Headscratchers / The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars

• Why does homophobia exist in the Avatar Universe? Sozin outlawed same-sex relationships because he wanted people to get with the oppose sex and make babies. That's his logic anyway, but homophobia existed before that, within the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, why?
  • Presumably for the same reasons it does in real life? Except for bending and other cartoony superpowers, Avatar humans seem to be pretty, well, human, with much the same psychology and mental characteristics as real people. And for whatever reasons, it seems that many, perhaps even most humans have some kind of more or less innate, instinctual bias against people who don't conform to sexual and gender norms that goes beyond culture. (Not putting any value judgment in that, just stating an apparent fact.) As for conscious, articulate anti-gay ideology, I'd imagine those who support that would also use much the same arguments as real-world philosophers, right-wingers and evolutionary psychologists who do, since they're about as valid (or not) in the setting as here.
    
    So, just to imagine a few examples, someone like Sozin or your average Earth Kingdom ideologist might say homosexuality is a decadent and socially disruptive phenomenon that undermines family, culture and national unity; a "spiritual" conservative like Unalaq might channel the Dalai Lama and say it's a carnal, unnatural act that debases the soul and disrupts the "balance" of the world; and so on.^note Not that I know whether Unalaq specifically has anything against LGBT people; if anything, the seemingly tolerant way he treats Desna and Eska could well argue against that. Just using him for a hypothetical example of how a Water Tribe religious conservative could put it. Perhaps some well-meaning Absent-Minded Professor type like Zei might even espouse the "scientific" theory that gays are ill people who have been touched and warped by dark spirits—analogous to how some real-life academic homophobes think homosexuality is really a literal brain-affecting microparasitic disease, like this guy does? Really, there's no shortage of reasons people can use to justify an anti-gay majority culture if they want to.
    
    As an aside: Does it say anywhere what Sozin's "canon" reasons for his anti-gay law were? IIRC that isn't in the first Turf War comic?

  • To the immediate above question, no, Sozin is given no reason for his views other than being an easy strawman to hate as he's already canonically responsible for making the Fire Nation into the evil empire the audience knew it as so what's a lil' homophobia on top of the genocide, dragon-killing, god-emperor worship, etc. (note that Irene Koh herself admits how trite this idea is.) While the overall answer to such a take is as the YMMV page puts it: Doylism, pure and simple. The bottom line is, Bryke didn't look at the established canon or historical views of homosexuality to feel out how to interpret queerness in The 'Verse so while their hearts are in the right place, (which is good,) and were touched by the responses from the LGBT Fanbase, (still good,) and wanted the characters to go through relatable struggles, (again, good,) their heads weren't and as of volume 2, the issue is a non-issue to go about regular heroics instead of exploring the issue like Book 1's Fantastic Racism allegory about benders vs. nonbenders all over again.
  • Regarding established canon, even if they allowed women to serve in the armed forces, the Fire Nation from Sozin's time to Zuko's time was still a Politically Incorrect Villain Faction, given that they were all about sharing their "greatness" by conquering the "backwards" peoples of the world. Not to mention the classism people from the Fire Nation homeland showed towards people in the Fire Nation colonies in the previous show. So while homophobia is admittedly quite a stretch from all that, it's not entirely baseless.
  • I'd go so far as to say that it's not a stretch at all. Totalitarian societies, historically, are nearly always homophobic, especially expansionist ones.
  • Again, like three replies up and the YMMV page covers, the issue(s) isn't whether or not it's a stretch about whether or not homophobia can/could exist in The 'Verse, but a lack of nuance because Word of God admitted they only looked at elemental mentalities rather than deeper into their own canon and real-life views of queerness throughout history instead of it simply be a "Yay or Nay", hence the Narm in Korra calling Sozin "the worst!" and the fact that Kya's exposition simply says "The Fire Nation used to be like the Air Nation until Sozin came along" and nothing more means this page, the YMMV and even the WMG have so far done more detail about the issue than the actual canon.
  • Its especially sad since this is a massive missed opportunity. Asian (and for that matter Native American, since the Water Tribes and all) cultures run the gambit when it comes to opinions on homosexuality and transgenderism; there's no consistent theological/cultural for homophobia like in Christian, Jew and Muslim civilisations but there's factoids like the aforementioned Buddhist conception of tolerating only reproductive sex (...which is funny given how Buddhists have historically condoned pederasty), Shinto ideas of "community growth first" and the Mayan and Aztec attacks on Olmec sexual tolerance combined with long-standing, almost universal practises of military homosexuality, pederasty and sacred prostitution would make for a rich base of ideological differences.
• If Raiko really is on -3 approval, why on earth does no-one think to challenge him for the United Republic presidency until part 2? You'd think that at least one ambitious person would see the position as being handed out on a silver platter.
  • Golden Rule of Thumb: The man who is smart enough to do the job is smart enough to know he doesn't want it. It'd be easy for someone to beat Raiko; but then they have to deal with the massive burden of running Republic City: Which includes but is certainly not limited to: restoration of the city, diplomacy between spirits and humans beyond relying on Korra, politics, budgeting, occasional threats from the Red Lotus (ok, I'm stretching on that one) and various other day to day duties. If everything was running smoothly, someone might see it as a comfy gig; but there's a LOT of work that will need to be done and hardly anyone can think of a good solution or be burdened with coming up for said solution.