Me, Mo and Alison
The Bechdel Test. A thought exercise that consists of a series of three criteria applied to media.
Does the media have:
1) More than one woman
Do they:
2) talk to each other
3) about something other than a man
It’s pretty well-documented that Hollywood movies fail miserably at even these three very basic criteria.
However, (and possibly surprisingly,) a great deal of Japanese manga does *not* fail the Bechdel Test. A shockingly large amount of manga, both by and for women and by and for men, fulfills and surpasses these criteria. And it dawned on me that this would make a great topic here at Hooded Utilitarian. So, I threw it out on Twitter that I would be writing about manga series that met the criteria and what suggestions did people have?
Almost immediately, my Twitter feed filled up with…really, bad suggestions. Stories of magical elementary school girls, stories of gender-bent political bedroom politics, stories in which the hyper-competent, super cool, yet totally sexy lead female was, with the exception of a few “bad girls,” the only female in the series. (To be fair, I received good suggestions, too, but the bad ones were more interesting in a lot of ways.)
I found myself having to explain the concept of the Bechdel test over and over. I was accused of adding criteria when I explained that it really had to be something that someone like myself might read.
And, ultimately, someone I respect greatly suggested two truly excellent series (by which I mean that I consider them both well-written,well-drawn by masters of the craft; that I loved one and anticipate very much liking the other when I read it) that, in my opinion utterly failed to meet the spirit of the test. Why? Because *I am Mo.* I am an adult woman with an preference for stories about adult women which are not exclusively focused on their relationship with men. (Or women. I discounted almost all ot the Yuri I read, because the conversations are focused on romantic relationships with women.) There were some heated words on the topic on Twitter. And eventually, I decided to ask the source – Alison Bechdel herself.
Here was the meat of my email:
I have a question that really, only you can answer. I write about Japanese comics and I’d like to do a post that highlights some titles that pass the “Bechdel Test.” Japanese comics do this better than any other media I’ve ever seen. There are many female leads, many non-guy conversations between women. Even in romances. In conversation with other folks about this, two suggestions were made that I turned down. I have been challenged about them, but I believe that while they both meet the criteria literally, they fail at meeting the spirit of the test. And so, I’m asking you what you think.
The first is Emma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_(manga)) – a story about a Victorian maid who falls in love (mutually) with a man from the upper classes. It’s a pretty realistic story. The women certainly do talk about things other than guys, because the main character is a servant and she has a lot to do, and tradesmen and other servants to deal with. There are other women – her mistresses, for instance. She discusses her love interest with almost none of them. However, the story is ostensibly a love story and while the conversation is not about guys, would Mo sit through that?
The second is Ooku, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooku) which is a story about Japan’s Edo period, in which many of the men have died and women take on men’s roles to keep the country going. The gender roles are flipped – the Shogun’s harem is now all men – but the women still maintain the facade of it being male rule.Both of these series are written by women.I know this is asking a lot, but I would really appreciate a note letting me know whether you think these pass or fail the Bechdel Test. I greatly appreciate your time.
Here is Alison’s answer:
I think I’m with you. I like your distinction between the letter and the spirit of the rule. Although whether Mo would sit through these stories is not, technically, a criterion of the test, I think she would not. Sit through them, I mean.
***
So, the question for me became not “what manga passes the Bechdel Test?” but “why is it so hard for people to understand what might pass the Bechdel Test?” Arrogant as this sounds, I have no problem at all coming up with titles that meet both the letter and the spirit of the test.
Is it that readers have *such* low expectations of female characters that them merely existing is enough? Is there some inherent difficulty in identifying a series that includes women in non-relationship conversations? Or are are female high school students in hopeless romances with the wrong guy, or sexy women wielding guns the only things being translated into English? It’s true that many of the popular action series for the younger crowd have the traditional one girl who is the potential love interest one day, when they all grow up and the lead male character isn’t focused on winning so much. But One Piece, a series that is arguably the most popular manga in the world right now (and is *still* under appreciated by most critics,) is targeted to that same age group, and passes the Test with flying colors.
Writer/reviewer Sean Gaffney says, “The Bechdel Test makes sure your characters aren’t dull. Who wants to hear women just talking about the same thing? It leads to well-rounded characters and better stories, and makes you THINK more. It also makes you want to step up your men.”
Melinda Beasi talked at length in her article here on HU about the way that women distance themselves from “girly” things, but it’s clear from the revenue generated by the Twilight franchise, that the fantasy of being the princess who needs rescuing and wants to be possessed by a man who is compelled by animal need, runs deep in many girls and women. I see much the same kind of thing in the Yuri/lesbian lit world, the only difference being that the “Prince” is female.
The default in western entertainment is that the female is the love interest, there for the man so, in the absence of the man, audiences will naturally assume the female has to be his replacement – that is, she must be the Hero (e.g., Salt, Aeon Flux, La Femme Nikita). Where there are multiple women, they will often either be a team of replacement men, doing “manly” things (Set it Off, Resident Evil) or not doing anything and talking about the men they need to do those things (Waiting to Exhale ). Of these, only Waiting to Exhale does not pass the Test. The others have women in heroic roles…and therefore pass.
There are many manga that pass the Bechdel Test. Next month, I will review one of those that are available in English- a series that I think best exemplifies what the Bechdel Test stands for.
The Bechdel Test is a starting point, not a place to end. It’s a thought exercise the point of which, I have been reminded, is to make one think.
If I were to posit that women are still socialized to be needy, or that female fantasies of being swept off their feet are precisely because so many women are the ones to shoulder more responsibility to keep everything together in difficult times, I’m sure I’d be challenged to “prove” it, or chatised for either buying into it, or being sarcastic about it (or all three at once. ^_^)
So, I’ll ask you, the incredibly intelligent readers of Hooded Utilitarian – why do you think it’s so *hard* to conceive of entertainment in which a woman has a conversation with another woman, about something other than a man?
“I explained that it really had to be something that someone like myself might read.”
I’d definitely be one of those irritating people on Twitter telling you you were changing the rules…and to my mind, at least, kind of missing what’s most interesting about the test.
I actually think about the Bechdel test a fair bit as a critic. It’s a really provocative rule-of-thumb. Part of what makes it so is that it’s objective — that is, it’s a letter, not a spirit, thing. Unlike most feminist criticism (or most criticism in general) you can look at a work and say whether it passes the Bechdel test with a fair amount of certainty.
And one of the things I like about it is that the result of that objective rule of thumb isn’t always what you might think it would be. In other words, you don’t necessarily get a list of series that would be interesting to Mo, or to you, or to someone who wants serious stories about adult female relationships rather than pulp crap. Often, pulp crap passes the test more easily than something Mo (or you) would like to see. As an example, many women in prison films pass the test really easily, even though they’re obviously mostly aimed at guys and are exploitation sleeze. (Though there are a fair number of lesbian writers who have expressed affection for these films too, for what that’s worth.)
Similarly, I think it’s much more interesting to think about what it means that books like Emma and Ooku pass the test, or that something like Cardcaptor Sakura does, than to eliminate them because you’re not interested in reading them.
