There aren’t many nonbinary characters on television. Though nonbinary people or people who otherwise don’t subscribe to being either male or female have existed for ages, but this sort of identity hasn’t seen much mainstream attention until the past decade. Now we see tons of people both celebrities and civilians alike who reject the gender binary entirely and that’s led to more nonbinary characters appearing on TV.
However, because this identity hasn’t been in the spotlight for long there aren’t yet many nonbinary characters and there are even fewer who get to be central characters. Things are improving slowly, but as with portraying any marginalized identity, there is a careful line to walk between characterization and tokenization. We’ve seen a handful of wonderfully executed nonbinary characters in the last few years, but one that stands out from the rest is Jim Jimenez (portrayed by the delightful Vico Ortiz) from Our Flag Means Death.
Who Is Jim Jimenez?
Jim is, bluntly, a badass. They’re a master with a knife, a rogue of great renown, and something of a straight man to the rest of the crew’s chaos. When we first meet Jim, they’re disguised as a man and posing as mute on the crew for the Revenge. They have no strong attachment to the crew except for their friendship with Oluwande (Samson Kayo) who is, at the start, the only person who’s aware of Jim’s true identity. Fittingly for someone of this crew, Jim is on a revenge quest. When they were young, their family was killed by the gang the Siete Gallos and Jim trained for years under a badass Nun (Selenis Leyva) before starting their quest to take down the people who took everything from them.
Throughout the season, they struggle between their desire for revenge and their growing attachment to the crew and their growing romantic relationship with Oluwande. Jim is an extremely self-assured character and that comes through not just in their dedication to their revenge quest and the confidence with which they deceive the crew and Spanish Jackie (Leslie Jones) but also in how they present their own identity. We only know Jim as Jim, a nonbinary badass pirate. We don’t see their identity challenged at every turn, and we see people take more issue with their propensity for stabbing than with anything to do with them being nonbinary. Like everything else, it’s an essential part of their character and something that is respected by the characters and the narrative, but it is far from the only thing Jim has going on. Jim has many problems they face but being nonbinary is not one of them.
Letting Nonbinary Characters Be Characters Without Explaining Themselves
It’s refreshing because so many nonbinary characters have to go through the grueling process of realizing their identity and then having to explain it to others who might not respond well. Our Flag Means Death treats queerness as normal. There’s no arc of people trying to understand “what” Jim is and Jim isn’t forced to go out of their way to explain themself. Even when they run into the Nun again and have to reintroduce themself as Jim, the Nun takes it completely in stride. It’s in line both with the lighthearted tone of the show and the general approach it takes to queer characters, Our Flag Means Death treats queerness as something relevant but not all-important. It’s not a challenge to overcome for either the queer characters themselves or those around them. And while this accepting and low-key approach to queerness is getting more prevalent on and off-screen, it’s still far from the norm. Our Flag Means Death never demands that queer characters explain themselves and, when put in contrast with how many nonbinary people are treated in real life, this is quite remarkable.
One thing that sets Jim apart even from other well-received nonbinary characters is that they never struggle with their identity. Jim arrives before us as a fully-formed person and that includes an implicit understanding of their own gender. We discover they are nonbinary along with the rest of the crew, and it is remarked on much in the same way any sort of identity reveal would be done. The crew responds to finding out Jim isn’t a man with the kinds of questions and foolishness one would expect from this group, they ask if Jim is a mermaid or a woman but once Jim clarifies that they aren’t it’s never questioned again. And crucially, the butt of the jokes in these scenes is always the rest of the crew failing to understand Jim and jumping to outlandish conclusions, not Jim themself. It’s such a minor thing, but it makes Jim’s identity feel absolute and unquestioned in a way that’s extremely affirming. And then no one talks about it again.
Jim is Jim, always has been, always will be, and so they continue to treat them as they always have, just now they’re all a bit closer, and it’s clear Jim trusts the crew more. And another crucial yet easy-to-overlook aspect is just how varied Jim’s relationships are. Since it’s still so rare to see a nonbinary person as a primary character in a show, it’s even rarer to see them in relationships. Some shows like Sex Education and One Day At A Time have managed to do so but it's still not very common. But in Our Flag Means Death, Jim has a unique dynamic with a lot of different characters. From the fear they strike into Lucius (Nathan Foad), the admiration they earn from Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), or the budding romance between Jim and Oluwande, we get to see a lot of different sides to Jim through these relationships. All of this helps us to understand Jim more as a character and start to see the different dimensions that make this character feel so fleshed out.
Jim’s portrayal is very in line with how the show, as a whole, treats its queer characters. Stede (Rhys Darby) and Ed’s slow-burn romance develops much in the same way that a heterosexual romance would with the steady realization of feelings. The struggle around the relationships has little to nothing to do with the fact that they are both men and more to do with Stede’s own cowardice and the doubt he felt over leaving his old life behind. Stede is the only character that really has a coming out arc, the rest of the queer characters in the cast (of which there are quite a few) have long passed any revelations regarding that aspect of their identity. Lucius is quite similar to Jim in his blatant way of discussing his lack of attraction to women or the forthrightness with which he pursues a relationship with Black Pete (Matthew Maher). They both wear their queerness on their sleeve (or at least, Jim does once their identity is exposed) and it stays a central part of their character and has a clear influence on their worldview, and yet they both have so much more going on.
Nonbinary Characters Are More Than Their Identity
Nonbinary people, like any marginalized identity, require care and attention when being portrayed to a broad audience. But they also don’t need to be handled with kid gloves. Jim is flawed, distrusting, and at times selfish. Jim is a character first, who is allowed all the depth and nuance that that role entails. What we need now isn’t just nonbinary characters showing up in media so executives can tick a box for diversity, we need them to be given the same care as any other character. Allowing Jim to have their gender identity be something that has a tangible effect on how they interact with the world does not mean that is all their character has to be. In fact, it does a huge disservice to reduce them to this single aspect of their identity. But it is still crucial to who they are as a character, just as Stede’s own developing understanding of his own sexuality has major implications for his character but does not eclipse the other aspects of his personality.
In Jim, the show manages to portray a nonbinary person for just what they are: a person, one with flaws and friendships and desires. It’s such a simple thing and in truth, it’s a low bar to clear, yet we see it done so infrequently that we take the victories where we can. Jim is great because they help to set a precedent for nonbinary characters, normalize their presence, and help to show how we can have visibly queer characters without them feeling tokenized. Our Flag Means Death revels in its own queerness and Jim is no exception to that. We need more nonbinary characters who get to be open, accepted, and loved by those around them but also weird, complicated, and flawed. We need more nonbinary characters like Jim Jimenez.