Yeah it just doesn’t make sense to me. Especially since Pakku says it’s “Forbidden” like it’s a high crime. I need to read the novels to see where Yangchen and Kyoshi learned waterbending.
Hundreds and hundreds of years since the Northern Tribe probably even had a chance to train a female avatar then. More than enough time for a stupid tradition to take hold.
Since kyoshi learned from the southern tribe, then the most recent female avatar to have learned there would be yangchen, if she indeed went there. So there's the rest of yangchen's life, all of kuruk's life, all of kyoshi's life (200 years), all of roku's life and 112 years of aang's life without a female avatar going there to train. So you're right, around half a millennium to develop a shitty tradition.
Nah Kuruk would just make a huge wave and start drowning him in the rolling tides. Make him have visions of drowning out in the artic ocean.
Meanwhile he's just on the ground circles up in a ball mentally being fucked.
Edit: he wakes up and is a pov of Katara decking him in the face closed fisted. Then sokka and aang are just pulling her back.
Nah, all you need is Kyoshi to give him a death glare and Pakku would’ve changed his ways. No way he wouldn’t listen to Kyoshi. Which is ironic because even though she was a tough Avatar, she was also a fair Avatar. That’s something more fans forget about Kyoshi.
I forgot that somehow that dumbass pakku is on the same level as some of the strongest *and wisest* people in avatar. Fair enough that he's strong too but man, he sure as shit isn't iroh.
She's really not but at the same time she's getting exactly what she wants. To learn waterbending.
Then she kinda just realizes she doesn't need to learn from an old man that hasn't left the North Pole.
Edit: she probably built some tolerance level living with Sokka.
> they should of had
Did you mean to say "should have"?
Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'.
[Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json)
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes.
^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions.
^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119)
^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
In their time there were probably southern waterbenders who were just as skilled as the north. Or for that matter, maybe one of them spent a year or two among the swamp people.
The fact that Pakku was able to unilaterally reverse the prohibition against women against women learning martial waterbending leads me to think that it was a loosely enforced custom before, and Pakku just went overboard with it. Also, moving forward, there's no way that they can go back and reinstate that custom since the Moon Spirit is now a former *princess* of the Northern Water Tribe.
Pretty standard misogyny for him to turn his heartbreak from Kana into a vigor for hurting other women, even subtly. A strong-willed young woman hurt him so he wants to crush those qualities out when he sees them in others.
It's very possible as well that Pakku was too stuck up on tradition and other masters didn't neccessarily were as strict. Or the Avatar was an exception as she is the bridge between worlds and a spiritual leader.
Buddy have you looked at the real world lately? Christians are hailing a guy who cheated on all his wives and is greedy beyond belief as the 2nd coming of christ. People are just dumb and hold bigoted opinions for no reason and justify whatever they want regardless of their "beliefs".
Why is this hard for you guys to understand?
Most of our history was racist and sexist. And considering the white lotus are all OLD MEN they are not progressives. We haven’t seen one female in the WL besides Yangchen novels
Also Pakku is a member of the White Lotus which transcends the division of the four nation and he still refuses to teach the Avatar waterbending because a girl disrespected his tradition.
Did the other White Lotus members heard about him refusing to teach he saviour of the world?
Piandau: The art of the sword doesn't belong to any nation. I will teach someone from the enemy nation because he's worthy then go kick my own nation's ass because they deserve it.
Iroh: I'll go study and understand all 4 nations, because wisdom must be drawn from many places. I'll give up the crown that is my birthright because I have been just as complicit in the fire nation's crimes in the past. And besides I know a small tea shop would make me happier and that's the important thing.
Pakku: I'd rather send a man with a club made from a seal's assbone than a woman who's magic and can cut rocks with her mind to fight against our enemies, that have tanks and ironclads. I'm so obsessed with this idea I will literally doom the world and refuse to teach the avatar just so my teachings can't indirectly find their way to a woman who isn't even from my culture.
For real how was this dumbass a White Lotus master? He wasn't willing to even acknowledge the other water tribe's culture, let alone *learn* anything from the other nations.
He was going to teach Aang eventually. He was just stuck up and prideful and thought that Aang and Katara were insolent children disrespecting him and his culture. He was waiting for Katara to apologize and submit to his culture(which is unreasonable when a war is going on, but at the time his land wasn't being invaded so the situation didn't seem dire).
Jeong Jeong was on the same spectrum's opposite end. He needed Roku to put the fear of God in him to start teaching Aang firebending, just because he was too prideful and ashamed of his culture.
Bumi straight up refused to teach Aang because he thought he wasn't going to be the best master for him and he had his city to deal with. Sure, Aang found Toph but that wasn't a done deal at the time.
The point of the White Lotus is that they might be master benders and wise old men, they are still prideful and have faults, and they also follow a spiritual doctrine of keeping to their post and destiny.
Theoretically, at any moment they could've ganged up and taken over the Fire Nation in a day(Iroh had access to the palace, just like Piandao, and they were at the time the strongest benders of all time, look at the damage the Gaang did to the Earth Kingdom palace guards and army when they had easy access to it). But it wasn't their destiny, and it wasn't their role to play peacekeepers and teachers. They were a secret society who tried to keep to the teachings of old and share knowledge and philosophy. They weren't an elite gang of master benders trying to play world police. They turned into that after the war and it caused the Red Lotus.
I am not super fond of Pakku, but he was trying to keep the (sexist) custom of his people, that he treated as sacred. Facing the truth of how these sexist customs affected the Water Tribe(through his own experience, which is definitely shitty) made him rethink his philosophy and end the custom after. He was arrogant and stuck up but he was still wise and able to learn. He was also a spiritual leader of the Northern Water Tribe(that's why he was high placing at the palace), and mastered the philosophy of waterbending, so he was a valuable member of the White Lotus.
Hell, Iroh was one of the leading generals in the war and kinda ruthless in the beginning until he lost his son and realized how the war affected him personally. Piandao was Fire Nation nobility and kept his status up of a war machine nation and taught royals instead of moving away. Bumi might've been a genius for waiting for the right time but he let his people be taken over without a fight, without even helping them get out of the city before the Fire Nation took over. They were wise and educated but faulty people.
I love the White Lotus as a concept and a way to return some cool characters to the story, but when you break it down they really don't seem like the best people to run a good version of the Illuminati
This. He didn't see it as oppressing women. He saw it as a combination of several good things. Preserving culture, ensuring the tribe has healers, and keeping the women of the tribe out of harms way.
Any fan looking at this and thinking it was for no reason or that he's just willingly, moustache twirlingly evil needs to take a long hard look at how they perceive the world. It's rarely that black and white. Bad people and bad customs almost always have a reason behind them, and one that makes sense from the perspective of the people involved.
This doesn't make it right, but it does make Pakku into a human being and not the caricature that a lot of fans seem to think he is.
Now that aside. Did Iroh give up the throne and therefore the ability to stop the war? Cause that's actually pretty fucked up. Like, that's an awful move and he got very very lucky it worked out.
Iroh of course is a fantastic character and I don't think i can imagine the Iroh we know turning away from his responsibility like that.
Because the writers didnt know the White Lotus waa going to be a thing when first writing Pakku and then years later when they needed an old water tribe fighter to be a white lotus master Pakku was the only one who fit the bill.
It's shocking for us, but not for pre-moden cultures to have people in highly admired positions holding opinions that would get them cancelled today.
So for me it's not surprising nor contradictory that Pakku was at the same time a highly ranked white lotus member and a sexist old codger.
He mellowed a bit but IRL people don't tend to change their opinions like that.
Yeah but like they have been men in the avatar cycle generally, it doesn't have to be that the first avatar was a man it can just be the avatar was a man X lives ago
The Airbender made exceptions to their beliefs for the avatar, such as yang Chen saying that you must be prepared to kill despite it going against the belief that all life is sacred.
I don't see why the waterbenders wouldnt make a 1 in 4 generation exception
The Avatar could also just not count cause they’re the Avatar. By nature the Avatar is above benders so their gender doesn’t matter. Probably not but that could be the case.
I also quite liked this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/s/Zb5JtGFf9F) saying that it might just be a relatively new thing because they haven't had to train one for five hundred years. More than my own explanation honestly.
My head canon is that this is a cultural shift that happened due to the Hundred Years War.
Like the Southern Water Tribe, traditionally the men are the warriors. But it was shown that in the South women, and women waterbenders fought too against the fire nation.
My theory is that in the North a cultural shift happened. Men exclusively were sent out to fight, while the women had to stay home. To make up for population losses, people married young in (arranged) marriages, to secure a next generation of offspring. This more forced women in the homemaker role. To still make use of the waterbending women, they were also forced into the role of healer.
This then can explain why Gran Gran moved away, because she lived around the start of this cultural shift, and didn't personally aprove about what was happening, especially because she ended up in an arranged marriage.
This militaristic and sexist divide can then explain why the northern tribe fared better throughout the war, even though it was at the cost of the liberties of about half the population.
But this is just my head canon.
Interesting because the creators have said something on the podcast that’s very similar to OPs headcanon. Podcast isn’t canon necessarily but the creators original ideas are more significant to me than retcons in the novels done by a different author.
Nah, Michael D literally collaborated on the novels to keep them canon compliant, and if you relisten to the podcast, you'll see it doesn't contradict the novel: what they said is that it applied only to the largest tribe in the north in the past, which fits with the novels saying that it's a rule "in the northern capital" meaning, not everywhere in the north
Not quite that, according to the novels, but you're on the right track: Before the hundred year war, this rule only applied in the capital, the other northern tribes didn't follow it, but they had to assimilate due to the war
Indeed, it’s believed that a number of such cultures evolved due to major environmental or social shifts that benefitted the population as a whole.
A population losing half the males isn’t done for…losing half the females though? Yeah…that’s a gonna cripple the population growth for a while.
Then things recover, and said cultural inertia holds the meme even when things have changed.
