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redana-otanaba · 3 years

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Fuck I just love James even more now 🥲

Some thoughts on Bond’s gender because oh my god (on canon)

because i’ve been running into a god awful amount of chronically online takes today, clearly

Most of the issues I’ve been getting, other than just, blatant transphobia, are on if bond is Really Trans TM because this is seriously an argument we have to make.

Most if not all horrid takes that I’ve seen floating around come from one or more of these misunderstandings:

-bond is simultaneously too feminine and too masculine to be a trans man (some people have Genders, becky)

-bond showed no signs of being trans before (are we even watching the same show here)

-the moriartys transed his gender without his consent (…no)

-bond is an actor and is therefore bad trans rep/not actually trans (im.. gonna need to sit down for this one)

-bond’s personality is different from irene’s, therefore it must be a role / its not done well. (there’s this thing called… character development)

So I’m gonna take a moment to explore what’s actually going on here, just from what is actually shown on screen, and well, a perspective as a trans man, you know.

I will preface this with yes, of course, bond is not Perfect Trans Rep, nor is he portrayed as well as he could be, nor is it gone into detail enough to rule out nonbinary possibilities for him, which are valid, just not my personal experience. So yeah, I’m going at this from a transmasc perspective. And there’s a pretty good chance that the mangaka’s intention wasn’t that at all, but it’s what they created, so they have to deal with it now.

Yeah, these arent like, headcanons, this is pretty much just taking this from what you can infer from the actual canon and what it is like to be a trans man.

To debunk these fucking awful takes, five straight up essays because this is what I decided to do with my fine sunday morning:

Bond’s presentation, Past and Present

Yeah, so this one’s to combat the first two misconceptions, which are a lot of terf shit, honestly. Mostly, it’s a lot of arbitrary qualifications to being trans that simply do not apply, and even then, Bond does fit within even fairly constrained definitions of a trans person, which kind of takes the entire argument away.

Most of these arguments point to Bond’s highly femme appearance pre transition, saying he Couldn’t Possibly Be Trans because he… had big tits and wore makeup, and didn’t seem horribly uncomfortable with them at all times constantly. Bestie, no. I mean, first off, there’s not much argument that him loving a feminine appearance was really the case to begin with.

Like these folks seem to love to point out, this bitch is an actor. A performer. There’s no saying he enjoyed all of those things. But like in most of his life, he’s placed in a role where he plays it. To the best of his ability, to the MOST he can do it. He literally said he used a feminine appearance literally to manipulate people. It was a weapon to him, and he likely exaggerated it to get ahead in life. It wasn’t just because he enjoyed all of it.

And even if that weren’t the case, it straight up does not matter. It doesn’t matter if he liked dresses or makeup or having giant fucking boobs, if he liked it in the past or he still likes it now. (And I think he does like some feminine things a lot, though he did exaggerate himself to make it easier.)

That’s straight up just not how it works. Trans men are allowed to be feminine. Trans men are allowed to not be dysphoric. That doesn’t undermine their gender, in the slightest. To say that’s not true is blatantly transphobic.

And to say that he showed no signs of being trans, that he like, transitioned “out of nowhere” is basically the same deal.

One, he quite literally did show many signs. He dresses up in masculine clothing and alters his voice to be lower twice in two episodes, and is shown enjoying wearing a suit three separate times in those two episodes. This isn’t just because he needed a disguise.

Remember the masquerade? There was quite literally no reason he needed to dress up as a dude to go to that. He just took the chance to be anonymous, you know, as you do, at a masquerade, and decided to go as a man, for no other reason than he wanted to. A cis woman simply would not do that.

And keep in mind, this was completely before the bond thing even existed. (He also looks frequently uncomfortable, when being percieved as weak or feminine, though this is not always the case, and cannot be held as real evidence.)