Or to put it another way, female relationships (which is what the Bechdel test is really about) are very important in a lot of media. The ways they’re important aren’t necessarily all straightforward, and they aren’t all necessarily even positive. I think, though, it’s really worth thinking about the ways in which female relationships aren’t necessarily opposed to romantic heterosexual love stories, even when they aren’t directly connected to those stories (as appears to be the case in Emma); or the way that female relationships can be feminist in some ways while really not leading to feminism in others (as in Ooku.)
Not that there’s any reason you should care about those sorts of questions, and obviously your own personal taste is as valid a way to judge art as the Bechdel test. It’s just that, as a critic and reader, I’ve found the letter of the test really valuable, and would hate to abandon it entirely for a more amorphous spirit.
So, to your last question:
“why do you think it’s so *hard* to conceive of
entertainment in which a woman has a conversation with another woman, about something other than a man?”
I don’t think it is that hard; or at least, it happens fairly frequently. The question, it seems to me, isn’t “why don’t more things pass the Bechdel test?” but rather, why and in what ways so many of the things that pass the Bechdel test aren’t things you like?
Oh, plenty of things I don’t like pass the Bechdel Test – and plenty of things I like, don’t. That was never a criteria *I* applied. I loved Emma, fwiw, but did not think it met the spirit of the test. I imagine I will also like Ooku, when I finally read it in Japanese, as the fakespearian translation really puts me off. My like or dislike of a thing was never part of the equation.
Me liking a thing was not what I said. Something that someone like myself might “read” is not at all the same as something someone like myself might “like.” So you did what the others did – add an extra specific I did not. And, by doing so, to my mind, proved my point.
It seems hard for people to conceive of something that fits both letter and spirit of the Test, without rewriting the test to their bias. (Well, duh, obviously, because as critics we’re always biased.) My criteria in many things (except taste in women) seem to be parallel to Mo’s and so, I feel pretty confident saying that Silent Mobius passes both letter and spirit of the test and Emma does not.
But you would read Emma! So if you’d read Emma, and it passes the test…then what’s your problem with it? The letter of the test is very clear; the spirit you’re talking about seems fairly confused?
As I said, I don’t really care that much if something passes the spirit of the test; I’ve never read Dykes to Watch Out for, don’t know anything about Mo, and obviously can’t read your mind, so a test based on “what Mo or Erica would like to read” isn’t something that can be all that useful for me as a critic. I mean, if the point is that you don’t want to read heterosexual romances or pulp crap, that’s cool…but I like both heterosexual romances and pulp crap and don’t think they’re necessarily bad or unfeminist, so I’m not sure where else to go with that. (But you did like Emma, so you don’t dislike heterosexual romance…so again I’m confused about what the issue is. Do you feel the heterosexual romance has to be less important than the female relationships? Or that, for Ooku, the women have to not be taking on male roles? I mean, those are both interesting criteria, and worth discussing in their own rights, but I don’t see why they have to be folded into the Bechdel test.)
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The link in your article does not define the “Bechdel Test” the way you do in this article. Nor do I see a discussion of the “spirit” of the Bechdel test at that link.
In fact, the link indicates Twilight passes the test- ad Aeon Flux.
Someone in the comment section for Twilight wrote:
“The Bechdel Test has enough gender politics in it already. Adding judgments as to whether a movie is specifically feminist enough would just serve to invalidate the exercise. ”
I find your whole form of argument to be frustrating.
Because I don’t use the Bechdel Test as the criteria for *everything* I would read, anymore than you read only certain things within limited criteria. ^_^ I am aware when I make those choices.
I was thinking that certain genres are severely hampered in their ability topass the Test. All romance stories are, by their nature about the relationship and therefore have discussion centered around that. I’m reading a romance series called Octave, which fits neither letter or spirit of the test, but I like it anyway. ^_^
Science fiction and comic-style stories *ought* to be able to pass the test with flying colors, but often don’t…. Limited perception of the audience, I would guess. Which was my question – why is it so damn hard for people to conceive of a story that passes the test?
Pallas –
Sorry if you found it frustrating. I actually meant that Aeon Flux *did* pass the test, as do “Salt” and “Set it Off!.” The only movie I mention that does not pass the Test is “Waiting to Exhale.”
I thought it was clear. I apologize if it was not.
“Salt” the movie? Are you sure that passes the test? I can’t think of any other women in that other than Jolie…? Maybe I’m forgetting something….
In any case, that comments discussion Pallas discusses about Twilight is pretty great. It’s here.
Pallas – I’ve rewritten that passage. Hopefully, it’s a little clearer now.
I’ve also made more clear that I liked Emma and expect to like Ooku, despite the fact that I (and Alison) think Mo would not read it. Because while Mo uses the Test as a starting point for things to watch…I do not. I simply understand her point.
I saw two movies last week; Easy A didn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but Machete did within like 5 minutes.
I’m glad you brought this topic back here after the conversation on Twitter. I think, in retrospect, why I reacted negatively to Mo’s personal taste being included as a criteria for the test, is that suddenly a test that I personally looked to as a guide for helping me find works I might enjoy (lists of manga, books, movies, etc. that fulfilled the letter of the test were popular when I was a regular on LJ) had essentially shut me out. Because while I always prefer stories containing strong female friendships and a significant female presence–the kind likely to emerge from following the letter of the test–by adding in Mo’s taste, nearly all the work I liked best was eliminated or at least deeply in question. So where was my list now? If the women I most identified with and most enjoyed reading about suddenly weren’t interesting enough for Mo, I felt thrown out along with them. It was as though after all the youthful years I spent being viewed by my peers as “not feminine enough” to be an acceptable girl were being followed up on with years in which I would be viewed as too girly to be an interesting woman.
Obviously, that’s an extreme (and inappropriate) reaction. Why should I care what Mo thinks of my books? I know why I like them and, whether she would read them or not, I gain strength and insight from the women within their pages. And it may be that I was simply mistaken to interpret the test as a guide for finding stories about women that might interest women. Perhaps it really is just intended to identify stories of interest just to women like Mo. So maybe what I’m really looking for is a different list. I, too, am interested in books where female characters are engaged with each other on issues other than the men in their lives. I think, though, that because the reality of my life differs so much from Mo’s, I’m looking for something a little different in my fiction.
I actually don’t think you’re wrong at all when you suggest that women are still socialized to be needy and that our fantasies are influenced by the expectations set up for us. This is our reality. This is my reality. So when I’m looking for characters I can identify with in manga, I’m going to find that in women who struggle with exactly those things.
