By Anna Menta

Early on in the new Netflix comedy Ladies First, Rosamund Pike’s character, Alex, overhears that she’s only been promoted at work for the optics of a “female perspective.” Her boss, Damien (Sacha Baron Cohen), frankly informs she’s there only because the people with the money want to make it look like they care about women in leadership. But they have no interest in actually letting her lead. They want her to show up, shut up, and look pretty—visual proof of their enlightened views on gender.

Obviously, Alex is angry. Rightfully so. But what’s ironic about this commentary on tokenism—Alex being hired to offer the “female perspective,” without actually being listened to—is that is exactly what Ladies First does to trans people, by including a token non-binary character with few lines, little personality, and no perspective of their own. It’s a clumsy attempt to address the film’s outdated take on gender roles, and it falls flat. Because Ladies First isn’t nearly as feminist as it thinks it is—it’s just good ol’ fashioned gender essentialism.

Directed by Thea Sharrock, with a screenplay written by Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul, and Katie Silberman, Ladies First—which began streaming on Netflix yesterday—is an English-language remake of the 2018 French film, I Am Not An Easy Man, also a Netflix original. Both films tells the story of a male chauvinist who wakes up in a world where women are in charge. The concept relies on complete and total acceptance of binary gender roles. In the normal world, all men are alphas who assert their dominance to climb corporate ladders, and all women are submissive caretakers who defer to their male higher-ups.

In both films, after the protagonist bumps his head, those dynamics are reversed. Suddenly, Alex (Pike) is the sexist boss, and Damien (Cohen) is overlooked employee promoted for the optics of “male perspective.” The power has been flipped, but men and women are still fundamental opposites. Men are like this. Women are like this. Mars, Venus. Now, imagine that, but switched. There is no in between.

Even in 2018, and even for a European rom-com, this perspective on gender feels outdated. Nearly 10 years later, for modern American audiences, it’s downright absurd. Ladies First simplifies gender in a way that feels entirely removed from the current cultural state. In the world of Ladies First, all women eat salad, cook, and go to spin class. Men eat steak, watch TV, and sexually harass women. The real-life men’s right movement of today is non-existent, save for an offhand comment from Cohen that “nobody wants a straight, white man in power anymore.” (It’s worth noting that despite that mention of “straight” and “white,” no one in this universe is gay, and everyone is colorblind to race.)

Here in the real world, there are soft nerdy boys, butch sporty girls, hyper femme lesbians, macho gay men, and everything in between. There are also, crucially, transgender people. Someone must have given the Ladies First team a note addressing the fact that transgender people do, in fact, exist, and gender is not, in fact, inherently binary. The existence of trans folks is very inconvenient to a movie like Ladies First, given that they spit in the face of the film’s entire concept. The solution, apparently, was to throw in a token non-binary child for Rosamund’s Pike character.

The kid’s name is Charlie, and they are played by trans actor Red Tennant (whose father is Doctor Who star David Tennant). We know Charlie uses they/them pronouns, because that’s how Alex refers them when she gets a call from Charlie in the middle of the work day. (“Its my kid and they know not to call me unless it’s an emergency.”)

Early in the movie, Charlie informs their mom that she needs to stand up for herself more. Later, they chip a tooth while skateboarding. And that’s… about it. No one acknowledges that Charlie is trans. Charlie doesn’t have any sort of emotional arc. They certainly don’t have anything to say about the sexist patriarchal “real” world, or the sexist matriarchal fantasy world. There’s no reason for Charlie’s character to exist at all, really. Except, of course, for optics.

Just as Alex is invited into the company board room to offer the female perspective, it couldn’t be more clear that Charlie is there to represent the trans perspective. But… there is no perspective. Adding a non-binary character to the background of a few scenes doesn’t magically add nuance to a movie steeped in gender essentialism. It’s a half-hearted attempt to address movie’s glaringly outdated idea of feminism that’s both hypocritical and confusing. (The movie isn’t brave enough to address whether Charlie’s personality changed during the ol’ switch-a-roo, as everyone else’s has, in accordance to traditional gender roles. This could also be attributed to the fact that Charlie has no personality in either world.)

Charlie’s presence in Ladies First suggests that, apparently, there are special exceptions to the “men are like this, women are like this” version of reality. But that’s all Charlie is: an exception. A blip on the radar. Sure, the movie seems to say, there are few weirdos out there who don’t come with a personality assigned to their genitals. But, for the most part, men are dominant assholes and women are submissive caretakers. It’s very unfair, and very sexist, but that’s just the way the world works.

Ladies First seems to think that highlighting these discrepancies between men and women is feminism. It wants gender to simple. But it’s not. It never will be. And pretending otherwise—even with a token trans character for progressive brownie points—won’t help anyone.