The Bechdel Test for Your Faith

well, as far as I know, I can’t think of an atheist group which has 1) an authoritative member who 2) shapes doctrine and practice which 3) is binding in *any* way on *any* other member of the group lol.

So perhaps we need a different measure for that.

apart from the fact that patriarchy really doesn’t need religion to persist — why bother? being sexist is really the least of religion’s problems…

My atheist groups are online. I have equal opportunity to contribute to the comments, participate in male and female blogs, can set up my own blog if I really want to. I guess that is a pass for the atheist internets.

As far as my previous church and religion. FAIL. A woman cannot be a leader unless in an all female group or with children. Even then there are restrictions.

Catholicism would pass, if nuns running a classroom full of boys at a Catholic school count.

<3 & Muah ^_^

@Jim: The problem with that test is twofold: First of all, atheists are a minority of the population, unlike women who are in fact a slim majority. Secondly, you can’t always tell for sure whether someone is an atheist within a movie. If you don’t know the religion of two people who talk to each, you can’t know for sure whether it passes or not.

Wait, wut? There are atheist groups? Seriously? I became and remain an atheist on my own. If there was a local group I could socialize with I’d welcome women being active and cornerstone components of such a social group.

I don’t need a religion, but it is always nice to socialize with folk who are not going to ‘head-asplode’ if you mention you don’t believe in magic sky daddies. I’ve had that happen and it’s not only embarrassing, but downright upsetting.

I’d really like to find a like-minded group to socialize with, and if it has women all the better. I’m kind of lazy. I like to help out, but if there are women that want to organize and do ‘stuff’ … well, I’m in. Don’t get me wrong, if there are ‘people’ that want to organize and do ‘stuff’ I’m in, I don’t really care what their sex or sexual orientation is.

I guess I live in an atheist desert of some sort. If there are any women or men in N.Texas that want a new member for their “group” let me know.

“Action films. . . And with many more men than women starring simply because the physical characteristics of each gender lend more men than women to the roles in reality just as much as in the film. You can’t seriously call them sexist as a result!”

Action films are not reality. Even the ones based on real stories, let alone the sci-fi and action adventure ones. We all know the actors are not really doing what we see. The stuntmen (and women) aren’t even doing it all. They are doing one stunt at a time with long breaks in between shooting, edited together to look like they are olympic gods or something. There is no reason whatsoever that you need men to do these movies over women. Yet, for some reason, almost all of the women in action films are there for eye candy and for the man to rescue. Yes, it’s sexist.

Action films are not reality. Even the ones based on real stories, let alone the sci-fi and action adventure ones. We all know the actors are not really doing what we see. The stuntmen (and women) aren’t even doing it all. They are doing one stunt at a time with long breaks in between shooting, edited together to look like they are olympic gods or something. There is no reason whatsoever that you need men to do these movies over women. Yet, for some reason, almost all of the women in action films are there for eye candy and for the man to rescue. Yes, it’s sexist.

First, of course the action films aren’t reality. Nor are romance films for that matter. But that is utterly irrelevant. In order to tell a story you have to make it as realistic as possible (and that includes the medium of books, and the genre of fantasy/sci fi). It’s basic story telling – you can’t draw someone into your tale if they can’t believe what is happening. What you claim is unnecessary is actually the most important thing of all!

You don’t get a huge number of action heroines (although you certainly get some – and these films would still fail the test) because they are less believable, and as a result, they don’t grasp the audience’s interest. It really is as simple as that. As for the comment on the woman being saved by the man – has it ever struck you just how often it is the hero’s spouse in danger? But also, most action films tend to be about saving the world rather than saving a woman. I can’t actually think of all that many which involve saving the woman. A couple of the Die Hard films – perhaps, but it wouldn’t have worked any way.

I’m all for equality when it comes to any subject I can think of – it’s a major part of how I get my morals, actually, but what things should be has no bearing on what actually is. And what actually is, is the most important thing when trying to tell a story.

(And if you compare professional athletes of both gender, you will find that men are stronger and faster than woman, so if you wish equality, then in fields that require those attributes men should be of a greater proportion than women. That way they are being chosen on ability rather than sexism. In a similar note, I think there would be a far better argument for sexism if there weren’t a majority of action heroes compared to action heroines. Positive discrimination is still discrimination.)