For instance, one of the characters I identify with most is Nana Komatsu (aka “Hachi”) in Ai Yazawa’s NANA. While I’ve got a career drive that better resembles her friend Nana Osaki’s, like Hachi, I can measure my past in increments of ex-boyfriends. I’ve struggled, as she does, with being hung up on men, with needing to feel loved (even when it’s false), with needing to keep my real thoughts and feelings secret for fear of losing that love, and so on. I’ve come further than she has (*maybe*, that’s probably more appropriately discussed over beer) but while she’s a woman Mo might find tiresome, she’s one *I need to read about*. She’s relevant to my life. Not the life I maybe wish I had, but my actual life. What I love about NANA is that while Hachi struggles with these things, what the real story is about is how, ultimately, the relationship that Hachi and Nana have with each other is more real and more satisfying than their tumultuous relationships with men. Do they talk to each other about the men in their lives? Certainly. They also talk about their careers, their personal hopes and fears, each other, and everything else under the sun. These women reflect myself back to me, but they also provide a blueprint for female friendship in which I can find hope and inspiration. I can’t undo the person I am or the broken things in my own past. I can’t erase the way I was socialized or what that made me. So for me, seeing that addressed on paper is important. It’s what makes something more than fantasy for me as a reader. And because so many women still struggle with these things daily, I think these stories are important as stories for women, if not perhaps as stories for women like Mo. In my world, these women are heroic.
All that said (and perhaps to get around to your actual point), Blindmouse’s recent Top 12 Fictional Female Friendships inspired me to try to put together my own list focusing exclusively on manga. But when I sat down to write it, I had trouble coming up with more than five. Though I could think of many, many strong, inspiring, heroic women in manga, I could think of just a handful who actually appeared together in the same story. Perhaps that should not have surprised me, but it really did.
Oh, ok Erica.
I thought you were saying that women as male replacements was a bad thing- and therefore didn’t meet the spirit of the rule or whatever. But I think that was just a mistake on my part, rather than you being unclear.
I’m still not really clear why a manga about magical elementary school girls wouldn’t pass the test. Or if a show about high school girls would? Or why gender bending invalidates it- or how much gender bending is ok- cross dressing no, women as replacement men ok?
I guess that goes back to the whole spirit of the test not being obvious to me.
Melinda – You just made me think of something totally different. It seems obvious (to me!) that the audience of “NANA” would identify with Hachi. I wonder if anyone even remotely like Nana the rocker would read it at all? ^_^ BTW, I would say NANA passes the Test. AND it happens to be something I don’t like. lol
Pallas – Words are so imprecise. We all do our best. :-) Why would elementary (or middle or high) school girls not pass the Test? Mo was looking for stories with women, not girls. I would say something like Azumanga Daioh does pass the Test, where Card Captor Sakura does not. In AD, the girls are having conversations about lots of things and their need for/reliance on/relationships with guys are almost never a topic. They interactions center around each other. In CCS, Sakura spends a lot of time parsing her relationships with other people and her potential like/dislike of two of the guys in the series. It passes the letter, but not the spirit…IMHO.
It’s funny you would say that, because I discuss NANA formally on a regular basis (at the Comics Should Be Good “NANA Project”) and one of the things that came up quite a bit early on was how many fans of the series dislike Hachi & claim to relate much, much more to Nana Osaki. Whether they are actually being honest or displaying an obvious self-loathing, I’m not sure. But weirdly, confessing to identifying with Nana Komatsu is almost a radical act in NANA fandom.
I can see that. But what I guess I meant is, how likely is a Nana Osaki type *likely* to read something like NANA? I have a friend who is totally Nana O. She’s stab herself to death with a fork before reading that kind of story. ^_^ It’s the Nana K. types who read stuff like this, I bet.
Well, that’s why I brought up the possibility of mass self-loathing. Heh.
Cardcaptor Sakura is all about girls fighting evil together. And she spends a lot of time parsing her relationships *with the other girls* as well as with the men. There are some pretty explicit girl/girl crushes for that matter. It certainly passes the test, and if Mo doesn’t like it because it’s too femme, that’s her loss, damn it.
I find both Nanas very sympathetic — Hachi probably slightly moreso, but that probably has as much to do with my irritation with punk rock as anything. I mean, both characters are totally a mess, clearly, but that’s part of the appeal!
Erica, I think if you think that someone like Nana K would be above reading something like Nana, you’re not really understanding Nana K or the series all that well.
Argh, I got my Nana’s mixed up, didn’t I? I’m trying to say Nana O would absolutely read something like Nana. She’s a total softee! She’s got this huge crush on Hachi in part because Hachi’s all femme and girly! I mean, Nana would probably hide the fact that she was reading Nana from her bandmates, but I could see her being way more addicted to it even than Hachi.
One of the great things about Nana is that the characters really aren’t types; they’re pretty specific individuals. Some punk rock singers (or pop singers who wanna be punk rock, more accurately) wouldn’t read Nana, but Nana O would.
Noah, I think I don’t see Nana Osaki buying or reading something like NANA on her own, but I think if Hachi was reading it (and probably raving about it) and leaving it around the apartment, Nana would read it in secret when Hachi wasn’t home. And yes, she’d probably get addicted, though it would make her angry a lot. She’d throw the books across the room every time the Hachi character went off somewhere with Takumi.
I’m not sure Hollywood deserves all that much to be damned by these lights.
Wouldn’t you say that TV crime dramas such as ‘CSI’ and ‘NCIS’– the most popular shows going — sail past the Bechdel test?
Nana roundtable! (I just finished reading 7 volumes in about 7 days.)
Alex, TV success with the Bechdel test depends. I was just watching The Wire, which is great — but many episodes don’t pass the test at all, and the one I saw that did was by the skin of its teeth.
I also have to say — I think Yuri totally passes the test. Why wouldn’t it? The test is about female relationships, and lesbian relationships are female relationships, yes?
Derik, I have to read the rest of Nana. I flamed out at volume 19 or something, but I understand it’s supposed to pick up again after that….
This discussion is three drinks away from collaborating on NANA fan-fiction. You should have more discussions like this.
I suspect it could happen in two drinks.
I usually hit the Very Old Barton after writing NANA fanfic. But that’s a different kind of drinking.
There can be artistic benefits for works passing the “Bechdel test,” but it’s inherently an ideological rather than an aesthetic measure.
An older, if not “party-line” feminist here. Greer’s 1970 “The Female Eunuch” made clear and crystallized my feelings about the way women were treated by society. And can recall only too well how frequently the end-credits of films from that era would explain how such-and-such a dewy-eyed starlet starred as “The Girl.” Not only given minimal – God forbid intelligent – dialogue, but simply serving as a plot device, a symbol of femaleness, rather than an individual.
The ideological essence of the “Bechdel test” is made clear with a little change:
——————-
Does the media have:
1) More than one black person
Do they:
2) talk to each other
3) about something other than the white characters
———————
No shortage of old films which would fail that variation; its black characters reduced to servile roles, their own culture and interrelationships ignored, depicted as focused on those who really matter.
The reason “why…it’s so *hard* to conceive of entertainment in which a woman has a conversation with another woman, about something other than a man,” is that in this post-“Backlash”* era, we see that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Even the superficially hip and au courant have still introjected a reactionary, exploitative society’s attitudes about how women’s lives revolve around men and their children.
(And no shortage of women to confirm that focus, as the covers of tabloids and magazines aimed at women revolve around relationships, so-and-so’s new marriage or baby, diets and fashions – to better attract a man, natch – and the endless “Cosmo” cover stories on how to “sexually satisfy him.”)