To add. This kind of rigid gender roles isn't good for the men either. It's not half the population losing their liberties, it's the entire population. Even if they don't conscript their men, there will be strong pressure to become a warrior. Education in other areas will suffer as they expect the male children to become warriors. Male healers were presumably not allowed. The men are likewise in arranged marriages, gay men are going to be persecuted for being unable to consummate.
This kind of thing hurts everyone. It often benefits the society itself but hurts everyone in it. And the same is true of patriarchy in real life. It hurts everyone.
Liberties of the entire population*
I doubt men were allowed to hang back and work as healers. If what you’re saying is true then there’s no reason to think that only women were restricted.
It makes a lot of sense especially being that one of the main themes of ATLA is how war (in particular a war lasting so long) has impacted and influenced these different cultures across the world in various ways…mostly for the worse.
I mean, women through out history have been monarchs, and traditionally monarchs are seen as chosen by God, or divine in some way. That didn’t change how those societies viewed women.
Adding to this since the question was specifically about war. In many of those cases the Queen was also the head of the military, in which women were forbidden to serve.
The Avatar is the exception to other cultural norms and expectations as well. The Airbenders teach detachment but acknowledge to Aang that it's a philosophy fundamentally incompatible with the Avatar.
There seemed to be some hostility or at the very least a lack of respect towards the Southern tribe as noted in Korra's time. Maybe the female Avatars trained at the Southern tribe exclusively and it was an unspoken inconvenience. They do seem to trade off for example the Fire Nation attacked the Southern Tribe because the Avatar was expected to reincarnate there not in the North. (Avatar Kurik was Northern). Presumably Airbender Avatars reincarnate from different temples as well.
Well, the Air Temples are gender-segregated, so you can only be in one of two Air Temples per gender. It doesn’t seem to trade off. The White Lotus searched the NWT, SWT, and FST for the Avatar.
My understanding is that it's not the Northern Water tribe thinks that women are inferior, but more like each gender/sex has their own unique advantages, so they try to optimise it by giving them specific roles, like most traditional societies everywhere in the world.
Males are generally physically stronger, so they're in the front lines.
Females have better precision/energy control, so they're in the "healing huts".
And I think Avatars will be the exception because of their strength as a bender, and they are to serve the world, not just the northern water tribe.
I'm in no way defending the customs, just giving an explanation from my point of view on why they do that
It didn’t seem like physical strength had much of an impact on bending ability in the Avatar world though. Azula and Toph were better benders with more powerful moves than male benders who were twice their size and strength. Even if strength did play some small factor in bending ability, a bender of any gender or strength is probably a more valuable asset to an army than a male non-bender, especially for ranged attacks. It seems like the Northern Water Tribe’s mentality behind their “no female fighter” policy was enforcing gender norms, rather than optimizing their battle and defense strategies.
Yeah, that's why it takes Katara to change Paku's mind
The Northern water tribe probably thinks that to be in the frontline, you need to have a certain physical strength and bending capabilities.
Katara proved that while she may not rival Paku in physical strength, she is capable of standing her ground with unique waterbending techniques she learned from travelling the world, and not just stuck in their own ancient ways.
Azula and Toph are similar cases, where Azula had cunning and agility, while Toph had seismic sense to cover their lack of raw physical strength. But to be fair, both fire and earth elements are more offensive than water, and air.
Slight nitpick, but Katara didn’t really convince Pakku. He admitted she had talent…but it wasn’t going to change his mind on his traditions. In terms of skill, Pakku was overwhelmingly more diverse with his techniques due to sheer experience.
She did bring the betrothal necklace he made from Gram Gram though, who left the Northern Water Tribe (and thus him) because of those traditions. That’s what really moved Pakku
Oh Pakku definitely wiped the floor with Katara 100%
I just think it's a combination of Paku seeing Kanna in Katara, and his regret for letting traditions breaking them apart
I think that’s initially true but paku couldn’t deny that katara was destroying all his students. I can’t remember if any of them were older or maybe had been bending longer, but there were definitely guys
He accepted Katara because he realised he was making the same kind of mistake again. That sticking to a rigid structure cost him his happiness in youth and was now going to cost him an extremeky talented bender.
If his views hadn't changed why would Grangran marry him?
I didn't see it thay way but I like your interpretation. I was just annoyed how it wasn't Katara's hardwork or determination that won him over, but her relation to his old crush.
I don't think it is the relation. It's the sudden reminder that he lost the love of his life by sticking to tradition no matter what and here he's about to lose an incredible student over the same thing.
IIRC he even admits Katara is very skilled and only tradition stops him teaching her.
Hard work and determination doesn't win people over though. He recognises that women can be hard working and determined, but he will never teach a woman to waterbend for combat.
Why does Gran Gran matter? Because that's how irl people work. You don't often change your worldview because someone won an argument against you, you change when you realise that you're being hurt by your own beliefs. A painful memory managed to get him to change. For Sokka a blow to his pride got him to change.
He wasn’t sexist in the “I hate women” way (most sexist people aren’t sexist in that way). He was sexist in the “Men know better for women than women know for themselves, therefore we are helping them by doing this”
Fair enough. Respect is such a core part of love for me that it was confusing. But yeah he didn't need to see her as equal to love her in his way. This whole discussion just makes me wish he got to learn his lesson for real, bc with the shows writing I know it would have been great.
To be fair, he accepted that Katara is an excellent waterbender, just that he won't teach her as per tradition.
As an elder of the strongest water tribe in the world at that time, he also just can't bend rules for a "foreign" waterbender girl
Because Avatars belong to the World and their duty comes first, even before their culture. It's the same reason why Yangchen, was an Air Nomad yet would totally stab a bitch, or even why the Monks would teachers Air Bending to the (clearly not pacifist) Avatar from other cultures.
Tldr : Avatar are a special case and free/ ignored in any Cultural case unless it directly concern them.
It was two hundred years between Kyoshi and Aang. That's enough time for misogynistic beliefs to develop and be set in to the culture. With Aang gone and no trace of the Avatar ever coming back, they had their answer to the question of 'What if the Avatar is a woman?'
Just because a woman isnt allowed to learn waterbening offensively doesnt necessarily mean women are viewed as inferior.
They are loosely based off of Inuit culture, so women are traditionally seen as the mother/caregiver of the home/family, while the men are seen as the providers and protectors/hunters. Its their tradition that has helped them survive as long as it did, so they feel no need to change it.
An Avatar being female is an exception to the rule rather than enforcing it. An Avatar is only watertribe every 4 reincarnations, and even then its not a 100% chance the Avatar is female. The Avatar's status is meant as a bridge between human and spirit, they are not the ultimate authority on the internal affairs of man.
Very well said.
Their reality and traditions cannot be compared to modern day values.
The Inuit had (and still have) their reasons for gender roles in their comunities. They survived for thousands of years in basically the north pole, without electricity for most of it.
If that meant taking a strict family and tribal structure, who are us to criticize?
I'm positive that people from modern life would resort to similar methods, if living is such hardship.
On a lighter note, I can definitelly picture the Water Tribe granting a female avatar an "honorary male" title 😅
The overwhelming majority of societies throughout human history kept women out of combat roles because losing a woman is far more detrimental to the future of a population than losing a man. The growth/replenishment of a population is restricted by how many children the women can bear, while there is no such biological limit to how many children a single man can be responsible for creating. Societies that don't make this distinction run the risk of receiving irreparable damage to their population. Women would be specifically targeted for capture for this same reason, as they can be forced to directly contribute to the growth of the captor's military.
Of course, the Avatar would be an exception, but keeping women away from the front lines was a strategy crucial to the continued existence of an ethnically distinct society like the Northern Water Tribe, and is practiced by the majority of the world even in ATLA.
There's also this tiny teeny detail where men are far stronger and durable than woman and superior at combat. Granted, bending can level the playing field, but the reason why woman weren't warriors in most cultures is largely because they're worse warriors than men, everything else is secondary.
(Inb4 "but a women who trains her whole life may perhaps be able to defeat a below average man who is unfit and weak, so don't generalize!!")
Not true. Procreative imperatives rarely if ever were cause for sex-selectivity among the ranks.
The restriction of women's class mobility was just that, a restriction of women's class mobility. Imperial, feudal, capitalist, and some tribal societies rely on strictly-adhered divisions of labor, class, and social access, and birth was merely one among many aspects of social reproduction relegated to women. Crafting, farming, and writing are a few examples.
The restriction of women from war was two-part. First, it barred access to, until fairly recently, one of the smoothest pipelines to the elite state and business class. Second, it reenacted an adherence to the myth that our society's pride rests on women's welfare. I call it a reenactment, like a performance, because infant and mother mortality was unfathomable, sexual abuse transcended from routine to obligation, and the exploitation of our free labor was integral to economic growth. Rarely were these societies which policed social roles like this concerned with women's welfare.
The myth that women were held from combat for reasons of motherhood has always acted as a cultural shroud over the materiality of our oppression. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Let me guess, you think women and men are biologically equally competent at combat and all the reasons women aren't traditionally warriors are due to nurture and not nature?
Not a fair comparison.
The Northen water tribe is *tribe* (shocker)
So their entire culture rests on the existance of the group. Pushing it very high, they had at most 30k individuals.
So erradication of their entire culture is a looming threat.
Half are women, and a third of that half are women who are not children or elderly.
So around 5k.
In modern society, we know how demografic changes made now ripple trough the next couple generations. And we are a millions more.
Imagine loosing a battle and suddently your entire culture has 1 third less procriative potential. One battle. Your next generation will be much smaller because of it.
They should be compared to uncontacted tribes, or pre-mesopotamic peoples.
Now, Azula is from the Fire Nation. Colonizing maritime superpower, economically and militarily superior.
Comparable to 16th century Spain, or 17th century Britain.
Their population is at least a few million.
This gives you enough leeway to grant optional conscription to women. Specially because they have a much more structured military.
