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Passing the Bechdel test

phantom000

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I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...
 

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I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...

It's not entirely clear to me whether you are being facetious or not, but either way I'd like to emphasize that the test is not about whether the story content is "pro-feminist" - it's not about the political content of the story. It's about whether the story content is about women or touches on any aspect of a woman character's life other than her relationship to men. That question in itself is political, especially as applied to an aggregate corpus of work. But the test is not about gauging whether a story's content is inherently feminist.

:e2coffee:
 

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This thread has given me a lot to think about. The protagonist in my previous novel was female, and there are several incidences of her hanging out with oth

However, my WIP is from a male POV. While the female characters are all well-rounded, have plenty of agency, and there isn't a bad-ass "not like the other girls/guy with boobs" among them, they are fairly siloed off from each other. It's not that they never interact, but I'm not sure it would pass the Bechdel test as easily as my previous novel.

That's one thing Kate Elliott mentions in the articles I linked up thread. Women not talking to each other much in stories. Many books with strong female characters have them cast as smurfettes in a cloud of men (again, the ratio of female to male characters in most movies and novels is well under 50/50--remember Rouge One, where the protagonist was female, but every other important character was male, and there were few women, even in the background).

Historically, though, this is very unusual. Even in very patriarchal cultures that sequester women, women spend most of their time with other women and have a lot to say to one another (and they don't just think about men, even if men do have a huge impact on their security and well being). When women are isolated from other women for some reason (like living on the frontier or being isolated in a male-dominated setting), they are usually very eager to talk to other women when they get the chance.

Maybe the "women who doesn't have much use for most other women" trope comes out of our experiences living in a culture that is transitioning somewhat from being very patriarchal but hasn't shucked all its male-biased values yet. Being a girl or woman who likes traditionally male things has not only become acceptable, it is often held up as a point of pride. It is seen asrepudiation of old norms that women were only good at/for a limited number of things (being sweet, pretty and caregiving).

And of course, in many professions that are just opening up to women, women are greatly outnumbered and isolated from other women, at work at least.

We still haven't shucked the idea, though, that the things that are associated with traditional femininity are lesser or weaker than traditionally male things, so we tend to think that women who are surrounded by men are more significant or interesting. We also fail to acknowledge how women, even in very traditional cultures, have important things they do to keep society going, and have a huge impact on their world, even if it is most often unacknowledged.

Add to it the complex mixed messages we still all get about the importance of female appearance and whether or not the traditionally feminine things some of us do still genuinely enjoy (makeup, long hair, high heels, bright colors, soft fabrics, tight-fitting clothes) are results of patriarchal brainwashing to be appealing to men at all times, or whether they can be genuine expressions of our femininity for our own sake.

I still haven't worked out that last question for myself.
 
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I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...

There are plenty of ways to do this, and in fact such stories exist. Sometimes there are perfectly legitimate reasons for a given story to fail the Bechtel test, and it is far from the only way of measuring how "pro woman" a story is. I can imagine a "pro feminist" scenario where two or more women are plotting to take down a male dictator who is implementing anti-woman social policies, for instance.

It is also possible for a very sexist or objectifying story to pass the Bechdel test. Imagine a story where two women, examined through the male gaze, are undressing and telling each other how lovely their bodies look in great detail (and in a way that is clearly meant to appeal to male fantasies).

Whether or not scenes are default filtered through a male gaze (when it doesn't make sense for them to be) is another potential gauge of a story's potential sexism. There is another Kate Elliott essay about that issue, called "The Omniscient Breasts."
 
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angeliz2k

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Along with the man-with-boobs thing, I find it aggravating when traditional female tasks are discounted, like cooking, cleaning, tending to children, and doing laundry. Especially prior to the turn of the 20th c. (and even afterwards), it was very hard physical labor to do these chores. It was no joke. Lugging around huge vats of boiling water and beating the heck out of heavy garments? Not easy. None of these things is a small task even today, with more modern conveniences. It's way too easy to underestimate the value of that work and the strength of those women. Give tasks like that (any tasks--it doesn't have to be traditionally female tasks) their value, in a modern or historical context, and you'll go a long way towards creating credible female characters.

I do wonder whether the "talking about men" pertains to everything male, or just men in a romantic context. Men are half the population. They do come up. For instance, I have two sisters who are together raising the one sister's six children during a time of war. Some of the children are male, so technically when they're discussing what to do about the children, they're talking about men--or boys, rather. And they talk about the reason that the childless sister has come to help with the children--because the other sister was widowed. Again, technically, they're talking about a man (the dead husband). I guess what I'm saying is that there's some gray area here with the Bechtel test.