“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ‘Tis woman’s whole existence,” Lord Byron wrote, reflecting this view. Men can be interested and talk about in a whole array of grander and more complex things than women, but for women their love-objects are seen as their sole focus, around whom their lives revolve.
Creative works which pass the “Bechdel test” might not necessarily have factors which would make them appealing, but at the very least there would be a broader – no pun intended – view of women and their interests and interrelationships, they would be more likely to be acknowledged as a significant part of the human race (thus, “more than one”), rather than an eros-object existing in isolation.
But when you’re “thr[owing] it out on Twitter that [you] would be writing about manga series that met the criteria and what suggestions did people have?”, who could be surprised, given the youth and therefore almost certain relative lack of maturity of the target audience, that the response would be “Stories of magical elementary school girls, stories of gender-bent political bedroom politics, stories in which the hyper-competent, super cool, yet totally sexy lead female was, with the exception of a few ‘bad girls,’ the only female in the series”?
———————-
Erica Friedman:
The default in western entertainment is that the female is the love interest, there for the man so, in the absence of the man, audiences will naturally assume the female has to be his replacement – that is, she must be the Hero (e.g., Salt, Aeon Flux, La Femme Nikita). Where there are multiple women, they will often either be a team of replacement men, doing “manly” things (Set it Off, Resident Evil)…[These] have women in heroic roles…and therefore pass.
———————
NoNoNoNoNo. To simply have a woman in what this utterly male-dominated (no matter how many women get to be business execs or professionals) society calls a “heroic role” – a ruthless killer with a big gun – is not only a false triumph for what I call faux-feminism (the variety where wearing ten-inch stilettos or stripping and pole-dancing is “feminist” because you’re, like, “empowered” by your sexuality), but hollows out the essence of the “Bechdel test.”
These aren’t women in most of these movies; they’re just guys with tits. As you said, “doing ‘manly’ things”: killing a lot, with great skill and few qualms, if any.
(As one bit of proof, it’s supposed to be a triumph for female equality when women are cast in ass-kicking roles originally written for men. Indeed, Lara Croft’s “Tomb Raider” character was originally a male Indiana Jones knock-off.)
To echo your words, these “pass the letter, but not the spirit…”
* Susan Faludi’s excellent 1992 book, that is: http://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-Women/dp/0385425074
“These aren’t women in most of these movies; they’re just guys with tits.”
I think this is a really problematic attitude. You and Erica are saying that women don’t count as women if they act a certain way or do certain things. That doesn’t seem feminist to me. On the contrary saying, “if you do that, you’d not a woman,” is one of the major ways limits on women are enforced.
I agree that women as action heroes are not a feminist triumph in every way. But I think you can say that or think about that without claiming that the women in those narratives aren’t women.
I tried to talk about some of these issues recently in this essay about Salt. In that movie, Jolie took on an action hero role that was initially meant for a man. The gender switch results in some interesting things, though the movie is still (a) bad, and (b) not especially feminist.
___________________
And Gene Ha had an interesting comment over at the main site:
“From what I’ve read, the manga fans understood it perfectly. Look at the original story it appeared in:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/bech8.jpg
The original strip is powerful because Mo sets up a ridiculously low standard and Hollywood failed it. Anything that raises that standard destroys the power of Mo’s indictment.
It’d be great if Hollywood surpassed that easy 3 rule standard and also wrote women well, but bad or cliched writing is a universal problem, not a misogynist one.
Noah: I’m actually only up to vol 17. I cheated and watched the anime series online then picked the manga volumes that followed the series (11-).
Noah & Derik, you guys should come hang out with us at The NANA Project sometime. I think we’re currently on hiatus until December, but already have discussion posted through volume 14.
——————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
“These aren’t women in most of these movies; they’re just guys with tits.”
I think this is a really problematic attitude. You and Erica are saying that women don’t count as women if they act a certain way or do certain things. That doesn’t seem feminist to me. On the contrary saying, “if you do that, you’d not a woman,” is one of the major ways limits on women are enforced.
…The original strip is powerful because Mo sets up a ridiculously low standard and Hollywood failed it. Anything that raises that standard destroys the power of Mo’s indictment…
——————–
By a “ridiculously low standard” – possession of the necessary biological equipment – those characters in the brainless action movies cited indeed technically qualify as women.
But, asking for minimal emotional complexity, psychological verisimilitude, is “enforcing limits on women”?
I guess griping that the “hero” of a Blaxploitation movie, “Big Badass Black Studd,” who goes around shooting cops, robbing banks, and forcing himself on blond white women, isn’t a real black man, but a grotesque caricature of one, is likewise enforcing “limits” on black male’s behavior? Not seeming like civil rights activism?
———————–
And Gene Ha had an interesting comment over at the main site:
….It’d be great if Hollywood surpassed that easy 3 rule standard and also wrote women well, but bad or cliched writing is a universal problem, not a misogynist one.
———————-
Does it have to be one or the other? Can’t bad or cliched writing likewise serve a misogynistic society’s function of putting women down/keeping them in their place?
And then it comes up with these “have your cake and eat it too” bits of pseudo-feminism, such as how acting like a Hollywood caricature of a man (violent, sexually casual and uninvolved), or a blatant sex object, is supposed to be “liberating”?
Re the lack of psychological realism in placing women in the roles of ice-blooded killers:
———————
10 Big Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Brains
By Amber Hensley
…Experts have discovered that there are actually differences in the way women’s and men’s brains are structured and in the way they react to events and stimuli….
1. Human relationships. Women tend to communicate more effectively than men, focusing on how to create a solution that works for the group, talking through issues, and utilizes non-verbal cues such as tone, emotion, and empathy whereas men tend to be more task-oriented, less talkative, and more isolated. Men have a more difficult time understanding emotions that are not explicitly verbalized, while women tend to intuit emotions and emotional cues. These differences explain why men and women sometimes have difficulty communicating and why men-to-men friendships look different from friendships among women.
2. Left brain vs. both hemispheres. Men tend to process better in the left hemisphere of the brain while women tend to process equally well between the two hemispheres. This difference explains why men are generally stronger with left-brain activities and approach problem-solving from a task-oriented perspective while women typically solve problems more creatively and are more aware of feelings while communicating.
…4. Reaction to stress. Men tend to have a “fight or flight” response to stress situations while women seem to approach these situations with a “tend and befriend” strategy. Psychologist Shelley E. Taylor coined the phrase “tend and befriend” after recognizing that during times of stress women take care of themselves and their children (tending) and form strong group bonds (befriending). The reason for these different reactions to stress is rooted in hormones. The hormone oxytocin is released during stress in everyone. However, estrogen tends to enhance oxytocin resulting in calming and nurturing feelings whereas testosterone, which men produce in high levels during stress, reduces the effects of oxytocin.
…6. Emotions. Women typically have a larger deep limbic system than men, which allows them to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express them, which promotes bonding with others. Because of this ability to connect, more women serve as caregivers for children. The down side to this larger deep limbic system is that it also opens women up to depression, especially during times of hormonal shifts such as after childbirth or during a woman’s menstrual cycle…
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http://www.mastersofhealthcare.com/blog/2009/10-big-differences-between-mens-and-womens-brains/
…Which doesn’t mean that women are (or should be) fated to be caretakers for home and hearth. Women can be soldiers, have performed and fought heroically in life-threatening situations; are capable of cruel murderousness*.
