Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Does this scene fail the Bechdel test?

The Bechdel Test has three rules: It has to have at least two [named] women in it Who talk to each other About something besides a man Some people who try to apply it use "man" in the romantic ...

posted 5y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:47Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39946
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:06:53Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39946
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T10:06:53Z (over 4 years ago)
The [Bechdel Test](https://bechdeltest.com/) has three rules:

1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

Some people who try to apply it use "man" in the romantic sense, but it doesn't have to be.

So if your scene has the two women as named characters talking about a foreclosure, it passes.

The idea is not to tick off a list of checkboxes, but to make you consider the work as a whole: Do the female characters function without male character intervention? Are the female characters interesting on their own? Do they have independent personalities, thoughts, lives, plot arcs? If you removed the male characters, would the female characters still have stuff to do?

Those questions are more important than "Do I have enough lines in this paragraph of these two characters talking about non-romantic stuff to qualify for passing this test?" If your female characters ONLY ever interact because they are talking about relationships with men, that's the problem the Bechdel test is trying to highlight. Women do stuff which has nothing to do with men at all.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-11-06T18:26:59Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 55