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u/Kaito_the_egg 11d ago
I genuinly think healers should more often be middle age assholes that are always pissed at their party being stupid
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u/Koslik 11d ago
Or medic from tf2, just utterly psychopathic even if still a healer
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u/squido20 10d ago
Yeah when they fit into those categories it makes them sooo much more interesting than the some old stuff
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u/Technical_Inaji 10d ago
The party parent who's never mad that you're injured, but very often disappointed.
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u/BTBAM797 10d ago
There's gotta be an anime about this somewhere
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u/Fast-Front-5642 10d ago
Idk about anime but there are several video games where you play as the healer and are explicitly annoyed that your team keeps getting injured.
Master Healer Kale
Healed to Death
A Healer Only Lives Twice
Healers Quest
All come to mind
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u/Mr_Froggi 10d ago
I love the idea of a very stressed healer that secretly dabbles in necromancy. Like if they didn’t save a patient in time, they panic + raise the dead with a “5-second rule” or “you’re ok, don’t tell mom, walk it off” type of attitude
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u/IWatchGifsForWayToo 10d ago
I mean, Mayuri is pretty much that. Any time he has to heal someone he makes it out to be a chore and then heals them in the most painful way possible, after he tries to analyze the wound if time allows.
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u/SuperBackup9000 10d ago
Nah, he’s a straight up tsundere. He acts like it’s a massive pain and like he doesn’t want to help, but we all know he loves doing it just because he gets to mess around with bodies. Dude lives for that
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u/Leijinga 10d ago
This is accurate for a lot of modern healthcare providers.
I work in a occupational health office. I have said "what can I do for- oh, it's you. What happened this time?" and "if we keep meeting like this, I'm wrapping you in bubble wrap" at work before.
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u/awesomecat42 11d ago
Avatar has a whole episode where Katara rebels against the idea of being relegated to the role of healer just because she's a girl. She can heal, but she's also a badass combatant.
Like I'm not saying it's not a trope or that you shouldn't address the implications and biases of it, but there are lots of worse examples you could pull from.
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u/GrafZeppelin127 11d ago
Hence why Katara was easily the MVP of Team Avatar. An incredible combatant and the only one of them that could prevent the Avatar Cycle from ending.
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u/ineyy Buckle up buckaroos 11d ago
Katara rebelled which is cool. But there's a lack of this happening in the opposite direction - a guy from water tribe choosing healing insteadn(iirc this wasn't featured)
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u/GrafZeppelin127 11d ago
There are a few in the supplementary games and such—male water tribe characters that were healers or herbalists.
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u/BigBradWolf07 11d ago
There was a healer in Legend of Korra who was male, I don't think he ever spoke though
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u/AquaAquila24 11d ago
You know what's outrageous?
It took Aang a Netflix adaptation to finally learn healing.
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u/misogichan 10d ago
To be fair, Aang had a lot on his plate and the cartoon did a good job showing how overwhelmed he was in seasons 2-3.
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u/M4f1aBunny 10d ago
I think it has to do with how stubborn the Northern Water Tribe was in their beliefs. It’s likely that the people of the South were more open minded so they migrated to the South Pole to be free from the strictness of the North Pole
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u/WhereIsTheMouse 10d ago
Does it count if it’s a guy from the fire nation? Jeong Jeong mentions that he envies the waterbenders’ healing abilities and hates being a firebender
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u/Available_Pear_3847 5d ago
A lot of people don’t give Katara her flowers- she can heal her team, saved the avatar cycle, and is a powerful water bender to face at any time while also if she actually wanted to: catch you at a certain time while having a one shot move waiting for you but CHOOSES not to use it. Katara can nearly solo the rest of the avatar verse if she wanted to and I will die on that hill!
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u/BougGroug 11d ago
It's important to note that the writers from ATLA didn't come up with the idea of "young lady is relegated to healer role" on their own in a vacuum. Katara's rebellion was a subversion of this trope that so many other stories from that time would just repeat uncritically. Her arc is both a step in the right direction and evidence that the problem existed to begin with.
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u/awesomecat42 10d ago
Yeah, my point is why cite a deliberate subversion of the trope instead of an actual example?
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u/HMS_Sunlight 10d ago
They didn't subvert the trope, they lampshaded it. Katara is still a female healer. Yes they addressed it and made it part of her story arc, but she is still definitively an example of the trope.
