/lit/ - Literature

Has literally never happened in history but i guess anything's possible in fiction

I think there’s also a part where there has to be more than like 4 or 5 female characters?

none of my books pass no damn jezebel test

Of course not, women, and what women occupy themselves with, are fucking boring

>>12489375
my favorite book is Moby Dick. I don't think there even is a woman in it. Ahab's wife is mentioned once.

>>12489375
Hopefully not

>>12489375
This "test" started as a joke by its creator. It's not meant to be taken seriously.

No, my favorite book is a man's memoirs. FWIW my favorite novel doesn't either.

>>12489493
Wrong. Do you know Alison Bechdel?

>>12489375
>reading for the plot

>>12489505
Yes and she's on record saying that it's an ultimately useless test that has no bearing on a story's quality.

>>12489530
Source on that? All I’ve seen her do is trace the test back to Virginia Woolf

>>12489530
That’s not the same as being a ‘joke’ and that doesn’t disregard it entirely. The point of the bechdile year isn’t to judge individual works as sexist, as this would obviously be unfair to say, a work that only featured two male characters, but rather to notice a general trend in media

>>12489375
Do the women in real life?

>>12489375
A conversation, or all conversations? Because at one point they do talk about men.

What would they even talk about? Shoes? Gossip about people? Who wants to read that shit?

>>12489375
More important: does your favorite book pass the reverse Bechdel test? Also, how do you reverse it, and does it make sense if you can't do that?

BTW, “Fun House” is really great, read it in one go.

Things women are capable of discussing with other women
1. Men
2. Children
3. Jobs
4. Shopping
5. Clothes
6. Gossip
7. Leftist politics and feminism
8. Other disciplines, but only through a feminist lens; e.g. how fluid dynamics is sexist
I think that's about it, really.

>>12489375
Every time I've overhead women talking to each other they're either talking about men or what some other woman posted on Instagram.

>>12489773
How do you differentiate between shopping, shopping for clothes, and clothes?

>>12489790
t. never had a gf

>>12489437
lol

>>12489773
desu I love Euro women, the ones that I meet on exchange are beautiful and smart, they are all bilingual and some are polyglots. It makes me insane thinking about all the neglected American women who are dumb as bricks because they received little education and attention from their parents.

Yes

>>12489959
>education makes you smart
please send yourself back to europestan

>>12489959
>they are all bilingual and some are polyglots
So they can talk about shoes in multiple languages.

Yep, Bible does. In the Book of Ruth

>>12489375
Nothing Good passes the (((bechedededel))) test. In particular no book wich offers positive portayals of women. I can think of ring of the nibelung and macbeth If You consider Classics of literature in the extended sense. In both the women doing the talking are portrayed as supernatural creatures full of Ill intent.

>>12489980
bazinga

two named women
have
a conversation
not
about
men

-Indian Rupee

>>12489375
>Gravity's Rainbow
yep

>>12489959
Speaking Spanish and Italian isn’t being bilingual

>>12489375
Doesn't this idea do a disservice to the cause of feminism by further segregating and compartmentalizing female experience? Surely it shouldn't matter what women are talking about. Is Bechdel saying that as soon as a woman mentions a man it somehow invalidates her point of view and renders the conversation meaningless?


I think most feminists would find something very problematic in the idea that a woman's point of view is only valid as long as she is not talking about a man. A text shouldn't need to "prove its worth" as a feminist text by showing that its female characters don't have to talk about men.

>>12491014
>speaking two languages isn't being bilingual
Okay bud

>>12491112
it doesn't count when they're both indoeuropean

>>12489437
kek

>>12489375
>giving a shit about some ugly goblin

>>12489458
based (and probably gay)

>>12491065
Yes, you're absolutely right that it flies right in the face of "equality". The test's creator is well aware of that and it is why she has disavowed it as anything more than a joke. Of course, as we're all aware, feminism isn't about equality but is just REEEEEEEEE FUCKING MEN given ideological backing.

The Iliad passes, by the way. The Odyssey does not.

>>12491228
Probably explains where my love of large Polynesian men came from. It was Queequeg the whole time. Even his name I'd one letter away from "Queequeg".