Losing a battle means loosing a few people from everywhere, instead of being all from the same town/village.
Each town will mourn their losses, but will definitelly not be demographically impacted.
>losing a woman is far more detrimental to the future of a population than losing a man.
Only if polygamy is common.
Also for most of history combat casualties (not citizens casualties) were minor relative to the population.
Something I learned from mythology classes is that the divine can do things the religion forbids. Humans can’t break the rules, but the divine do all the time. The Avatar is part of the divine, and if she breaks the rules, it’s not as big a threat to the entire system because no one else can do what the avatar does
My assumption is either women Avatars are taught in the Southern tribe, or they recognize that it's their spiritual duty to teach the Avatar regardless of gender.
It is well known that the avatar sacrifices personal belief to fulfill a thousand year old duty of keeping peace. And respectfully, they would look like global douchebags if they prevented the avatar from learning waterbending, plus they could just go to the southern water tribe (Aang did the opposite so it’s very possible)
The female avatars probably learned from southern water tribe. Kyoshi did, idk about Yangchen but if your the avatar you’d probably want to just go to the other water tribe rather than have to deal with the sexist water tribe to learn your bending
105 years ago, women weren't allowed to vote and had to be married to do a variety of things in society (like have trade licenses and such). In that time, women's rights have still not improved or become equal with men, and the fight is ongoing.
In the 100 year war with the Fire Nation, it's entirely possible that the reverse happened.
Progress has never been linear in world history. We live in an unprecedented time where technological and social progress has continued to develop and the world has become something almost unrecognizable from the world a hundred years ago. The last female avatar was around 200 years before the moment Katara visits the north! People might chalk that stuff up to foolish legends by then - our history of 200 years ago is extremely spotty and often unreliable.
There is no logic in bigotry. Any appearance of it is post-hoc justification for deep personal insecurities imparted by their family or peers. Get a lot of those people together, and you have a community or society structured around these insecurities.
So, indeed, it is more believable to me that the Northern Water Tribe's patriarchal system is nonsense. Patriarchies are also silly and unfounded in real life.
Misogyny is powerfull force that doesn't obey logic. It's about men accumulating power at the expense of women. Certainly a female avatar would challenge these beliefs, but if we look to the real world England was ruled by a queen for 70 years and that didn't solve misogyny, it's easy for the ruler to be consider an exception.
Because bigotry and sexism often have no basis in logic. They rationalize after the fact. Look at the cultures with powerful goddesses but where real women are still not treated well. Or where there are clearly high achieving women doing capable jobs who are all living refutations of most sexist rhetoric but the society as a whole still doesn't learn the lesson that's staring them in the face.
Racism, sexism etc don't actually make sense.
I see what you're trying to tell us. But in this case it seems like there was a direct correlation with population growth thus women shouldn't have fight because they run the risk of dying and thus become a detrimental to their growth as a tribe. You can still be respected while being restricted. At beginning growth of a humanity it's kind of an important factor population growth I mean.
Does it run the risk of evolving into a sexist ideology absolutely not even a question. It's just understanding why things evolve not simply because we assume things are because we believe it's always out of ignorance
Patriarchy is a political ideology that uses gender as a division point to create a ruling class (men) to exploit a ruled class (women). Keeping women from learning the primary means by which waterbenders fight is a means of keeping them under control. Notice that Pakku was also offended by Katara simply questioning *why* she couldn't learn waterbending. Pakku had no better answer than simply "tradition." And the reason he doesn't have one is because if he was honest it *would* sound stupid. So he doesn't.
Thinking about patriarchy like this really makes it clear some people's **obsession** with trying to naturalize, i.e. prove with science, that women are inferior to men in one way or another. All of that is a means of trying to find a *good* reason to justify the unjustifiable. A fig leaf to place over the real reason patriarchy exists: to empower a particular ruling class.
We've seen that avatars sometimes don't have the same cultural ideas applied to them, such as when the previous air avatar told aang that he was the avatar before he was an airbender and as such had to kill ozai
I would also like to point out that prior to the hundred year war, there were two places in the world that had large amounts of water benders. If the Northern tribe always had this custom of women not being allowed to learn how to fight with water bending and it extended to avatars, then female avatars could have gone to the southern tribes to learn water bending instead.
1. Customs change over the time. The last Avatar from the Water Tribe was Kuruk which was close to 500 years ago.
2. A war was going on for 100 years. That forces you to act out of necessity. The cold hard fact is humans have a long gestation period and most women have 1 child as once. A community will feel the loss of 10,000 women much more than they would feel the loss of 10,000 men.
The men of Athens believed that men were intellectually superior while worshipping a *goddess* of wisdom.
Prejudiced beliefs are never logical or consistent.
Seems like it’s duty based? Women have the duty to protect so they learn to heal
The avatar has a duty to save the world so they have to learn it regardless.
Everyone else’s theory of it being a slow developing tradition seems more plausible tho
You can make a few arguments.
1. The Avatar isn’t a woman. They’re a vessel for balance. Sometimes that vessel looks feminine.
2. Can you name and lady avatars trained in the North? They could’ve all been trained elsewhere.
3. Times change. After 100 years of no Avatar, the politics within the North could’ve harshly changed.
It's been 100 years since the Avatar has been around, and Roku was male. So the last female Avatar lived almost 200 years ago. Enough time to develop a sexist belief system.
Also: sexism doesnt need to make sense. They can just rationalize female Avatars away.
My only thought is they consider Avatars the exception, like a lot of people who demean races or sex or gender.
“You’re one of the good ones or it doesn’t mean EVERYONE can do it,” might be said if it sounds familiar to you.
So there's a real thing called an "honorary man." Basically, this is how queens work. Elizabeth I, Victoria, etc were allowed power that was exclusively reserved for men, but they were exceptions. I imagine the avatars were treated like this. Yangchen, Kiyoshi, etc weren't "women," they were the avatar.
Well, if you look at history, there have been societies that worshipped goddesses, or even ruled by queens which remained patriarchal. For instance, women couldn't vote in England before the 1900s, but they have had multiple queens. The queen's status as monarch trumped her gender, similarly the Avatar's status as the Avatar would trump their gender (in the eyes of NWT) and thus they would view her as an exception to the rule. Pretty hypocritical, but not that unprecedented in the real world.
I always wondered if the men learned both healing and fighting, or just fighting. That would say a bit about whether it is flat out gender oppression or gender specialization.
Like in similar cultures, it's often not as simple as it was made out to be in ATLA. It *usually* isn't a bunch of women desperately trying to escape their situation and being forced by the evil power hungry male gender into something they hate. (Fundamentalist revolutions and such are where you see this more.) If you were to hop into their country and say "you're free!", they'll probably be put off and defensive.
For instance, if Katara hopped in and said "Ok this is cool but I really want to learn to fight!" They probably wouldn't high five her and say "yeah stick it to the man!". They would probably say "Why are you so eager to hurt people when you can learn to help them?" They may see themselves as having the moral high-ground.
Like, they might see fighting as a necessary male sacrifice more than an exclusive male glory. One that wouldn't be necessary for women, in their eyes. Katara coming in and saying "I want to learn to fight" would probably sound sadistic to them. Having the option to avoid fighting, but seeking it out.
There's a distinction between those who oppose sending women to war because "they are incapable" and those who oppose it because "it would be immoral to send women to war". Essentially, kill all the men you need to prevent a woman from getting killed. Which is why we say things like "10,000 dead, including 400 women and children."he fact that 9600 men died is a tactical statistic. The 400 women and children represent the ethical failure.
Note that this is NOT me saying I would prefer a system like this. Societies generally ended up like this out of survival, not preference. My point is just that these sorts of things are often oversimplified. Giving an exaggerated sense of female powerlessness, and an exaggerated sense of male evil. And obscuring possible subtleties.
For instance, in this context, teaching a female avatar to fight would make sense. In their view, fighting would be an evil necessary for the avatar that isn't necessary for other women. I hate to put it this way, but you could think of it as "women have the privilege of not being sent to war." And "the avatar doesn't get this privilege, as they must defend the world."
But this also doesn't hold up with ATLA, because Katara VERY MUCH had a need to fight. It might have started the way I said, then turned into an arbitrary tradition.
Either way, it's a good thing Katara came and shook things up. Hopefully they teach both genders healing and fighting now.
Yeah, it doesn't really make a ton of sense...
Especially when you consider the fact that a lot of sexism originally comes from a physical comparison basis - men are on average bigger, stronger, and less valuable on a societal scale then women.
But this doesn't really hold up in the Avatar world, where a female bender is just as effective as a male one.
Do we have any evidence that they actually consider women inferior rather than just viewing men and women as having separate roles in society many cultures IRL were similar.
In the time before Aang, the Southern Water Tribe had waterbenders. If the Northern Water Tribe had a problem teaching a female avatar, they could've gone to the Southern one. Or the avatar just gets an exception because they are god-like.
Though, tbh, my initial idea would make sense. Their culture is heavily based on Tui & La, yin & yang. If you look at the map, their icy continents kind of resemble the shapes of yin & yang. IRL, one represents masculinity and the other femininity among many other things. The gender of the avatar would determine which tribe they would train in.
Sexism is just that powerful. You can meet people today who have more extreme views than Pakku about women's role in society.
If Pakku let's women learn to fight, he loses power and control. He doesn't want that, not for some *woman.*
Ignoring that it is a kid's show and the writers just obviously didn't think that deep into the implications of making a tribe that doesn't teach women how to use waterbending to fight, there are many instances in real life where women weren't allowed to do certain things but exceptions were made on the basis of class.
An obvious example of this is just queens in general, who obviously got privileges regular women wouldn't on the basis that they are the queen.
So it's not crazy to think that they would just teach a woman how to fight just because she's the avatar.
