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

[drakyn.livejournal.com]

Hmm, warning you: I've only read some comics of the various xmen series, as well as the recent movies, and the xmen: evolution cartoons.

One possible reason is Xavier's idealism; Showing humans that not all mutants are evil and some will even fight for you instead of against you is sure to win some points. Even though it doesn't change the view of mutants as fighters/killers. *rolls eyes*
One would also hope there was less dramatic, more useful activism going on behind the scenes of the comics; but then again, if it isn't shown in the source it isn't strictly canon.

And of course, Erik decided that the best defense is a good offense.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Right, but I can't help but think there were more forces at work than just "Erik's so pissed off at the Shoah that he wants revenge for that and preemptive strikes to save mutantkind from the same."

And also, yes, the entire point of Xavier's X-Men was showing that not all mutants were bad and some would fight to defend humanity - although this was hardly ever portrayed as effective. Once the X-Men defeated an enemy, they'd get verbal abuse until they went away. And of course the abusers were safe because the X-Men were fundamentally the good guys, and even threatening them would be inflated into more anti-mutant sentiment.

And yeah, I didn't mention it in my post, but the vast majority of mutants are closeted. It's considered unusual that Warren Worthington III is out in the open as a mutant, and he's largely shielded by his rich white maleness, and you see very little actual activism, lobbying, and the like.

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

Warren is the bucks behind the scenes. He does his activism with his checkbook like all high powered white dudes who don't believe in being the face of a movement but the force in the shadows.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

That's totally reasonable, and I think it's something he would do. I can't remember if he ever actually did it?

I'm also thinking of stuff like how Shaw Industries supplied Project: Wideawake with sentinels and just what the Hellfire Club did or whether they cared about civil rights, or just preferred the closet.

Also: Would mutants try to out closeted prominent mutants to increase visibility? Or is being a mutant so dangerous that it'd be a really awful thing to do?

[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. :)

[drakyn.livejournal.com]

Outing sounds like something Magneto would do imo. Since he wouldn't care if the prominent mutant got killed because they should have either been helping mutantkind and/or out already and therefore were betraying mutantkind.

I happen to think that the Institute/refuge of Xavier's school is a good idea. And Grey did some lobbying in the first movie. Also, would Mystique pretending to be Kelly be considered lobbying? honestly, Magneto should have kept her there until she either got found out or voted out. She could have been incredibly useful in many, many ways.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

True - a lot of the stuff I'm talking about actually did eventually happen on some level later in the series, the cartoons, and the movies. And yes, Magneto should have had Mystique stay there as long as possible.

The impetus for this was thinking about the start of the X-Men, right in the middle of desegregation and the Civil Rights Act and the formation of an actual effective civil rights movement - or rather, overlapping movements - that have served as the model for activism ever since. And that in the midst of all this, we get a comic book that's really about a marginalized group (with superpowers) that's also facing these struggles, but the story doesn't really go there so much, and the later stories aren't written in that context.

And now, of course, I think the current timeline is that everything's happened in the past 10 years? So Xavier founded the X-Men in 1998, which excises all of that.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Actually... I don't know about expendability. The Magneto in X3 would, but he wasn't really the same Magneto as in the first two movies. Yes, he was going to sacrifice Rogue, and that was wrong, I think that he largely views mutants as more important than humans, whatever their circumstance. Of course, this is situational, and you put a mutant like Rogue in front of him when he has a mutant-making machine that'd kill him to use at full power, and he'll take the opportunity.

That's not to say he wouldn't out anyone. His politics are pretty radical, to say the least. I think he's primarily focused on winning the war before humanity starts it.

Which puts another angle on it - this belief by the extremists on both sides that mutants and humans are on a collision course for war, and the FUD that would cause.

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

The Hellfire Club is in the position of Quentin Crisp's "stately old homos", more or less - they have their position in the very upper tiers of society, where overall group solidarity means pitching in when it's time to keep the unhappy masses at bay, and applying the "don't frighten the horses" standard.

I haven't seen Iron Man yet, but the "this isn't the strangest thing you've waked in to find me doing" line nails it precisely. Protect the class, and everyone else will pretend either that they don't know what you're up to or that they aren't bothered.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Good points. I never really saw the Hellfire Club as caring much about mutant liberation - they had as much power and privilege as anyone could have before you throw in superpowers.

I need to write a followup post.

Oh, when I said "both sides" above, I meant humans and mutants, not Xavier's mutants and Magneto's mutants. Just to be clear.

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

A good use of "useful activism" in regards to any of the X-books can be seen in X-Factor Layla Miller that came out last week.
I don't want to spoil the plot, but I thought/think it was awesome in regards to social justice politics.

ETA: and activism/political action

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

I'll check that out - thanks. :)

Also, thank you for the links in your earlier comment.