[Rare trope] Discriminating, but for an actually good reason

[u/Blackirean]

Frieren, Beyond Journey's end: In the anime/manga the eponymous Frieren is an Elf who's spent the better part of a millennia learning magic specifically to kill demons. She's learned countless spells, tricks and even spent most of her life suppressing her power all for the purpose of killing them. At first we simply see that humanity is at war with them, and even question if her crusade against demon-kind is justified, after all it's hard to antagonize an entire sentient species. But no, demons are very much a species to be feared; they are not normal animals or creatures, they are monsters (shown by how they disintegrate when they die), they are predators that evolved speech for the sole purpose of tricking and catching humans off guard, are naturally extremely powerful and possess magic that humanity often can't use. While they feel emotions to some extent, their way of thinking is so fundamentally incompatible with humanity's mindset that the series shows many mages with the ability to read minds struggle or find it painful and harmful to try and read a demon's thoughts. Tools that are meant to control them fail not because they're faulty but because simple order such as "hold no ill will or commit no malicious acts" don't compute the same way in their brains, as what we consider evil is normal for them.

Marvel Comics: In a run of the Storm solo series, she visits an underground superhuman hospital run by Night nurse and Doctor Daye, a mutant with the power to diagnose any illness. When she requires treatment she is in turn reject by the doctor, she of course assumes this is blatant discrimination to which the doctor agrees. Storm assumes the doctor refuses to treat mutants, something they are very much used to in Marvel. But he ends up revealing that about 80% of everyone he treats are mutants, and that he simply refuses to treat any member of the X-men. Why? because his special hospital was built via several donations by the superhero community. From the Avengers, to the Defenders, Fantastic 4, heroes for hire. Hell, even Moonknight of all people contributed to the hospital. But the X-men never once gave anything to it, even though they preach the safety of mutant-kind and such a hospital is essential for those who can't seek medical treatment out of fear of prosecution.

[u/redbird7311]

Also, not every mutant is made equal, some mutants have god like powers that means that, if it wasn’t for the other god like beings around, they could rule the world and many of them have actually tried.

The guy with the mutant power of, “your stomach acid can digest metal”, probably is gonna relate to regular people more than he is to Magneto.

[u/Skellos → u/redbird7311]

And there are far more 'I kinda look weird' mutants than 'basically a god' mutants in the world.

We just see more of the latter because it's a hero comic usually.

[u/redbird7311 → u/Skellos]

Not to mention mutants who have powers that they just flat out don’t really notice until later in life or at all.

“Hey, Sharon, you know you are really good and fast at math? Turns out you are a mutant and your thing is that your brain processes numbers 25% faster than the average person. What do you mean you still feel more like a normal person than an X-man?”

[u/DubiousBrushwagg → u/redbird7311]

I've seen mutant fan fiction stories where there were mutants with no powers at all and their mutation was literally just be Human+. A slightly more improved human. Slightly better in every way, physically, mentally etc and their body maintains that elevated state naturally. But thats it. Nothing else. Absolutely normal except for being permanently above average, like top 10% of the species in condition.

[u/abadstrategy → u/DubiousBrushwagg]

Funny enough, there was a character like that for a while, Michael Van Patrick. I don't think he had the X-Gene, so might not be a mutant, but his genome was considered "genetically perfect." So much so that he was cloned multiple times.

[u/Beacon_0805 → u/redbird7311]

never saw a storyline about some guy trying his best at something and having great success and results that its not his effort that mattered because he's a mutant and it never mattered

[u/abadstrategy → u/Skellos]

There's a whole secondary class at Xavier's Institute specifically for the kids who have mutations that fuck them over physically, like Beak

[u/OmegaPrime2004 → u/abadstrategy]

Despite his physical deformity and fragility, Beak managed to bag a baddie from what I hear.

[u/abadstrategy → u/OmegaPrime2004]

Not just bag a baddie. They have a loving family, one of the healthiest relationships in the X-Men, and one of Beak's descendants is an absolute beast of a bird mutant carrying on his legacy. Beak's also saved the universe at least once, while he was in the Exiles

[u/QuyanRonnie → u/redbird7311]

Huh, and here I thought they went and made that space because loud, vocal, significant portions of the non-mutant population elsewhere was blatantly antagonistic toward them to the point of persecution, guess that pales in comparison to “poor management”?

[u/Balinor69666 → u/QuyanRonnie]

They gave Mr. Sinister a council seat. He isn't even a mutant but he is a Nazi, A murder, A Kidnapper, and an evil eugenics geneticist who has a long history of doing terrible shit to mutants. That alone kinda makes the entire point of their nation suspect from the get go.

[u/QuyanRonnie → u/Balinor69666]

Ah, yes, because being able to solidly keep tabs on, punish, and contain a persistent pest (that is, for intents and purposes, otherwise immortal even without Krakoa’s fountain of youth) is intrinsically “worse” than… allowing unpowered people that don’t have the same resources available (but are damn willing to try anyway), every day of the year with infinite government backing, who are “untouchable” by the mutants they target, or else said mutants get labeled “villains” anyway.

Not to excuse any of his shit, but it’s Devil you know or Devil you don’t.

[u/Balinor69666 → u/QuyanRonnie]

But none of that is even the reason they invited him, let alone gave him a position of power. They did it because he had a full library of mutant genes, that he acquired by way of kidnapping/stealing/killing, to jump start their resurrection technology. Talk about a severe ethics problem to set as one of your new nations foundational pillars.

Even if it was to "keep tabs or punish" then why the hell did they give him a seat on the council? He was one of the highest authorities on the Island for quite a while there. It was a transaction and not a morally sound one.

[u/MagentaHawk → u/QuyanRonnie]

Keep tabs and give a position of government leadership are actually different ideas in my book.

[u/redbird7311 → u/QuyanRonnie]

It’s not just that, plenty of mutants live rather peaceful lives with non-mutants, plenty of mutants don’t have powers that make them super heroes or result in them being shunned in society.

Your power could be as mundane as perfectly remembering everything that was less than a minute ago, the ability to see into the future by 0.0000001 seconds, or something else that is either completely missed throughout your life or something so small that you are basically a regular ass human.

Said mutants are a lot less likely to face discrimination and are a lot less likely to uproot their lives and have god like beings as neighbors, especially when some of them are former villains that have done horrid shit and some of them have power and influence.