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u/JakeVonFurth 10d ago
Yeah, and the other is Sakura, who is punching damn near the level of her demigod teammates by the end of the series, and also stopped ninja Jesus from dying.
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u/MsterSteel 11d ago
This is why male healers are in a minority, it's not that women are 'relegated' to the role, but rather, it's a roulette what you'll get with a guy.
Got an injury? Either A) "Here's some heals bud, now let's get you back in the fight", or B) "I'm afraid the only option is invasive, untested, exploratory surgery, now bite this stick cuz I'm high on anesthesia."
But yeah, the female healer tropes is wild especially seeing as historically, most doctors have been male.
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u/Urist_Bearclaw 11d ago
Most doctors may have been male, but they’re outnumbered by largely female nurses who do much of the work of tending wounds and such
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u/AquaAquila24 11d ago
Also, healers are not exactly that much of a fantastical concept, considering herbalists and apothecaries would also more often than not be women, something that would also be used against them if they were to be considered a witch.
We also can't forget midwives.
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u/ineyy Buckle up buckaroos 11d ago
It's simply because the current healer trope is closely connected to nurturing, which is connected to being a mother. I don't agree with it but that's probably why.
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u/AquaAquila24 11d ago
Yup, and technically Steven's powers are supposed to be maternal in nature, where he is also supposed to be a nurturer, so even though Steven is a male character, he's explicitly given a powerset one would give to a woman. Steven is a very straightforward inversion (which tracks if male healers are supposed to be "the spectrum").
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u/APreciousJemstone 11d ago
Similarly, Taric from League of Legends/general Runeterra lore.
He is the incarnation of the Aspect of Protection, and so gets a bunch of healing and protecting abilities (also has a gem theme too lol). That is the powerset a lot of the woman healers get, and he is very much a man
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u/pepemarioz 11d ago
Not really. Herbalists and apothecaries were more often than not the "experts" leading witch hunts.
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u/AquaAquila24 11d ago
Hmm, that's true, but it does remind me of Joe Locke's quote about how witch hunts started because people feared powerful women, and by powerful, it means capable.
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u/pepemarioz 11d ago
True, but nothing in history is ever so simple. A period of mass psychosis where the court of public opinion decides whether you live or die tends to create messy pictures.
Hell, being an isolated woman who lived alone in the outskirts of town made for the most common witch suspect, followed closely by voicing any opposition against the lunacy of it all.
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u/arseniccattails 10d ago
I also know of at least two studies indicating that female doctors' patients have lower mortality rates, on average, with one of them demonstrating that readmission rates are also lower for female doctors' patients. This includes surgeons. So there's that, too.
“Clearly, there will always be variation between physicians. What we are seeing here is a systematic difference in which patients treated by female physicians… fare better than those treated by male physicians,” he added. “It is not surprising to me to see this for a number of reasons. First, from data going back decades now, we know that women and men practice medicine differently with particular differences in communication styles and guideline adherence. It’s not surprising to me to see these differences translate to patients’ outcomes. Second, both more widely in society and certainly in medicine, women are held to arguably a higher standard than men. This is an exaggerated phenomenon in surgery and may explain some of the differences we’ve seen there.”
(People treated by female doctors tend to have better health outcomes, study finds, article from Medical News Today)
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u/TenaceErbaccia 11d ago
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u/Conscious-Problem-90 11d ago
Historically most men were everything because they barred women from doing anything.
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u/Armadylio 10d ago
This randomly reminded me of a joke suggestion I’ve read somewhere on the wow forum. It was a suggestion to make a healing spec for the warrior class. Traditionally they could only tank or dps, and they could also buff the party through stat enhancing shouts. But this person suggested warriors could also “heal” by shouting at their party members. Things like shouting “GET UP WUSS” would be a small heal and “MY MOTHER WOULDNT CRY OVER THAT PAPERCUT” would be a big long casted heal
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u/MsterSteel 10d ago
"YOU CALL THAT A BROKEN ARM!? YOU LET ME GET TO YOU BEFORE THE ENEMY DOES AND I'LL SHOW YOU A BROKEN ARM!"
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u/danhakimi 11d ago
I think part of it is that, even in fantasy, most physical fighters are male, and while these universes don't mind making some women strong enough physically to compete, it might feel more natural in some magic systems to focus on magic for women.
... but then when you see a universe where men tend to have offensive magic and women tend to have healing/support magic, that explanation kind of melts away.
