So as I said, I'm rewatching Avatar: the Last Airbender. And this time, a few little things have struck me as potentially in need of improvement.
Master Pakku, his refusal to teach Katara, and his coming around when he sees she is Kanna's granddaughter.
This is the first culture in the show we have seen be extremely patriarchal (Sokka is supposed to be the man of the southern tribe and all that is left there are women and children, but they also have extremely low numbers, and honestly, it seems like Gran-Gran is as much in charge of the tribe as the chief's mom or mother-in-law as anything else). Kyoshi Island, obviously, has the Kyoshi Warriors and venerates Avatar Kyoshi; the mayor seems to be a man but Suki and the other warriors are considered leaders as well, despite being teenagers. We see several other Earth Kingdom towns and villages that seem mostly patriarchal, but apart from Sokka (and, once, Zuko) we don't hear a whole lot about what women can or can't do. The Fire Nation army and navy seem to be co-ed, although in season one we mostly see male commanders. However, working with women or taking orders from women doesn't seem to bother anyone except Sokka.
Then we get to the Northern Water Tribe, and they seem to have a pretty stratified society, with explicitly sex-segregated bending traditions. But it kind of seems like the writers wanted to have a moral about sexism without actually depicting sexism?
Pakku does say some derogatory things about how Katara's proper place is with Yugoda and the other girls, but he doesn't even hit as hard as Sokka does with the "girls shouldn't be fighting" stuff. He talks about tradition, which is...a really weird argument to make to the sole remaining Southern Tribe waterbender. Surely in the case of cultural extinction, the importance of keeping Southern waterbending alive is more important than sexism based on traditions? Like, are the traditions of the Southern Tribe completely irrelevant here? It wouldn't seem so, because the Chief does make a big deal of welcoming Katara and Sokka from their sister tribe and treating them as honored guests in their own right, not just as the Avatar's friends. So why didn't the Chief say "Pakku, we've failed to help our sister tribe at all in the last hundred years and now they're down to a single waterbender, we have to at least give the appearance of caring about them", especially since, you know, he's got the Southern Tribe's Chief's son and daughter there with the Avatar. Making sure the Southern Water Tribe still has waterbenders seems like a concern for the balance of the world, no?
And since when have sexist pigs become less sexist when presented with evidence that their crushes have been romantically entangled with someone else? Kanna has grandchildren, she got married to someone else and had children and meanwhile, as far as we can tell, Pakku has no family and never married. He certainly has no issue fucking off to help rebuild the Southern Tribe at the end of season one. Like...is it not much more common for sexist jerks to become more obnoxious after finding out they got dumped and forgotten about? Do men who want your number not usually call you a bitch instead of going, "Ah, you're right, I should reflect on my behavior?"
We also have absolutely no textual evidence for Katara's immediate assumption that Kanna couldn't stand the sexist traditions of the Northern Tribe. Apart from raising Katara, who is definitely not sexist, and raising Sokka, who is definitely sexist at the beginning of the show, we know very little about Kanna.
This is actually a pretty simple fix, in my opinion. A: make it clear Kanna does not stand for Sokka's sexist nonsense. I don't think this actually takes that much effort; some lines when Sokka is being sexist early on met with "You wouldn't say that if Gran-gran could hear you" or "Why don't you ever say that to Gran-gran?" implying that Sokka is in fact watching his tongue around his grandmother lets us know that Gran-gran has an opinion more in line with Katara's.
B: reverse Pakku's stated reasons for not teaching Katara. At first he grudgingly agrees, out of kinship and solidarity (and because the Chief pressured him and the Avatar is watching) but then not only is she a disrespectful student (by his standards) he finds out she's the grand-daughter of the woman who spurned him and apparently started a whole different family with someone else, and finds an excuse to kick her out of class. Or he sees her necklace and accuses her of stealing it, or something. Something so that his argument isn't based solely on the weirdly backwards presumption that his Tribe's traditions are more important than hers, despite the fact that hers are actively endangered.
I think we should honestly also see Pakku be more actively sexist, assuming Katara will be unable to match Aang's progress or his progress or something. He should talk more specific shit about how ill-mannered or boyish she is, or blatantly judge her excellent skills more harshly than Aang's. We should see actual sexism, not just "la la la you can't be here" which is like. Annoying but certainly not the most common or most harmful way sexism manifests. I mean, even him claiming Katara would be unable to concentrate on bending because she's at that age where girls only think about boys would be more than he does; we could even have that tie into the betrothal necklace blowup where he's like "You're fucking up because you're thinking about your impending marriage, aren't you?" and she's like "The fuck you talking about, old man?"
I just. I know they were going for a sort of, oh look, he's been reminded of his True Feelings and the sexism was just sour grapes, but that isn't as strong and it doesn't really send any message about sexism? Whereas if we had any indication that Kanna really did specifically hate that part of the Northern culture, if we had any indication Pakku has actually internalized any sexist ideas beyond "this is how it is", and we had any sense of Pakku actually grappling with the idea that the same things he loved in Kanna are the things that annoy him in Katara, and how that means he's changed, this subplot would be a lot stronger.
I also wonder uhhh what the fuck was Pakku going to say, if someone asked him why he was spying on the Avatar? We know the answer, he's literally spying on the Avatar for the Order of the White Lotus, but it looks like he's just stalking a 12 year old student after dark. It's really weird. Is he that obsessed with enforcing the sexist tradition of women not learning combat waterbending? That's also weird, to be honest! He's an old man, he should have other shit going on! Or else everyone should acknowledge that he's being weird!