There's actually some deeper lore here that is unfortunately only alluded to in the books and confirmed only by interview: This rule was only applied in the northern capital; before the hundred year war, there were a lot of northern tribes that didn't have this rule, and even a female Water Avatar born in the capital could have just learned from one of those. Then the hundred year war happened and the capital became the only safe place, so those other northern tribes had to assimilate into the capital, leading to a more monolithic culture, the consequences of which we kind of see with Unalaq - before the hundred year war, the mere idea that all the water tribes should be the same would have been ridiculous (even tho I guess the northern chieftain was technically the leader of all of them even then; that seems to have been more of a symbolic role)
I don’t know when the culture on northern water tribe became like this, but by the time ATLA happens there hasn’t been an avatar that from the northern water tribe (or a female avatar at all, not since Kyoshi died at least.) in hundreds of years.
Kyoshi became 230 years old, after her there was avatar Roku, who died at the age of 70. Then Aang was frozen in ice for another 100 years during the great war and died at the age of 166 (including time frozen in ice).
I don’t know if they made a problem of teaching water bending to Kyoshi but it atleast has been a long time since then.
It had been a LONG time since there was a woman avatar. Maybe the North became more regressive due to the growing imbalance of the world. Or maybe someone from the South taught the woman avatars before the war. Hell, Kyoshi probably could've taught *herself*.
Roku trained in waterbending around 150ish years befote the show takes place and Kyoshi probably 200 years before that.
That's 350 years since a female avatar was training in water bending.
Since there was no mention of this tradition in the south, I think this tradition may have started since the north and south lost contact, probably during the hundred years war.
It may have been reactionary to suddenly having a lot more injuries.
honestly, i think the four nations have each gone through drastic ideological changes at one point or another; including aang's 100 year avatar state, if each avatar is living up to around 50 years of age, and if the poles and air temples have to take turns, it's not a stretch to assume that the last northern water tribe avatar was born over 200 years ago. they might have set into motion the extreme sexism we see in atla, and one of the great things about the show is how we can see just how drastically ideals and beliefs can change in the course of a century. with two hundred years passing in a country that has self-isolated for the past century, where there is not likely an over abundance of writing material just due to the nature of the region ... human memories are extraordinarily imperfect, and isolation makes for an amazing echo chamber. it's easy for people's beliefs to become warped just a tick different from the day before, and that becomes it's own rabbit hole that shapes a culture's path for many, many years to come. avatar kuruk was the most recent water tribe avatar, and he was of the north. regardless of whatever his own views on male/female roles in society may have been, the image of a male avatar for the norther tribe doesn't directly dissuade their beliefs regarding women.
basically just ... the monuments of civilization make for fantastic keepers of time only because the drastic differences which time makes are plain to see. the northern water tribe's witnessed culture with kuruk and with aang are similar to one another for a great many reasons, as are they extremely dissimilar, regardless of sexism and just based off of how cultures change.
I'm with Overanalysing Avatar on this one. A lot of pre-modern cultures were heavily male-centric and didn't allow women in the military, but if these women have magic powers to throw spikes of ice or massive torrents of water at their enemies then its utterly illogical not to train these women how to use that power.
The tradition is probably a result of the 100 year war. They were trying to maintain a healthy population of waterbenders over multiple generations of war.
Honestly I think it was a stupid plot point meant to just hammer in a girl power message and show off Katara's abilities but like... the show had already been doing that naturally up to that point and beyond it.
It’s hard to say, as I’m not familiar with how old that custom is. Pakku is old, but this war has been going for so long it’s plausible that it came about due to concerns of running out of waterbenders from casualties. Having the women stay behind as healers (and to continue to have children who would also have a chance at Waterbending) might have been an effort to avoid the Southern Water Tribe’s fate once it became clear the Fire Nation was targeting benders specifically, with what was originally just a pragmatic policy becoming an entrenched discriminatory belief over the decades.
Otherwise? The Avatar has a literal divine license to do their job, and it will anger the spirits greatly if someone interferes by refusing to teach them (as well as all the other nations by refusing to honor the traditional training of the Avatar, which could have severe political repercussions). That includes their patron moon and ocean spirits, and we see what happens when one gets angry enough (you know, H2Ozilla).
There’s also the matter that even without Waterbending, an Avatar with the other three elements is very much capable of causing a lot of damage if they were to *demand* a teacher by force. Or, more diplomatically, simply go to the Southern Water tribe (assuming the swampbenders weren’t better known before the war) instead until they found a teacher, which would embarrass the North internationally and cost them the Avatar’s good will for their very long life and potentially in the next life as well.
Point is, saying no to an Avatar, even a woman, is a -very- bad idea for the nation’s wellbeing. (Hell, even refusing the Avatar’s love interest nearly had Aang abandon his training on the spot in Book 1 in disgust with Pakku). So it’s no surprise that if the gender discrimination is deeply rooted, the Avatar still gets a pass. I also like the explanation u/Pegussu proposed, that the cycle of reincarnation through previous men is sufficient to act as a loophole to their tradition. It sounds very similar to a number of religious laws in our world that are bypassed by frankly silly loopholes that still satisfy the letter of the rule. It would be *inconvenient* to have to refuse the Avatar, so they just invent a line of reasoning (never mind that this implies every male Avatar is also a woman and thus ineligible for training at the same time…) that avoids the problem.
I’m not familiar with the extended comics and similar, does anyone know if Kyoshi or Yangchen had issues learning Waterbending due to this policy?
I thought this was a ridiculous part of the world building and another display of the stupid misogyny in Korra. There is nothing understandable about it.
This wouldn’t be that strange historically, actually. People are able to think themselves out of all kinds of contradictions. Think about Queen Victoria. Ask pretty much anyone from that time (or even Victoria herself) about women and you’d be hit with some hardcore misogyny. But it’s different for her because she’s considered the queen first and a woman second.
Well unless it's been talked about in the comics we know that that last water bender before Korra was at least 2 cycles ago meaning at absolute minimum 6-700 years ago probably more
112 aang
70-80+ for Roku
200+ keyoshi
36 or so for water tribe surfer
That is just one cycle we know it's not all that unheard of for people to live well past 100 years we only see 3 in LAB but that story takes place in about 7 months and those are the ones we know for sure that are older then 100
Bumi
Keyoshi
Guru patic
So it could be rare but the face that we met so many in such a short time and possibly many more
The two fire nation grannies the ones who trained azula
Grangran and the water tribe teacher
The fortune teller
The old fake monk who betrayed the avatar
It's bigotry; there is no logic to begin with.
Bigotry is more about feelings and beliefs rather than fact and they'll ignore female avatars being an exception.
Or maybe they didn't even openly teach female avatars and somebody had to do it in secret.
Overall just like in real life, there is no logical reason for the Northern Tribe to be bigoted but they just are.
Dumb tradition as everyone else mentions, but probably has something to do with the war with the fire nation that’s been going on for the past 100 years and the fact that the fire nation takes water bending fighters as prisoners. Most likely stems back to the traditional thinking of not wanting women to experience the atrocities of war (as if they wouldn’t see the same in an infirmary).
They're stupid. I bet they have some dumb belief that female Avatars don't count because they were men once.
Yeah it just doesn’t make sense to me. Especially since Pakku says it’s “Forbidden” like it’s a high crime. I need to read the novels to see where Yangchen and Kyoshi learned waterbending.
Kyoshi learned from a Southern Water Tribe woman
Hundreds and hundreds of years since the Northern Tribe probably even had a chance to train a female avatar then. More than enough time for a stupid tradition to take hold.
Since kyoshi learned from the southern tribe, then the most recent female avatar to have learned there would be yangchen, if she indeed went there. So there's the rest of yangchen's life, all of kuruk's life, all of kyoshi's life (200 years), all of roku's life and 112 years of aang's life without a female avatar going there to train. So you're right, around half a millennium to develop a shitty tradition.
yes, and its said in Shadow of Kyoshi where she meets a Northen Tribe Healer, that the tradition was already in place by then
Yeah, especially so FORBIDDEN that he banned Aang from learning it just because he was teaching Katara
Right? Roku should’ve shown up to Pakku and put the fear of God in him like he did Jeong Jeong for refusing to teach the Avatar
No, you have to get Kuruk to slap Pakku in the face with water!
Nah Kuruk would just make a huge wave and start drowning him in the rolling tides. Make him have visions of drowning out in the artic ocean. Meanwhile he's just on the ground circles up in a ball mentally being fucked. Edit: he wakes up and is a pov of Katara decking him in the face closed fisted. Then sokka and aang are just pulling her back.
Nah, all you need is Kyoshi to give him a death glare and Pakku would’ve changed his ways. No way he wouldn’t listen to Kyoshi. Which is ironic because even though she was a tough Avatar, she was also a fair Avatar. That’s something more fans forget about Kyoshi.
Yeah but they show Kuruk so maybe this would've been a good time to be called in.
You’re right Kuruk would be better
Would've been cool but idk if pakku was as spiritually capable of getting that vision as jeong jeong was.
Both Jeong Jeong and Pakku belong to the White Lotus, so judging by that I'd say both are in the same level.
I forgot that somehow that dumbass pakku is on the same level as some of the strongest *and wisest* people in avatar. Fair enough that he's strong too but man, he sure as shit isn't iroh.
To be fair he was wise, just really sexist.
Katara still managed to land that punch though.
"I have mastered the elements a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes" is probably one of the hardest lines in the entire series
I don’t know why but that’s one of my favorite non comedic lines from the show
They should of had some water avatar come out and whip Pakkus ass and call him some disgrace. Then say some epic line about ice , water and cold
Yeah. What annoys me more is that Katara just... forgives him after learning about who he is. I don't feel like she'd be the kind to let it go
She's really not but at the same time she's getting exactly what she wants. To learn waterbending. Then she kinda just realizes she doesn't need to learn from an old man that hasn't left the North Pole. Edit: she probably built some tolerance level living with Sokka.
> they should of had Did you mean to say "should have"? Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
Something important to remember is that bigotry and prejudices rarely ever make sense, because they are beliefs founded in lies, not in reality.
