diff --git a/gpgmymail b/gpgmymail
index ad5fe67..f9b4308 100755
--- a/gpgmymail
+++ b/gpgmymail
@@ -223,7 +223,8 @@ def encrypt(
         *,
         unconditionally_encrypt: bool = False,
         encoding: str = DEFAULT_ENCODING,
-        ignore_errors: bool = False
+        ignore_errors: bool = False,
+        decode_before_encrypting: bool = False
     ) -> str:
     """Encrypt given message
 
@@ -262,13 +263,14 @@ def encrypt(
     # make necessary changes to message
     # this function is quite clunky and seems to throw exceptions from time to
     # time; if we can't make the necessary changes we want to just continue
-    try:
-        message = decode_email(message)
-    except Exception as e:
-        if ignore_errors:
-            pass
-        else:
-            raise e
+    if decode_before_encrypting:
+        try:
+            message = decode_email(message)
+        except Exception as e:
+            if ignore_errors:
+                pass
+            else:
+                raise e
     
     gpg = gnupg.GPG()
     gpg.encoding = encoding
@@ -331,6 +333,8 @@ def main() -> None:
                         help="Encrypt mail unconditionally. By default, mail is not encrypted if it is already encrypted.")
     parser.add_argument('--ignore-errors', action="store_true",
                         help="Ignore errors at certain error-prone points of the script.")
+    parser.add_argument('--decode', action="store_true",
+                        "Attempt to decode quoted-printable and base64 parts to latin-1 before encrypting a message")
     parser.add_argument('recipient', nargs='*',
                         help="Key ID or email of keys to encrypt for")
     args = parser.parse_args()
@@ -344,7 +348,8 @@ def main() -> None:
             args.recipient,
             unconditionally_encrypt=args.unconditional,
             encoding=args.encoding,
-            ignore_errors=args.ignore_errors
+            ignore_errors=args.ignore_errors,
+            decode_before_encrypting=args.decode
         ))
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':