Gender and the Bechdel Test in your work

This came up in the Fantasy Novelist's Exam thread, but I thought I'd start its own thread.

How well does your work pass the Bechdel Test? If it's a novel, it will almost certainly pass (there are a lot of conversations in a novel), so how does the test stack up against the reverse Bechdel Test? The Smurfette Principle (are all the female characters The Chick? Are they all love interests?)? Etc, etc.

I don't think my novel will pass the bechdel test. Yes, there are at least two female characters, neither of whom are love interests, but I'm not sure if they will ever meet each other.

My story passes both the Bechdel Test, the reverse Bechdel Test, defies the Smurfette Principle, and generally treats females as like any other character.

...but I don't think people will agree with the above, as there are only two female main characters (though I have a small main cast), and the most defining characteristic in both of them is that they are bitches that few can tolerate, and almost no one likes.

What's the reverse Bechdel test?

The Bechdel Test applied to male characters this time.

I see.

Do non-human females count with the Bechdel test?

I'm really bad about doing female characters so I always fail the Bechdel Test. The only females in Boy Aurus (so far and scheduled to appear) are a Mob Boss's bratty daughter who only shows up for a few pages, 3 ghost women in niqab who only show up in one panel kidnapping a man, the cousin Niccolo has dirty thoughts about, and Vito's mother.

And none of them associate with each other so there isn't a single conversation between women.

edited 30th Apr '11 11:41:10 AM by Kaxen

Beowulf probably fails the Bechdel test. There are plenty of female characters and they're very different, but they're not really seen interacting with each other.

There's no reason for it not to. This is so simple and general that you don't need to think about little details like this. The same goes for Mt F transexuals, hermaphrodite that self-identify as females, etc.

Eh, my M Cs have a relatively intelligent car, which one of the characters absolutely insists is female, though infertile (he's seen under her hood, he should know these things), and a female human talks to the car because she can sense something strange about it. The car really gives no indication that it's female, it's just that one character says it is.

In that case, you should decide yourself if the car counts or not. It doesn't sound like it does, to me. A somewhat intelligent car, which may be kind of female... that sounds a bit like you're looking for loopholes.

My current novel actually does poorly because it's a war story with a lot of all-male or mostly-male factions, but I have other stories with much heavier female casts, including one which just barely passes the reverse Bechdel test (only through things like a guy asking the bartender for a drink, for instance).

Most of my works would pass the Bechdel Test, given that a vast majority of my characters are female. The Harry Potter fanfics and the "Dessert Senshi" series definitely pass the reverse test, but I'm not so sure about the others since I just have so many girls that they outnumber the boys in the other stories.

Hold on, I have two women (Beowulf's aunt and mother) discussing not Beowulf himself but how he should be treated. Does this count?

The car is about as intelligent as a dog, but only when it's running. It doesn't have human intelligence, but it has enough that the people who know it well would insist "she's really smart" and that she can tell them things.

As I said, I can't tell if your car counts or not. It's your character, you know it best. If you think it counts, it does. Don't think very much about it.

The Bechdel sucks and doesn't indicate anything besides that your work is passing the Bechdel test.

^ The Bechdel test isn't supposed to be anything other than an observation that the roles of women in works is, in general, geared toward love interest status. Much like the Fantasy Novelist's Exam this conversation sprung out of, it's not really intended as a something where the work's "mark" counts— it's just meant to inspire thought and criticism about cliches.

Of the five perspective characters in the thing I'm presently working on, two of them are female. Neither of them are love interests. But since there's no ultra-contrived way they bump into each other, I fail the Bechdel test.

Knowing about it for a long time though, I have wanted to stick in a scene in a film where two women have the following conversation:

A: "You know, apparently some writer won't watch any film without two female characters chatting about something other than men to each other?"

B: "Wow. Strikes me she'd miss an awful lot of great cinema, based on a strange rule."

A: "I agree."

B: "Anyway, enough of that conversation. Let us now proceed to talk about men."

A: "Indeed."

Or some variant. I have a rather immature sense of humour.

Endless Conflict passes The Bechdel Test handily. And the reverse. And The Smurfette Principle.

Thing is, though, people tend to take it seriously, thus inspiring discussions not on female roles in stories, but on making stories Bechdel-compliant, which doesn't necessarily help much at all.

Yes, that is what bothers me about this topic. If you have to ask yourself if your work passes the Bechdel Test (and check all of your dialogue to make sure that it does), than there is a larger problem at work here.

That's the whole idea, though, is that the test will make you think more broadly about gender in your work, like "Huh. How come there are seventeen named male characters in my story and only four female characters (and that's actually doing pretty well)?" or "How come my male characters talk to each other all the time but my female characters never do?", not that you'll just go "Yep, Girl 1 says hi to Girl 2. Check!"

(And that's why I tried to phrase this topic more generally.)

edited 30th Apr '11 3:52:50 PM by jewelleddragon

Right, those are the imporatant things. Is there a good distribution of the sexes for the purpose of the story, what roles do the fe/males play, how are they treated, etc. I know that Bechdel Test is a little bit tongue and cheek, but when you ask yourself these questions about your work, it should be more than just counting the conversations.

Hm, I don't know then.

I have two characters right now who are Walking the Earth. One of them is definitely male and one of them is an Eldritch Abomination currently taking human (male) form, so I guess it's male. They meet pertinent people one at a time, generally, so any conversation not involving either of them is nonexistent. Therefore, fail.

However, whenever I write stories from a female POV, bechdel is very easy to pass. It seems for my works, whether the work will pass a bechdel test or not is solely dependent on the gender of the viewpoint. I guess for any of my work to be worthy of female readership, I should write exclusively female main characters?

edited 30th Apr '11 4:27:46 PM by OhSoIntoCats