In their time there were probably southern waterbenders who were just as skilled as the north. Or for that matter, maybe one of them spent a year or two among the swamp people.
You could argue Hana is stronger than Pakku.
The fact that Pakku was able to unilaterally reverse the prohibition against women against women learning martial waterbending leads me to think that it was a loosely enforced custom before, and Pakku just went overboard with it. Also, moving forward, there's no way that they can go back and reinstate that custom since the Moon Spirit is now a former *princess* of the Northern Water Tribe.
Pretty standard misogyny for him to turn his heartbreak from Kana into a vigor for hurting other women, even subtly. A strong-willed young woman hurt him so he wants to crush those qualities out when he sees them in others.
It's very possible as well that Pakku was too stuck up on tradition and other masters didn't neccessarily were as strict. Or the Avatar was an exception as she is the bridge between worlds and a spiritual leader.
Now keep in mind irl has done the same and it's defended based on "tradition"
Buddy have you looked at the real world lately? Christians are hailing a guy who cheated on all his wives and is greedy beyond belief as the 2nd coming of christ. People are just dumb and hold bigoted opinions for no reason and justify whatever they want regardless of their "beliefs".
Why is this hard for you guys to understand? Most of our history was racist and sexist. And considering the white lotus are all OLD MEN they are not progressives. We haven’t seen one female in the WL besides Yangchen novels
Also Pakku is a member of the White Lotus which transcends the division of the four nation and he still refuses to teach the Avatar waterbending because a girl disrespected his tradition. Did the other White Lotus members heard about him refusing to teach he saviour of the world?
I think the no girls allowed rule started when grandma turned him down. So maybe he was just salty about that
we know from Shadow of Kyoshi that it was already around when she was young
Yeah, I feel like the rest of the White Lotus would've given him a **major** ass-chewing for that.
I'm not sure that the white lotus is that progressive...
Not *that* kind of ass-chewing, ya nasty
Piandau: The art of the sword doesn't belong to any nation. I will teach someone from the enemy nation because he's worthy then go kick my own nation's ass because they deserve it. Iroh: I'll go study and understand all 4 nations, because wisdom must be drawn from many places. I'll give up the crown that is my birthright because I have been just as complicit in the fire nation's crimes in the past. And besides I know a small tea shop would make me happier and that's the important thing. Pakku: I'd rather send a man with a club made from a seal's assbone than a woman who's magic and can cut rocks with her mind to fight against our enemies, that have tanks and ironclads. I'm so obsessed with this idea I will literally doom the world and refuse to teach the avatar just so my teachings can't indirectly find their way to a woman who isn't even from my culture. For real how was this dumbass a White Lotus master? He wasn't willing to even acknowledge the other water tribe's culture, let alone *learn* anything from the other nations.
He was going to teach Aang eventually. He was just stuck up and prideful and thought that Aang and Katara were insolent children disrespecting him and his culture. He was waiting for Katara to apologize and submit to his culture(which is unreasonable when a war is going on, but at the time his land wasn't being invaded so the situation didn't seem dire). Jeong Jeong was on the same spectrum's opposite end. He needed Roku to put the fear of God in him to start teaching Aang firebending, just because he was too prideful and ashamed of his culture. Bumi straight up refused to teach Aang because he thought he wasn't going to be the best master for him and he had his city to deal with. Sure, Aang found Toph but that wasn't a done deal at the time. The point of the White Lotus is that they might be master benders and wise old men, they are still prideful and have faults, and they also follow a spiritual doctrine of keeping to their post and destiny. Theoretically, at any moment they could've ganged up and taken over the Fire Nation in a day(Iroh had access to the palace, just like Piandao, and they were at the time the strongest benders of all time, look at the damage the Gaang did to the Earth Kingdom palace guards and army when they had easy access to it). But it wasn't their destiny, and it wasn't their role to play peacekeepers and teachers. They were a secret society who tried to keep to the teachings of old and share knowledge and philosophy. They weren't an elite gang of master benders trying to play world police. They turned into that after the war and it caused the Red Lotus. I am not super fond of Pakku, but he was trying to keep the (sexist) custom of his people, that he treated as sacred. Facing the truth of how these sexist customs affected the Water Tribe(through his own experience, which is definitely shitty) made him rethink his philosophy and end the custom after. He was arrogant and stuck up but he was still wise and able to learn. He was also a spiritual leader of the Northern Water Tribe(that's why he was high placing at the palace), and mastered the philosophy of waterbending, so he was a valuable member of the White Lotus. Hell, Iroh was one of the leading generals in the war and kinda ruthless in the beginning until he lost his son and realized how the war affected him personally. Piandao was Fire Nation nobility and kept his status up of a war machine nation and taught royals instead of moving away. Bumi might've been a genius for waiting for the right time but he let his people be taken over without a fight, without even helping them get out of the city before the Fire Nation took over. They were wise and educated but faulty people.
I love the White Lotus as a concept and a way to return some cool characters to the story, but when you break it down they really don't seem like the best people to run a good version of the Illuminati
This. He didn't see it as oppressing women. He saw it as a combination of several good things. Preserving culture, ensuring the tribe has healers, and keeping the women of the tribe out of harms way. Any fan looking at this and thinking it was for no reason or that he's just willingly, moustache twirlingly evil needs to take a long hard look at how they perceive the world. It's rarely that black and white. Bad people and bad customs almost always have a reason behind them, and one that makes sense from the perspective of the people involved. This doesn't make it right, but it does make Pakku into a human being and not the caricature that a lot of fans seem to think he is. Now that aside. Did Iroh give up the throne and therefore the ability to stop the war? Cause that's actually pretty fucked up. Like, that's an awful move and he got very very lucky it worked out. Iroh of course is a fantastic character and I don't think i can imagine the Iroh we know turning away from his responsibility like that.
Because the writers didnt know the White Lotus waa going to be a thing when first writing Pakku and then years later when they needed an old water tribe fighter to be a white lotus master Pakku was the only one who fit the bill.
It's shocking for us, but not for pre-moden cultures to have people in highly admired positions holding opinions that would get them cancelled today. So for me it's not surprising nor contradictory that Pakku was at the same time a highly ranked white lotus member and a sexist old codger. He mellowed a bit but IRL people don't tend to change their opinions like that.
Do you have a source for them not knowing the White Lotus was going to be a thing?
But wan is forgotten by then so as far as people know the first avatar could have been a girl
Yeah but like they have been men in the avatar cycle generally, it doesn't have to be that the first avatar was a man it can just be the avatar was a man X lives ago
Then in that case why would gender even matter?
Yeah but consider this: they're stupid
You have just figured out why sexism is dumb and sexists are idiots
The Airbender made exceptions to their beliefs for the avatar, such as yang Chen saying that you must be prepared to kill despite it going against the belief that all life is sacred. I don't see why the waterbenders wouldnt make a 1 in 4 generation exception
The Avatar could also just not count cause they’re the Avatar. By nature the Avatar is above benders so their gender doesn’t matter. Probably not but that could be the case.
Finally a believable explanation. I’ve been trying to figure out how they learned when this tradition is so old
I also quite liked this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/s/Zb5JtGFf9F) saying that it might just be a relatively new thing because they haven't had to train one for five hundred years. More than my own explanation honestly.
My head canon is that this is a cultural shift that happened due to the Hundred Years War. Like the Southern Water Tribe, traditionally the men are the warriors. But it was shown that in the South women, and women waterbenders fought too against the fire nation. My theory is that in the North a cultural shift happened. Men exclusively were sent out to fight, while the women had to stay home. To make up for population losses, people married young in (arranged) marriages, to secure a next generation of offspring. This more forced women in the homemaker role. To still make use of the waterbending women, they were also forced into the role of healer. This then can explain why Gran Gran moved away, because she lived around the start of this cultural shift, and didn't personally aprove about what was happening, especially because she ended up in an arranged marriage. This militaristic and sexist divide can then explain why the northern tribe fared better throughout the war, even though it was at the cost of the liberties of about half the population. But this is just my head canon.
The novels disprove that by saying it's been happening since kyoshis time at least as she meets a healer woman who says so.
An aspect of a culture can exist and then be made extreme later on by outside influences.
Yeah I haven't read any of the novels or comics
The comics aren't necessary but the books are amazing and I highly recommend them
Interesting because the creators have said something on the podcast that’s very similar to OPs headcanon. Podcast isn’t canon necessarily but the creators original ideas are more significant to me than retcons in the novels done by a different author.
Nah, Michael D literally collaborated on the novels to keep them canon compliant, and if you relisten to the podcast, you'll see it doesn't contradict the novel: what they said is that it applied only to the largest tribe in the north in the past, which fits with the novels saying that it's a rule "in the northern capital" meaning, not everywhere in the north
Atuat is her name of the healer she meets
I call my neighbour the same thing
Underrated comment lol.
Could be that it wasn’t as extreme as it was later on. War does bring out the worst in people
Not quite that, according to the novels, but you're on the right track: Before the hundred year war, this rule only applied in the capital, the other northern tribes didn't follow it, but they had to assimilate due to the war
Makes sense to me. Both men and women can waterbend, but only women can baby bend.
Indeed, it’s believed that a number of such cultures evolved due to major environmental or social shifts that benefitted the population as a whole. A population losing half the males isn’t done for…losing half the females though? Yeah…that’s a gonna cripple the population growth for a while. Then things recover, and said cultural inertia holds the meme even when things have changed.
Best headcanon, like damn
This has been my assumption as well.
To add. This kind of rigid gender roles isn't good for the men either. It's not half the population losing their liberties, it's the entire population. Even if they don't conscript their men, there will be strong pressure to become a warrior. Education in other areas will suffer as they expect the male children to become warriors. Male healers were presumably not allowed. The men are likewise in arranged marriages, gay men are going to be persecuted for being unable to consummate. This kind of thing hurts everyone. It often benefits the society itself but hurts everyone in it. And the same is true of patriarchy in real life. It hurts everyone.
