#there are multiple ‘gender swapped’ atla memes where girl zuko calls sokka ‘honey’ or ‘dear’ instead of buddy . which is insane????????????

[comradekatara]

I think gender politics in fandom has progressed (or at the very least developed) past essentialism, toothless liberal “girl power” memes, and “gender swap AUs” but sometimes I still see an older fanart from a simpler time that’s like “the atla characters gender swapped!!!” that is soo cringe and lame and seems to completely miss the fact that every character in atla (with perhaps the exception of aang) is fundamentally informed by their gender, and their behaviors, presentation, and worldviews would shift drastically if they had been raised as the “opposite” gender (opposite within a patriarchal binary, not as an ontological fact). i mean aang would mostly be the same tbh, but all the girls would be way lamer (see: the original design for toph), zuko would be….. i don’t even know, and sokka would be a completely different person. i do think cis guy ty lee is a cool concept though, because ty lee’s character is so staked to her femininity that trying to map that performance onto a boy would be challenging but not impossible. that said, the only TRULY valid atla genderswap is queen bumi. i wanna see a jacked shredded ripped old lady who is completely off her rocker. now THAT’S feminism