Geek Feminism Wiki

The Bechdel test or Bechdel/Wallace test was developed by Liz Wallace and became widely known after Alison Bechdel featured it in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

The Bechdel test is a test of female characterisation in movies. Passing the Bechdel test requires that:

  1. the movie [media] has at least two women characters;
  2. who talk to each other;
  3. about something other than a man.

Passing or failing the test is not an ironclad guarantee of well-rounded, feminist, characterisation but it is indicative of the problems of token women characters. The point of the test is not whether individual works pass or fail, but what the trend over major masses of media are. A vast amount of geeky media fails the test.

Applications

The test has been applied to various media:

  • tigtog applied it to a list of the “Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years”, with few books meeting the full criteria at Larvatus Prodeo

Variants

External links

See also