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Confused Florida legislator compares trans people to X-Men as if that's a bad thing [1]

['Thom Dunn']

Date: 2023-04-12

On Tuesday, April 11, Florida State Representative Webster Barnaby was discussing the state's most recent pending bathroom bill aimed at oppressing trans people for absolutely no reason with any basic grounding in reality. To explain his support for the bill, he cited … the X-Men. You know, that popular comic book franchise about a group of people who are demonized by society for being different, but still insist on using the things that make them different to help the people who fear and hate them.

To be clear, Rep. Barnaby intended this comparison as a pejorative.

Florida Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby directly compared trans people to mutants in X-Men and called the trans people, including children, present in the room "demons and imps."



This was during debate for HB1421 that would criminalize trans people using bathrooms. pic.twitter.com/y5VsCKeAfJ — Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) April 10, 2023

I'm looking at society today, and it's like I'm watching an X-Men movie. It's like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Rep. Barnaby did then clarify that the mutant-like trans community are also "demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world." For it's worth, he almost immediately apologized for the demon part — though the X-Men comparison remained curiously on the record, with Baranaby seeming completely unaware of how he pretty much just quoted the villains from the one of the most famous X-Men stories of all time.

Of course, as Jake Kleinman at Inverse noted back in 2020, the hate-mongering anti-mutant politician Senator Kelly as he appeared in the X-Men movies has long been viewed as a hero by some real-life politicians — to the point that the actor who portrayed the character was often sent to schmooze with those politicians on behalf of Hollywood lobbyists.



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