This is just an observation. "encode" seems to be a method for string objects
str_1 = 'a'
str_1.encode('utf-8')
>>> b'a'
However, if str1 is inspected for methods, an empty list is returned
inspect.getmember(str_1, predicate=inspect.ismethod)
>>> []
So, maybe I am wrong, but the issue seems to be not simple.