We're All Mutants

Scar tissue formed over my joints in the womb, leaving limbs that bend at unexpected angles and a gait that draws stares. The diagnosis: arthrogryposis. I'm what you might call an obvious mutant - my mutations wrote themselves across my body.

But I'm just the one you can spot from across the room. We're all mutants.

There's no factory-standard human. Nobody matches the average across all dimensions. We'd all have one testicle and one ovary if it were so. My arthrogryposis affects joint formation in about 1 in 3,000 births - same rarity as webbed toes, far less common than extra nipples (1 in 18 people!), yet only mine gets called a disability. The six-foot-six guy who can't fit in airplane seats? Height variations. The woman who tastes cilantro as soap? Taste receptor mutations. Cancer? Mutations of cells attacking our own body. Mine just happen to be visible from birth.

Evolution is random experimentation. There is no route to perfection. Every human trait was once a mutation. Blue eyes emerged 10,000 years ago. Adult lactose tolerance appeared over the last 7,000 years. Pale skin developed in populations far from the equator. These weren't improvements but trade-offs: pale skin aids vitamin D synthesis but increases cancer risk. Sickle cell protects against malaria but causes painful crises.

The racist interpretation of human variation gets the biology catastrophically wrong. Even Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, couldn't escape his own data. In the attempt to prove pedigree, he discovered regression to the mean instead: tall parents have shorter children, and short parents have taller ones. He titled his results accurately, "Regression Towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature," a finding that fundamentally undermined the very ideology of a genetically superior class.

Human genetic diversity is highest within populations, not between them. Any two Norwegians are likely more genetically different from each other than a typical Norwegian is from a typical Nigerian. Every population carries mutations - Europeans for cystic fibrosis, Africans for sickle cell, Asians affecting alcohol metabolism. None confer superiority.

This misreading of genetics has become a toxic rallying cry fracturing even its own adherents. When your ideology requires constantly policing who's genetically 'pure' enough, you end up eating your own, as recent political implosions demonstrate. Movements built on genetic superiority collapse into infighting over who qualifies - because the categories were always fiction.

The mutations affecting appearance - skin color, facial features - are trivial compared to our genetic commonality. We all share the same capacity for language, need for connection, vulnerability to disease. Supremacists confuse "different" with "better," imagining evolution as a ladder when it's a sprawling bush.

My visible difference gives me particular insight into a universal truth: disability is not a separate category but a point on the spectrum of the human condition. I require specific accommodations - automatic transmission, power steering, a tool that helps with my socks - but these aren't fundamentally different from everyone else's needs.

Consider eyeglasses. Hundreds of millions have vision impairments, but we've normalized this so completely we don't call it disability. The short person needs a stool. The pale person needs sunscreen. The colleague who carries an EpiPen for her peanut allergy. The friend who pops antacids before eating anything spicier than black pepper. We all need accommodations.

We all move through different points on the variation spectrum. Everyone who lives long enough watches their biological variations surface - hearts falter, minds fog, joints fail. Disability isn't a separate category but part of the human experience.

The outsiders who created superheroes understood this. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby - Jewish kids who didn't fit mid-century America - created the X-Men, feared for their mutations, and Spider-Man, struggling with loss and making rent while saving the city. What the MBAs fail to understand is the real superpowers were never the mutations but the human struggles: integrity, resilience, sacrifice.

Walking down the street, I'm surrounded by mutations. The couple with dramatic height difference. The redhead at the bus stop. The jogger with unusual oxygen processing. Some visible, others hidden. Some common enough we call them normal, others rare enough we call them disabilities.

Our mutations aren't flaws but the raw material of human adaptability. They allowed our ancestors to spread across every environment, survive diseases, develop new capabilities. My arthrogryposis is part of that experiment.

We're wildly different, each carrying unique combinations of mutations. But these differences don't create hierarchy. Viewing ourselves as a collective of mutants is a biological truth. Diversity is the byproduct.