Of Jane Bond & Lady Voldemort

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Here’s the thing: I love a strong female character. In fact, I thrive on them. Give me Ripley fighting xenomorphs, Furiosa steering that war rig through the wasteland, or even Lizzie Bennet verbally dismantling Mr. Darcy before she falls for him; I’m here for all of it. What I cannot get behind is the constant, almost desperate trend of gender-bending characters who were never meant to be women just for the sake of calling it “progress.” Turning James Bond into Jane Bond or Lord Voldemort into Lady Voldemort isn’t feminism, it’s laziness disguised as creativity. It’s like putting lipstick on a franchise and hoping we won’t notice it’s the same old story with a different pronoun.

Take James Bond for instance. Bond is a relic of a very specific era - suave, smug, martini-sipping, emotionally stunted - and it works precisely because he is who he is. Making him “Jane Bond” feels like trying to make him something he’s not, rather than giving us a new heroine who could easily outwit him and walk away in her own heels. Imagine how much more interesting it would be if there was a female villain who could match him, manipulate him, and maybe even make him question everything he believes. Think about it, a female Blofeld who’s not there to seduce him but to defeat him. That’s power. That’s fresh. That’s actually exciting.

Let’s talk Voldemort. He’s terrifying, snake-like, ruthless; and it works. A Lady Voldemort would almost certainly get softened, given some tragic backstory about being misunderstood, or worse, be forced to fit into some tired femme-fatale stereotype. Instead of rewriting He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, why not just give Hermione and Luna their own spin-off series where they solve wizarding crises without Harry bumbling into every situation? Hermione deserves to be shown as the true strategist of the group, and Luna has the kind of chaotic wisdom that would make for the most unpredictable adventures. Just imagine an entire series or movie on Professor McGonagall? That’s how you show women as brilliant, not by shoehorning them into roles that weren’t written for them.

Also, can we be honest? Some of these gender-swapped remakes have been, well… not great. Remember Disney’s “woke” phase where they turned every princess into a live-action feminist who sang about breaking free? Yes, I’m looking at you, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. It didn’t suddenly make the stories better,  it just made them feel like they were shouting “See? She’s independent now!” instead of letting her actually be independent. And don’t get me started on Marvel making Thor a woman. Yes, Jane Foster Thor had her comic fans, but on screen it felt like a half-hearted detour. Women deserve original epics, not leftover costumes.

This is the heart of the problem: gender-swapping is a shortcut. It’s easier than writing new, complex, unforgettable female characters. Shouldn’t women deserve original characters who stand on their own merit? Do we really want a female Sherlock Holmes when we could have an entirely new detective who brings a completely fresh perspective? Instead, why do we think turning Edward and Jacob into women and Bella into a boy would be appealing? (Honestly, can you even picture that melodrama? Yikes.)

There’s also something incredibly patronizing about the way women are often written once they are gender-bent. Suddenly, they’re smoking, drinking, angry, divorced, and perpetually rolling their eyes as if cynicism is the only path to “strength.” Don’t get me wrong, a messy woman can be fascinating, many TV shows taught us that, but that doesn’t mean every female lead needs to be emotionally broken to be compelling. Strength comes in many forms: in resilience, intelligence, humor, or even just refusing to play by a rigged system.

What I want and what I think a lot of us want are characters who feel alive. Give us a villain so clever she makes Bond sweat in his perfectly tailored tuxedo. Give us a heroine so magnetic we follow her whether or not she’s the center of the story. Give us women who are kind, terrifying, vulnerable, powerful, graceful, and ruthless, sometimes all at once. Create the next icon instead of repainting the old ones. Because trust me, the world doesn’t need Lady Voldemort. But it might just need the next Bellatrix Lestrange who decides she doesn’t need a Dark Lord to run her empire of chaos.

Feminism isn’t about erasing men from the roles they’ve played for decades, it’s about making space for women to have stories that are just as unforgettable. We don’t need to borrow the power of male characters to make women powerful. We can build our own. And maybe, just maybe, when we do, we’ll create characters so good that fifty years from now, no one would dare make them men.