Bechdel Test Blues

I read the article on the Bechdel Test, but I'm just a tad bit confused. See, I'm writing a book with LOTS of female characters, and they talk about a bunch of other topics besides boys. In fact, it rarely, if ever, comes up at all. However, in those rare cases that it does, does that mean my work fails the test?

What.

The test only requires that you have two female characters that talk about something other than boys. It's preferred that such conversation (about other than boys)is the majority of theirs, but not required.

Anyway, you shouldn't have to worry at all.

Thanks, I wasn't worried, just curious.

Yeah, most people don't even care about it, since abiding by it strictly would essentially destroy most of our fiction that's been written. It was only meant to be something that started a conversation on why our media tends not to follow it, instead of being a stick that groups use to beat other groups into submission.

But that's a conversation we've been having in the on-topic forum for years; it has not yet reached a satisfying conclusion for anyone...

I thought we were generally of the consensus that you should try to pass it unless your story has a specific plot reason not to. (e.g.: It's about a pre-1970s military platoon.)

Yeah, I never really cared about it anyway; and as I said, I passed it anyway. The female leads cover everything from A-10 Warthogs to zip-up jackets over their appearances.

The Bechdel test is mostly useful as a criticism of broad trends in culture, rather than of individual works. You shouldn't worry about it (which, great, you haven't — just consider this a public safety announcement, then).

It's more that you should pass it naturally, in most stories, I think — just as a matter of course, rather than as a moral command that you must deliberately go out of your way to pass the test.

Thanks, imadinosaur; I didn't even know that the test existed until I was knee-deep in my book already, and I had already passed it. Like it says on the trope page: it's easy to pass. It's almost TOO easy to pass.

In fact, it's so easy to pass that a work where the women in question are passive satellites to the men the entire rest of the story can still pass so long as there's one tiny conversation about clothes or their daughters or something like that shoehorned in.

Yeah.

I'll have to fish up the link, but I read somewhere that even some of the most misogynist works have ironically PASSED the test with flying colors.

Yeah, it's just as Crystal Glacia said above. It's easy to accidentally pass the test, considering how simple the rules are. It's a test made to spark discussion, but an individual work failing the test doesn't make it sexist, in the same way an individual work passing the test doesn't dissolve it of sexism.

Yeah, the importance of the concept is that it highlights how few stories seem to pass it and forces us to ask ourselves why this happens. There have been similar critiques involving the significance of minorities, LGBT+ representation, really the whole gamut of big ignored groups in fiction. It's not that every story is going to be perfectly representative, nor that every story should be, but that not even close to enough of them are.

All we really need to do is not avoid it. There are actually film schools that have taught screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test if you can believe it. I agree with the others, passing The Bechdel Test should be natural but not necessary and the best thing we can do is talk about it.

There are no obscenities vile enough to express the disgust I read after reading that article.

Thank god I've never considered trying to get into screenwriting.

I would add a point 3a to the test:

3a. ...or a conversation that, while technically about a man, would be essentially the same if the person being conversed about were a woman.

For example, if your two leads are female cops tracking down a male fugitive, any conversation they have about this task would count. If they are a mother and daughter in a rom-com, the conversations they have about dating would not count.

The Bechdel Test isn't about the third-person pronouns your female characters use. It's about said characters' relevance to the plot.

Kara: Lots of people would add that exception, I think. I know that I would, since the point of the test in the first place was to demonstrate how often the female characters are simply satellites of the male characters. But it's not acceptable to many of the people who care the most about whether a work "passes" or not.

The problem with that exception is that it sort of ignores what I see as a secondary problem the test is meant to point out: a frequent lack of female characters. If every conversation in a work where the subject's gender doesn't really matter is still about a male character, that kind of suggests a fairly skewed gender balance.

edited 18th Jun '14 8:54:03 PM by nrjxll

Speaking of the test, I was somewhat dismayed when I realised that my work-in-progress features a female POV/main character and did not pass the test until eight chapters and a hundred pages in.

True, but then merely passing the test doesn't say much about how the movie actually treats its female characters. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs technically passes.

Well, obviously - that's the whole point of this thread. I just think that the preponderance of characters who could be either gender in theory being male in practice is meant to be part of what the test is designed to point out, so making an "exception" about it is missing the point.

Yup. The Bechdel test is like a sledgehammer: you smash it into the culture and then look at the cracks. There's not much room for subtle distinctions in there.

It's mainly just a broad analysis, most works should pass it, and it shouldn't be a big deal. It's a very simple test to pass. But like other people have said, passing it does not make your work anti-sexist, and failing doesn't make it sexist. Some examples, hidden because it was just too much words in this post. ^*  The Shawshank Redemption fails it, but it's a film about a men's prison, where women just aren't going to be hanging around. It's not a sexist film, it's just not about women. And that's perfectly okay. ^* You also could write a story about two characters, a man and a woman, where neither of them speak to anyone else, but it features extremely strong feminist themes. That film would also fail due to the setting used. ^* If you have a story written in first person with a male main character, it's going to be fairly difficult to find a scene where any two characters have a conversation without the main character, whether they're two men or two women or whatever. ^* And a story that is extremely sexist against women might pass when the two women characters briefly chat about what sort of cleaning products they use or something else stereotypical.

I've heard some people giving out, saying, "Oh, this film should pass since it has strong female characters," or "How can this film pass when it's clearly so sexist!", but that's not the test. It's not about sexism, or how 'strong' your female characters are, it's about representation. If two women do not have a conversation about something other than a man, it's a fail. If two women do have a conversation about something other than a man, it's a pass. End of.

I do think it's something to think about when you're writing, to try and bulk up female representation, but it's not entirely crucial in every case. It's a very general statement. Why do so many films fail the test, when it's so easy and requires something extremely basic to pass? Why do so many films pass the reverse Bechdel test, where two men have to speak about something other than a woman? It's designed to bring up questions.

Again, it's so simple that most films should be passing it by default. Women make up 50% of the population. They should be making up a significant portion of the dialogue in fiction too, both as the subject of it and the speakers.

I'm loving your username by the way, Dublin.

edited 20th Jun '14 4:41:35 AM by QueenPanic

Appreciate it, Queen Panic. But my original question still stands, and I apologize if it was a bit unclear at the top (I've been told I'm not very good at being clear like that). If my female characters mostly talk about other things that, well, AREN'T men, does my work fail the test if they DO have one conversation about men?

As I understand it, no, the work doesn't fail: the test requires that:

1) There are at least two women. (Check)
2) Who have at least one conversation. (Check)
3) In which they discuss something other than men. (Check)

(I'm ignoring the stricter requirements given on the trope page for the sake of simplicity; the principle of how a work passes or fails is the same either way, I believe.)

The presence of any other conversations is irrelevant: as long as there exists at least one such conversation as described above, the work passes.

Put another way, the work doesn't fail by virtue of having women talk about men, but by not having them talk about something else.

edited 20th Jun '14 9:20:40 AM by ArsThaumaturgis