Two, again, even if this were not the case, even if he acted completely like a cis woman right up until his transition, that would not change a thing. Not everyone “show signs”, and that’s not cis people’s to police- especially someone in the position of being so much in the public eye, so sexualized and made to be even more exaggeratedly feminine. There’s no reason he would, it would straight up just be a risk he didn’t need to take. Acting like anything but a feminine woman would get him fucking hate crimed, and it certainly wouldn’t get him an acting career. Before the moriartys, he had next to zero options to present any differently, and doing so would have been a death sentence.

Even then, he still did.

So, I really don’t see the issue here.

“They Transed His Gender Without His Consent”

Now, I get having a bit of whiplash here at the end of episode 3 if you weren’t expecting it. Of course you couldn’t really predict that, without prior knowledge, and especially in the anime where they shorten things so that they’re just like “alright your name is james”, it can seem a little like they just went “hey so we want you to be a man”. From that conclusion, of course I could understand thinking that’s kind of weird and not good rep or whatever.

But well, logically, that just… doesn’t make sense.

There’s no reason that the moriartys would need Bond to be a man. It’s not as if they don’t have any agents who are women- Moneypenny literally exists. And the “alright you’re a man” conversation could not have been the only thing they said before this occurred- that happened in the daytime, while he originally went off with them in the middle of the night. This was not one conversation.

However, these are consecutive panels, all at once. And I think the fact that he does this so easily and without question kind of shows that “your name is now james” could not be the first time him as a man was brought up. He never asked “oh so you want me to be a man full time with no breaks” no he just… cut his hair and went hell yeah male pronouns, and everyone seemed to understand it. That’s… not forced. That’s him jumping at the idea, and that’s something that probably had to have been discussed before.

The explanation I can provide for this is that the Moriartys probably asked bond what he wanted to do with the new life he was given- you can start over, you can be someone else, what do you want to be within our organization?

Given this sudden opening, he has the opportunity to be something he wants to, completely separate from what he had to be as an actor. The fact that he would accept and want this when he has been so feminine before just kind of proves itself, anyway.

Of course, none of this can be proven, but tell me in what situation taking a feminine woman and deciding to say “alright your name is james now” would make any sense on its own. There’s no reason they would say that, if it hadn’t been asked for. This is not policy, they didn’t take in moran and fred and go yall your name is james now. They didn’t do that with moneypenny. This simply does not add up.

So yeah, if someone has an explanation for the moriartys deciding his name needs to be james with no fucking context other than him asking to be male offscreen, I’d love to hear it. But until then, that’s the only thing that could have happened.

The Moriartys know that he is not just fulfilling a role- otherwise there is no reason they’d refer to him as a man in private and treat him as such. And there’s no reason there would be a need for another guy in the organization at all.

And from the way they treat him- asking him where he wants to change, how he’d like to be referred to, what he wants to dress like etc- they’re very happy to facilitate not just what they want from bond, but what bond wants himself. So they didn’t just assign it to him. They specifically sent him on missions so that he could figure out for himself what he wanted to be and do, to take him out of the idea of being “assigned” something.

Once he realizes he’s allowed to do “what he wants” he becomes a lot more chaotic and loses a lot of the restraints of a “role” he’s put on himself, bragging that he Doesn’t Do Things Conventionally (he’s not like other boys.) But the one thing he does not change is his own gender presentation- if so, he becomes even more masculine.

There’s no logic in thinking that the Moriartys forced this upon him. It has been clearly shown that they want him to be able to contribute to this organization in his own way, with his own ideas- completely constradictory to that idea.

The Myth of “Pretending” to be Trans

Yeah so I’ve seen a LOT of comments trying to make the argument that bond isn’t actually trans and is simply pretending to be a dude, which doesn’t hold up for a… a lot of reasons.

I mean, just saying that someone could be pretending to be trans is fucking stupid and transphobic, but I do have to say this is somewhat of a different situation and I get that there is a bit of reason to think that way here. Yeah, he’s had a lot of Man Disguises before.

