I wish seals would let me slap their bellies

Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism aren’t marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.

In ATLA, Sokka's misogyny was present for 3 episodes in the very beginning of the show, and then used to deliver narrative carthasis in episode 4, in the form of Sokka's 180 turn into feminism. The tension of flexing the rubber band of Sokka's misogyny was brief, and the release of that tension then felt appropriatly sized, because it came so soon in the series. The the rest of the show continued slapping instant karmic punishments to characters who expressed misogynistic beliefs. (Anyone who underestimated Toph, Yue's bethored, the guys who catcalled Katara, etc, etc). The world of ATLA is such, that it bends itself to always prove the misogynist wrong. (of course atla also has it's weak points where it falters with this aim, but the express aim is clearly there) The audience is primed, so that they can ignore the flinch of hearing a misogynist micro (or macro) agression, because they can expect the cathrasis of a karmic punishment to follow.

This works very well in the genre of escapist fantasy adventure. Shows like Succession, or Breaking Bad, or IWTV can present misogynist characters, who never learn or face any consequences, because the cathrasis of those shows comes from watching unpleasant people wallow in their self-inflicted miseries. They are shows about characters you love to hate.

Escapist fantasy adventure as a genre doesn't want to create characters you love to hate. It wants to create characters you love to love.

One Piece is an escapist fantasy adventure. It wants to create characters we love to love. So, it also has to ask the question of: How much can we pull on the rubber-band of discomfort before delivering any kind of cathrasis to the audience. The complaints that animanga One Piece faces, comes from the fact that for a lot of people, the answer is not this much.

Complaints about ATLA liveaction removing Sokka's *Suki teaches him about feminism* moment, and complaints about animanga One Piece having characters dropping misogynistic microagressions casually all over the place, come from the exact same emotion. 'I wanted to see a moment of fantasy-wish-fulfillment where a man changes how he behaves, and I was not delivered that emotional cathrasis.'

This has nothing to do with whether any of the misogyny of the characters makes sense in universe.

Different people will find different character flaws more or less bearable, and it's always a tight-rope you have to walk on. But creators do have a choice in what flaws they expect the audience to find interesting and where the line of so-insufferable-I'm-picking-a-different-show lies. I think for OPLA crew, the choices would have been

Leave it as it is, rubbing that *discomfort without any comfort* button way too roughly for a HUGE chunks of the new audience.

Create an entirely new storyline about Sanji and Zoro facing consequences and *changing their ways*. And I would be willing to bet actual money that the fans of the animanga would have been even more pissed if OPLA had started soloing with the storyline like that.

Just sand down the sexist corners, as the show did. And from these three options, I fully belive they picked the right one by pikcing this.

In ways that might be partly to make the character more complex, because rejecting it and not perpetuating it are in fact different actions, with a social trend that ingrained, but I think were mostly just the writer kind of losing interest in that narrative thread.

This guy is set up to be actively angered by the idea that women have any kind of inherent weakness, because his rival he couldn't beat was convinced that she was doomed to fall behind him because of the male puberty buff to muscle development, and he was like ABSOLUTELY NOT HOW DARE YOU CHEAPEN MY INEVITABLE TRIUMPH LIKE THAT and then she died in an accident, so the question was doomed to remain unresolved forever.

Zoro by rights has a more intense relationship with sexism-qua-sexism than any of the girls on the crew. And Oda simply did not write that, because he is not up to it. His reach exceeds his grasp, which I don't resent as much as I might because I can't help giving him credit for reaching at all; it puts him well above industry standard.

However: mad respect to my coworker who has been using these as his backpack and water bottle for years: