What are you watching & reading? Will you do the Beshdel Test on it?

Reading "The Secret Life of Bees", it passes easily.

I've been enjoying Frasier every morning with my breakfast but it always fails.

Also watching "My Mad Fat Diary" which only just scrapes through, they talk about "lads" most of the time but not always.

Our current box-set is "The Fringe" season 4. There are a few more passes this season, as Nina Sharpe talks to Olivia more about "stuff other than men". Otherwise, Olivia and Astrid only talk about the male characters or the cases, although about half the cases are women. It usually passes.

These blog posts are fab, Trills. I'm slowly working my way through them!

If you like Terry Pratchett you might like this

YY amanda - I saw a hang glider on holiday and made a conscious effort to say "where's she gone now?" etc to DS. It's a definite effort.

Watched Borgen and it passed.

ouryve I'm reading Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, having just finished Equal Rites.

I think every Pratchett book I've ever read would pass both the Bechdel and reverse Bechdel tests with flying colours.

There's Tina the taxi driver too. But the characters discuss all sorts with Granny Murray. Last week Doctor Juno was off on a sponsored bike ride to France and she chatted about that with GM before she went; the week before Doctor Juno and bus-cleaning woman (whose name I forget) had a talk about the "Be Seen, Be Safe" publicity campaign. Tina is heavily into am dram so she tends to talk to Granny Murray about that. Women who have male dogs and/or sons are capable of talking about something else. i can't offhand think of many episodes I've seen that wouldn't pass.

On Balamory over half the recurring cast (and the only character who's in it every single week) is female. So 50% of the time the person who first turns up to talk to Miss Hoolie will be female and it'll automatically pass.

Did you mean to just deliberately ignore all the other examples people gave? I mean, I'm prepared to load quite a bit of opprobium on Cbeebies fir the sexist tosh that is Tree Fu Tom but I don't feel the need to whitewash entire shows out of the collective consciousness to make my point.

Balamory tends to involve discussion between miss hoolie and another woman about fixing a problem PC plum is having, or Archie, or Spencer. There may be episodes that pass.

Me too - well doctor juno's dog is male, so she discusses him with granny Murray, the lady who cleans buses has a son so that's out, can't remember any other female characters.

Still just some episodes of me too and balamory is pretty rubbish out of the entire channel.

Thinking about Cbeebies I'm pretty sure most episodes of Me Too would pass (many of them wouldn't pass a reverse Bechdel test, though), also many episodes of Nina and the Neurons (ditto). Come Outside would pass on quite a few episodes (when the person explaining stuff to Auntie Mabel is female) but wouldn't generally pass a reverse Bechdel. Charlie and Lola would pass when Lotta is in it.

Amanda - I do that too. I'm starting to win. All of dd2's stuffed toys are automatically female and although I struggled to start with I am now calling all dogs and cats we pass 'she'. It was hard to train myself to do it, so I'm hoping that it will just be normal for dd2 to assume animals are female seeing as she's growing up with me doing it (dd1 is more vocal about this sort of thing than I am so I have no worries about her any more)

I'm currently reading the worst princess to dd2 and we quite like itas the princess ends up doing her own thing and going off with the dragon, but it annoys me slightly by calling her the worst princess, and she does hang around at the start waiting to be rescued instead of getting herself out of her tower. I don't think it passes though because the princess is the only female character as the dragon isn't specifically female (it is in our house but others may think of it as male)

I run an ongoing experiment on myself where I try to see whether I can call animals of indeterminate gender (you know, dogs you pass in the street, etc) 'she' without having to make a conscious decision to do so. Not managed so far. Even when talking about a field of bloody cows (i.e. they are going to be female), I find I have to consciously say 'she'. It is so ingrained to default to the male.

At least English doesn't have male and female versions of 'they', with the female only used for an exclusively female group.

Julia Donaldson is quite good. We currently have a Room on the Broom obsession. The witch is obviously female, so is the bird and I don't think you know the gender of the cat. The dog, frog and dragon are male. I also like Pearl in Zog - "Don't rescue me, I won't go back, to being a princess. And prancing round the palace in a silly frilly dress". Love her.

Doctrine I agree. However if a book takes place in the past, two women having a political discussion about women politicians would be inaccurate.

It is so automatic for generic characters to be male. I think Julia Davidson is quite good at not falling into that too.
Funnily enough, MIL was driving me mad the other day calling the Gruffalo's child "he" and DD's toy dog (who happens to be a girl dog) "he" and something else "he".

Female isn't "other"! Argh.

Talking about cbeebies and that age group I was going to say earlier that Julia Davidson is quite good on female characters. Anyone read 'hide and seek pig'? Mostly female animals, the first 5 or 6 times I read it to dd I kept saying he instead of she each time. Shows how out of the ordinary it is to have main characters and supporting characters as women.

Chubfuddler - really? What about Tweenies? Or Balamory?

Depressingly I can't think of a single cbeebies programme that passes.

Been watching:

Miranda: pass (though they do talk about men quite a lot they also talk about other things).
Call the midwife: pass. The one I watched this week they talk about being missionaries, and babies.
House of Elliot: pass. they talk about sewing as well as men.

Recently read:
Those Happy golden years (just checking it out for the dc): pass, the women there talk about sewing too.
Some of Casual Vacancy. I suppose it passes, teacher talks to a girl. social worker talks to the girl. It's very boring though, I've ditched it.

I am rewatching BSG. The episode I watched last night from the first season passed - and I think all of the ones I have rewatched so far passed. But in at least one case because Laura Roslin is addressing groups with women in them.

RM76, no, you didn't say Warehouse 13 was great TV, don't worry -- I was just qualifying the positive comments that I was about to make about it.

But they only talk about cookies (it seems to me), can that really count?!

I also hate Two Broke Girls