But real women are ‘way even farther apart from these cinematic killing machines than men are…
*Kipling’s rhyme comes to mind:
———————–
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
————————
The fact that you immediately wander into bullshit brain nonsense as a biological basis for your statements pretty much proves my point.
Blaxploitation has a really complicated history in terms of race politics. It’s like saying, “rap is racist.” It’s not wrong, but I’d argue that stopping there obscures more than it contributes.
As for stereotypes — action movies are made out of stereotypes, for men and women both. If you’re looking for sincere meaningfulness and realistic characters, it’s kind of the wrong genre.
Also, if you’ll note above, I didn’t say that there had to be anything especially liberating about Hollywood portrayals of female action heroes. But there’s nothing especially liberating about saying that women can’t be action heroes, either.
Does it have to be one or the other? Can’t bad or cliched writing likewise serve a misogynistic society’s function of putting women down/keeping them in their place?
Mike, I think you’re right, but, again, one of the reasons the test is so effective is it’s so damn simple. Out of ten movies nominated for Oscars in 2009, half at most pass the test (I’m giving the ones not on BT site the benefit of the doubt for the moment). That manga might treat female characters differently– or perhaps need a different test altogether– is not the fault of the Twitterers using that very simple test.
And honestly, I love Mo as a character, but watching and reading only things she would like sounds at best like a chore!
(I should say I think you’re right on this point, Mike, as I disagree on the blaxploitation stuff but don’t want to get into it, like Noah.)
“So, I’ll ask you, the incredibly intelligent readers of Hooded Utilitarian – why do you think it’s so *hard* to conceive of entertainment in which a woman has a conversation with another woman, about something other than a man?”
I have a very simple answer to this question: because I don’t think about my entertainment in these terms! For example, the strip which originated the Test mentions Alien as a movie which passes the test. Despite loving that movie and having seen it more than once, I would have assumed it didn’t pass the test at all, because “a conversation between two women not about a man” doesn’t stick out to me one iota in the context of watching that movie. When I’m watching Alien, I don’t “care” if it happens or not, if that makes any sense. I imagine I’ve seen many movies which pass the Test, without remembering specifically that they did. A quick visit to bechdeltest.com proves that I have, but in the majority of cases I would not have been able to recall from memory that they passed.
Now, the subjective matter of whether or not those movies would appeal to a feminist is an entirely different matter which I am not remotely qualified to answer (no one is, actually, since “feminist” is too broad a term), though I imagine very few of them would. As I am, the Bechdel Test does nothing to point me in any direction regarding whether or not I will like something. There are many prejudices in Hollywood and elsewhere (the core one being that stories about white men are instrinsically more universal than any other kind of story), but I suppose I am simply not very picky, or that I enjoy things in spite of themselves. As a brown person living in America, I don’t have to be reminded about this, but something has to go much further than being stereotypical and cliche before I am offended by it. I don’t need 15% of American movies to have a hispanic in a central role simply because that’s the percentage of us who live in this country. In fact, I would find it insulting if movies were created to meet that quota and presented as “entertainment to make people like me feel good.”
As a caveat to earlier comments, I find the claim that some of the entertainment which passes the bechdel test doesn’t really do so because the women are just acting like men to be really reductive and patronizing. I’ve met “women that act like men” in varying degrees and extents, just as I’ve met “men that act like women” to varying degrees and extents. In none of those cases would I take their behavior to betray what their actual gender is, so why would you say that about silly action heroes that happen to be female?
The common complaint that’s being bandied around here that assertive women in movies are really just guys with breasts, reminds me of an early Doonesbury.
In it, a boy in Joanie’s class was complaining that the girls were acting like boys. (This was around the time of Woman’s Lib) Joanie rebuffed his claims by quoting Simone de Beauvoir who said “There are two kinds of people; human beings and women. And when women start acting like human beings, they are accused of trying to be men.”
I agree with you, Emilio. This test, which should’ve just been left as a funny bit in a comic strip, is pretty much pointless when treated as some practical heuristic. Most feminist essays about patriarchy fail it, too, but so what? Claire Denis’ _Beau Travail_ fails every criterion, but there’s definitely a feminine approach to the film. Also, it’s the opposite with what I think is a problem with gay, black or other minority representation in films: that they tend to have to represent their collective identity, rather than exist as a more whole character. There are more gay characters in mainstream films like Philadelphia than Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, for example.
No, it’s a very useful heuristic. You are both making the mistake that it’s not useful *to you* and therefore it can’t possibly be useful to anyone else.
As I said, it’s informed a lot of my writing. I’m interested in how female relationships are treated in popular culture; the Bechdel test is a very helpful way to think about that (not exhaustive or anything, but a good place to start.) And the Manga curmudgeon has a nice essay up today about how he’s found it useful in finding things he’s interested in reading or pursuing.
And actually, Charles…you use it too! The fact that the issues with gay and black characters are different is a *useful insight generated by the test*, not a contradiction of the test. Similarly, the fact that it doesn’t always map onto feminism is an interesting point which is worth exploring.
Bechdel’s basic point is correct — female relationships get short shrift in popular culture. The Bechdel test is a place to start thinking about what that means and how it works. If you don’t care about those issues, that’s your prerogative, of course — but that’s not the fault of the test. It’s not even evidence against the test’s basic premises. Quite the contrary.
As for Salt and female action heroes, I agree with Noah (except I enjoyed Salt). I happened to see 3 action films around the week that Salt was released. Something interesting that I noticed on my own blog was the treatment of women receiving violence. In both The Expendables and Scott Pilgrim, a significant point was made to show how women shouldn’t be hit by men, whereas in Salt, the woman took it as good as she gave. Keeping in mind that these are fantastic scenarios (women in Scott Pilgrim are actually superpowered and the heroes of The Expendables are hardly realistic), there’s definitely something more feminist about Salt than the “women must be protected” message of the other two.
Noah,
The problem is that the test doesn’t even distinguish between discussions of men. I haven’t done the bean-counting, but it seems to me that talk of men in The Philadelphia Story is a tad bit different than in Baise Moi or in the films of Catherine Breillat. And I could say that because you find you believe the test meaningful, you believe it actually is. I, of course, don’t agree. It’s a bean-counting sort of test, all form with little to no content. I agree that women get short shrift in the majority of films. I didn’t need the test for that. But the test actually excludes stuff that doesn’t give short shrift to women, so fail.
I hate not being able to edit. blah.
But the test isn’t meant to show whether or not a film is feminist! It’s a baseline, not an all-encompassing metric. It’s a good place to start a conversation. Every critical precept doesn’t have to be a complicated overarching theory, y’know?
But isn’t the point of the test essentially a feminist one about how women are represented? I guess I can’t separate feminism from it.