But it is something to get us as writers thinking.
 
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Maybe the "women who doesn't have much use for most other women" trope comes out of our experiences living in a culture that is transitioning somewhat from being very patriarchal but hasn't shucked all its male-biased values yet. Being a girl or woman who likes traditionally male things has not only become acceptable, it is often held up as a point of pride. It is seen asrepudiation of old norms that women were only good at/for a limited number of things (being sweet, pretty and caregiving).

This is the prevailing theory these days, but I have to say, it feels completely wrong to me. I acknowledge this is entirely due to my own experiences growing up. I was an atypical girl in the 1970s, but when I tried to conform - dress properly, wear makeup, etc. - it was the other girls who informed me in no uncertain terms that my attempts were laughable and I should be embarrassed to even be trying.

So yeah, I learned to take pride in being "not like other girls," because that's all other girls left me to be proud of. It wasn't the patriarchy that soured me to pretty girls who knew how to wear makeup, it was the girls themselves.

(And yes, I do recognize them as victims of patriarchy, just in a different way than I was. But I'm still viscerally suspicious of skillfully made-up, well-dressed women.)

Add to it the complex mixed messages we still all get about the importance of female appearance and whether or not the traditionally feminine things some of us do still genuinely enjoy (makeup, long hair, high heels, bright colors, soft fabrics, tight-fitting clothes) are results of patriarchal brainwashing to be appealing to men at all times, or whether they can be genuine expressions of our femininity for our own sake.

I still haven't worked out that last question for myself.

Based on the culture my 14-year-old is absorbing, makeup isn't just for girls anymore, and it isn't (always) about conforming. I have to say, it's kind of marvelous.
 

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I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...
That would be easy. Just have a female character constantly getting dumped on, ogled, blamed and mansplained by men, and have her fight back. She could even converse with other women about what louts all the men were. It'd be extremely feminist and wouldn't pass Bechdel.

General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase to describe this phenomenon?
Sure, why not?

Re: male gaze. The book and movie whose male gaze troubled me deeply was The Virgin Suicides. The thing is, I liked the book. It was well written, very much set in a time and place, and engaging. It had a fair take on the toxicity of controlling parents. Yet the POV boy telling the story is either drooling over this group of sisters or pitying them. "She's so damn hot." "Golly, I feel so sorry for her." "I'm watching her screw some dude on her roof top. Oh baby, so haaaawt." "Gee, I'm so sad because their parents are so mean to them."

Ugh.
 

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General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase [than "man with boobs"] to describe this phenomenon?
Before I try I want to say that your posts are ones I consistently read carefully as they are so clear, wise, and to the point.

Hmm. Crypto-male? Darn. Feeble attempt. I'd love to have such a phrase. I hope others can do better than me. I too have long wanted a better term.

One GofThrones comment. Arya Stark saying "Girls are idiots." That is HER viewpoint, not one generally propagated throughout the book. The series has many strong and very different women, both good and bad ones, who deal with a dangerous time and place.

I found it interesting that in Season 7 she and her sister Sansa Stark came to appreciate and approve their differences, Arya the warrior with cutting weapons and Sansa the warrior with social weapons, who nevertheless discovered a deep affection for each other.
 

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Hmm. Crypto-male? Darn. Feeble attempt. I'd love to have such a phrase. I hope others can do better than me. I too have long wanted a better term.

:) That's as good as anything else I've heard. I tend to use phrases like "female characters written with only stereotypically male characteristics," but that doesn't roll off the tongue.

I'll be more specific about my objections to the original phrase: 1) it's kinda transphobic; and 2) it's not, on the face of it, going to make a bad character. There's nothing wrong with writing a female character who's made up of nothing but traditionally male traits, as long as she's fully realized. If she's not fully realized, that's why she's a bad character, not how masculine she seems.

One GofThrones comment. Arya Stark saying "Girls are idiots." That is HER viewpoint, not one generally propagated throughout the book. The series has many strong and very different women, both good and bad ones, who deal with a dangerous time and place.

I found it interesting that in Season 7 she and her sister Sansa Stark came to appreciate and approve their differences, Arya the warrior with cutting weapons and Sansa the warrior with social weapons, who nevertheless discovered a deep affection for each other.

My issues with GoT are legion, but yeah. Arya says that when she's still incredibly naive, and I do think we, as viewers, are supposed to understand from that comment how little she actually understands of the world.

