| abstract | - However, if you want to get more in depth as to WHY mutants offend people but other augments don't, it still makes sense. First of all, not every augmented human is loved. Spider-Man's PR is generally very mixed. A lot of people like him and a lot of people hate him. And a lot of dialogue suggests that many if not most people assume that he is a mutant because his origin story isn't common knowledge. Likewise, The Hulk is almost universally feared and Daredevil is considered to be shady and dangerous. So, there are a lot of augments who meet just as much fear and distrust as mutants. Now look at the augments who are loved. Primarily the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. In the case of the Fantastic Four, Reed Richards and his family were well known in the scientific community and highly respected by the public long before they received powers. From the common person's perspective, it was a great man and his family who, through a fluke, received amazing powers. A true testament to the wonders of science. And The Avengers (at least the core team) are made up of: A scientist who intentionally gave himself and his wife powers, a scientist who built himself a powerful suit, a GOD (who's godhood is not universally believed in the MU, with most people who think he's human believing his power still comes from his hammer, i/e TECHNOLOGY), and a beloved war hero who was intentionally given powers by the government. They're exactly the kind of people who would be loved by the public, and they all have two very important things in common (except for Thor, but we're talking about the public perception of him here): They all used to be normal people, and they received powers in controlled, artificial circumstances. And these two things mitigate the main reason why people would be bigoted towards mutants. A sense of otherness. People don't hate mutants because they hate super powers on principal. That's not how bigotry works. They hate mutants because they're different, separate from the human race by some measure, because they're unknown and mysterious, and because that unknown represents a possible danger we're not prepared for. Augmented humans don't represent that because, not that long ago, they were exactly like everyone else. They're not something that's been apart from humanity since birth, they're humans that were altered through circumstances. And there is less of an unseen, unknown threat element with augments. The majority of the super heroes I listed got their powers on purpose. They were people of great intelligence and will who chose to become super humans, often with the consent of the government. Many super heroes, in the Marvel universe at least, got their powers intentionally. And even those that didn't got them in very rare circumstances usually involving some kind of advanced technology. This technology can, through law, be controlled and regulated, kept as safe and as far from those who would misuse it as possible, and most cases of people getting powers unintentionally are usually chalked up to accidents that were beyond anyone's control to prevent. But you can't control how a person is born. The X-Gene seems to be some freaky kind of recessive, showing up and then disappearing in family lines almost randomly. You don't know who's going to be born a mutant. The person wielding phenomenal cosmic power isn't a respected super scientist acting on behalf of Uncle Sam, and it isn't some poor schmuck who was caught in an incredibly rare accident that's usually prevented. It's an eight year old girl who's prone to temper tantrums, and there is absolutely no way to prevent that from happening. That kind of thing is absolutely terrifying. Technology and resources to create super humans can be contained, rationed to those who would use it wisely. But the X-Gene is loose in the world, and the average baseline human is powerless to stop the likes of Proteus, Sabertooth, and Apocalypse from coming to be. That's why the citizens of the MU hate and fear Mutants, on average, more than they do augmented humans. Because if you take humanity out of the equation, if you ignore the fact that these people are humans with their own lives and hopes and dreams and just view everyone involved as mere statistics, then Mutants are much more frightening than augmented humans.
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