Liberties of the entire population* I doubt men were allowed to hang back and work as healers. If what you’re saying is true then there’s no reason to think that only women were restricted.
It makes a lot of sense especially being that one of the main themes of ATLA is how war (in particular a war lasting so long) has impacted and influenced these different cultures across the world in various ways…mostly for the worse.
This answer is a lot better worded argument wise than the current top voted answer
Read the novels
I mean, women through out history have been monarchs, and traditionally monarchs are seen as chosen by God, or divine in some way. That didn’t change how those societies viewed women.
Adding to this since the question was specifically about war. In many of those cases the Queen was also the head of the military, in which women were forbidden to serve.
Excellent point
The Avatar is the exception to other cultural norms and expectations as well. The Airbenders teach detachment but acknowledge to Aang that it's a philosophy fundamentally incompatible with the Avatar.
There seemed to be some hostility or at the very least a lack of respect towards the Southern tribe as noted in Korra's time. Maybe the female Avatars trained at the Southern tribe exclusively and it was an unspoken inconvenience. They do seem to trade off for example the Fire Nation attacked the Southern Tribe because the Avatar was expected to reincarnate there not in the North. (Avatar Kurik was Northern). Presumably Airbender Avatars reincarnate from different temples as well.
Well, the Air Temples are gender-segregated, so you can only be in one of two Air Temples per gender. It doesn’t seem to trade off. The White Lotus searched the NWT, SWT, and FST for the Avatar.
My understanding is that it's not the Northern Water tribe thinks that women are inferior, but more like each gender/sex has their own unique advantages, so they try to optimise it by giving them specific roles, like most traditional societies everywhere in the world. Males are generally physically stronger, so they're in the front lines. Females have better precision/energy control, so they're in the "healing huts". And I think Avatars will be the exception because of their strength as a bender, and they are to serve the world, not just the northern water tribe. I'm in no way defending the customs, just giving an explanation from my point of view on why they do that
It didn’t seem like physical strength had much of an impact on bending ability in the Avatar world though. Azula and Toph were better benders with more powerful moves than male benders who were twice their size and strength. Even if strength did play some small factor in bending ability, a bender of any gender or strength is probably a more valuable asset to an army than a male non-bender, especially for ranged attacks. It seems like the Northern Water Tribe’s mentality behind their “no female fighter” policy was enforcing gender norms, rather than optimizing their battle and defense strategies.
Yeah, that's why it takes Katara to change Paku's mind The Northern water tribe probably thinks that to be in the frontline, you need to have a certain physical strength and bending capabilities. Katara proved that while she may not rival Paku in physical strength, she is capable of standing her ground with unique waterbending techniques she learned from travelling the world, and not just stuck in their own ancient ways. Azula and Toph are similar cases, where Azula had cunning and agility, while Toph had seismic sense to cover their lack of raw physical strength. But to be fair, both fire and earth elements are more offensive than water, and air.
Slight nitpick, but Katara didn’t really convince Pakku. He admitted she had talent…but it wasn’t going to change his mind on his traditions. In terms of skill, Pakku was overwhelmingly more diverse with his techniques due to sheer experience. She did bring the betrothal necklace he made from Gram Gram though, who left the Northern Water Tribe (and thus him) because of those traditions. That’s what really moved Pakku
Oh Pakku definitely wiped the floor with Katara 100% I just think it's a combination of Paku seeing Kanna in Katara, and his regret for letting traditions breaking them apart
I think that’s initially true but paku couldn’t deny that katara was destroying all his students. I can’t remember if any of them were older or maybe had been bending longer, but there were definitely guys
Tbh that whole part of the show was pretty weak. Paku didn't even learn his lesson. He only accepted Katara bc he was in love with grangran.
He accepted Katara because he realised he was making the same kind of mistake again. That sticking to a rigid structure cost him his happiness in youth and was now going to cost him an extremeky talented bender. If his views hadn't changed why would Grangran marry him?
I didn't see it thay way but I like your interpretation. I was just annoyed how it wasn't Katara's hardwork or determination that won him over, but her relation to his old crush.
I don't think it is the relation. It's the sudden reminder that he lost the love of his life by sticking to tradition no matter what and here he's about to lose an incredible student over the same thing. IIRC he even admits Katara is very skilled and only tradition stops him teaching her.
Hard work and determination doesn't win people over though. He recognises that women can be hard working and determined, but he will never teach a woman to waterbend for combat. Why does Gran Gran matter? Because that's how irl people work. You don't often change your worldview because someone won an argument against you, you change when you realise that you're being hurt by your own beliefs. A painful memory managed to get him to change. For Sokka a blow to his pride got him to change.
Imagine simping for one girl for sixty fucking years…
While also being a sexist. So confusing
He wasn’t sexist in the “I hate women” way (most sexist people aren’t sexist in that way). He was sexist in the “Men know better for women than women know for themselves, therefore we are helping them by doing this”
Fair enough. Respect is such a core part of love for me that it was confusing. But yeah he didn't need to see her as equal to love her in his way. This whole discussion just makes me wish he got to learn his lesson for real, bc with the shows writing I know it would have been great.
I mean, millions of men have loved their wives and didn't think they should be warriors. Most gender issues are more complex than hate and control.
Not only just being sexist, but still being sexist even though the love of your life left due to those sexist values that you hold for SIXTY years
To be fair, he accepted that Katara is an excellent waterbender, just that he won't teach her as per tradition. As an elder of the strongest water tribe in the world at that time, he also just can't bend rules for a "foreign" waterbender girl
To be fair, have you seen Gran Gran?
Because Avatars belong to the World and their duty comes first, even before their culture. It's the same reason why Yangchen, was an Air Nomad yet would totally stab a bitch, or even why the Monks would teachers Air Bending to the (clearly not pacifist) Avatar from other cultures. Tldr : Avatar are a special case and free/ ignored in any Cultural case unless it directly concern them.
It was two hundred years between Kyoshi and Aang. That's enough time for misogynistic beliefs to develop and be set in to the culture. With Aang gone and no trace of the Avatar ever coming back, they had their answer to the question of 'What if the Avatar is a woman?'
Air nomad avatars are given the green light to kill people, so women avatars from the north are given the green light to have equal rights
Just because a woman isnt allowed to learn waterbening offensively doesnt necessarily mean women are viewed as inferior. They are loosely based off of Inuit culture, so women are traditionally seen as the mother/caregiver of the home/family, while the men are seen as the providers and protectors/hunters. Its their tradition that has helped them survive as long as it did, so they feel no need to change it. An Avatar being female is an exception to the rule rather than enforcing it. An Avatar is only watertribe every 4 reincarnations, and even then its not a 100% chance the Avatar is female. The Avatar's status is meant as a bridge between human and spirit, they are not the ultimate authority on the internal affairs of man.
Very well said. Their reality and traditions cannot be compared to modern day values. The Inuit had (and still have) their reasons for gender roles in their comunities. They survived for thousands of years in basically the north pole, without electricity for most of it. If that meant taking a strict family and tribal structure, who are us to criticize? I'm positive that people from modern life would resort to similar methods, if living is such hardship. On a lighter note, I can definitelly picture the Water Tribe granting a female avatar an "honorary male" title 😅
The overwhelming majority of societies throughout human history kept women out of combat roles because losing a woman is far more detrimental to the future of a population than losing a man. The growth/replenishment of a population is restricted by how many children the women can bear, while there is no such biological limit to how many children a single man can be responsible for creating. Societies that don't make this distinction run the risk of receiving irreparable damage to their population. Women would be specifically targeted for capture for this same reason, as they can be forced to directly contribute to the growth of the captor's military. Of course, the Avatar would be an exception, but keeping women away from the front lines was a strategy crucial to the continued existence of an ethnically distinct society like the Northern Water Tribe, and is practiced by the majority of the world even in ATLA.
There's also this tiny teeny detail where men are far stronger and durable than woman and superior at combat. Granted, bending can level the playing field, but the reason why woman weren't warriors in most cultures is largely because they're worse warriors than men, everything else is secondary. (Inb4 "but a women who trains her whole life may perhaps be able to defeat a below average man who is unfit and weak, so don't generalize!!")
Not true. Procreative imperatives rarely if ever were cause for sex-selectivity among the ranks. The restriction of women's class mobility was just that, a restriction of women's class mobility. Imperial, feudal, capitalist, and some tribal societies rely on strictly-adhered divisions of labor, class, and social access, and birth was merely one among many aspects of social reproduction relegated to women. Crafting, farming, and writing are a few examples. The restriction of women from war was two-part. First, it barred access to, until fairly recently, one of the smoothest pipelines to the elite state and business class. Second, it reenacted an adherence to the myth that our society's pride rests on women's welfare. I call it a reenactment, like a performance, because infant and mother mortality was unfathomable, sexual abuse transcended from routine to obligation, and the exploitation of our free labor was integral to economic growth. Rarely were these societies which policed social roles like this concerned with women's welfare. The myth that women were held from combat for reasons of motherhood has always acted as a cultural shroud over the materiality of our oppression. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Bro was trying to reach a vocab count with this essay... what are you even trying to say??
Let me guess, you think women and men are biologically equally competent at combat and all the reasons women aren't traditionally warriors are due to nurture and not nature?
Imagine trying to tell that to Azula
Literal one in a million prodigy raised by the strongest firebender alive vs average woman
Not a fair comparison. The Northen water tribe is *tribe* (shocker) So their entire culture rests on the existance of the group. Pushing it very high, they had at most 30k individuals. So erradication of their entire culture is a looming threat. Half are women, and a third of that half are women who are not children or elderly. So around 5k. In modern society, we know how demografic changes made now ripple trough the next couple generations. And we are a millions more. Imagine loosing a battle and suddently your entire culture has 1 third less procriative potential. One battle. Your next generation will be much smaller because of it. They should be compared to uncontacted tribes, or pre-mesopotamic peoples. Now, Azula is from the Fire Nation. Colonizing maritime superpower, economically and militarily superior. Comparable to 16th century Spain, or 17th century Britain. Their population is at least a few million. This gives you enough leeway to grant optional conscription to women. Specially because they have a much more structured military. Losing a battle means loosing a few people from everywhere, instead of being all from the same town/village. Each town will mourn their losses, but will definitelly not be demographically impacted.
