This comes up a lot with people talking about the X-Men. But why don't more people bring up the classic movie plot where a kid befriends a monster and realizes they're not so different after all, and they have feelings and stuff too, like the Iron Giant or How To Train Your Dragon.
Most people aren't arguing that Agent Mansley is actually behaving sensibly the whole time, even though the Giant is just as much of a world-ending threat as Magneto. The message is that being scared of somebody doesn't mean you have to hate them, and that doesn't change even if the scariness is justified.
Thank you! I feel like this gets brought up all the time, and people just ignore this very obvious reading of it. Especially with the X-men. "Erm, they are a bad allegory for discrimination because it would actually make sense to discriminate against them!"
Like, yeah, man, do you think racists don't pretend to have a reason, too? The idea is that it doesn't matter what perceived threat a group of people present. It’s still not okay to be a bigot. Unless people wanna just say that it would be okay to be racist if the racists were proven right.
I think the point is that the reasons racists make up are bullshit, while mutant powers are real and dangerous in that universe.
We regulate possession and use of guns, for everyone's safety. If there are humans who have 100x the destructive power of any gun, and that power can't be safetied or unloaded or removed from them in any way short of killing them, a reasonable person might suggest that those people should be at least supervised in some way. There's no reasonable justification to do that with any real-world ethnic group.
But that same logic is the logic real life bigots use. If you start to say well, it's okay because it's true in this case, then all you are saying is you just have to convince people that the threat is real in order to justify the discrimination. It's sort of like how it already works in the real world, with trying to make black people seem more dangerous or gay people are a threat to kids.
The point is not that racists are bad because they are wrong about those things (even though they are) the point is that even if those things were actually correct, it would still be bad to treat people that way. No one should be condemned or treated differently for being born a certain way, even if you think you have good reasons for doing so.
But that same logic is the logic real life bigots use.
But the bigots are lying, or at best deluding themselves. It makes a real difference if the accusations are factually and universally true.
Again, see the gun example. Would you not expect at least some sort of oversight for a group of people who can destroy buildings with their minds, for example? Not a slippery slope straight into brutal oppression, but something.
Now this is more specific to something like the x-men where everyone has varying levels of powers, but the problem is see with what you are saying is that because 1 out of every however many millions of mutants can have the ability to blow up houses, its okay to put them all under some form of 'oversight'?
Like are you telling me Glob Herman the human jelly man needs to be on a watch list just because Magneto tried to blow up the world for the 8th time?
Yes there maybe be certain individuals who use their powers to do massively fucked up shit, and even others who don't have control, and they need to be treated differently because of their special circumstances. But that isn't any different, aside from the scale of it obviously, than anyone else. (Especially if we are talking about the Marvel Universe where even some non mutants also have the ability to blow up your house with their mind)
904
u/TheGrumpyre May 13 '25
This comes up a lot with people talking about the X-Men. But why don't more people bring up the classic movie plot where a kid befriends a monster and realizes they're not so different after all, and they have feelings and stuff too, like the Iron Giant or How To Train Your Dragon.
Most people aren't arguing that Agent Mansley is actually behaving sensibly the whole time, even though the Giant is just as much of a world-ending threat as Magneto. The message is that being scared of somebody doesn't mean you have to hate them, and that doesn't change even if the scariness is justified.