Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

That's just racist. Like, very blatantly making up a BS rule to "justify" not having POC in your story.

 

Gaming discourse the last 10 years or so has taught me that there are two races, white and political. Two genders, male and political. Two genders, male and political.

 

I meant to include that one.

 

The P in pansexual is for politics.

Also I never got the argument that media was making people gay or whatever. If that was the case I would be gay as ****. It doesn’t make logical sense as plenty of people who are on the left of the political spectrum are still straight or are bi or pan but still end up in a straight relationship. By the logic that would mean no person would be straight. It just makes no sense. But then again the arguments don’t make sense anyway.

or maybe the gay beams from my television just made me dyslexic instead.

 

I've never forgotten the assertion made in this thread that Star Wars justifiably doesn't have that many East Asians because in the real world most live in either China or the "third world."

I mean... fricking hell. A number of people, me included, posted some glib replies in that thread that are embarrassing in retrospect, but that (completely earnest) one easily takes the cake.

 

Looks like I'm double-posting. But friends, I saw the most ridiculous, asinine, media-illiterate tweet ever and wanted to share it here. It's not about Star Wars --- and I know that we kind of made an unwritten agreement to try to keep this thread more focused on SW instead of media diversity in general, after some pretty long and far-off (if productive and worthwhile) tangents a few years back --- but hey, what the hell, eh?



Hilariously, they blocked me within the last five minutes after I posted the thousandth reply calling them out, but you all should still be able to view it and shake your heads in incredulity (check out all the doubling down in the comments). But seriously --- in the year 2024, after way too many X-Men movies that don't try at all to hide their politics, after tons of explicit confirmation from its creators that yes, it's about oppressed minority groups --- imagine having your fingers that firmly stuck in your ears.

Is this really what Giant Freakin Robot is about? It's a site I've heard about, read stuff from, and probably even linked to when making citations in some Wook Behind the Scenes sections before. But are they really, well... like this? A quick Google search indicates that yeah, maybe that IS what they are --- one of those crap sites filled with nothing "scoops" based completely on rumours, still posting takes like "Discovery isn't Star Trek!!" today...

Anyway. Anyone been watching X-Men '97? Or any other shows or movies that deserve a shout-out in this thread?

 

My issue with X-Men isn't that it is an allegory for oppressed minority groups, I actually like that about the IP. My issue is that I often find said allegory clumsy and not well-written, for a lot of the same reasons True Blood is a poor allegory: when your oppressed group can (and often will) easily butcher dozens of people with their superpowers, it weakens the argument that bigotry is an irrational response fueled by nothing but hate and fear. When you have megalomaniacs like Mr. Sinister (great supervillain name notwithstanding) be an active threat to society and general well-being, then of course people are going to freak out. That's the natural response.

I guess what I'm saying is that I wish it was a little more nuanced. Oftentimes it feels like the people scared of mutants go straight to the holocaust camps and that gets a little...ridiculous.

But maybe I'm off base, what do I know?

 

Sinister is a bad example, he wasn't born a mutant. He only technically became one due to his own genetic tempering.

 

TBH I've never even heard of Giant Freakin' Robot so at the risk of sounding like an egomaniac, I'm not really surprised that it'd offer bad takes. I vaguely thought there was a site called simply Giant Robot and now I'm tempted to wonder whether this is the website equivalent of a mockbuster, but I also might just be thinking of something else.

I mean, though, there's a pretty big difference between "X-Men is not a great analogy for real-world bigotries because the metaphor doesn't hold up" and "X-Men is not an analogy for real-world bigotries at all". The latter is laughably false.

 

IMO, in the last few years in comics Sinister (originally British imperialist from the nineteenth century, by the way) had a rather interesting approach to a classic "bigoted villain" trope, himself removing the rasist part of his personality to better integrate into the new mutant society, thus by becoming even more dangerous and effective.

Spoiler

 

Fair enough, I'm not an expect in X-Men lore so that's on me.

Of course, I didn't mean to imply that I held the latter view.

