omi_ohmy | The Bechdel test and writing slash (Reply)

This is something I find myself thinking about on a regular basis.

First of all, if you are not familiar with the Bechdel test, it started as one of Alison Bechdel's comic strips Dykes to Watch Out For n 1985 (original here), about a simple way of assessing how women are portrayed in movies.

The test is simple:

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

Thinking about these three points transformed the way I saw movies, and women, and society. I'd say it contributed hugely to my calling myself a feminist, because the only conclusion I could come to was that in most movies, the men are the people, and the women? I don't know, furniture. 'Love interests'. Not people who think and chat and laugh and get things done in their own right, without constant reference to men. Not real people

This is my interpretation: feel free to come up with (or share) your own. But whatever you may think of feminism, or my interpretation of what the Bechdel test means, I hope you read on.

Anyway, my main point is that I try to make my fics Bechdel-compliant. This isn't easy, and I don't always manage it, because I write slash. A romance involving two men does, by its nature, tend to exclude women. My thinking on it though, is that if I am going to have secondary characters, and I already have two men leading the story, I can make some of the extra characters women. So, in Trust in Hope Luna and Ginny argue about a potion or charm (I can't remember the details), and in Coffee, Cakes and Doorknob Snakes, there are two (named) female Aurors who talk about a case. Of course, I tend to write longer fics, with several characters, so this is something I can do. I know other people keep things tighter, and that's fine.

I was talking to

birdsofshore about this the other day, and she raised the point that attempting to do this might be a bit tokenistic. She may well have a point, but I'd say that it's less tokenistic than never having women with lives outside of men – especially as the story isn't even a romance between a man and a woman. Yes, sometimes I have to stretch myself a little further, but I've found that doing so is good for my writing, and my dialogue, and I always like the scene much better when I've finished. Women talking to each other shouldn't be an odd thing, it happens all the time!

Now, I don't really bother applying the test when I read fics. I am happy if I do happen to notice a fic passing the test, but it's not something I expect to see that often with slash. I want to make clear that I don't judge fics, or writers on this basis. I should also make clear that the Bechdel test isn't a measure of quality: some pretty dire movies pass the test, and it doesn't magically make them 'good'.

But writing more 'real' (even in this very limited sense) women in my fics makes me happy, and happy to write male-centric stories when I live a very female-centric life. I don't know if anyone's ever noticed me doing it – maybe I should hope they haven't: no writer wants the joins to show – and I really don't mind if no one has. I hope it doesn't leap out too much now, except perhaps to help anyone reading this to think about what the test means to them.

My final thought: the HP world is full of fantastic female characters – Hermione, Luna, Pansy, McGonagall, to name but a few. But if they don't get a chance to exist as anything other than a foil to a man, I don't think we quite do them justice.