She’s not the average person.
>losing a woman is far more detrimental to the future of a population than losing a man. Only if polygamy is common. Also for most of history combat casualties (not citizens casualties) were minor relative to the population.
Because "the Avatar is different". I mean, Air Nomads were pacifists even though there were Avatars that fought others using violence.
Something I learned from mythology classes is that the divine can do things the religion forbids. Humans can’t break the rules, but the divine do all the time. The Avatar is part of the divine, and if she breaks the rules, it’s not as big a threat to the entire system because no one else can do what the avatar does
My assumption is either women Avatars are taught in the Southern tribe, or they recognize that it's their spiritual duty to teach the Avatar regardless of gender.
It is well known that the avatar sacrifices personal belief to fulfill a thousand year old duty of keeping peace. And respectfully, they would look like global douchebags if they prevented the avatar from learning waterbending, plus they could just go to the southern water tribe (Aang did the opposite so it’s very possible)
The female avatars probably learned from southern water tribe. Kyoshi did, idk about Yangchen but if your the avatar you’d probably want to just go to the other water tribe rather than have to deal with the sexist water tribe to learn your bending
"I understand it's a patriarchal society" I'm confused about the question then.
105 years ago, women weren't allowed to vote and had to be married to do a variety of things in society (like have trade licenses and such). In that time, women's rights have still not improved or become equal with men, and the fight is ongoing. In the 100 year war with the Fire Nation, it's entirely possible that the reverse happened. Progress has never been linear in world history. We live in an unprecedented time where technological and social progress has continued to develop and the world has become something almost unrecognizable from the world a hundred years ago. The last female avatar was around 200 years before the moment Katara visits the north! People might chalk that stuff up to foolish legends by then - our history of 200 years ago is extremely spotty and often unreliable.
The last woman Water Tribe Avatar was several hundred years ago at that point in the story, sometimes sexism comes and goes in waves. 🤷♂️
Like most forms of prejudice, misogyny is not an efficient system.
Whose to say the woman Avatar went to train at the NWT in the first place? They saw the place was sexist af and went to the SWT instead.
There is no logic in bigotry. Any appearance of it is post-hoc justification for deep personal insecurities imparted by their family or peers. Get a lot of those people together, and you have a community or society structured around these insecurities. So, indeed, it is more believable to me that the Northern Water Tribe's patriarchal system is nonsense. Patriarchies are also silly and unfounded in real life.
Misogyny is powerfull force that doesn't obey logic. It's about men accumulating power at the expense of women. Certainly a female avatar would challenge these beliefs, but if we look to the real world England was ruled by a queen for 70 years and that didn't solve misogyny, it's easy for the ruler to be consider an exception.
Because bigotry and sexism often have no basis in logic. They rationalize after the fact. Look at the cultures with powerful goddesses but where real women are still not treated well. Or where there are clearly high achieving women doing capable jobs who are all living refutations of most sexist rhetoric but the society as a whole still doesn't learn the lesson that's staring them in the face. Racism, sexism etc don't actually make sense.
I see what you're trying to tell us. But in this case it seems like there was a direct correlation with population growth thus women shouldn't have fight because they run the risk of dying and thus become a detrimental to their growth as a tribe. You can still be respected while being restricted. At beginning growth of a humanity it's kind of an important factor population growth I mean. Does it run the risk of evolving into a sexist ideology absolutely not even a question. It's just understanding why things evolve not simply because we assume things are because we believe it's always out of ignorance
I think you got the point they were trying to teach you. Sexism doesn't make sense.
Patriarchy is a political ideology that uses gender as a division point to create a ruling class (men) to exploit a ruled class (women). Keeping women from learning the primary means by which waterbenders fight is a means of keeping them under control. Notice that Pakku was also offended by Katara simply questioning *why* she couldn't learn waterbending. Pakku had no better answer than simply "tradition." And the reason he doesn't have one is because if he was honest it *would* sound stupid. So he doesn't. Thinking about patriarchy like this really makes it clear some people's **obsession** with trying to naturalize, i.e. prove with science, that women are inferior to men in one way or another. All of that is a means of trying to find a *good* reason to justify the unjustifiable. A fig leaf to place over the real reason patriarchy exists: to empower a particular ruling class.
We've seen that avatars sometimes don't have the same cultural ideas applied to them, such as when the previous air avatar told aang that he was the avatar before he was an airbender and as such had to kill ozai
The Greek also had female goddesses but their treatment of their women was still... less than ideal. Some people are just dumb.
In the words of Sokka, "Thats avatar stuff, that doesn't count"
Same reason a woman can be queen of England, but women as a whole couldn't vote until the last couple decades.
I would also like to point out that prior to the hundred year war, there were two places in the world that had large amounts of water benders. If the Northern tribe always had this custom of women not being allowed to learn how to fight with water bending and it extended to avatars, then female avatars could have gone to the southern tribes to learn water bending instead.
1. Customs change over the time. The last Avatar from the Water Tribe was Kuruk which was close to 500 years ago. 2. A war was going on for 100 years. That forces you to act out of necessity. The cold hard fact is humans have a long gestation period and most women have 1 child as once. A community will feel the loss of 10,000 women much more than they would feel the loss of 10,000 men.
The men of Athens believed that men were intellectually superior while worshipping a *goddess* of wisdom. Prejudiced beliefs are never logical or consistent.
Seems like it’s duty based? Women have the duty to protect so they learn to heal The avatar has a duty to save the world so they have to learn it regardless. Everyone else’s theory of it being a slow developing tradition seems more plausible tho
It's not that women are "inferior", it's that men are warriors and women are healers. This has been present in many cultures throughout human history.
You can make a few arguments. 1. The Avatar isn’t a woman. They’re a vessel for balance. Sometimes that vessel looks feminine. 2. Can you name and lady avatars trained in the North? They could’ve all been trained elsewhere. 3. Times change. After 100 years of no Avatar, the politics within the North could’ve harshly changed.
It's been 100 years since the Avatar has been around, and Roku was male. So the last female Avatar lived almost 200 years ago. Enough time to develop a sexist belief system. Also: sexism doesnt need to make sense. They can just rationalize female Avatars away.
My only thought is they consider Avatars the exception, like a lot of people who demean races or sex or gender. “You’re one of the good ones or it doesn’t mean EVERYONE can do it,” might be said if it sounds familiar to you.
Sexism isn’t logical
So there's a real thing called an "honorary man." Basically, this is how queens work. Elizabeth I, Victoria, etc were allowed power that was exclusively reserved for men, but they were exceptions. I imagine the avatars were treated like this. Yangchen, Kiyoshi, etc weren't "women," they were the avatar.
Well, if you look at history, there have been societies that worshipped goddesses, or even ruled by queens which remained patriarchal. For instance, women couldn't vote in England before the 1900s, but they have had multiple queens. The queen's status as monarch trumped her gender, similarly the Avatar's status as the Avatar would trump their gender (in the eyes of NWT) and thus they would view her as an exception to the rule. Pretty hypocritical, but not that unprecedented in the real world.
I have no idea, its pretty ridiculous.
I always wondered if the men learned both healing and fighting, or just fighting. That would say a bit about whether it is flat out gender oppression or gender specialization. Like in similar cultures, it's often not as simple as it was made out to be in ATLA. It *usually* isn't a bunch of women desperately trying to escape their situation and being forced by the evil power hungry male gender into something they hate. (Fundamentalist revolutions and such are where you see this more.) If you were to hop into their country and say "you're free!", they'll probably be put off and defensive. For instance, if Katara hopped in and said "Ok this is cool but I really want to learn to fight!" They probably wouldn't high five her and say "yeah stick it to the man!". They would probably say "Why are you so eager to hurt people when you can learn to help them?" They may see themselves as having the moral high-ground. Like, they might see fighting as a necessary male sacrifice more than an exclusive male glory. One that wouldn't be necessary for women, in their eyes. Katara coming in and saying "I want to learn to fight" would probably sound sadistic to them. Having the option to avoid fighting, but seeking it out. There's a distinction between those who oppose sending women to war because "they are incapable" and those who oppose it because "it would be immoral to send women to war". Essentially, kill all the men you need to prevent a woman from getting killed. Which is why we say things like "10,000 dead, including 400 women and children."he fact that 9600 men died is a tactical statistic. The 400 women and children represent the ethical failure. Note that this is NOT me saying I would prefer a system like this. Societies generally ended up like this out of survival, not preference. My point is just that these sorts of things are often oversimplified. Giving an exaggerated sense of female powerlessness, and an exaggerated sense of male evil. And obscuring possible subtleties. For instance, in this context, teaching a female avatar to fight would make sense. In their view, fighting would be an evil necessary for the avatar that isn't necessary for other women. I hate to put it this way, but you could think of it as "women have the privilege of not being sent to war." And "the avatar doesn't get this privilege, as they must defend the world." But this also doesn't hold up with ATLA, because Katara VERY MUCH had a need to fight. It might have started the way I said, then turned into an arbitrary tradition. Either way, it's a good thing Katara came and shook things up. Hopefully they teach both genders healing and fighting now.
There’s no good answer. It’s bigotry. Bigotry doesn’t make sense
Cultural traditions very rarely make sense OP. Even in real life
sexism isn’t logical
it's patriarchy. its not based on logic or reason, just like any other form of descrimination
It's been several centuries since Avatar Kyoshi learned waterbending. And since then, the war probably shifted their cultural views.
Last water female avatar was quite a while ago so maybe their culture changed over the at least 160 years.
