Tried to explain the Bechdel Test to DS and ended up making him cry. Advice on doing a better job next time very welcome.

[SolidGoldBrass]

DS will be 9 next week and lately we have been having chats about Life and Ethics and Opinions and stuff. So tonight I decided to introduce him to the Bechdel Test as a way of looking at films/books/TV programmes. DS loves writing stories, and therefore immediately applied the test to his own stories. All of which failed. DS cried. I feel horrible and mean. I tried to explain that there are quite a lot of films/stories/TV programmes which are really good but which don't actually pass the Bechdel Test, and that it's not a measure of merit, but I still feel horrible and mean. Anyone got any advice?

That's generally true of Austen (although I don't think it's that she "didn't think she could represent men well enough" as that she'd by definition never been present in a situation where there were no women), but actually there are a number of brief male-only conversations in Mansfield Park .