It’s Time to Ditch the Bechdel Test–Or at Least Take It Less Seriously
Alison Bechdel's 1985 comic strip "The Rule," from her series Dykes To Watch Out For, where the idea for the Bechdel Test originated (via bleedingcool.com),
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I think the flaw in our cultural understanding of the Bechdel test is that it has anything to do with the general feminism of a movie at all, when it's actually a test to see if you can project lesbianism onto some characters in an era where there is as a rule not going to be actual lesbian representation. Can I go home and wrote some super extrapolative femslash fanfic without having to create a character from scratch? Can I forgot for two seconds that this girl is 100% heterosexual? Does this movie throw my lesbian heart a single crumb?