Quotes / The Bechdel Test

"Your 'tale as old as time'
Sets us back fifty years
Do your chores, do the floors
'Til a man just appears?"

— Belle to Cinderella, "Princess Rap Battle"

"And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends… They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that."

— Virginia Woolf

"It’s not that the Bechdel test identifies particularly good or feminist films. It’s that it’s a low bar to clear that huge swaths of things simply don’t."

— Dr. El Sandifer

Laura: I'd also like to note that there is literally only one scene where any female characters appear in either of these issues, and this is it. Naturally, they do not speak.
David: OOH LOOK AT LAURA HUDSON AND HER RADICAL FEMINIST AGENDA. There you go, commenters. I saved you the trouble!

— Laura Hudson, "The Complete and Utter Insanity of Batman Odyssey"

"It's fascinating to compare the lives of Sisko and Janeway in their respective series six: he is juggling the fates of Empires whilst she is personalising her own dildo!"

— Joe Ford on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "In the Pale Moonlight"

"There’s an alternate cut of the episode where Trip and Travis resolve their problem by building a tree house. T’Pol spends the rest of the episode trying to guess the password."

— Darren Mooney on Star Trek: Enterprise, "Strange New World"

Rick: Morty! Do you know what the Bechdel Test is?
Morty: T-the what?
Rick: For god's sakes, Morty, the formula for measuring female agency in a story proposed by lesbian cartoonist Alison Be—what the hell are they teaching you in that school?!
Morty: Other stuff!
Rick: Then you've KILLED US BOTH!
Morty: Why is "lesbian" part of her job title?!
Rick: Oh, NOW you're progressive?!
Morty: What is the test?!
Rick: You have to tell...Morty, Morty...two women, they have to have names, and talk to each other about something...other than a man...
Morty: No! No, Rick listen to me! Once upon a time, my mom, and my sister...listen to me!

— Rick and Morty, "Never Ricking Morty"

"Even when they formed their own religious group, these women still go on about shrivelled gonads and limp dicks. Talk about failing the Bechdel test."

— That SciFi Guy, Bad Movie Beatdown: The Shepherd

"Someone pointed out that 'Oh my god, Becky, look at her butt' passes the Bechdel test and I haven't stopped laughing for a week."

— @Krinkle8 on Twitter

Speckle: I'm gonna go get dressed. [sing-song] Don't talk about me while I'm gone!
Tuca: We never do.

—Tuca & Bertie, "The Sex Bugs"

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