>>12491262
Queerueg

>>12491065
You're missing the point, its not a case of simply ticking the Bechdel boxes, its more of a thought experiment that shows the way in which a lot of male writers find themselves unable to write female characters without perpetually relating them back to the male protagonist/characters, as though all female experience is centred around whatever the men happen to be doing or thinking about. It's not a rigorous assessment of the social progressivism inherent to the text under scrutiny, its just a rudimentary approach which can help us navigate the difference between characters that are capable of defining themselves and those who are so one-dimensional that their function is purely a secondary concern towards fleshing out a male protagonist. Take the last chapter of Ulysses, for example– even though its written from the perspective of Molly lying in bed next to her husband, it passes the Bechdel test because her thoughts and feelings extend well beyond that sphere. She's not just a wife (IE. a counterpart to the protagonist of Bloom), if anything she has an almost cosmic significance to everything that happens in the novel, she's like the body of the earth that turns beneath the feet of all characters.

Can't think of a single book that doesn't pass that "test". This is similar strawman as all the other feminist garbage created solely to attack males.

>>12491302
>I am a man and feel personally attacked by women not wanting to be represented by one-dimensional characters
Always gotta make it about yourself, huh? Ironic, that attitude is precisely the kind that the Bechdel test wants to highlight. The majority of books will pass the test, that's beside the point– its more valuable as a writing guideline for using female characters that aren't there simply to prop-up the protagonist. Why you feel so personally vindicated by that idea I have no idea but its pretty pathetic desu

>>12489375
Sounds unrealistic

>>12491331
>a female charachter is deep becuase they talk to another woman about something that isn't le menz
Yikes

>>12489375
>Moby Dick
shit

>>12491014
>Hi I'm certifiably retarded!

>>12489530
>that has no bearing on a story's quality.
Obviously not, that would be a truly stupid claim. But it's still interesting

>>12491302
Being attacked with garbage is better than being attacked with an emasculator, innit?

>>12491333
I never said that, it's just the absolute bare minimum standard required if you want to write believable characters. The problem some (male) writers have is that they only know how to understand women in relation to themselves, which translates into the text as being able only to write women as peripheral characters in relation to their protagonist. The whole "talking to another woman about something outside of men" aspect of it is kind of a joke, because no male writer can really have knowledge or experience of that world–but what it demonstrates is a writer's ability to navigate it as an imaginative exercise, despite having zero familiarity with it. It shows a sensitivity to things and interactions that exist totally apart from or beyond themselves.

>female writer
>1/2 of my books don't pass this test
Male is a default for a character, I only make them female if there's a reason to. Also I like writing about cute boys doing cute things. 2 of the male characters in my current book are lowkey gay and it's absolutely adorable.
>men like reading about men
>women like reading about men
Unless you're trying to appeal to angry lesbians and tumblrites there's no reason to write female-heavy books. Males are cuter.
Also there's still a lot you can't do with female characters that you can with males. Current novel my male lead gets the shit beaten out of him on a regular basis, including by his boss. If I genderswapped him that would be "problematic". Female ryona is still more taboo than even pedophilia. Don't blame me, blame society. Can you imagine the leagues of asspain that would be generated if I had a male boss beat up a female employee on a regular basis?

>>12489458
some of the best works of art have no women in them at all
Lawrence of Arabia is one of the most gorgeous and breathtaking art pieces in cinema, and for 4 hours of film, there is not a single female character

>>12491302
>Can't think of a single book that doesn't pass that "test"
Then you are very poorly read, anon

>all these posters giving their hot takes instead of reading the thread to find out the test was just a joke taken way too seriously

>>12491450
It is problematic either way.

>>12491363
>caring this much about litterature
YIKES

>>12491465
>It is problematic either way.
??
Grown men beating up teenage boys is hot. People spilled their pussy juice like mad when Levi beat up Eren during the courtroom scene. Is it perverted? Yes. But 50 shades and Twilight didn't sell because of their prose. Readers want erolit disguised as proper novels. If you throw in a few erotic concepts and fapbait you'll be popular. I can worry about writing actual literature when I've emancipated myself from wageslavery. Plus it's fun.

>>12491363
>>12491331
>keeping your strunk&white elements of basedle mao redbook nearby to make sure you are following all the proper goodthink that is required by a writer under the feminist madrassas

>>12491466

>>12489375
What else do women even talk about?