There's a scene in (I think) Season 2, where Tyrion offers a kind word to Sansa (maybe after she's attacked during the riot; can't remember), who's still stuck at King's Landing. Instead of taking the opportunity to confide some of her distress (and draw the ire of pretty much everybody her life is depending on at this point), she gives him her usual mantra of "Joffrey is my king and I love him with of my heart." As she walks away, Tyrion says admiringly to her back, "Lady Stark. You will survive us all."
 

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This is the prevailing theory these days, but I have to say, it feels completely wrong to me. I acknowledge this is entirely due to my own experiences growing up. I was an atypical girl in the 1970s, but when I tried to conform - dress properly, wear makeup, etc. - it was the other girls who informed me in no uncertain terms that my attempts were laughable and I should be embarrassed to even be trying.

So yeah, I learned to take pride in being "not like other girls," because that's all other girls left me to be proud of. It wasn't the patriarchy that soured me to pretty girls who knew how to wear makeup, it was the girls themselves.

(And yes, I do recognize them as victims of patriarchy, just in a different way than I was. But I'm still viscerally suspicious of skillfully made-up, well-dressed women.)



Based on the culture my 14-year-old is absorbing, makeup isn't just for girls anymore, and it isn't (always) about conforming. I have to say, it's kind of marvelous.

I had experiences like this too. I used to have little use for most other girls because of it, but nowadays I think that dominant groups are excellent at dividing and conquering subordinate groups, so they compete within themselves for status within the relatively narrow role allowed them. I'm not saying "the patriarchy" is even a conscious thing in most men's, let alone women's minds. It's a system that's so entrenched people of all genders participate in and enforce without being aware. And people of all genders have ways they benefit from it and ways they are hurt by it, but overall I'd say women tend to be hurt more and men benefit more.

I think one reason I resonate with women who have non traditional blends of characteristics or who are rebels within their societies are not only because of my own experiences, though, but because I tend to like underdogs and outsiders of all kinds. This doesn't mean it isn't refreshing to read a story where being female isn't a big deal or a serious impediment to the character reaching her goals (other obstacles and impediments can work too).

As for female characters that only possess stereotypically male traits: such people exist, surely, but they are probably rare. It may not be implausible once in a while at least. For that matter, men who display all and only stereotypically male traits aren't the norm (in my experience, at least) either.

Well-written characters are complex and multidimensional, and they have reasons for being the way they are.
 
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Marian Perera

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Arya Stark saying "Girls are idiots." That is HER viewpoint, not one generally propagated throughout the book. The series has many strong and very different women, both good and bad ones, who deal with a dangerous time and place.

Actually, Arya Stark doesn’t say that in the books at all. At least, not that I’m aware of. It’s a show creation, because (again, as far as I know) book!Arya doesn't despise other girls. Just as in the books, Brienne prods Jaime out of his suicidal mindset by saying, “Are you such a coward?” whereas in the show, she tells him he’s acting “like a bloody woman.”

Maybe this is meant to be an example of show!Brienne’s naivety, in that she's seen so little of the world that she assumes women are inherently weak and cowardly (because they're female? because they're not brought up and trained to fight?). But by then she’s already met Catelyn Stark, who I think is a strong woman. So once again, I’m disappointed at the internalized misogyny—which, once again, seems to be more a product of the show rather than of the book.

I also wonder, does anyone on the show say that most boys are idiots, or cowards, or sadists?
 
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Maybe this is meant to be an example of show!Brienne’s naivety, in that she's seen so little of the world that she assumes women are inherently weak and cowardly (because they're female? because they're not brought up and trained to fight?). But by then she’s already met Catelyn Stark, who I think is a strong woman. So once again, I’m disappointed at the internalized misogyny—which, once again, seems to be more a product of the show rather than of the book.

Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.

Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.
 

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Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.

I still can't forget that scene which shows Craster's Keep after the mutineers take over, and women are being casually raped in the background. They have no names, let alone personalities. They're just there to be raped. That's one episode I wish I'd never watched.

Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.

I don't mind a world with a strongly patriarchal culture, where some people are misogynists. But it's frustrating when the misogyny comes from characters I want to like, from the heroines of the series, and when they're not called out on it.

In the books, a lot of the internalized misogyny comes from Cersei, which is fine by me. From her, it doesn't come across like it's meant to be cool, or a sign of strength.
 

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Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.

Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.

Slight derail to point out that women complaining about this isn't new. It's in the works of Christine de Pizan (1364 – 1430).
 

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I still can't forget that scene which shows Craster's Keep after the mutineers take over, and women are being casually raped in the background. They have no names, let alone personalities. They're just there to be raped. That's one episode I wish I'd never watched.