It’s not sexist – just like the Pride and Prejudice example I mentioned above isn’t sexist. Just like Sex in the City, or any other films I consider to be trash (:P) aren’t sexist just because they centre around a female. It’s only sexist when it is an unfair reflection on reality.

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice – do you consider it racist because the stars are all white Caucasians? No? Good. It’s very similar reasoning.

(And if anyone tries to call me sexist on the basis of what I have just written, then I’m going to ask you to reread it. Or if I’m feeling grumpy just call strawman.)

Yeah, but for an atheist, any church is a “fail” regardless of the role of women.

My former church? No. I was a Quaker, so we had no formally recognized leaders. We had a Meeting House caretaker who was male, but he had no authority beyond “I think the roof needs to be re-shingled this year.” We also had elders, but they were just the old people of the congregation – male and female – and that was more of an advisory position than a leadership one.

In my Atheist organization, we do pass! Not with flying colours, but we do pass. Out of ten people on the board, only two are women – but one of those women is the president. We’ve talked about sexism in the atheist movement at some of our meetings and most women I’ve talked to have agreed that:

1) This group is better than any religious group we’ve previously been a part of…
2) But still not perfect.
3) We resisted coming to a meeting for a long time for fear that the group would be as sexist and male-dominated as many Atheist online communities are.
4) We were pleasantly surprised…
5) But still don’t feel totally at ease.
6) This is mainly because we are still hugely out-numbered at meetings (see point 3), and often feel that male members talk over us or shout us down when we disagree.

I think it’s telling that when some males joined the conversation and we explained what we had been talking about, we were told that we were being “silly” because there are many women in the group, the president is a woman, and the group actively advocates feminism.

Yes, that’s right – we were told that our experiences as women were “silly”… by men… who obviously knew much better than we did… which is proof that sexism is absent from the group…

I wasn’t entirely pleased.

Thinking of Jane Austen books made into movies, there are many male characters, with relationships to each other, who talk, and not necessarily about women. They talk about hunting, money, horses, manners, business. . . It depends on the book in question, but you’ll find it in all of them. Actually, you find it in most romances, because a male character is not attractive unless you portray him as high-status, and that requires showing his relationships with other men. Hmmmm.

For the test for the religion it might matter whether it applies to the local group or to a denomination.

In the US, I would guess Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, United Church of Christ (UCC), Episcopal (but with some holdout dioceses), Reform Judaism, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, United Methodists, American Baptists, African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) fit the requirements in that women are allowed, I think, in all roles. Both the UCC, AME, and the Episcopal Church have had women heading the denomination.[1] However individual churches or synagogues may act differently and the feel of a given denomination may not yet be egalitarian.

[1] Episcopal – Katharine Jefferts Schori, elected in 2006 for a 9 year term
AME – Vashti Murphy McKenzie – served in 2005 (head rotates annually among bishops)

The Bechtal Test doesn’t measure sexism. This isn’t “feminism” it’s chauvinism (watch the other videos by this woman). A few times Hemant has wrongly suggested that proportional representation is equivalent to equality. That’s uniformity not equality. Equality is about freedom and rights. It’s stuff like this that makes people associate feminism with stupidity and delusion. Adam Lee’s test actually involves looking at sexism.

There are a few reasons I can think of for why so few movies pass the test:

1. The vast majority of screenwriters are men (at least for the hundreds of movies I’ve seen), they write from a male perspective because they’re lazy and they’re better at it.
2. Movies reflect history and experience.
3. Movie production is run by males, they pick movies they like.
4. There’s a film making culture that was created and continued by males.

All these reasons are not sexism, they may have resulted from sexism, but they’re not sexist in themselves. I’m not even saying there isn’t plenty of sexist sentiment in movies. Are these four reasons problems that have to be dealt with? No. If other areas of culture were dominated by women would I think it was a problem? No, because I’m not a chauvinist. I think barriers to women creating their own film making culture and being represented in the industry is not further understood by this test, which says nothing about sexism, or problems.

This test is interesting though. 40% of my top 199 favourite movies pass the test, and I didn’t even notice. Quite a few of my favourite movies have female main protagonists (many title characters), and surprisingly many fail the test. Although I didn’t notice when the reverse was true either. I wonder about other mediums. I don’t watch much drama on television. I have 12 favourite shows, most are cancelled now, 5 out of them have females as the main protagonists, 9 of them would pass the test in most episodes, although the casts are still dominated by men.

