Gender and the Bechdel Test in your work

Both major female characters my protagonist (Aya, also a woman) converses with do end up talking about a male character— The Lancer's sister Ilana, introducing her brother; the Dragon-in-Chief Shani, discussing her employer/father figure. Both talk with Aya about plenty of other stuff, though— Ilana (and her daughter Nissa) being the first people she meets in the story proper, Shani trying to make her stop talking.

Aya's bird is male, but I'm unsure whether or not that counts when it comes to conversation about him. Come to think of it, I haven't planned out any male-to-male conversations yet.

edited 21st Nov '13 11:34:13 AM by Blueeyedrat

I had to double check to see if a work failed if two female characters discuss men at all at any point in the story. Looks like I was wrong. So I pass.

What if your story is written from a male first person perspective. You'll kind of screwed unless the character is into eavesdropping.

That's a part of the reason why the test isn't supposed to be indicative of the quality of individual works, only as a statistical test for a group of stories as an whole.

edited 28th Nov '13 6:01:22 PM by Noaqiyeum

Hmmm... my novel-in-progress fails so far (I believe...), unless you're willing to count subsets of conversations that include characters of both genders. Actually, it fails both the Bechedel AND the reverse Bechedel test, because the major and the secondary characters are pretty evenly split between characters, so since they're either talking to each other (cross-gender conversation) or as a large group, and the quirky miniboss squad has two men... and someone genderqueer, which makes it a technical fail. Furthermore, most of the talking that's not done in groups is about the other members of the team, who, if the members talking are the same gender, is almost certainly going to be the other! Should even out a little later though, as I intro more characters. (Switching genders on the main character does nothing but reverse his own actions, since he's already FTM!)

I wonder if there's a variant of the test for queer characters. "You must have two characters who are queer, but exist for plot reasons other than being queer." (That meaning a Gay Aesop and the like.)

That wouldn't be even as useful as the Bechdel test, I don't think. A character's sex is much more visible than its sexuality, in the sense that almost every character is immediately attached to a pronoun but, only sometimes, may, some time later, be attached to a lust object. That makes the corresponding test a much higher bar to meet than the Bechdel test, and consequently widespread failure to meet it is much less illustrative.

Bluewyrm, you might be making it out to be more complicated then it is. For The Bechdel Test, is there ever a time when two female character (I'd say what counts is if they identify as female even if one was born male) who have a conversation that ignores men, be it about woman, manly topics, or girly things.

For The Reverse Bechdel Test you just ask your self if there's ever a time when two male characters have a conversation about something other than women. It can be about how to solve the story's conflict or something completely mundane.

edited 4th Dec '13 1:20:28 PM by lexicon

Romantic movie's would be the case for that.

My current Wi P is screwed from the start as there's only one female character.

However, if there were another there'd be plenty of opportunity to discuss things other than men in general (or specific men) due to the nature of the situation in which they all find themselves.

It would pass the reverse Bechdel with flying colours, however, as the men do not spend all their time discussing the woman or trying to make themselves attractive to her.

And she doesn't spend all her time trying to make herself attractive to any of the men, either, there's just no other woman to chat with about anything.

Oh, man. I have three female characters. One is already dead but her blind brother assumes she's "just sleeping", one is eaten by bears when I realized that she wasn't really adding anything to the story, and one is an intelligent and matronly sort who runs a church.

Is that okay? Do I need more female characters?

Make the bears female and you should be good to go.

Oh, wow. I feel sorry for the extraneous characters in your story.

Does being eaten count as a meaningful conversation?

Jinxmenow, you don't need anything. You shouldn't force something into your story just so it passes. You could have a story that's all about men who never talk about women if you really want. The important thing is that you're not against having female presence. I've heard that at least some screenwriters are.

Exactly. Movies like Fight Club don't need to pass the Bechdel Test, just like movies like Bridesmaids don't need to pass the reverse one. If there's a genuine plot or setting-related reason not to include a demographic in a story, it's fine. It's only a persistent and irrational bias spanning multiple works that's a problem.

I pass the Bechdel test in my second and fourth novels, intentionally fail it in my third. It takes place in a biblical context and, in keeping with the times (and to get a morally icky tone I'm aiming for), women mostly don't matter.

edited 7th Dec '13 12:08:02 AM by garridob

Bechdel Test shouldn't be treated like some kind of a magic manual to a gender-equal story. Twilight passes it. That says enough.

Twilight passes? You mean Bella was able to talk about something else then Edward for change?

Yup. It passes. She talks about shoes once.

Makes sense, though. Isn't part of the point how easy it should be to pass it, and how low the standards are to pass the test? That's why it's eyebrow-raising when so few movies or whatever pass it, the implication being, wow, you can't even do this much. So many movies and the majority can't even have two women discuss the weather, let alone a part of plot that doesn't revolve around men. A work can be feminist or at least not a piece of misogynistic shit without passing, but the test shouldn't be a surefire route to gender equality because the whole point is how little work is necessary to make a story pass.

Exactly so.

I passed the reverse test although I didn't pass the general Bechdel test. However since once of my protagonists is female and couldn't care less about 'being attractive' or 'getting with men' she's bound to have a meaningful conversation with another female eventually. I also passed the Smurfette test because I only have two main characters, one male the other female. And there's no room for romance between them because they're related.

It's possible to fail the test with a character who doesn't care about "getting with men" and possible to pass with a character who only cares about being attractive.

Most people who look to be attractive tend to do it to impress friends (usually other females) or due to making THEM feel better about themselves.

The purist of beauty is it's own reward so I don't see why not.

Or just make her a lesbian.