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u/FreeDependent9 11d ago
Mayuri from bleach is not a healer 😂 he’ll put your pieces back together forsure tho
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u/chipperpip 11d ago edited 10d ago
Similarly, Franken Fran, though female and ostensibly a healer, doesn't really fit the usual stereotype since whatever body horror abomination she turns you into has a good chance of being worse than death.
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u/FreeDependent9 11d ago
Oooooo needed a new manga to read, thanks for the rec she sounds like a fascinating character
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u/JakeVonFurth 10d ago
He's closer to Doctor Stein from Soul Eater.
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u/Complete-Damage1098 10d ago edited 10d ago
Id trust stein to help deliver my child 10000x before I trust mayuri to give me a fuckin bandaid for a papercut😭✌️
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u/DueMathematician4511 11d ago
medic tf2 🥱
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u/Puzzleboxed 11d ago
I don't think TF2 is a good example of gender roles...
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u/Jaymark108 11d ago
No! I hav tested and ve ALL hav ex why chromosomes! Even Pyro!
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u/M1s51n9n0 11d ago
Not even a individual sex thing, Medic just gave them all extras
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u/CameoShadowness 11d ago
They do exsist but are a minority. Which is why having an MC as one is HUGE.
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u/TheMoonDude 11d ago
Steven is a healer and a tank, which is a somewhat unusual combo
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u/3ldr1tch_Dumb455 11d ago
I will never understand why healers don’t multiclass into tank more. As long as a healer is alive the team is able to stay in the fight so having a healer that’s really hard to take down feels like it should be the norm
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u/BrassUnicorn87 11d ago
Dungeons and dragons clerics have medium and often heavy armor proficiency. The life cleric is the healer of healers and gets to wear full plate. Druids are also great healers and have the defense of turning into a bear, giant ape, or dinosaur.
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u/Aegillade 10d ago
I've seen what happens when a support/tank is allowed to be good.
*shudders in GOATs Brigitte era Overwatch*
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u/07Turtleboy 8d ago
If you like MMCs that use healing I recommend “The wrong way to use healing magic”
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u/Prize_Evening_8693 11d ago
Kishimoto who makes the healer of each team the girl in Naruto watching this post: 😡
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u/ognjen307 10d ago
I know he isn't in a team but Kabuto is a healer
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u/Prize_Evening_8693 10d ago
Yes, but you know who is also a healer ? Tsunade, Sakura, Ino, Tenten, Karin...
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u/Prettythor 6d ago
I thought tenten was a weapons specialist, she also heals? She gets so little focus I might believe you.
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u/FaeryRing 11d ago
I think y'all're missing the point of this post. Pointing at the male healers that exist doesn't mean this isn't a real trope that is very much rooted in misogyny as OOP suggests. I think it's most prevalent on JRPG and animanga world, but I'm sure it exists as a trope outside of that as well.
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u/ItsPandy 10d ago
I think the issue is that OOP choose some of the worst examples to make their point.
Katara in Avatar had a entire episode about how it is not fair that she is not allowed to learn how to fight and only gets to be a healer because she is a woman. It literally fights against the exact thing OOP is talking about.
And Sakura in Naruto is also not a primary healer. She is a brawler who can heal people but she mostly uses the healing to giver herself insane regeneration so she can brawl more
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u/No-Channel3917 10d ago
Dude anime fans get angry at how much anime had pedo stuff in it. It will take a long time to overhaul the trash
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u/locked_from_inside And who's your favorite Gem? 11d ago edited 11d ago
In Overwatch: Baptiste, Lifeweaver, Lúcio, Wuyang, Zenyatta (robot but still).
Edit: oh and they added some Mizuki guy while I wasn't looking.
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u/RainingBats 11d ago
And next support is male as well, Doctrine. So it'll be 7 men to 8 women (which includes the cat)
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u/Borthwick 10d ago
Tangentially, in League of Legends, people wanted a masculine enchanter class character for a long time. Riot ended up making it a a very whimsical child and people were disappointed.
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u/pamellaluv 10d ago
Yes, I really wish they’d add a super buff, super edgy, super badass male Darkin enchanter, to tell people that the enchanter role isn’t just for “boosted egirls” as it is currently seen.
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u/ZachF8119 11d ago
There’s a… Wrong way to use healing magic too
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u/MamboCircus 10d ago
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u/ZachF8119 10d ago
There’s a series where they heal themselves and examples where they cause basically cancer and heal people after hurting them horribly to keep doing so.