>>12491450

>>12491551
>someone might be more honest while anonymous
Really? I also didn't say anything that was actually sexist. So.

>>12489375
Noone cares

>>12491293
isn't that a literal cuck book

>>12489375
My favorite book doesnt have a named woman anywhere in its 300 pages.

>>12489375
My favorite book only has one character in it (Patrick Bateman) and the entire story takes place in a perfectly insulated Kantian bubble of his own isolated thought process, so no

>>12489959
>desu
>going anywhere as an exchange student
you're not complimenting the women in this post, you're just slow jerking yourself by praising the daddy's money and mommy's basement life you and eurothots live by

>>12491730
The greatest books always are.

>>12489375
Not in the slightest.

the mother of the crippled girl in brothers karamazov talks about goldmines, but not sure if she talks about goldmines only with a Dimitri, so it may still not pass it

>>12491810
That makes me not want to read anything great.

Not even my real life passes the Bechdel Test so no OP.

>>12491870
>so uncomfortable with cuckoldry he can't read about it in books
If you were truly at ease with the idea that it wouldn't ever happen to you, you wouldn't feel so anxious while reading about it. Something on your mind?

>>12491450
>>12491491
They should never have been given freedom.

>>12491228
kek

Does it pass?

>Tfw 63/66 Bible books fail the bechdel test

currently reading
Crime & Punishment: so far no

last 5 books
Heart of Darkness: no
Jane Eyre: yes
The Haunting of Hill House: yes
Winesburg, Ohio: yes
As I Lay Dying: yes

>>12489375
The Bechdel test always seemed kind of petty to me. Like, what if the plot involves a female character coming to terms with the abusive household? She’d probably speak of her father, if she did or did not have one, and that doesn’t necessarily mark a work as bad. There’s simply too many situations in which two women might discuss a man.

>>12492279
the test isn't that the work fails if two women talk about a man, it passes if there is one line of dialog between women that is not about a man.
>maid: wheres the bleach?
>maid 2: *shrugs*
>the whole book now passes the Bechdel test

>>12489773
You forgot medical issues, literally the only thing women over 50 talk about

>>12489959
Honestly if the modern European university student is proof of anything it's that speaking several languages fluently is no barrier to being an utter retard.

Having spent a significant amount of time living in coastal USA, Scandinavia, UK, and China honestly people didn't seem significantly smarter or dumber on average any of those places. It pretty much depended on where I was within those countries and what circles I was moving in.

>>12489773
>how fluid dynamics is sexist
Fluid dynamics hates everyone, its egalitarian. Turbulence is just a giant fuck you from the universe to any engineer or physicist dealing with it.

>>12491014
American spotted

>>12489375

Even books written by women don't pass the Bechdel Test. In fact, they're less likely to pass than books written by men.

>>12493261
this would be a further argument for it being useful

>>12489375
Camilla in the Aeneid

>his favorite book has characters
Yikes!

>>12492120
I think Joelle has some conversations with other women about cinema or something.

>>12491293
wtf didn't read fucking beta cuck

>>12492361
Good god, this.

>>12489375
>Tarr
i think so, why does it matter

>>12491347
it would be an accurate claim, middlewit

>>12489375
Who cares lol! I hope not. Which deranged moron thinks that women shouldn’t talk about men? they need jizz to solve their most existential crisis as Nietzsche aptly pointed out.

>>12489375
Does an ant colony masquerading as a woman count?

>>12489375
What's with the format of that image? It pisses me off.

>>12491116
yeah czech and sanskrit are practically the same

>>12491228
call me a shemale

>>12489375
>Faust
Yes, unfortunately

>>12491293
>a lot of male writers find themselves unable to write female characters without perpetually relating them back to the male protagonist/characters, as though all female experience is centred around whatever the men happen to be doing or thinking about.
So any depiction of a female character in a work of literature has to stand for "all female experience"? A female character can't just be a character in her own right, with individual motivations and characteristics, separate from her gender-identity? You are forcing that gender-based reading onto the text. The idea that female characters must be read as mouthpieces for "the female experience" seems contrary to your own idea that female characters should be "capable of defining themselves". It seems hypocritical.