Charles– you seem to be using the test as a cure-all, and it isn’t. I don’t think it’s ever been sold that way. It is, exactly as you say, a bean-counting sort of test, and I believe a quick look at what does and doesn’t pass it can be very educational.
Most Bedchel-test-passing movies get labeled and derided as chick flicks. You’re arguing Salt is more feminist than Scott Pilgrim (did that one pass? I haven’t seen it yet) because Angelina Jolie gets to hit people and get hit back. That too is a very narrow view of what makes a feminist movie. And I would argue that there’s something profoundly anti-feminist, and anti-women, about a culture that half the time can’t bother putting two female characters in significant roles, much less give them something substantial to talk to each other about.
*anti-woman, not anti-women, I too hate not being able to edit.
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Noah says:
The fact that you immediately wander into bullshit brain nonsense as a biological basis for your statements pretty much proves my point.
———————-
Scientifically proven “bullshit brain nonsense.” (B.S. compared to what, the mental meanderings of postmodern philosophers?
And, in what way does it prove your point? (And, which point was that?
I’m an old enough feminist to have gone through the movement’s time of believing that boys had to be socialized into being more aggressive and thing-focused that girls, that girls were programmed to be nurturing and more relationship-focused.
And that if we raised everybody equally, all these differences would fade away.
Alas. over the years study after study showed things weren’t as simple as that. Society may exaggerate and manipulate differences between the genders, but they’re there in the first place.
———————–
As for stereotypes — action movies are made out of stereotypes, for men and women both. If you’re looking for sincere meaningfulness and realistic characters, it’s kind of the wrong genre.
———————–
They’re a hugely popular genre, however; and one which I focused on – as opposed to, say, historic dramas – because of the emphasis Erica gave it, and the fact that women can star in those roles is held up as some kind of feminist victory. (The Sunday magazine of the local newspaper featured a photo of the outstanding Helen Mirren in her new movie – ready to blast away behind a .50-caliber machine gun.) Even “Alien,” mentioned in the original Bechdel strip, is as much an action movie as a horror movie.
———————–
Also, if you’ll note above, I didn’t say that there had to be anything especially liberating about Hollywood portrayals of female action heroes. But there’s nothing especially liberating about saying that women can’t be action heroes, either.
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I indeed noticed the first. But about the second, if by “action heroes” one means – as I repeatedly emphasized – cold-blooded killers who mow down dozens of human beings without batting an eye – to feature women in these roles is to push a grossly warped faux-feminist image: that a woman is most powerful when she’s acting like the most brutishly violent male.
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…I’m interested in how female relationships are treated in popular culture; the Bechdel test is a very helpful way to think about that (not exhaustive or anything, but a good place to start.)…
Bechdel’s basic point is correct — female relationships get short shrift in popular culture. The Bechdel test is a place to start thinking about what that means and how it works…
————————
Yes, I agree with you there; at the very least, it raises awareness of these failures in the media.
“I found myself having to explain the concept of the Bechdel test over and over. I was accused of adding criteria when I explained that it really had to be something that someone like myself might read.”
I’m with the twitterati here. There’s nothing in the original test that would exclude Ooku, or Emma, or “magical elementary school girls [or] gender-bent political bedroom politics”. There’s nothing in the original test that says that it only allows the sort of books that you personally would spontaneously read. The original strip gives a pass to Aliens, fer crissakes! If you want to introduce the Friedman Test, knock yourself out. But as stated here, yes, you are adding criteria.
Scientists know fuck-all about how the brain works, Mike. They certainly don’t know whether male-female differences are biological or social. I don’t think they even have any idea how they’d begin to separate those two out.
And just because some study says it doesn’t mean it’s “proven”. A study is a study, not gospel.
“f by “action heroes” one means – as I repeatedly emphasized – cold-blooded killers who mow down dozens of human beings without batting an eye – to feature women in these roles is to push a grossly warped faux-feminist image: that a woman is most powerful when she’s acting like the most brutishly violent male.”
She’s not acting like “the most brutishly violent male” though, for several reasons. First, violence isn’t a male prerogative; women can be very violent too without it meaning that they’re acting like men. To insist otherwise is to say that women unsex themselves when they (for example) box, or fight in wars, or whatever. Second, violence in action movies is *far, far beyond* what any human is capable of, male or otherwise. So having a woman do it instead of a man isn’t making her more like a man; it’s making her more like a fantasy that is often coded male — but can be coded female, sometimes with interesting results (Marston’s WW) and sometimes with not so interesting results.
“Men with Tits”– thanks for coming up with the name for our next garage band, guys and guyettes.
While the extent of nature and nurture in shaping us is a complex and totally unresolved issue, you’d be hard-pressed to find any qualified scientist who thinks it’s entirely one or the other, whereas just about every single one would say male-female differences are BOTH biological and social. Scientific findings may or may not offend you, but the scientific method doesn’t warp itself to accommodate social norms or political correctness. When scientists try to make it do that, it can end tragically (ex. David Reimer).
Noah, when someone creates an exaggerated female action hero of the sort you speak, how do you know it’s their intent to push a feminist image at all (faux, warped or otherwise)? I can’t agree with you because you seem to be conflating the act of creating a specific kind of character with pushing a specific kind of motive.
Emilio, it’s not clear to me that there are many qualified scientists in this area. I don’t think they know much of anything. Which doesn’t mean it’s all social; it means they don’t know. (Charles though probably has a better take on the state of brain science than I do….)
And I didn’t say anything about whether the “intent” was to push a feminist image! I think that there is actually some sort of “girl power” motive, or at least rhetoric, around such things, but it’s often not especially feminist in execution — though it can be, too.
I guess in general I’d say that the fact that our culture is really into female action heroes is connected to feminism, and is probably overall a good thing in the sense that I’d rather have girls see examples of girls being heroes than not. (I can see people feeling differently about it for various reasons, which is cool — I’m just saying that’s where I’m coming from.) After that baseline, though, it really depends on the individual movie. For example, I think Salt is, as Charles says, sort of incrementally feminist in that the woman is the hero, but it doesn’t really do a whole lot with it beyond that. The old Marston WW’s are much smarter and much more self-conscious about feminism. On the other hand, something like Jennifer’s Body (which is horror but has the women doing most of the fighting/action) is based around anxieties about women’s power and women’s friendships which seems to me to be really unfeminist. I thought Buffy often went out of its way to sneer at powerful women and tell them to get back into line (contrary to its press.) And so forth.
“Scientifically proven “bullshit brain nonsense.” (B.S. compared to what, the mental meanderings of postmodern philosophers?”
Good lord Mike, you seem to think that a random link to a SPAM referral blog somehow backs up your point- was that the first thing that popped up in google or something?
This is like when you randomly skimmed Wikipedia looking for “scientific proof”
Really you should just be embarrassed that you provided this link:
http://www.mastersofhealthcare.com/blog/
I see no particularly evidence that you are open minded about science that doesn’t support your preconceived biases, but here’s a discussion of neuroscience that accounts for some subtleties in the discussion:
“To say that men like video games because their reward systems are more sensitive to video games is not a “why” explanation. It’s a “how” explanation, and it leaves completely open the question of why the male brain is more sensitive to video games. The answer might be “innate biological differences due to evolution”, or it might be “sexist upbringing”, or “paternalistic culture”, or anything else.”