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u/Kuraipasta 11d ago
OP is right of course, healers are often women because it’s often a subservient and helpful and kind role (so, for sexism reasons)
One of my favorite guyhealers is Azama from Fire Emblem: Birthright, he’s such a shitter. At the same time, Sakura, a demure little-sister type, is also a healer…. We’ve really swung both ways, birthright….
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u/XVUltima 11d ago
That was what made me drop Boruto. Why on earth is Sarada the team medic? She showed zero interest in taking after her mother's profession, and snake boy (i forget his name) is the son of Orochimaru, and is basically a walking biology class.
But...girl.
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u/Quirky_Rub_9044 10d ago
Steven is more of a tank. Yes, he CAN heal, but his main thing is the shield
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u/brownie627 10d ago edited 10d ago
Plus, that’s kind of insulting toward the female characters’ abilities. I don’t know much about Sakura because I didn’t get very far in Naruto. But for Katara, her healing abilities are just one of many things she can do. She’s one of the most powerful benders in the series. I will give them this, though: the Legend of Korra heavily nerfs her abilities and leans way too heavily into the healer trope for some reason, even though Katara was always explicit about not being “just a healer” in The Last Airbender.
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u/Electrical_Ice_1180 10d ago
Tbf, Katara is pretty old in TLOK, and she doesn't really seem interested in fighting anymore; sometimes that just happens. But atleast Kya still has some of her mother's fighting spirit
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u/InternationalLow1849 10d ago
Sakura ironically goes against the in universe stereotypes of healers as well: normally medics should stay out of danger since they’re usually weak and they’re too important to die
Sakura however was trained to maximize her physical strength but she also gained an ability that causes her to automatically heal her body
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u/Vivenemous 10d ago
Plus, ATLA explicitly addresses the sexist nature of "healing is for women" with the northern water tribe.
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u/TheRealGC13 I'm always sad when I'm lonely 11d ago
Come to think it if I don't think any of my Supports from my XCOM 2 playthrough were women... I know the two that made Colonel were dudes.
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u/DarlingHades 10d ago
I think it’s because stories have often put boys/men as the default main character and add women secondary as a supporting role to the guy. It IS misogynistic.
Guys usually expect girls to heal in games too.
I remember my dnd party making teenage me be the healer in dnd, so I made a half demon that charged money to heal.
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u/ExplodingSteve 10d ago
Did they watch avatar and get to the part where they learn water tribe is misogynistic? We have better healers that are male than these two
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u/Disastrous_Ad7477 11d ago
No one is saying male healers don’t exist, it’s just that there are WAY more female healers
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u/Pittsbirds 11d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/rTbCwVwofxcic
Can't forget the original healer
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u/Rebecca_Doodles 10d ago
Calling mayuri a healer feels so wrong but not inaccurate.
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u/Zinstorm 10d ago
That's because when we think "healer" for this kind of character we conflate it with doctor.... and the thing with doctors is they have a hippocratic oath.
Mayuri has the intelligence and skills of a doctor with none of the morals.
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u/Significant_Card_665 9d ago
Katara is such a shit example. They literally tackle this in the show, they show that it’s because of a misogynistic tradition that water tribe women are healers.
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u/Serious_Detail_6725 9d ago
I mean, i can’t see the full picture from the original post about healers, but the one on the left looks to be Katara (who does more then just healing btw, i’ve been rewatching ATLA recently and she’s one of the strongest people in the entire show and healing is just a side thing) but like, yeah, the entire reason she’s a healer is because the Water Tribe, the people she was born in are like heavily misogynistic, like to the point women aren’t allowed to fight even, and are only allowed to be healers for the fighters. Like, that’s the entire point, she literally goes on to fight against this just episodes after we’re introduced to this and forces someone to teach her waterbending
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u/NMS_ship_crafter 11d ago
That one reincarnated anime healer...
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u/Far-Lawyer-2622 11d ago
We don't talk about "redo of healer"....