But like… just cause he’s an actor doesn’t mean he can’t also be trans… there are trans actors……. like there are trans Everything Else…. and a lot of them would say that before they realized they were trans they would act in opposite gender roles or “pretend” to be the other gender? So that doesn’t really debunk the argument at all, it adds to it.

And there is a clear and visible difference between him as Bond and the disguises he’s put on before, straight up in the overt text and drawings. In the manga especially, every time he had a disguise, there is a scene where he’s shown Revealed As The Real Person, like when he takes off the bohemia disguise, and when in the masquerade Albert calls him out and there’s a panel of his actual appearance without the disguise.

The main quality that shows this is the beauty mark below his eye. As every other disguise, he covers it up with makeup, because it’s… a disguise. He’s trying to be someone else. But as Bond, he makes no attempt to hide it. Because that’s not a disguise, it’s who he really is.

Another thing that points to this is the panels where Sherlock looks at the picture of Adler and the King of Bohemia together, stating, with the quotes, ‘that “woman” is dead.’ (do note this wording was an anime only thing)

woman, in quotation marks.

Then when he throws it aside, it flips to the bohemia guy. Aka, how Adler first appeared to him, and the fact that this was the same person, that the woman is dead, because… “she” was never there in the first place.

If yall have any other explanation for what those panels are trying to say, I’d love to hear your opinion, but that’s pretty much what it comes off as.

And obviously there’s other facets to this. You do have to take into account the line in the manga where Bond thinks to himself that the personality he’s putting out is playing a role, but that line is so often taken out of context to be used as an all out denier for Bond as a man, when that’s not at all what that is even referring to.

It should be taken into account that this line was removed from the anime altogether, as the anime team probably wanted to invite less controversy over his gender. But even taking this line as canon, that’s still not what it even means.

This line is in reference to Moran stating that Bond is lying to himself, but Moran doesn’t specify about what. Moran’s problems are that Bond is biologically female, and that he is not as physically strong. Moran acknowledged that Bond could have the mind of a man. That’s not what’s in question at all.

In that locker room, Bond was playing it up so much that he basically would not acknowledge he could have any weaknesses or could be recognized as like, not a cis man.

So even though his own self doubt could be taken to put his gender into question, Moran saying he’s “pretending to be something he’s not” does not have to be talking about his gender at all, but his physical strength and personality, which is what has not been proven to Moran. He’s pretending to be more confident than he is, for sure.

And Moran completely changes his tune about that, once Bond goes out on that mission and gains some personality. The mission has nothing to fucking do with his gender. It’s about his usefulness, his strength, and his independent thinking. If Bond could prove that he wasn’t just following orders, Moran would accept him fine.

And he did.

What bond “wanted” was what Moran was testing him on, and that ended up being not about his gender presentation at all, but about his… independence in a mission. So once that was cleared up, Moran was cool with it.

Of course Moran had some trouble believing Bond was a man, At First. But obviously, he went through this situation, and came out realizing that Bond wasn’t faking at all, and that he was actually really fucking cool. So if you’re still going on with that bullshit, you have less of an understanding of Bond than Moran? Get a grip.

And literally even if this was referring to his gender, that still does not cancel out him being a man, because, well… people question themselves sometimes? Trans people question themselves over and over and have internalized problems toward it. This would be especially bad for bond, considering how much of his life has been acting and pretending, he would have a difficult time trying to figure out what part of it was real and what was a lie. That doesn’t change the fact that in the end, he comes out and discovers himself, and once he gets comfortable and starts to show his own personality more, it’s clear that he’s confident in that as well now. It just took him some time.

“He doesn’t seem like the same person anymore”

Now this one I don’t even really see how you could take as evidence against his gender, but it’s still something I feel I need to address in reference to it, because it really does have a lot to do with his transness.

I mean… yeah, I can see where people are coming from here. When he transitions, he does kind of just, change a lot of aspects of his presentation. But that’s… um, how it is to transition, especially at first.

