Reverse Bechdel?

I am not sure if that is the best way to put it, as whether or not they necessarily have a crush on Rainbow Dash (or Trixie, in season 1) is left up to the viewer interpretation, but the point that male conversations are about female characters remains either way.

For what it's worth, I consider that a bit more fitting, as guys are probably a bit more obsessed with the girls they have crushes on than the gender-flip of this anyway. But that alone doesn't seem to be enough to explain away the relatively less concern about things failing the "reverse bechdel" anyway, which leaves me with the impression that reverse discrimination might be playing a bit of a role here.

Of course, that's putting aside that the oddly specific criteria of the bechdel test also seem oversimplifying and all, but even that I'd agree to disagree on if people were more consistent about it.

The Bechdel test is not the be-all and end-all of a show's quality. It's only notable in that it's a simple standard that a disproportionate number of shows fail to meet.

Works that fail the reverse-Bechdel are far rarer, so the reverse-Bechdel is not generally considered relevant to discussions of media in general.

edited 6th Dec '11 2:27:16 PM by Iaculus

Yeah, the test isn't even really all that needed for stuff with an audience highly directed at a certain demographic that's almost entirely one gender, I mean, every football broadcast fails the test (and a lot of sports movies do too), the test is notable because a lot of movies and books that aren't directly solely at one gender still fail it.

I didn't think the Bechdel Test was even supposed to be listed as an example on works pages... oops, never mind. It's the other way around — no examples on the trope page.

edited 6th Dec '11 2:38:08 PM by Fighteer

I've actually brought up the Reverse Bechdel test in other contexts. I claim that if a work fails the Reverse Bechdel test, then the Bechdel test shouldn't apply. I think a medium should be judged by the ratio of Bechdel to reverse Bechdel failures. The closer this is to one (or if the n values for both are small), the better the medium is with respect to gender.

I've seen people criticize romance plots for failing the Bechdel when they also would fail the reverse bechdel (all anyone talks about is who they're into). I've also seen this used to discuss video games, most of which fail both tests.

Again, I don't think it's a particularly bad thing, as pointed out in the OP. It just leaves me wondering about the inconsistency with which this reasoning is applied.

I don't think that the point of the Bechdel Test is so much to analyze particular works so much as it is media as a whole. It's already been noted that the Bechdel Test isn't meant to judge the overall quality of a work. It doesn't even accurately measure whether or not a work is feminist. An incredibly feminist work can fail the Bechdel test while an incredibly misogynistic work can pass.

I think the point of the Bechdel Test is really to get people to realize how few works can pass it. A work with very few important female characters is fine. The problem is when this becomes pervasive. The fact is simply that a lot more works would pass Reverse your Bechdel Test than would pass the Bechdel Test. If it was the other way around, then the Reverse Bechdel Test would be a lot more important and useful.

I am personally of the opinion that it doesn't necessarily matter how many members of your cast are one gender or another, so much as it matters that you portray that gender realistically given the setting, time period, and environment that character grew up in.

It does little to have a cast full of women if they're stereotypes, and vice versa for men. Both are still sexist, and both are still useless.

That said, modern fiction is rarely good at having casts that, barring gender balance, at least have realistically portrayals of the genders, and thus "how many female characters are there?" is still, if not quite a metric of egalitarianism, then at least whether or not the author at least bothered to try.

The portrayal of the genders matters more than their actual numbers though, on a work-per-work basis. Even so, I highly doubt a reverse-test would be particularly useful; we already know most fiction is full of mostly men. You seriously can't watch TV for all of an hour before you realize this, between whatever you're watching and all the commercials...

Waaaaait a second!

Spike had that argument with the owner of Quills and Sofas! They weren't talking about a female there! MLP passes!

Why does it matter if it reaches these arbitrary criteria or not? It is a children's show about talking ponies, I seriously doubt it is trying to spread a misandrist agenda.

Still though, now I'm curious as to the standards of "not about the opposite sex." Is the entire conversation not supposed to be about someone of the opposite sex? Is it supposed to not be motivated by someone of the opposite sex? (Spike was looking to get a quill for Twilight Sparkle, after all.)

It's strange that even such seemingly specific criteria can be so vague.

That is a valid point and one I agree with entirely. The Bechdel test is a load of wank, just even moreso when you apply the wank of it with the wank of trying to justify why a children's show is a work of art.

The gender-inverse could also be said about many shows the "normal" Bechdel test is used to criticise.

The Bechdel Test was never intended to criticise individual shows. All it is is a simple illustration of the general marginalisation of female characters in media.

Indeed, but fans love to miss the point and apply concepts like this to works they love or hate.

The Bechdel test is not a load of wank unless you completely miss the point of it.