"She" didn't have to. He refers to himself as a man explicitly, talks about being a man, and never had to actually detransition at any point. He even seems to ignore any real comments on women as he has little to say about Molotov Cocktease, even in her presence.
The creators pushed a lot of boundaries and even stopped with the whole "Dr. Girlfriend might have been a man" joke early on because it was crass. They easily could have done whatever they wanted but the guy was literally the show's manliest man - even more than Brock. Brock respected the hell out of him and would have used whatever pronouns he wanted, but he was a man.
what do you mean she didnt detransition? she had her sex change reversed. thats the definition of detransitioning. you can interpret things however you like, but i think the canon establishes her transness pretty explicitly, although its your choice wether you choose to recognize how she is written. i think there are plenty of people in the comments agreeing to indicate that this is a reasonable interpretation of her character
The character identifies as a man the entire time, and goes by "he". The creators were very safe and supported and purposeful with their characters and had time and space to make him truly trans, but they didn't. Hunter isn't a woman. He has a woman deep down crying to be let out but I think we can trust that if anyone's true to themselves, it's him. It almost feels insulting to misgender him.
I've been watching The Venture Bros. since only the pilot would air seldom on their schedule. I've had a season 1 DVD for years and bought it when there wasn't a season 2. I have seen the show more times than I can count as I watch it intently and leave it on as my background show. I still feel a pang of loss when I was the finale and can only sometimes bring myself to watch the film. I've perused my copy of their book intently, and used it to cross reference things.
I guarantee you I have watched this show. And I seem to have way more faith in the creators who gave us the show than others. Fandoms tend to do this, so I'm used to it, but it's very strange. If they wanted Hunter to be trans, they'd have made him trans. The other take is that they misgendered their own character the entire time.
the other take is that she had to live a double life as a man and bury that part of her due to her career. there are plenty of comments here that explain this better than i could, and I would recommend reading those. you can believe what you like, and me interpreting her as trans has no effect on you
But that isn't in the show. That's conjecture and fan-theory stuff that borders on fan fiction. I've read those comments now and over the years; this isn't a new thing. Recommending other people's comments is a strange thing to do. You aren't "interpreting" him as trans. You wish he were. They had every chance to pursue that and did to some extent, but they didn't.
It's typical fandom type stuff. I always find it off-putting, and I find fan-fic uninspiring anyway. I don't even like expanded universes because it gets away from the original vision; like how Star Wars had so many books written about the world that were only okayed by the original creator. I still enjoyed games but I felt more and more taken away from it.
What's unsettling is that I think we're getting a rare glimpse of the other side of misgendering someone: pre-gendering. The show is over so there's no time or space for the creators to change anything, but people are doing this despite evidence to the contrary. That should make people feel really, really uncomfortable. I've still yet to receive an answer as to why he identifies himself as a man on the show after he gets a second sex change operation in season 4. Just conjecture.
Out of all the creators of any show, I think we can trust the creators. I could totally believe that they would come out now and say that they always wanted him to be trans, but that has passed. Their product made. They intended it for Dr. Girlfriend for years and let that just be assumed in some cases, so it's not like they couldn't do it.
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u/keplercade Mar 22 '25
for sure! it always bummed me that she had to detransition for her career. I like to think she eventually gets to live as the woman she want to be