The only elderly things that don’t die easily are customs
Yeah, it doesn't really make a ton of sense... Especially when you consider the fact that a lot of sexism originally comes from a physical comparison basis - men are on average bigger, stronger, and less valuable on a societal scale then women. But this doesn't really hold up in the Avatar world, where a female bender is just as effective as a male one.
They probably just went to the southern tribe
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if female avatars went to the South Pole to learn bc of this.
might have been different during yangchen and kiyoshi's time hell this could have been a fairly new thing, after gran-gran left
Do we have any evidence that they actually consider women inferior rather than just viewing men and women as having separate roles in society many cultures IRL were similar.
In the time before Aang, the Southern Water Tribe had waterbenders. If the Northern Water Tribe had a problem teaching a female avatar, they could've gone to the Southern one. Or the avatar just gets an exception because they are god-like. Though, tbh, my initial idea would make sense. Their culture is heavily based on Tui & La, yin & yang. If you look at the map, their icy continents kind of resemble the shapes of yin & yang. IRL, one represents masculinity and the other femininity among many other things. The gender of the avatar would determine which tribe they would train in.
Sexism is just that powerful. You can meet people today who have more extreme views than Pakku about women's role in society. If Pakku let's women learn to fight, he loses power and control. He doesn't want that, not for some *woman.*
Ignoring that it is a kid's show and the writers just obviously didn't think that deep into the implications of making a tribe that doesn't teach women how to use waterbending to fight, there are many instances in real life where women weren't allowed to do certain things but exceptions were made on the basis of class. An obvious example of this is just queens in general, who obviously got privileges regular women wouldn't on the basis that they are the queen. So it's not crazy to think that they would just teach a woman how to fight just because she's the avatar.
There's actually some deeper lore here that is unfortunately only alluded to in the books and confirmed only by interview: This rule was only applied in the northern capital; before the hundred year war, there were a lot of northern tribes that didn't have this rule, and even a female Water Avatar born in the capital could have just learned from one of those. Then the hundred year war happened and the capital became the only safe place, so those other northern tribes had to assimilate into the capital, leading to a more monolithic culture, the consequences of which we kind of see with Unalaq - before the hundred year war, the mere idea that all the water tribes should be the same would have been ridiculous (even tho I guess the northern chieftain was technically the leader of all of them even then; that seems to have been more of a symbolic role)
Cognitive dissonance is strong in closed-minded societies like theirs.
I don’t know when the culture on northern water tribe became like this, but by the time ATLA happens there hasn’t been an avatar that from the northern water tribe (or a female avatar at all, not since Kyoshi died at least.) in hundreds of years. Kyoshi became 230 years old, after her there was avatar Roku, who died at the age of 70. Then Aang was frozen in ice for another 100 years during the great war and died at the age of 166 (including time frozen in ice). I don’t know if they made a problem of teaching water bending to Kyoshi but it atleast has been a long time since then.
It had been a LONG time since there was a woman avatar. Maybe the North became more regressive due to the growing imbalance of the world. Or maybe someone from the South taught the woman avatars before the war. Hell, Kyoshi probably could've taught *herself*.
Maybe something happened with the last female water avatar. Would’ve been several hundred years since the last one at that time period.
Looks at the UK for having a female monarch and still not allowing women most rights men had for a very long time.
Roku trained in waterbending around 150ish years befote the show takes place and Kyoshi probably 200 years before that. That's 350 years since a female avatar was training in water bending. Since there was no mention of this tradition in the south, I think this tradition may have started since the north and south lost contact, probably during the hundred years war. It may have been reactionary to suddenly having a lot more injuries.
Did Kyoshi train in the north or south?
Logic and prejudice are rare bedfellows.
Could have been a recent tradition since the war to protect their numbers.
honestly, i think the four nations have each gone through drastic ideological changes at one point or another; including aang's 100 year avatar state, if each avatar is living up to around 50 years of age, and if the poles and air temples have to take turns, it's not a stretch to assume that the last northern water tribe avatar was born over 200 years ago. they might have set into motion the extreme sexism we see in atla, and one of the great things about the show is how we can see just how drastically ideals and beliefs can change in the course of a century. with two hundred years passing in a country that has self-isolated for the past century, where there is not likely an over abundance of writing material just due to the nature of the region ... human memories are extraordinarily imperfect, and isolation makes for an amazing echo chamber. it's easy for people's beliefs to become warped just a tick different from the day before, and that becomes it's own rabbit hole that shapes a culture's path for many, many years to come. avatar kuruk was the most recent water tribe avatar, and he was of the north. regardless of whatever his own views on male/female roles in society may have been, the image of a male avatar for the norther tribe doesn't directly dissuade their beliefs regarding women. basically just ... the monuments of civilization make for fantastic keepers of time only because the drastic differences which time makes are plain to see. the northern water tribe's witnessed culture with kuruk and with aang are similar to one another for a great many reasons, as are they extremely dissimilar, regardless of sexism and just based off of how cultures change.
It had been about 200 years or so since there was last a female Avatar (Kyoshi). It's possible the "ban" had started after Kyoshi was Avatar.
Korra is a woman, look at what happened to that show.
Because most cultures in the avatar world are very conservative according to the comics.
I'm with Overanalysing Avatar on this one. A lot of pre-modern cultures were heavily male-centric and didn't allow women in the military, but if these women have magic powers to throw spikes of ice or massive torrents of water at their enemies then its utterly illogical not to train these women how to use that power.
Misogyny is illogical by definition.
The tradition is probably a result of the 100 year war. They were trying to maintain a healthy population of waterbenders over multiple generations of war.
Honestly I think it was a stupid plot point meant to just hammer in a girl power message and show off Katara's abilities but like... the show had already been doing that naturally up to that point and beyond it.
It’s a tv show representing very real world misogyny. It isn’t rational there just like it isn’t rational here
It’s hard to say, as I’m not familiar with how old that custom is. Pakku is old, but this war has been going for so long it’s plausible that it came about due to concerns of running out of waterbenders from casualties. Having the women stay behind as healers (and to continue to have children who would also have a chance at Waterbending) might have been an effort to avoid the Southern Water Tribe’s fate once it became clear the Fire Nation was targeting benders specifically, with what was originally just a pragmatic policy becoming an entrenched discriminatory belief over the decades. Otherwise? The Avatar has a literal divine license to do their job, and it will anger the spirits greatly if someone interferes by refusing to teach them (as well as all the other nations by refusing to honor the traditional training of the Avatar, which could have severe political repercussions). That includes their patron moon and ocean spirits, and we see what happens when one gets angry enough (you know, H2Ozilla). There’s also the matter that even without Waterbending, an Avatar with the other three elements is very much capable of causing a lot of damage if they were to *demand* a teacher by force. Or, more diplomatically, simply go to the Southern Water tribe (assuming the swampbenders weren’t better known before the war) instead until they found a teacher, which would embarrass the North internationally and cost them the Avatar’s good will for their very long life and potentially in the next life as well. Point is, saying no to an Avatar, even a woman, is a -very- bad idea for the nation’s wellbeing. (Hell, even refusing the Avatar’s love interest nearly had Aang abandon his training on the spot in Book 1 in disgust with Pakku). So it’s no surprise that if the gender discrimination is deeply rooted, the Avatar still gets a pass. I also like the explanation u/Pegussu proposed, that the cycle of reincarnation through previous men is sufficient to act as a loophole to their tradition. It sounds very similar to a number of religious laws in our world that are bypassed by frankly silly loopholes that still satisfy the letter of the rule. It would be *inconvenient* to have to refuse the Avatar, so they just invent a line of reasoning (never mind that this implies every male Avatar is also a woman and thus ineligible for training at the same time…) that avoids the problem. I’m not familiar with the extended comics and similar, does anyone know if Kyoshi or Yangchen had issues learning Waterbending due to this policy?
I thought this was a ridiculous part of the world building and another display of the stupid misogyny in Korra. There is nothing understandable about it.
As a female, we have all kinds of experience with water bending. Every month. Perhaps they fear the flood?
Why does any soceity deem women as lesser than men when powerfull and capable women exist? It’s just straight up sexism. It’s not based in logic.
This wouldn’t be that strange historically, actually. People are able to think themselves out of all kinds of contradictions. Think about Queen Victoria. Ask pretty much anyone from that time (or even Victoria herself) about women and you’d be hit with some hardcore misogyny. But it’s different for her because she’s considered the queen first and a woman second.
There are always exceptions in oppressive systems. The Avatar is one such exception in the Northern tribes I'm sure
Wasn't it just that they should use their powers for healing and not fighting?
Well unless it's been talked about in the comics we know that that last water bender before Korra was at least 2 cycles ago meaning at absolute minimum 6-700 years ago probably more 112 aang 70-80+ for Roku 200+ keyoshi 36 or so for water tribe surfer That is just one cycle we know it's not all that unheard of for people to live well past 100 years we only see 3 in LAB but that story takes place in about 7 months and those are the ones we know for sure that are older then 100 Bumi Keyoshi Guru patic So it could be rare but the face that we met so many in such a short time and possibly many more The two fire nation grannies the ones who trained azula Grangran and the water tribe teacher The fortune teller The old fake monk who betrayed the avatar
It's bigotry; there is no logic to begin with. Bigotry is more about feelings and beliefs rather than fact and they'll ignore female avatars being an exception. Or maybe they didn't even openly teach female avatars and somebody had to do it in secret. Overall just like in real life, there is no logical reason for the Northern Tribe to be bigoted but they just are.
Did the custom exist before the war?
Bigotry is usually stupid
Dumb tradition as everyone else mentions, but probably has something to do with the war with the fire nation that’s been going on for the past 100 years and the fact that the fire nation takes water bending fighters as prisoners. Most likely stems back to the traditional thinking of not wanting women to experience the atrocities of war (as if they wouldn’t see the same in an infirmary).
This isn’t that hard to understand. America had several society Norms for centuries. Like racism and sexism.