The Bechdel Test

[rowyn]

I was just thinking about this rule -- that a work should '(1) have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man' -- and it just struck me that if you invert this rule to "have two men in it who talk to each other about something besides a woman", I am not sure if any of Jane Austen's books would pass.

Huh.

Comments

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a dude who tends to write about women, I just find women tend to be more interesting characters with richer nuances of personality. Much as I dislike the TV stereotype of men as simpleminded children who have to be kept in line by the rolling-her-eyes wife, it doesn't exist without reason.

That and, well, as the Bechdel Test points out, men have been talked about already. Talked and talked and talked about. O.o

-TG

[rowyn]

I don't find that gender makes a whole lots of difference to me in whether I like characters or not. Someday I'm going to write an outline for a story and then gender-swap all the characters when I write it, just to see what happens. :D I do usually find that gender shapes my characters to one degree or another, just like race/species does.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I've read that Alien was written with an explicitly gender-neutral script, and then the gender of each character was determined during casting by which actor they wanted for the part.

The net result was Ripley, one of the all-time models of a female action hero.

I don't know what (if anything) to make of that, other than "write people first and genders second, if at all," but it's a tidbit I always found very interesting.

-TG

[rowyn]

I probably saw the same article you did on that. :D It's the thing that made me think it would be fun to gender-swap characters after deciding on a story outline.