#mutants are a metaphor
People ask why I like the X-Men so much. Shit like this.
Stan Lee made X-Men to address all the social issue through his passion: comics. That’s why X-Men is generally independent from his others works. Professor X represented Martin Luther King Jr while Magneto represented Malcom X. When the mutants were forced to register as mutants, that represented the Jews being forced to wear the Star of David. He even addressed gay rights. There was a disease that was spreading rapidly. It was believed by the general public to be mutant-based disease. Incredible hostility towards mutants was a result of the disease. This represented the AIDS outbreak in the 80s that was believed to be a “gay disease”. There are tons more.
To be fair, when Stan Lee wrote the X-Men they were a pretty typical super hero team. Girls were fawning over Angel, the army were happy to see them come in and save the day, all that stuff. It wasn’t until much later that the whole ‘hated and feared’ thing came about. Same with the Martin Luther King/Malcolm X parallels. And the 'gay disease’ that you mentioned, the Legacy Virus, didn’t come start until the early 90s, and by then Stan was long gone.