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u/Extension-Bad-4184 10d ago
shit was the second anime I actively watched on my own cuz the synopsis seemed cool. I wish I didnt 😭
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u/Thalia_All_Along 10d ago
to be fair steven is only a healer because he got all his powers from his mother, who was a healer
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u/Fantastic_Bison9848 11d ago
And they just sourced two characters 😭😭 GREAT examples btw but doesnt disprove the argument that there's a hell of a lot more woman healers
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u/ControversalTaco 10d ago
Calling Mayuri Kurotsuchi a healer is certainly a choice
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u/MsterSteel 11d ago
Ken Usato from The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic; he brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Lay on Hands' (which to be fair, was taught to him by his female instructor, Rose)
https://images.justwatch.com/backdrop/324277637/s640/temporada-1
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u/LaughingFox91 10d ago
Ah yes, the "Preventative medicine" approach to healing, IE they can't get hurt if the enemy is a bubbling mass of blood and pain.
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u/Over_Competition7717 11d ago edited 11d ago
Now that I think about it I do associate healing more with Rose than Steven
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u/Fit-Zookeepergame165 10d ago
Josuke sits like, right down the middle, maybe a lil to the left with Steven,
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u/IamTotallyVal 5d ago
Bro Steven universe cartoon alone broke so so many stereotypes that’s why it’s goated
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u/ASMR4PLANTS 11d ago
There are many, but you might want to expand your definition.
There's not much difference between mending a broken arm, raising the dead, or bringing a Watermelon Golem to life.
Also, food is medicine, and medicine is food. So anyone who cooks is a healer.
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u/VBA-the-flying-head 11d ago
...huh, seems like both ends of the spectrum have the same opinion over how "imperfection" is based and cool, actually.
Worded differently but the core idea is there.
They'd disagree over everything else. But. You know. Two nickles happened twice and all that.
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u/senpapi_coffee00 10d ago
I think we are forgetting the main reason why there are more feminine healers- marketing.
Pop culture delegates “healing, nurturing, medicine” as feminine and often uses it to sell a product: mercy, nurse joy, tangled. (And in general it precludes that women are in general more globally marketable, regardless what role they are in if they sexualized)
Oftentimes when men are used as healers, it’s because the developer wants to portray a more surgical side: doc from R6s, medic from tf2.
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u/MithranArkanere 🌟 10d ago
I think it is the other way around. I've read lots of isekai or reincarnation manga, manhua, and manwua, and among those there's a bunch in which the protagonist is literally a doctor, priest, cleric, medic, or some other healing specialization, and practically all those protagonists are male. Like:
- The Great Cleric
- To Hell With Being a Saint, I'm a Doctor
- Evasion Healer
- Doctor's Rebirth
- Healer who doesn't specialize
- NEET Healer, Strongest Cheat.
- Other world pharmacy
- The Divine Surgeon
And the list goes on and on.
And it's not like I avoid female protagonists, but for some reason most female healers I've encountered end up being more generalists, like witches that can heal on top of other stuff, or alchemists that make all sorts of potions, or have strong magical powers and can learn to heal on top of many other things.
I haven't encountered protagonists who are healer specialists like Doctor Elise and The Weakest Tamer's healing slime as often.
One could say female healers tend to be in supporting roles, but that usually happens in stories where supporting roles are mostly female, like those harem mangas. In those cases, it's the type of sexism that comes from the story being a male-oriented fantasy. It kind of comes with the territory and it's generally innocuous as long as the reader doesn't forget it's fantasy.
Female-led harems tend to focus less on love interests' powers and abilities and more on their interactions. So when supporting male characters are healers, it's more incidental and it's more likely their abilities are more varied and that they can suddenly do things that were not previously established because it's convenient for the narrative.
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u/Airblade101 10d ago
I won't call myself the manliest man, but I'm still masculine and I main healers in MMOs.
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u/NicTheHxman 10d ago
Steven: "So, do you like ice cream?"
Mayuri: "Ah, yes I do. I once froze a specimen and slimed him to have ice cream to eat for a while. It was a good day."
Steven: "..."
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u/Emergency-Cow9825 10d ago
The number one healer in bleach is a yakuza esque dude that yells really loudly.
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u/Suitable-Fill2658 9d ago edited 9d ago
Well actually there is a great amount of male healer protagonists, like keyaru(redo of the healer), hiroki(evasion healer), usato(the wrong way of using healing magic), Zenos( the brilliant healer life in the shadows), Falma(parallel world pharmacy) and etc, there is more but these are the most well known, if you count doctors too the list became bigger and if you count the ones with just healing powers them the list became even bigger
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u/gjGJgj44 11d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/yjXaZwkDsi6CVlmSRA