Confirmation Bias in the ATLA fandom
Stating the obvious first, of course, it is fine that people don't ship or like Zutara as a ship. I don't think i've ever ran into a zutara shipper who has even implied that antis should ship it, or that antis are stupid if they do not.
However, it needs to be said that some zutara antis operate from confirmation bias and hypocrisy.
starting with the confirmation bias, there is this assumption that all zutara shippers envision headcanons the same way. To the extent, i've personally participated in conversations with individuals who claimed that 80% of the time, zutara shippers only talk about them in the FN with Katara as FireLady, which is a huge assumption to make especially for a fandom that you aren't a part of. (For example, I don't claim to know what any ship fanart of fandoms I'm not in looks like because I don't regularly engage with their content.)
it honestly feels like zutara antis intentionally go searching for and amplify zutara takes that confirm their feelings that zutara shippers are incapable of morality and undeserving of basic respect to the effect of "see what those horrible fans are doing! i knew they were all bad people!" Essentially, seeking to get more people to be antis, which is why zks have said that this is ship policing. going into ship tags to "convince zks about how stupid they are" or seeing it as your mission to stop people from shipping it is not the unbothered persona that people think it is. like, saying "idc what you ship" and then saying "but zutara is X dynamic" doesn't mean that the last part of that sentence goes away or that you are tolerant of people having different shipping opinions than you.
besides that, there's the very hypocritical assumption that zutara shippers should answer for the "sins" of other zutara shippers (from 1000 years ago) and sweeping generalizations about how zutaras think. for example, it is (beyond my understanding) "reasonable" to send hate to zk shippers because "zks in the past said this" or "zks mischaracterize aang." in no other IRL scenario does it make sense to assume all people who share one commonality think or feel the same way. for example, as a Black person, I do not and should not be seen to represent opinions for all Black individuals. also, people having a different read on fictional characters should not be a hall pass to be intentionally antagonistic to them. like there is no way that there should be viral twitter posts about how ppl are shocked that zutara shippers are capable of being pro palestine because of ship preference. that kind of sentiment is freely shared and supported because so many antis engage in confirmation bias unchecked.
this generalization and hypocrisy extends to colonizer/colonized conversations. as a BIPOC, i will never tell another BIPOC how they should feel about this argument because their lived experiences and perspectives are different than mine. however, i believe sweeping statements like "zutaras support colonization" are inappropriate--especially when stated by people who ship (or are fine with people who do ship) zukka, zutoph, jetko, etc. it feels dismissive of not just the people in fandom (someone recently said that BIPOC zk shippers are lost or seeking "oppressor" approval/affection which is NOT something you should say to someone irl) but also the characters. a few weeks ago, someone said that jetko was fine bc "jet didn't have colonization as bad as katara" and that "jet has more power than katara and an army" (note: i do ship jetko as well). additionally, for the past few years, i've seen some zukkas imply that sokka wasn't as affected by their mom's passing/didn't have as much trauma, so that's why zukka would be more permissable. i've even recently had someone imply that the difference in how the colonizer/colonized argument is discussed wrt zutara and zukka is because zukkas "aren't as loud" about their ship not being canon (despite the fact that ofc this presumes that all zks wanted zk to be canon). when these comments are leveraged, it feels less about the actual issues at hand and more about disdain for a group of shippers themselves. none of the arguments for why these biases/criticisms are disproportionate make sense (i.e. discussions of this argument should include all ships).
in general, i just wish that people didn't come into conversations with knee-jerk preconceived biases about their character/morality. i don't ship kataang or maiko, but idc if people do, and i'm mutuals with people who do. i don't think all kas or maikos should answer for strange things said by a person in their fandom. i think fandom culture needs to shift away from generalization and back to viewing people as their individual self.
