X-Men and Civil Rights

[lisaquestions]

So I was thinking, earlier:

The X-Men comic book series started in 1963, featuring Professor Xavier and his five students, trying to show the world that mutants were just like everyone else by training them to be superheroes so they could fight other mutants. Specifically, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Erik Magnus Lensherr, aka Magneto (although I don't think he got a real name until much later). When humans spotted mutants, as seen in the first issue, they'd almost immediately form a mob and start attacking the mutant with whatever came to hand. I can only imagine how many times Stan Lee imagined that scene playing out and ending with a dead mutant, since most mutants at the time weren't really all that powerful - and most only had one or two powers, otherwise being fairly normal people.

The X-Men debuted the same year that Martin Luther King led a peaceful protest against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the famous letter from a Birmingham Jail. The next year, three black civil rights workers were murdered by Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

So this is the political environment that the X-Men are born in - the black civil rights movement and violence directed at it. As they mature, the gay rights movement and second wave feminism get started.

So: Why, during all this actual activism, do mutants spend so much of their time kicking each other's asses? Why does the militant, violent faction call itself the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?" Why does Professor Xavier feel that the best way to win acceptance for mutants is to train them to fight other mutants? Why don't mutants have a Stonewall?

This isn't really intended to be a criticism - comic books weren't really all that great at social relevance at the time. It's more, "what social forces would drive mutants in the midst of being massively persecuted to turn on each other and not take any cues from the civil rights struggles going on around them?"

Yes, I am a geek. I wear that label with pride.

Edit to clarify: I'm not criticizing the comic books or asserting they should have been written differently. I'm just asking: "Look at the history of civil rights. What would it look like to put the X-Men into that context on a political level?"

Also, read this page for an article highly relevant to this post.

Comments

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

Warren is doing it currently in Uncanny. He might have done it back on the original X-factor series too, but I don't remember offhand.

Hellfire Club - the old school version anyway - only cared about making more money. They are like the corporate nation states of mutants!

Early storylines about the character Dazzler might answer your last questions or at least give some insight into it.
Outing anyone - no matter what it is for - is a pretty awful thing to do IMO.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Initially, he used his money to fund X-Factor, and the political implications of a group of mutants setting up a company with the intended purpose is to rescue mutants from lynch mobs, but the likely outcome of increasing anti-mutant prejudice even more, are interesting.

And yeah, I read pretty much all of Dazzler - she was in the closet until the Movie graphic novel, which temporarily torpedoed her career and sent her to the X-Men. Is she back from MojoWorld or wherever now?

The outing thing - I think outing should never ever ever be done, but I was thinking of how gay activists did (or supposedly did) the involuntary outing thing? Would this be something mutants would do?

And the backlash from other mutants for doing it, of course - never mind the damage to people who are outed.

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

I definitely think some mutants would to advance their cause kind of in a similar queer nation way.

Have you ever heard the rumor about the time that Queer Nation activists like attacked Morrissey on stage and tried to make out with him in order to out him....
That went around when I was in junior high, but it still makes me feel like laughing at the idea of it.

Dazzler was last in the newest Excalibur, but I dropped the book from my monthly pick up list. I can not say what happened to her more recently.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about that, but it's an awesome rumor. Even though outing people is bad! Very bad!

Oh, Dazzler is back, woo.

And I think you're right. If mutants are willing to topple nations and threaten the world with nuclear destruction, some will out closeted mutants.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

You might also remember that Professor X himself was closeted for *years* in the series, and lobbied as "Hi, I'm a non-mutant intellectual expert of mutants, and I say they should have rights." And the Xavier Institute was closeted for years as a "mutant school."
...yeah.

I'm also remembering the semi-retcon that people like Magneto and Mystique named the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" ironically, as sort of a, "you'll call us evil anyway, we'll thumb our noses at you while we do it, ooh we're so scary" thing.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

True on Xavier, and I really should have talked about that. Really, the whole "Professor X = MLK and Magneto = Malcolm X" thing is problematic anyway, and this just makes it moreso.

And yeah on the naming ironically, although it's hard to be ironic when you're leading a brotherhood of evil mutants and trying to conquer nations and engaging in the occasional act of nuclear terrorism. ;) Mostly the latter more than the former.

Also, that's a really cool icon. :)