diff --git a/http.client/http/client.py b/http.client/http/client.py
index 7a9f3e29..98f883c1 100644
--- a/http.client/http/client.py
+++ b/http.client/http/client.py
@@ -1038,7 +1038,7 @@ class HTTPConnection:
             header = header.encode('ascii')
         values = list(values)
         for i, one_value in enumerate(values):
-            if hasattr(one_value, 'encode'):
+            if isinstance(one_value, str):
                 values[i] = one_value.encode('latin-1')
             elif isinstance(one_value, int):
                 values[i] = str(one_value).encode('ascii')