If a book has a male protagonist or prominent male characters and its plot relates to the interactions between those characters (as in the vast majority of plots), then it's reasonable to expect that characters would think or talk about other characters, regardless of their gender. In fact, it would be bad writing if characters randomly started talking about irrelevant shit just because the author wanted to make them emblematic of some generalized notion of a gender-based "experience". The result would be a poorly plotted and thematically simplistic novel.

>[female characters in books that fail this test] are so one-dimensional that their function is purely a secondary concern towards fleshing out a male protagonist.
Just because they happen to be talking about men? The quality of characterization in a book cannot be quantified by simply counting how many different things a character talks about. If a character talks about pigeons and gas prices and tennis does that make her a "better" character than a character who talks about her husband? Isn't the quality of the characterization based on the character's thoughts and means of expression? Lady Macbeth is regarded as one of the greatest characters in literature - but Macbeth doesn't pass the Bechdel test. Are we supposed to think she is stupid because she talks about her husband all the time? Or maybe she talks about her husband because it's a play and he's part of the fucking plot.

That's the fundamental problem with this kind of reading. It fails to see that characters are artificial components of a narrative. They are not "real people". You can't judge a fictional character as though it's a real person. It's like saying "novels and films are not realistic because they don't depict every character going to the bathroom. They are falsely claiming that people never shit."

There's no need to show someone shitting if it's not relevant to the plot or the themes of the text. So why would we need to show two female characters talking about the weather?

>>12496220
Don't be dense, clearly the implication is that they'll be moving the plot along, not veering into tangents about gas prices and tennis shoes (unless they're somehow related to the theme/aesthetic/whatever of the book, you know what I mean). And again, the Bechdel test isn't meant to be some all-encompassing one-size-fits-all test to determine whether a book has good female characters. It's just an interesting thought experiment. Can the author write two female characters with enough agency and autonomy that they're able to move the story along through their own means without having their actions be subordinated to those of male characters? If so then they probably wrote good female characters. That's all it is.

Obviously I could write a story where all the main characters are male and drop in a chapter with two female characters talking about flowers over tea-time and it would technically pass the test. So it's clear that you could come up with any number of examples of books passing the Bechdel test with awful female characters and vice versa. That's not the point.

>>12491458
more books/films like this?

>>12496320
I just don't see what we have to gain from a "thought experiment" that requires us to force every text into a simplistic reading in which every female character symbolizes "the female experience". That's not an "interesting thought experiment", it's just a simplistic way of reading a text that doesn't tell us anything valuable about that text.

>Can the author write two female characters with enough agency and autonomy that they're able to move the story along through their own means without having their actions be subordinated to those of male characters?
Why would talking about another character make their actions "subordinate" to that other character?

When Lady Macbeth talks about the death of Banquo, does that mean her interests are "subordinate" to his? No - in fact, she is the driving force for most of the events of the play.

If you want to make the claim that "some texts have overly simplistic female characters", then that's fine, and I agree with you. But what's the point of trying to apply that criticism to almost all existing literature on the basis of an arbitrary and misguided set of rules? What the hell does that tell us about anything? Of course texts don't live up to this stupid and arbitrary test, because that's not the way dialogue and characterization works. In the vast majority of narratives, characters talk about other characters.

>>12491458
And Lawrence was a gay brit turned Muslim cocksucker, it's poetry.

>>12489375

This is retarded. According to the test there is no difference between a book where women don't talk to each other due to broader circumstances, them being secondary characters or there being too few women, and a deliberately misogynistic book. Moreover, the latter could be as misogynistic as possible and still pass the test provided a shitty irrelevant formality. Stupid MORONS. Dumb animals.

Jimmy: Women are cunts.
Vinny: They're subhuman.
Ricky: We should kill them.
Anna: How about the weather?
Maria: A bit damp.
Ricky: I'm going to murder both of you.

PASS!

>>12491302
You can literally flip this argument around also: is there a book where a male protagonist/side character doesn't talk about women?

Rarely.

>>12491293
Ulysses is not a great example. It doesn't follow a conventional structure. In fact, Joyce's aim was to literally transcribe every thought that went through his characters' heads. So of course that book would pass this bullshit test. Most other books don't depict every single thought a character has within a scene - they only show conversations that are relevant to the plot.