Scenes like that in movies, books and television always bug me, because it feels like the writers and producers are doing it to "remind" us women of how unsafe it is to be a woman (as if we need reminding) and to "remind" us how "good" we have it today, because if we'd lived in a less "civilized" time or place, we'd be non people.

I've never been raped, and I still find it very, very disturbing to be "reminded" of how awful it is and has been to be a woman in this way, and all with a sort of odd relish and supposedly in the name of so-called realism.

At least the GoT TV show (and book) does a bit of that with men too. A lot of the time, "historical" fiction and "grimdark" fantasy completely ignore the fact that men were often tortured, raped and treated like non people too.

To bring this back to the Bechdel test, these GoT books (and tv show) do have scenes where women interact with each other and don't talk about men. So it's definitely not the only thing that determines how pro-feminist a work is.
 
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I thought I would try to contribute some materials to this discussion. I suppose I should provide a more substantive contribution, but I'm feeling lazy. Sorry :)

Robot Hugs Webcomic about how too many movies write women: http://www.robot-hugs.com/pitch/

In terms of recent movies, I think Black Panther was just as amazing for its female characters, as it was for its Afrofuturism. Merely the act of having more than one female character felt oddly revolutionary. By doing so, the characters were able to be so much more interesting than the stereotypical Strong Female Character, because the movie didn't just have this one woman character who has to represent all women everywhere. So we get Nakia who wants to open Wakanda to the outside world and has no problem talking smack to T'Challa, Okoye, the faithful general who wants Wakanda to stay closed to the outside world, Ramonda the maternal figure, and Shuri, who is freaking adorable and is the smartest person in the MCU according to those involved in it. The smartest person in the MCU isn't Tony or Bruce; it's a sixteen-year-old black girl.

Though to add to all the stuff about Fridging and Sexy Lamps, there's another pernicious trope afflicted on female characters.

Amy from Gone Girl defines the trope:

Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

And it's totally okay if you want to have a female character who likes cheap beer and hot dogs. The problem is with the Cool Girl trope is the same that afflicts the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: both feels like a creation from a male fantasy, rather than an actual character with any kind of inner life, hopes and dreams whatsoever.
 

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I just randomly stumbled across a short list of these "tests" on Pinterest that had two I hadn't heard of before, but make sense:

The Anti-Freeze: No woman assaulted, injured, or killed to further the story of another character (for the curious, it's called Anti-freeze because the act of harming or killing women to push someone to act is called "fridging" after Green Lantern's girlfriend, who was murdered and shoved into his refrigerator for him to find)

The "Strength is Relative": Complex women defined by solid characterization rather than a handful of underdeveloped, masculine-coded stereotypes.

I actually find these more relevant to storytelling quality. While interesting, the Bechdel test is way too stringent to deliberately achieve, because it requires an entire scene, or sub scene. It is narratively uneconomical unless two characters are women and need to have a separate scene. My novel actually passes, when a little old lady calls 911 about a truck-led invasion column, and speaks to a female operator (!).: Completely random... (Although I realize now the sex of the operator is never stated: In my mind she was, trust me)

Other than that, the only major female character is a sub-terranean "General" going along -unenthusiastically- with the likely extinction of Mankind... She completely overshadows all the male characters combined, and gets a good 20% of her very own first person narration, so thanks to her I guess I pass all the tests!

Gaston
 

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I hope I can spend the Bechdel points from my Sisyphus story (Female protagonist negotiates the fate of the world with female antagonist) on my current WIP, which is short on female parts. Do they carry forward like frequent flyer points?

Kidding! Kidding! I see the Bechdel test as a screening test with a high sensitivity but low specificity, not a diagnostic test. It's designed to alert you to where there might be problems, particularly if it keeps coming back positive, not to point out there automatically IS a problem if one particular story 'fails' it. One high blood pressure reading doesn't mean much. A whole series of them...
 

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General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase to describe this phenomenon?

Agreed. And can everyone also remember that women with so-called "masculine" traits are real, living and breathing women too? I've had my whole life being told I'm "not feminine" and that I walk/talk/dress/eat/skate/etc ad nauseum "like a man" and it's tiresome. "man with boobs" - I've not been called that in those exact words but it's been implied often enough or said in other ways that I'm "like a man" and not "like a woman".