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/01/lessons-from-video-game-brain.html
It sounds like you’re using scientific uncertainty to preemptively disregard findings you may ideologically disagree with. The brain is sexually dimorphic, and while the extent to which that affects personality is in question, there is no wash of “we just don’t know.” I’m not saying that because it fits in line with my beliefs about the world (I have surprisingly few of those), but because it’s what I’ve heard and read time and time again. Female equality is an important social issue, but obviously women can be socially equal to men while being biologically different from men, which we already know they are.
I still don’t think there’s anything harmful or bad about creating the extreme sort of female action heroes you’ve been talking about, so I guess I’m grappling with how what you’re saying fits back into that earlier point you made. There is undoubtedly room for more fiction that passes the Bechdel Test, but that doesn’t necessarily make what we already have superfluous, harmful, or a step backwards, even if it is dumb or not in strict accordance with feminist principles.
I would hope a society in which men and women are equal would engender appreciation for a greater variety of movies, not less. There will always be room for schlock, hyperbole, shock value, and fantasies which don’t correspond to reality.
I’m preemptively disregarding Mike’s link for the reason Pallas explained. I don’t disregard the idea that men and women may have biological differences in brain chemistry — I actually think it’s likely. However, how those differences function in practice is very, very far from being as definite as Mike’s link suggests. Indeed, it probably can’t be that definite.
I don’t know what you don’t understand with my statements above? I think the Bechdel test is an interesting way of thinking about gender and female relationships in media. That’s the only claim I made for it, I think, and I’m happy to stick by that. (I guess I also said that female relationships in media are often short-changed, which I believe is true, but I don’t see why that should indicate hatred of every possible female action hero.)
“Bechdel’s basic point is correct — female relationships get short shrift in popular culture.”
This is precisely why the test isn’t particularly useful. We already know this “female relationships get short shrift, etc…” So…the fact that the test shows this doesn’t tell us much. If you identify it as a heuristic to use, then, of course, it may seem useful…but it’s foundational principle is fairly obvious for anyone who’s thought about these issues at all. It seems unlikely that someone who hasn’t/doesn’t think about these issues is suddenly going to start applying the “test.”—So, it’s largely preaching to the converted. I agree with its basic notion, but after that, it hardly seem sophisticated enough to get us anywhere. To be fair, my understanding is that it’s more of punch line for a comic strip than a “test” that Bechdel suggests has any great insight, feminist or otherwise.
As to why it’s hard to find works that have two female charcters who have a conversation about something other then a man or a relationship some of that could be audince excpectations or at the worst just lazy writeing. But that’s just how I see things I still kind of have trouble understanding it all though.
Hey Eric. The trick is, it’s a useful shorthand way to give that general feeling (female relationships aren’t given much attention) a concrete form. It also shifts attention from what tends to be the main focus of such conversations (that is, sexualization) to female relationships per se, which aren’t actually focused on as much as you’d think even in feminist studies (the gaze and issues of sadism/masochism are much more discussed in film theory than female relationships.)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Scientists know fuck-all about how the brain works, Mike…
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Maybe ancient Greek scientists. Nowadays, they know a HUGE amount about its structure and processes. Though the fact that they don’t know everything about the workings of what has been called “the most complex object in the universe” then gets used to totally dismiss their findings.
In the same fashion that those dismissing evolution, or climate change, brush aside the overwhelming scientific consensus on those phenomena.
——————–
They certainly don’t know whether male-female differences are biological or social. I don’t think they even have any idea how they’d begin to separate those two out.
——————–
There is still a great deal of controversy about where one leaves off and the other begins. Yet more and more, the massive influence exerted by biology is proven. (It’s predictable that liberals – a group with which I’m mostly aligned – are dismayed by and resist these results. As did Stalin, for that matter, with his embrace of “Lysenkoism.”)
Consider the true story of separated-at-birth identical twins, raised by different families, sometimes with no knowledge of the existence of the other. When reunited as adults…
——————–
…James Arthur Springer and James Edward Lewis, had just been reunited at age 39 after being given up by their mother and separately adopted as 1-month-olds. Springer and Lewis, both Ohioans, found they had each married and divorced a woman named Linda and remarried a Betty. They shared interests in mechanical drawing and carpentry; their favorite school subject had been math, their least favorite, spelling. They smoked and drank the same amount and got headaches at the same time of day.
Another source says:
The twin boys were separated at birth, being adopted by different families. Unknown to each other, both families named the boys Jim. And here the coincidences just begun. Both James grew up not even knowing of the other, yet both sought law-enforcement training, both had abilities in mechanical drawing and carpentry, and each had married women named Linda. They both had sons whom one named James Alan and the other named James Allan. The twin brothers also divorced their wives and married other women – both named Betty. And they both owned dogs which they named Toy…
Equally astounding was another set of twins, Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe. At first, they appeared to be a textbook case of the primacy of culture in forming individuals — just the opposite of the Lewis-Springer pair. Separated from his twin six months after their birth in Trinidad, Oskar was brought up Catholic in Germany and joined the Hitler Youth. Jack stayed behind in the Caribbean, was raised a Jew and lived for a time in Israel. Yet despite the stark contrast of their lives, when the twins were reunited in their fifth decade they had similar speech and thought patterns, similar gaits, a taste for spicy foods and common peculiarities such as flushing the toilet before they used it.
Daphne Goodship and Barbara Herbert first met when they were 40. Debbie was raised Jewish and Sharon was raised Catholic.
They, too, have discovered remarkably similar life experiences. “We discovered we had a miscarriage the same year, followed by two boys and a girl in that order,” says Barbara.
They admit that they’ve also cooked the same meal from the same recipe book on the same day, without knowing it…
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More at http://lornareiko.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/identical-twins-who-were-separated-at-birth-what-are-they-like/
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And just because some study says it doesn’t mean it’s “proven”. A study is a study, not gospel.
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Those “gender differences in the brain” findings have been replicated in many different studies across the world, following the rules of the “scientific method.”
Now, you say that “because some study says it doesn’t mean it’s ‘proven.’ ” By what other way would something be proven – excuse me, “proven” – other than by studies? Because you feel it’s right, in your gut? Because it fits your unconscious beliefs about The Way Things Really Are? (Which is the way, heaven help us, Boobus Americanus makes political decisions.)
“A study is a study, not gospel”; how unintentionally revelatory that this phrasing dismisses one approach (which may be flawed or distorted – I’m not saying that “all studies are created equal”), holding up a batch of faith-based superstition (and a soupçon of spiritual wisdom) instead.
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[Mike quote] “If by “action heroes” one means – as I repeatedly emphasized – cold-blooded killers who mow down dozens of human beings without batting an eye – to feature women in these roles is to push a grossly warped faux-feminist image: that a woman is most powerful when she’s acting like the most brutishly violent male.”
She’s not acting like “the most brutishly violent male” though, for several reasons.
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“She”? I’m talking about the roles in general, you’re bringing up one in particular. (I’m guessing you mean “Salt,” since you reviewed the movie.)