Ulysses also contains several passages that have been called misogynistic. Stephen's theory of Shakespeare in the Scylla and Charybdis episode, for instance. Or the entire Nausicaa episode, which is basically a parody of "women's writing". If I was a feminist critic, I would not be calling this a feminist text simply because Molly Bloom happens to think about oysters and dresses as well as her husband.

>>12491065
>doesn't this idea do a disservice to the cause of feminism by further segregating and compartmentalizing female experience?

I think you're getting hung up on the "test" part, as if Bechdel wants to burn all literature that doesn't have two women talking in it. It's not about that, it's a way of showing how literature has been dominated by male voice and male ideas about women.


My favourite book is Lord of the Rings, and I don't think there are any passages where two women talk about anything. That doesn't mean I don't see the value of this measurement.

>>12491532
in real life, their husbands/boyfriends/kids mostly

>>12489375
well most books I have read this year have little to no named women in the them, so no.

>>12489773
You realise that those eight categories are broad enough that most things anyone ever talks about could be included in them. Even discussing the legal responsibility for potential biological hazards you take on as a buyer when you import large amounts of taxidermied pelts could be considered a discussion of shopping.

You would have to be trying very hard to avoid all of them in any given conversation.

>>12492120
Does Steeply & Poutrincourt count?

>>12491551
>>>/twitter/

Do they have to be biological females?

I always find it funny that people are defensive over the test. Like yeah if a feminist wanted to make it a law that all stories followed this or some shit I'd get it.

You know, I think just figured out why this feminist shit is so annoying.

It's because feminists don't make any effort to understand the live of men. They just see a bunch of "masculine oppressors" that like their "private clubs and dancing girls", and assume that just means all men are 100% on top of their game, free to dominate and control and do whatever they want.

What they fail to realise is just how powerless men ACTUALLY feel, and how much of a struggle it is to maintain motivation / integrity / status and so on, especially when the world seems to constantly be out to shit on you.

So ok, sure, maybe most fucking novels don't have two named women talk about something about than a man, but here's a thought.. so what? A man's world, especially a man going through as much turbulence and struggle as a hero, rarely has time to slow down and ponder the subtler nuances of society. When your world is a (literal or figurative) battle of life and death, victory or failure, survival or annihilation, the LAST thing you want to be thinking about is how two little old ladies had a discussion about how much petrol prices have gone up.

FUCK IT. Life is a tough, thankless journey. Fiction is a way to both escape it and feel inspired to continue through it. The classics aren't perfect, but they provide us with accessible wisdom. Fuck you for trying to use snarky air conditioned vitriol to take that away from us.

>>12491551
PROPER

>>12497173
Imagine being this triggered by a joke test that just points out a trend.

>>12497209
Yeah, I am, and I really don't care how that makes me look

>>12497223
Based

>>12497173
>>12497223
Imagine being this triggered that you would grand stand and virtue signal in a Taiwanese ballet forum

Let's see... Blood Meridian... don't think so...

>>12491491
>Grown men beating up teenage boys is hot.

>>12496220
Where in my post did I say that female characters have to be representative of all female experience? How do you get from the claim “female characters shouldn’t be peripheral objects that prop up the male protagonist” to “all female characters must be emblematic of femininity”? It would be hypocritical if that was my claim, but it isn’t.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct that could give that stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race the name of the fair sex; for the entire beauty of the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more justified in calling them the unaesthetic sex than the beautiful. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense and susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their desire to please, if they affect any such thing.
This makes them incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything, and the reason for it is, I fancy, as follows. A man strives to get direct mastery over things either by understanding them or by compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to indirect mastery, namely through a man; all her direct mastery being limited to him alone. Therefore it lies in woman’s nature to look upon everything only as a means for winning man, and her interest in anything else is always a simulated one, a mere roundabout way to gain her ends, consisting of coquetry and pretence.

>>12489375
dumb dyke should be burned alive

>>12489375
Why does she look like a man tho? Bechdel fails the bechdel test

Wasn't this created to illustrate how little lesbians there were at the time in media? It's not that deep.