The Bechdel Test

[illcounttothree]

Hoping someone can help me out.....

I've nearly finished writing a book. It's a young adult novel about swords and sorcery and snogging, and I want it to pass the Bechdel Test. I have some really interesting female characters and they have plenty to say that isn't about boys or men.

And because I like a challenge, I don't want there to be just one conversation not about boys or men (which I believe is the requirement) but I want the protagonist to have a non-boy conversation with every other female character.

So here's my question: for a conversation to pass the Bechdel Test, are you allowed to mention a boy/man in passing, or is it strictly No Men Allowed? There's one bit where my protagonist is talking to her mother about when her crazy, uncontrollable psychic powers started to manifest themselves in her childhood, and her dad gets mentioned in passing. In a 1700-word conversation, her dad is mentioned twice for a total of 60 words. Does this conversation pass the Bechdel Test?

I'm genuinely interested in people's thoughts on this!

Tbh you'd be better just writing good women characters. The Bechtel test doesn't measure how good or how feminist a film is, or how good the women characters are, so it's not a test as such. It's a tool that highlights representation (or rather lack of representation).

The Bechdel Test is at its core a lesbian test, ie is there anyone in this that you could reasonably ship (assuming that like in most things there aren't any actual lesbians). It's not really a 'feminist' test, there are things that are very feminist but don't pass, things that are not feminist or are even anti-feminist but pass.

"I have some really interesting female characters and they have plenty to say that isn't about boys or men." sounds good. You don't need to be adding up the number of characters in a words that reference males.

My husband has a (rather great) film blog and has written quite a lot about the Bechdel test - in fact coming up with a new test that might be more relevant in some instances. Have a look and see what you think: notlefthandedfilmguide.co.uk/2014/01/18/the-iswyd-test-a-new-way-of-measuring-the-portrayal-of-women-in-cinema/

I think the rule of the Bechdel Test is that women must talk to each other, but not about a man. If the conversation is about psychic powers and a man is mentioned, that passes. It really isn't a test to ensure that women aren't at all connected to men--the point is to establish that women have concerns other than their connection to men.

Alison Bechdel herself is a really interesting person, and has a blog that's worth reading (though as a blogger, she's not very prolific):
dykestowatchoutfor.com/blog

"The Bechdel Test is at its core a lesbian test, "

Is it?

As most films pass the reverse Bechdel, is the reverse Bechdel a gay test?

OP, yes, I think so, because exchanges within that conversation will make no mention of men, were they to be extracted.

The Bechdel Test is more meant to be a cumulative thing - how many movies per year/ever get a 'yes' from it, compared to how many that don't. Then you get an idea of how normal/abnormal it is to see women being presented as anything other than an adjunct to a man.

I can't remember what the stats are, but it's a depressingly low number of Hollywood movies that get a 'yes' from the Bechdel test, thereby creating the illusion that women, real women who do their own thing, not just worry about becoming a girlfriend/wife, are only about 10% of the population, or some such stupidity.

BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure um yes? Do you know what it's from? It's not even by Alison Bechdel, it's her friend's rule but she was the one who put it in a comic and popularised it. Bechdel is a lesbian, her friend is a lesbian. The test was made by a lesbian, popularised by a lesbian, in a comic for and about lesbians. "is the reverse Bechdel a gay test" don't be stupid.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist you're a lesbophobe. I didn't say it "makes them lesbians" and you shouldn't act like lesbians in films is a bad or ridiculous thing. I said quite clearly it's hard to ship women who don't talk to each other or who only talk to each other about men. Of course a mother and daughter could pass the test and of course that doesn't mean anyone's shipping them, before you start.

That it works as a feminist test is a side effect. So relying on it to make something feminist is pointless.

Yes, I know who it's from.

the people who monitor and update the Bechdel test site are listing films that pass or fail. It is a quick test of whether a film has realised female characters who exist in their own right.

It's not a feminist test - a film can pass without feminist themes.

I would not be so rigid about this, and create artificial conversations.

I'd just focus on a good story, well told, and not try to please everyone.

You can't please everyone anyway.

As you can see on this tread.

What about different races and ethnicities, are they represented? the disabled are in there I hope? And at least 1 person with SN ? And they have a conversation about someone who is NOT NT? And what about transgender people? And the elderly? can there be a few elderly people who talk about someone who is Not younger than them?

Whilst I think the Bechdel test is interesting in the way it highlights sexism in Hollywood, and therefore a helpful top in tackling a sexist industry, i don't think any aspiring author needs to bend over backwards to fulfil someone else's criteria.

Do your own thing.

Good luck!

Thought the lesbian shipping thing was a bit suspect.

I'm missing something here - what does 'shipping' mean in this context?

It's a term used primarily in fanfiction to indicate pairing two characters in a romantic or sexual relationship. It can follow the relationships built up in the original work or introduce new ones (often gay male). Authors are said to "ship" the characters when they write it, or have a preferred "ship" or even to be "shippers" (typically applied if they only write about, or read stuff written about their preferred pairing).

Oh, and should add, it's got sweet FA to do with the Bechdel test in my opinion.

So Harry/Draco or Hermione/Snape are "ships"

Ah - thank you! So not entirely relevant to the op or general discussion then.

Hermione/Snape - now there's an image I didn't want over breakfast.

Yes - it strikes me that the whole point of the OP was that the Bechdel test enables us to shed light on the fact that even when two named female characters in a film are having a conversation without a man present, it's often about one of the male characters, and frequently about the relationship one of the women has to that male character. What's missing from films are the conversations about (depending on genre) the forensic lab results, the political tensions between country X and country Y, the philosophical meaning of life and death, last night's netball results (by way of background colour to establish, y'know, that these are real everyday people with the same interests as your average Josephine), how to fix the spaceship's engines, how the lead female character being passed over for promotion yet again has led to a mid-life crisis, a crisis in her own sense of her femininity, and the purchase of a fast red sports car...

What the Bechdel test is most definitely not about is the fact that the conversation about relationships which the women are having (because that of course in bad scriptwriter land is all women ever talk about) is about a straight relationship rather than a lesbian one.

No, I think that particularly pp has simply spectacularly missed the point (based on the rather tenuous hypothesis that because Bechdel is a lesbian herself, all her writings must pertain to lesbianism). I think neither the OP nor the rest of us on this thread think that! I think TeiTetua summed it up quite nicely.