 

The mutants we see in the X-stories are the ones who, most of the time, won the genetic lottery. The great majority? Likely get useless ones. "Mutant! He's going to kill us!" With what? Exploding farts? Flammable bogies?

But, turns out, superpowers are not needed for people to freak out and then kill others, blaming them for the act at the same time: "If you weren't this way, we wouldn't have to kill you, etc". Which is what is happening with trans kids and gay kids now, with no shortage of deadly precedents.

One idea running through the X-Men is we should be more than our natures.

 

Again, I didn't mean to imply that I thought otherwise.

 

X-Men also works as a gun control allegory

 

Only if you think mutants should have to register with the government and get permits to use their powers, which uh, is not usually how the stories go.

I will say that I've always believed if superpowers really existed--mutancy or otherwise--the SHRA would pass in about 5 seconds and with 90% support. But that isn't really sustainable in a universe like 616 so it's reasonable enough to disregard it. Like the fact that Reed Richards hasn't cured cancer and so on.

 

Some reeds have! They are also the ones that turn into supervillians though

Also the second episode of x men 97 has the bad buying going "you are making me evil by disagreeing with me" so it's like...not subtle

 

Lesson: the only morally sound use of superpowers is punching. Everything else is a slippery slope.

 

But in marvel the mutants aren't the only ones with powers, there are aliens (like Nova), Thor, not to mention Iron Man Tech is equal to just about any mutant, yet people don't hate them and call for their death or internment.

Which is why I think the x-men work MUCH better in a shared universe with other superpower sources.

 

I always thought that part of the reason why people feared mutants was the shear randomness of who could develop powers.

Imagine sending your kids to school only to discover that one of their classmate's mutant powers developed during second period and blows up the school.

It makes people scared of what their kids could become after seeing what happens in the news. The X-Men are meant to show people that mutants can be trusted and their mutations can be controlled with training.

At the end of the day it works better as a gun control metaphor mixed with puberty.

 

I think the reason people hate mutants so much was said recent(ish)ly in the real world "They will not replace us". Mutants are a race after all.

 

Eh, they're (almost all) still human, that's also a main point in the media.

And when it comes to mutants and the X-Men, Marvel has traditionally oversimplified (to being very misleading) on evolution. Each Mutant Gene represents a possible new branch of humanity. They're not altogether a new branch, unless it's somehow one mutant gene that's the same in all of them but shows up so differently in all of them (which is sometimes said in some versions), but really makes no sense and is just handwaved. Also all living being are equally evolved (we didn't evolve from chimpanzees, we both descend from a common ancestor, chimpanzees and homo sapiens are equally evolved -- homo sapiens, goldfish, oak trees, squid, elephants, mushrooms, and amoebas are all equally evolved -- we just adapted differently). This are common misconceptions. Other franchises like Pokemon also mislead on what evolution is actually like according to real world science.

 

The X-gene is indeed one common gene that manifests in all mutants, that's why it's called the X-gene, as in x-factor. I can't think of any source that's ever said otherwise. Does it make scientific sense? Of course not, but neither does shooting force beams out of your eyeballs.

And in any event, the scientific reality of evolution isn't even an impediment to the mentality of "they're going to replace us!" in the real world, so why should it matter in X-Men?

 

Bigotry not rational, news at 11

 

Hey guys if you ever need an example of someone who was trans and not in the 21st century. I found this cool story recently



dude named Albert Cashier served in the Union, but of course he wasn’t born a dude. He was born a women. However why this is important when it comes to trans stuff is she didn’t admit to being a women until 1915. And that was because the government was accusing him of fraud.

I love finding older stories like this from the 19th century or earlier because it shows that people like Albert Cashier have always existed. Anyone who says it’s a modern phenomenon is dumb as hell and a bigot.

it also shows that acceptance of these people isn’t a modern phenomenon either. When he was outed in 1915 his regiment friends vouched for him. The original doctor who discovered he was biologically female didn’t out him.

I know this was attached to a conversation we had almost a month ago but seeing this clip reminded me of it. So if you ever need a historical source to shove in some bigots face here you go.