syndrome who decided not to take the cure?


What some of us are trying to say is mutation as a 1:1 analogy for racism and/or LGBTQ community just. doesn't. work. And all you guys are doing is taking it as a 1:1 analogy if you think taking the mutant cure is same as turning a black person white.

You and others dont need to keep coming back with different examples. I said what I said with something that is relevant to me. I dont have that condition so I dont have the experience on how that person copes with life and how difficult it may or may not be

[Wiccan]

Different kinds of mutations fit better with different kinds of minorities.

Mutants who can pass as normal but have something "hidden" that society would judge them for work better for LGBT people.

Mutants with unusual looks who can't walk down the street without being seen differently work better for racial minorities.

Mutants with powers that "inconvenience" them that they have to learn how to live with work better for disabilities.

[Kingdom X]

Different kinds of mutations fit better with different kinds of minorities.

Mutants who can pass as normal but have something "hidden" that society would judge them for work better for LGBT people.

Mutants with unusual looks who can't walk down the street without being seen differently work better for racial minorities.

Mutants with powers that "inconvenience" them that they have to learn how to live with work better for disabilities.

I think you hit the nail on the hand. This is why the metaphor touches so many people but also gets very tricky.

[Devaishwarya]

I don't find the metaphor offensive per say, but I think we fans and writers need to acknowledge that it's never going to work as a 1:1 analogy, or even close to it.

It stopped being a 1:1 analogy a long time ago (personally I don't think it ever was...and I've been reading X-Men since 1983) Only some readers are just now picking up on that departure.

As Wiccan has astutely posted...the analogy is representational across a broad spectrum which can be relatable to ANY one of us who have felt different or persecuted and discriminated against, for whatever reason.

Is it perfectly applicable even within that broad spectrum...absolutely not. But the main goal has always been to tell exciting, interesting and engaging super-hero stories first and foremost and the context in which those stories are told/have been told is somewhat secondary. That's why writers who come on board very rarely make the discrimination context a prime plot and direction.

[Dante Milton]

Within the context of the Marvel Universe, mutants are a persecuted people based on the expression of a genetic mutation, this expression results in a power. A mutant's power is a large component of their cultural identity. A mutant cure would erase their cultural identity, and could lead to the annihilation of the culture all together (that's called genocide). The people who oppose the idea of a mutant cure are giving real world examples to explain why that idea would be bad in the context of this fictional world (literally, an analogy). They are not giving real world examples because they believe that the mutant metaphor is a perfect analogy for real world persecuted peoples. Also, the claim that they are not born mutants is false, they are born with an inheritable genetic mutation, it's just that the expression of that mutation generally, but not always, occurs at puberty.

[Devaishwarya]

Exactatiously, DM. This is why I fully and unashamedly endorse Destiny burning Moira to soot and ashes.
(except...I don't think any of us truly believes the mutant metaphor is a perfect analogy...sometimes it comes close but when directly addressed, it far more often than not falls way short).

[Grunty]

Different kinds of mutations fit better with different kinds of minorities.

Mutants who can pass as normal but have something "hidden" that society would judge them for work better for LGBT people.

Mutants with unusual looks who can't walk down the street without being seen differently work better for racial minorities.

Mutants with powers that "inconvenience" them that they have to learn how to live with work better for disabilities.

That's a good comparison.
However when all these aspects are essentialy thrown into the same pot and treated as the same by many writers, it can create frictions between the different metaphors.

For example the "disability" metaphor should make power supression technology or drugs an at least moraly grey thing, similar to how medical drugs in real life can be used for both good and bad.
For mutants who have self harming, disfiguring, or dangerous powers, being able to fully supress or weaken them by choice would certainly be a positive thing, even if they can be misused.
Under this metaphor having someone tell such mutants to stop taking or wearing their power supressors and be proud of living with their conditions even if they have to suffer from it, would be like telling someone suffering from uncurable or long treatment requiring mental or physical conditions to stop taking their respective medicine and "man up".

However since the "disability" metaphor is thrown into the same pot as the "sexual/gender identity" and "ethnical" metaphors, power supression technology is treated as an automatically evil thing, since under those they can only appear as a bad thing.

Basicly the more dimensions are added to the mutant metaphor, the more one dimensional writing becomes problematic and x-men writers have a bad tendency to treat the mutant metaphor very one dimensional as "mutant = good/victims" "normal humans = bad/agressor".

By the way.
The disability metaphor has also become somewhat problematic with Decimiation, because Ex-Mutants essentialy became a metaphor for disability too. So basicly both having problematic powers and not having powers at all anymore essentialy filled the same metaphor.

And if being depowered is akin to being disabled, what does that make the Crucible? Telling people with disabilities they should die and hope they get reborn in healthy bodies?

Imagine that being the presented solution back when Storm was depowered for quite a while during Claremonts era. Which i recall many count as her biggest time of development.

[Kingdom X]

That's a good comparison.
However when all these aspects are essentialy thrown into the same pot and treated as the same by many writers, it can create frictions between the different metaphors.

For example the "disability" metaphor should make power supression technology or drugs an at least moraly grey thing, similar to how medical drugs in real life can be used for both good and bad.
For mutants who have self harming, disfiguring, or dangerous powers, being able to fully supress or weaken them by choice would certainly be a positive thing, even if they can be misused.
Under this metaphor having someone tell such mutants to stop taking or wearing their power supressors and be proud of living with their conditions even if they have to suffer from it, would be like telling someone suffering from uncurable or long treatment requiring mental or physical conditions to stop taking their respective medicine and "man up".

However since the "disability" metaphor is thrown into the same pot as the "sexual/gender identity" and "ethnical" metaphors, power supression technology is treated as an automatically evil thing, since under those they can only appear as a bad thing.

Basicly the more dimensions are added to the mutant metaphor, the more one dimensional writing becomes problematic and x-men writers have a bad tendency to treat the mutant metaphor very one dimensional as "mutant = good/victims" "normal humans = bad/agressor".

By the way.
The disability metaphor has also become somewhat problematic with Decimiation, because Ex-Mutants essentialy became a metaphor for disability too. So basicly both having problematic powers and not having powers at all anymore essentialy filled the same metaphor.

And if being depowered is akin to being disabled, what does that make the Crucible? Telling people with disabilities they should die and hope they get reborn in healthy bodies?

Imagine that being the presented solution back when Storm was depowered for quite a while during Claremonts era. Which i recall many count as her biggest time of development.

All very good points. As others have mentioned I think the way for the franchise to move forward with discrimination plots is to actually have more marginalized characters in the spotlight, and have writers explore the intersection between their real world identities and being a mutant. Otherwise, things are just going to get more and more muddled with the metaphor trying to cater to everyone.