[ SECRET POST #2755 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2755 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 094 secrets from Secret Submission Post #394.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not OP, but no, I'd rather mutants didn't stand in for women... or minorities... or oppressed or stigmatized groups.

There are very solid, reasonable reasons for humans to dislike mutants and the X-Men in particular in the series. (At best, they accidentally hurt people with abilities they can't control. At worst, they deliberately hurt, maim, and murder people. Professor X and the other telepaths are shown to have few, if any, qualms about bending/breaking people to their will. They want to be treated like humans... but none of the human laws apply to them, except when it doesn't inconvenience them, of course.)

None of those objections apply to actual, human people, regardless of what gender or race they are. No woman or member of a minority group can burn my face off with an ill-placed glare. No one can lobotomize me, intentionally or not, with a single thought. The only cabals that believe the law doesn't apply to them aren't usually separated from the rest of us along gender/racial lines, but rather criminality.

It's an awful comparison, and I wish people would stop trotting it out.

[arcadiaego]

I agree that the 'monsters = minorities' trope is often offensive but it's not fans 'trotting out' that interpretation of X Men, it's literally the point of why they were written.

[(Anonymous)]

Same anon.

That fact saddens me, but that doesn't mean fans have to embrace it or quote it at every opportunity. Just because the writer intends X, doesn't mean that readers have to buy into it.

And I wish they wouldn't in this case.

[(Anonymous)]

statistically speaking black people are more likely to be criminals, should we fear them?

[(Anonymous)]

AYART

Can they burn my face off? Change my mind for me? Are they or any other minority in any way capable of things that the average human is incapable of?

No?

Then why he hell are you asking me this? Unless you're going for the inhuman implication inherent to your question, I mean.

[(Anonymous)]

according to you its ok to hate a group of people if there's a greater chance they can be dangerous

[(Anonymous)]

that's not what they said

they said humans have legitimate security concerns about mutants that are not analogous to minorities

black crime rates are the result of 1) longstanding institutional racism destroying and devaluing their communities and livelihoods, barring them from opportunities or making them deal with far more difficult obstacles to succeed in the same arenas, etc, and 2) a strong, empirically proven bias among police and judicial system to pursue black and investigate black suspects more vigorously, and to charge them more harshly

it's not a result of black people being inherently more dangerous than other people, which mutants are, and creating a false equivalency between the two like you're doing is exactly why AYRT and myself don't like the trope

[(Anonymous)]

except mutants aren't inherently more dangerous. unless you think cypher, husk, artie and leech pose a threat to all mankind.

[thelonebamf]

This was what I came to say. For every rockstar, spandex wearing, jet flying mutant, there are a dozen with "crappy" powers or simply physical differences that pose no danger to anyone, but are they themselves threatened because of the stigma against mutants. (Cough Morlocks Cough.)

[duaedesigns]

I'm pretty sure that's wrong? http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43 Statistically, a crime is generally over twice as likely to be done by a white person than a black person. So go ahead and hate whitey for being inherently violent due to race.

[ill_omened]

...

Is this epik me me trolling?

[(Anonymous)]

There are also 5 and a half times as many white people in the US as there are black people. So - if you want to follow this line of reasoning, and I don't think you should - black people are committing a disproportionate share of crimes, and while the average crime is much more likely to be committed by a white person than a black person, the average black person is statistically much more likely to be a criminal than the average white person.

Of course you still shouldn't, because it's a flawed line of reasoning, but it's better to just reject it as flawed, rather than to buy the line of reasoning and attempt to out-calculate it.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

It also depends on what kinds of crimes you're looking at. In my city a considerable number of black men get put away for possession (drugs, mostly marijuana).

Being put away for a violent crime probably would have different numbers. But I do agree that the reasons for which such high numbers of black people are imprisoned have very much to do with the history of the U.S.A and the institutionalized racism that has seeped into the educational systems and judicial systems. Let's be honest here.

[darkmanifest]

This is how I've always felt. I loathe fictional metaphors that use magical people who can flatten a city by blinking really hard as stand-ins for real-world minorities. Sure, there are some mutants who have mutations as unimpressive as skin color or sexual preference, but those aren't the mutants at the forefront of most of the X-Men franchise, especially in the movies.

[(Anonymous)]

AYART

Thanks for this!

From the reactions I'm getting for daring to say that I dislike the metaphor you'd think I'd proposed murdering all the mutants in the franchise, rather than simply saying tat the metaphor is broken and I dislike it. (And I actually, literally did get accused of that further down thread.)

My one consolation is that I originally opted not to respond while logged in. Finding most of these replies in my in box would've irritated me.

[darkmanifest]

Yeah, I saw that comment, it was priceless. I honestly don't get where this level of defensiveness is coming from. X-Men has its better moments, especially with the few appearances by powerless mutants like the Morlocks, but mostly its metaphor is hilariously weak, like every other story that gives minorities dangerous powers.

[hiyami]

The ones we see at the forefront are the ones who have the power to fight back and stand in for their fellow mutants. And there are only a handful of mutants who are as powerful as you describe. Most aren't more dangerous than someone with a gun or a car in their hands.

It's pretty simple narration requirement...

Also, X-Men and New Mutants usually tried to have mutants around whose powers were not destructive, like Cypher. Or the kid with the snake tongue, in the movie. They were few because in combat they'd get killed right away, so most of them didn't last long in the team, but they were there.
Some were even team members, like Warpath.

Also as someone pointed out, Morlocks. For all we know, most of them are too difformed to "pass" for humans, and also their powers are often useless in fights. Caliban's power is to detect mutants.

[darkmanifest]

There may be only a few mutants with that level of power, but there aren't any real-world minorities whatsoever with the power of a gun or car that can't be separated from their physical body. That's where the metaphor breaks down; there's no percentage, small or otherwise, of gay or black people who can move things with their minds.

I know about the mutants without powers or harmless ones, but having them in the background or on the side of most of the franchise is just throwing the metaphor a bone. The trade for all the action and excitement of the X-Men is a severely weakened message. That's okay, I don't seek out a fun adventure comic for reality, but then I shouldn't be expected to equate its issues with reality. The kid with the blue tongue and all those like him are just shoehorned in there as an afterthought following the massively destructive fighting between the powerful mutants are over, to remind us "Hey, we have a deep metaphor going on here, remember?! Pay no mind to the guy with the claws for a couple of seconds."