Rewatching A:tLA and got to an episode where Katara Defeats Sexism By Being Awesome And Having A Personal Connection.

I cannot count the number of times I read this plot as a kid, and as an adult it's really bothering me.

In general, bigots are not bigoted because they have never seen someone of that marginalized group being awesome. But that's a very comforting narrative. If you just SHOW THEM, surely they will SEE.

Yeah, no, that's what prejudice is, actually: the refusing to see.

Especially someone like the character in this episode, who has attached very firm binary gender roles to RESPECT FOR HIMSELF AND HIS CULTURE. That is not a person who has mistaken concerns, a bad data set.

That's a person who will look you in the face while you are doing a thing and say out loud, "people like you can't do the thing." The fact that you're doing it will remain irrelevant.

This has happened to me in labs. It's happened to me on panels at SF cons.

Frankly the idea that bigots just don't KNOW that you can do the thing is pretty biased itself. If someone believes women can't write science fiction, you should fix it by writing great science fiction! Uh...what about the women who already tried that? for generations?

Being amazing is always a good idea. Definitely you should do that. But setting it up in your own head or in your fiction that if you're just amazing ENOUGH, people will lose their prejudices...is not true, and is pretty damaging to yourself and others.

Being amazing is not FOR the bigots. It's for you. It's for the other people like you. And it's for the people unlike you who have not already wholeheartedly committed themselves to prejudice and are open to awesomeness where they find it.

So stop writing plots where ONE PERSON is finally amazing ENOUGH that people with a huge investment in bias stop being biased against their group. It's exhausting and frankly completely unbelievable.

(Especially this Avatar episode plot. Lordy. "I was going to stay biased against you, but it turns out you're the relative of someone in your group who deeply wounded my pride years ago! Now we're cool!" What no this is not how it works.)