I hate the labelling of personality traits as "masculine" and "feminine" as they are just stereotypes within our culture, not universal truths and there are many people who don't fit those stereotypes. I'm equally as feminine as this female Neandertal or a female T. rex... i.e.. 100% feminine, because modern western stereotypes don't get to define feminine for the whole of nature. (In T. rex the females were bigger and stronger than the males but that doesn't stop people portraying cartoon female T. rex as a smaller, weaker version standing behind the male one with a twee bow on her head. Because so many people default "female" to "smaller, weaker, less significant, less important, twee version of the real thing" - and therein is the issue because it's what so many characters in films amount to. Either that or they're just there to be sex objects.)

There is no right or wrong way to be female and there will be women with every combination of personality traits you can imagine. I agree very much that women who are more like the so-called "feminine" stereotype are also strong women and those traits are as valid as any other personality trait, and that there are multiple definitions of strong - you can be strong like a rugby forward (and still wear flowery dresses after the game if that's to your taste) or you can be strong through enduring multiple hardships or you can be strong by persevering against adversity. And there's more to life (and well-developed characters) than just being strong.
 

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I hate the labelling of personality traits as "masculine" and "feminine" as they are just stereotypes within our culture, not universal truths and there are many people who don't fit those stereotypes.

With you on this one.

Any statistical set of differences, cultural or physiological, is utterly irrelevant when discussing individuals. (Rather like tests applied to individual stories. :))

That said...the fact that these tests exist, are discussed, and so often get people's backs up does indicate a pervasive issue (although I tend to agree it's far worse in film and television, but that may be because of the books I choose to read). We're used to seeing women portrayed as two-dimensional background filler, and sometimes we unconsciously build off those portrayals in our own work.

Being aware doesn't mean you have to change anything, but IMHO it's never bad to be aware.
 

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Do they really? I doubt it.

This seems to be another case where you don't get the point or context of the test, and again, it's not a scientific examination that will provide a readout telling you 'your story is 57% suck.' Girlfriends/wives in comics in particular, fiction in general, tend to have a terrible time of being present for no other reason than their deaths being cheap, easy pathos. They have no character, no arc, no agency, they exist simply as a prop in the story. It's the 'sexy lamp' thing. If you can replace a character in a story with a lamp and the only change it has on the plot is that now the character is out for revenge because of his broken lamp, that's a failure on the test.

As I read the test—a female character is injured, harmed, or killed to further another character's story—yes, many of my stories would fail that test. Remove the "female"—a character is injured, harmed, or killed to further another character's story. That's a common trope. The martial artist's master is killed and the martial artist vows revenge. Bruce Wayne's parents get shot. Uncle Ben gets killed by a thug Spider-Man should have stopped.

The test takes this common trope and considers it a negative thing (i.e. failure) if it happens to a female character. And it doesn't consider it a negative thing based on the story itself, but on other stories. A specific story has a female character killed in an absurd way only to affect the male character (the Green Lantern example), but then the response is to create an overly-broad test that likens any instance of a female character suffering harm that impacts the story of a character to that poorly-written instance (and other poorly-written instances like it).

In an ideal world, people wouldn't need to make assumptions of poor writing because of things that happen to characters of a certain gender. But what if I write a story that stars well-written, fleshed-out, positive female characters...and people say it Fails a Test about female characters in fiction, just because the story starts with a dead woman rather than a dead man? And would those same people who judge the story because of that "fridged" female character make any assumptions about the male characters in the story if that dead person at the start of the story was a man?

Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.

Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.

A lot of "dark" stories do rely on the culture being misogynistic to depict the Crapsack World, because most people identify that a misogynistic culture is bad.

I mentioned earlier that people should decide what they think is good writing in regards to female characters. In the case that I'd write a setting where the world is meant to be seen as horrible, I'd never add to that by having a misogynistic culture. But that is more that I find the "Crapsack World, therefore misogyny" trope to be really uninteresting, probably because it is so overdone.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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I submit "Fembro" for consideration.
Seconded.

Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.

Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.
I agree. It seems like the ratio of scenes featuring naked, tortured women to men is about 100:5.

I rarely watch detective series of any kind because it seems like every time I tune one in, it begins with the naked body of a murder victim who is inevitably conventionally hot (young, slim, attractive). I guess we're supposed to care because there was a victim, but I just see it as an excuse to put boobs that have no agency on the screen. It's such a huge cliche.
 

lizmonster

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I rarely watch detective series of any kind because it seems like every time I tune one in, it begins with the naked body of a murder victim who is inevitably conventionally hot (young, slim, attractive). I guess we're supposed to care because there was a victim, but I just see it as an excuse to put boobs that have no agency on the screen. It's such a huge cliche.

I remember telling my daughter once that statistically most murder victims are men. She immediately retorted "then why are most of the murder victims they show on TV women?"

Started a good conversation.