Bond lived as a woman for more than 20 years. Of course he’s gonna have a very well developed idea of being a woman, a very personalized style, lots of feminine mannerisms and traits he’s stuck with his whole life. When someone completely switches genders, especially in an era where gender was so unbelievably rigid and strict? Of course he’s gonna lose a lot of his personality traits when he starts out.

When he’s playing the role of someone else, it’s easy to invent a personality. He does it well. But the entire fact is that although he tries to make it a role at first, that doesn’t work out. This is gonna be him, and what he wants to be, but for someone so new at being a man, as in, for real- he’s gonna start with the basics.

What is required of him is pretty much to fit in as a man and to have traditionally masculine traits- strong, talented, aggressive, and a leader. So clearly, he’d stick to those religiously. He’s not going to have as much nuance in his gender presentation for a bit, because he’s trying so hard to be a man there’s not room for anything else yet. Most of his energy is spent just on convincing everyone and himself that he can Be A Dude, it takes him a second to reach the place where he’s comfortable expressing himself. That’s… very, very well documented among trans people. Even the fact that he wears those platforms is probably quite a bold move for him at first.

Most of the things people complain about him losing in this manner aren’t gone at all. The things that Adler was good with- being fearless, convincing, good with kids, sassy, incredibly sly, a wonderful actor- those things don’t change. What gets lost in translation is mostly the Gendered Traits. But those aren’t necessarily gone forever.

Like with his sexuality and willingness to show off his body. It was likely very easy for him to display his body as a woman, but to do so as a man with, well, the same body, is just, difficult. I’ve seen people complaining about how bond being sexualized only before he came out is Problematic and I understand that, but man, if Bond showed off his fucking tits in a suit in 19th century London, it just, wouldn’t be a smart idea. And I think even in private, it’s going to take him a while to come to terms with correlating his gender and his body in a way that makes him feel ok to like, be a slut again. It’s ok that this doesn’t happen in the first month after he transitions, actually.

Same thing with his feminine traits, like his love of fashion and stuff like that- he’s allowed to like that stuff and to show it off as a man, but it’s not awful that he pushes that aside for a while. It takes people a while to come to terms with just gender basic, he wants to seem as masculine as possible at first, otherwise he’s not gonna be recognized as a guy. Gender nonconformity as a trans person is difficult, and for someone in that day and age, it’s a struggle to balance those things. The fact is, we only see the first few months of his transition, and he’s a minor character who we don’t get to see a lot of. Give him a second, guys.

And other than the change from Strong Woman (unheard of!) TM to Strong Man (hate all men!) TM, there are some other changes, but, well, those things are called, character development.

He’s clearly happier. He’s more confident, and even though a lot of that is probably false, it’s not like he didn’t use false confidence before he was a dude, man. It’s like one of his main personality traits. To be honest, a lot of how he presents here seems more genuine than the personality he exhibited before.

As Irene, he didn’t have a very consistent personality to begin with. He has a poor sense of self, and a lack of motivation and morals. He’s just kind of going around and stealing stuff and not feeling fulfilled, acting like a completely different person around different people to get what he wanted, and was not truly confident, trusting, or happy. He didn’t seem to have any consistent friends, and the half-con, half-friendship he had with Sherlock was the best he could get.

As bond, he not only is able to dress and act like a man, which probably contributes to his happiness, but once he gets settled, he suddenly has a large, supportive, tight knit family that he can get along with and trust, with genuine compliments that reflect not just his looks, but what he wants to be recognized for- his accomplishments and integrity. You can see him becoming more authentic just because of that.

So yeah, I think it’s really clear that it’s quite understandable that Bond is trans, he wasn’t coerced to transition, he’s not faking it or playing a role, and he hasn’t lost his authentic self in that endeavor.

In conclusion if you still think Bond isn’t trans fuck off facts dont care about your feelings TM

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