::rolls his eyes at Her Idealisticness::

I’m tempted not to bother saying anything, but I will just say this:

It must be easy when if someone disagrees with you you can just call them names and ignore what they say.

…

Hang on, I will say a bit more on the subject – you know what really bugs me about that?

It’s that I am not saying there is no sexism in films/books/tv/whatever. What I am saying is that there are certain genres of films where it really is not fair to apply this test to, and also that it only works when you take large sample sizes, because there are valid reasons that individual films might fail the test and yet it would still be ridiculous to call them sexist.

That is the problem when you are trying to judge someone or something by what they don’t do, rather than what they do do.

Is it truly that hard to understand that someone is capable of holding a position, and yet is willing to call foul when an argument supporting that position doesn’t work?

Anyway, turning to those people who are willing to actually discuss the subject rather than just name call…

J. J. Ramsey,

Not really. There are a lot of breaks from reality that audiences are willing to accept, especially in action movies: showy martial arts moves, protagonists who are practically made of iron, explosions that don’t bust the eardrums of the people standing near them, etc. Genre conventions allow for suspension of disbelief, especially if it makes for a more exciting spectacle on screen.

Perhaps I didn’t explain myself well enough. I’m not saying that there can be no breaks with reality. What I am saying is that the audience must be able to accept the general premises as believable – once you have fulfilled certain criteria (that, for example, the protagonist is incredibly athletic) you can stretch believability a bit, because they are willing to run with it (e.g. the protagonist jumping on top of a moving vehicle, hanging on, and then kicking through the passenger window).

Just to illustrate what I am saying away from anything to do with gender. Would a skinny, wimpy kid with glasses, acne, etc. work as well as a bodybuilder in the prime of his life when it comes to an action hero. The answer is a resounding no. Why? Because the audience do not associate the former with being (capable of being) an action hero. For them, it is less believable. It truly is as simple as that.

By the way, if you want to change that belief that audiences have, you don’t do it by alterations in the films, you do it with alterations in real life. It’s like killing the roots of weeds, rather than just the leaves.

Robin,

Thinking of Jane Austen books made into movies, there are many male characters, with relationships to each other, who talk, and not necessarily about women. They talk about hunting, money, horses, manners, business. . . It depends on the book in question, but you’ll find it in all of them. Actually, you find it in most romances, because a male character is not attractive unless you portray him as high-status, and that requires showing his relationships with other men. Hmmmm.

What you have to remember is that Jane Austen books as a rule are all told from the point of view of the female lead. Pride and Prejudice – apart from a very few chapters at the beginning involving Mr and Mrs Bennett talking – is entirely told from the point of view of Elizabeth. Emma is almost entirely told from the point of view of Emma Woodhouse. As a result, the male characters aren’t just talking to each other. To take P&P again, there are plenty of examples of conversation in Netherfield between Elizabeth Bennett, Mr Bingley, and Mr Darcy, that develop the male characters, but they aren’t conversations between just men.
Now it strikes me that perhaps I am wrongly taking the word ‘conversation’ as meaning more than a couple of sentences, and talking to each other as meaning a conversation between just the two of them (rather than Elizabeth, Mr Darcy, and Mr Bingley for example), but I do that because otherwise I doubt you’d find many films at all that fail to pass it. (At least, apart from films like Sleuth which have just 2 characters, or action films which have virtually no dialogue)

I mean, unless you demand the conversation to have some length and meaning, even Die Hard 2 – one of the archetypical action films – would not fail the test, because of the conversations in the aeroplane as regarding why they aren’t landing.

Incidentally, I agree with AJ.

Greg:

Would a skinny, wimpy kid with glasses, acne, etc. work as well as a bodybuilder in the prime of his life when it comes to an action hero. The answer is a resounding no.

But comparing a “wimpy kid” to a woman is unfair, especially since we do have examples of women being badass on-screen in action movies.

Also, the films wouldn’t have to have just more than two characters. They would have to have more one female character who participated in a conversation with the other female character and the male characters. Actually, I don’t know if it meets the criteria, but I would count that. And I bet you would still have many films fail.

Robin, Re: the referral to conversations. As far as I can make sense of the Bechdel Test referrals couldn’t count – otherwise suddenly even the slightest comment would have to count. (E.g. woman A was at the house of woman B earlier in the day. Or even… woman A was at work earlier in the day.)

When it comes to the series adaptations of P&P at least, I would be willing to bet that in the 6(?) hours of it any male – male conversation are virtually nil (although I can think of some in reference to a woman(!!)). There’s the occasional moment like the 10 – 15 second interaction between Darcy and Bingley about whether or not he should rent Netherfield, but calling it a conversation would be a stretch to say the least. (I happen to be one of those people who likes re-watching films and rereading books – call it comfort fare! ;))

I’m not entirely sure what you mean with the second message. If it’s in reference to a film that only has two characters, then when I mentioned Sleuth, all I meant was that as there were only two characters in it, it seems to be rather trivial that it fails the Bechdel test, and that that fact alone does not allow one to claim that it is sexist.

(Along the same lines, I’m guessing that these animal films where a few or more dogs/cats/whatever travel from one end of the country to another also fail the Bechdel test (and the ‘inverse’ Bechdel Test!! :D) ;))

Greg I’ve read all your comments and I’m still finding myself disagreeing with you. I think the reason we have more films with men is because Hollywood in general is skewed toward straight (the character at least – they don’t care if the actor is or not) white men. That’s just the way it is. It has nothing to do with whether or not a female action adventure hero is believable or not. AJ says that’s not sexist but I think inherent sexism is still sexism.

Your skinny kid example immediately made me think of Spiderman. And there are also plenty of average men (like Indiana Jones) who do unbelievable stunts that the average man simply could not do. We believe Spiderman because of the backstory. We believe Indiana Jones because . . . I don’t know. It’s not believable, and there’s no backstory as to why he should be able to do what he does, but but we (audiences in general) go with it anyway.

(By the way, I’m not knocking Indy in any way! Just using him as an example.)

How about the Aliens trilogy? No way would I (or your average man or average woman) be able to survive what she did, but despite that and despite her being a woman, the movies seem to have done pretty good.

For whatever reason, tv seems to be better when it comes to female action adventure heroes. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, Firefly. Mostly sci-fi. But why can’t that translate to the big screen?

I’m rambling now, sorry. I just don’t agree that action heroes have to be realistic (they rarely are) to sell. And I also don’t think it’s realistic to think the average man could do most of what they do. So if you have to come up with some sort of backstory for the man to be so adept, why can’t a backstory work for a woman? I guess that’s my point and that’s why I think it’s just sexism at work.

For Pride & Prejudice by the way, I haven’t seen the recent movie, but have seen the BBC miniseries and read the book. There were a number of times when men talked to each other about something other than a woman. Finances, where to live, fishing (Mr. Darcy and the uncle), how to find Mr. Wickham and save Lydia (which was about honor, not romance). I guess it does depend on what you mean by “conversation” but I would certainly count a few lines as long as it was more than “please pass the sugar” or something equally insignificant.

It also depends on what you mean by #3 in the test. I took it to mean “a man” as in romance and love. Correct me if you think I’m wrong in that, but I don’t think it meant that if the two women were planning to (for example) rescue a male hostage from terrorists, they are now off the Bechdel list. So in that regard, I think talking about finding Lydia would count but if you don’t agree, just strike that one.

As to whether I think P&P is racist – here’s my opinion. No, if you’re looking at it in a bubble, no it’s not. But if the only movies that get filmed are ones like P&P that have entirely white casts then yes, there is racism going on. The film studios say that straight white men sell. They say that black men don’t, white women don’t, lesbian Chinese women don’t. And yes, I do think there’s something wrong in there.

I’m not sure if film makers really have properly explored what sells. More likely they are just sticking with what they know to be working.

Film makers are part of society and the industry itself is skewed. It’s largely male executives, male producers and male directors.

The first ever female directing Oscar last year does say more than enough I think. Incidentally there were almost no females in that movie.

I agree we shouldn’t make it too simple and accept simple tests as describing it all, but that there are still very significant imbalances, stereotypes and so forth is, I think, really beyond discussion.

Atheists don’t fare too well in mainstream movies, either.

In “Contact”, our atheist protagonist is subjected to fierce interrogation and made to look like a fool for not believing in something “out there”, and ultimately is transported to a sort of “heaven”.

In “There Will Be Blood”, Daniel Day Lewis’ character turns into a villain in the end after bludgeoning his nemesis, the town preacher, with a bowling pin.

Can anyone think of a mainstream movie where the atheist actually prevails?

United Methodists pass. They have women in leadership at all levels, from “bishops to local pastors”.

http://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?mid=1021