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First, violence isn’t a male prerogative; women can be very violent too without it meaning that they’re acting like men.
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I already said as much; nice we’re agreeing on something!
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To insist otherwise is to say that women unsex themselves when they (for example) box, or fight in wars, or whatever.
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No; but violence doesn’t come as easily to them as it does to the typical male. For instance, when called in to an angry altercation, women cops are far more skilled than male ones to “cool things down.” (Admittedly, angry guys may feel less “challenged” by a woman officer…)
That “unsex” reference couldn’t help but remind of this great passage:
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LADY MACBETH:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry ‘Hold, hold!’
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(Damn, that Bard is great!)
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Second, violence in action movies is *far, far beyond* what any human is capable of, male or otherwise.
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Point taken, and it tends to grow ever more exaggerated in the history of the genre. I’d read a commentary on how the first “Die Hard” movie’s heroics were at least humanly possible, while in the last, the laws of physics were being stretched willy-nilly.
Though I recommend checking out the mind-boggling feats which have earned some heroic individuals the Congressional Medal of Honor. You’ll find actions there that one would swear were “far, far beyond what any human is capable of.”
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So having a woman do it instead of a man isn’t making her more like a man; it’s making her more like a fantasy that is often coded male — but can be coded female, sometimes with interesting results (Marston’s WW) and sometimes with not so interesting results.
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A well thought-out and compellingly argued point!
(Um, when I argued that “These aren’t women in most of these movies; they’re just guys with tits,” in what way is that different – aside from being less elegantly phrased – than saying they’re “more like a fantasy that is often coded male”?)
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pallas says:
Good lord Mike, you seem to think that a random link to a SPAM referral blog somehow backs up your point- was that the first thing that popped up in google or something?
This is like when you randomly skimmed Wikipedia looking for “scientific proof”
Really you should just be embarrassed that you provided this link…
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Not in the slightest. If some handy website – no matter that it’s not laden with scholarly gravitas, even if it’s downright right-wing – features a nice synopsis of info I already know is true, I have no trouble with using it.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I’m preemptively disregarding Mike’s link for the reason Pallas explained.
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Then is a set of the multiplication tables somehow rendered less credible if located on the back of a “Dick and Jane” book? To some, they are…
Earlier, on other threads (on the TCJ message board, which doesn’t choke on bunches of links) I’ve included many links to various studies proving those same “sex differences in the brain” results. Which aren’t exactly breaking news, folks…
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pallas says:
I see no particularly evidence that you are open minded about science that doesn’t support your preconceived biases…
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Ah, but I earlier mentioned that…
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Mike Hunter says:
I’m an old enough feminist to have gone through the movement’s time of believing that boys had to be socialized into being more aggressive and thing-focused that girls, that girls were programmed to be nurturing and more relationship-focused.
And that if we raised everybody equally, all these differences would fade away.
Alas, over the years study after study showed things weren’t as simple as that. Society may exaggerate and manipulate differences between the genders, but they’re there in the first place.
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What happened to the “preconceived biases” I had when research results contradicted it? I changed my mind.
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pallas says:
…but here’s a discussion of neuroscience that accounts for some subtleties in the discussion:
“To say that men like video games because their reward systems are more sensitive to video games is not a “why” explanation. It’s a “how” explanation, and it leaves completely open the question of why the male brain is more sensitive to video games. The answer might be “innate biological differences due to evolution”, or it might be “sexist upbringing”, or “paternalistic culture”, or anything else.”
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/01/lessons-from-video-game-brain.html
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An enjoyable site, thanks for the link. Let me take those “why the male brain is more sensitive to video games” possible explanations one at a time:
– “innate biological differences due to evolution”
Surely the most substantial one; aren’t our very bodies, brains included, and all species, chockablock with “innate biological differences due to evolution”?
– “sexist upbringing/paternalistic culture”
Unfortunately, as the failure of the belief and practice “that if we raised everybody equally, all these differences (boys being more aggressive, girls focused on nurturing) would fade away” proved, while upbringing and culture can exaggerate the basic qualities of the genders, they can’t reshape their nature entirely.
(Ah, all those idealistic “non-sexist” parents, dismayed that their boys still gravitated to toy cars and guns, their girls toward dolls…)
Therefore the polar opposite, sexist upbringing, paternalistic culture (“Boo! Hiss!”) , can’t reshape biological natures into even something as trivial as being heavily “into” video games.
Mike, you make me just want to shake my head.
I think the most important bit is where, at the end, you say that evolution is “surely the most important” factor, basically because you, in your common sense wisdom, have decided it must be. Why should anybody be convinced by that? Why do you think that that sort of ad hoc, “this must be so” statement has anything to do with science or shows anything except your particular prejudices?
Also…eliminating sexism hasn’t happened. Therefore when you claim that gender differences have persisted despite the elimination of sexism, you are spewing utter nonsense.
You seem to think that science can find truths about human behavior the way it can about chemicals in a lab. It doesn’t work that way for a lot of reasons — not least because your understanding of lab work is, as far as I can tell, hopelessly naive and unrealistic.
As a biologist, let me jump in here:
There is a large amount of research on sex differences in brain anatomy / function, personality differences, innate preferences, und so weiter. Much of it is questionable, some is interesting but not fully proven, a few findings are quite well-supported. The take-home message, to date:
1. There are some traits that show consistent differences which appear to be innate, but these are only a minority of the traits that are culturally coded as gender-typed, and do not necessarily line up with gender stereotypes,
2. Most of the traits that appear to have innate differences have large within-sex variation compared to their between-sex variation, and so do not support the “all boys are competitive, all girls are nurturing” tripe that Leonard Sax et alia deliver,
3. These potentially innate differences are greatly reinforced and exaggerated by social influences, which start extremely early in life and are strongly peer-derived even in the face of parental encouragement towards gender-neutral or gender-atypical behavior; i.e., boys with ““non-sexist” parents” still play with guns because other boys play with guns, ads for toy guns show boys, and guns are male-coded, while their peers (and less-tolerant adults) will tease them or ostracize them if they play with “girl stuff”, regardless of whet their parents say.
For a good, readable overview, I suggest Lise Eliot’s Pink Brain, Blue Brain. It’s a bit focused on an educational perspective, but it has a solid take on the science.
Oh, thank goodness. I kept hoping someone who actually knew something would weigh in.
Julia Serrano’s “Whipping Girl” is really interesting in this regard. She’s a biologist and a male to female trans woman; the part of the book where she discusses how taking hormones affected her outlook/emotions/color sense/etc. is fascinating.
I thought “Whipping Girl” was interesting, but she gets some of her facts wrong. As part of her argument for innate gender identity, she claims that chromosomally-male children who undergo sex reassignment as infants almost invariably revert to a male gender identity. This is in fact only true for those who are reassigned after about age one; children reassigned in the first few months of life overwhelmingly identify as female as adults and have no particular gender issues. This is evidence of how early in life gender identity (and gender stereotypes) are formed, but it doesn’t support innate gender identity.
I don’t think any media should be held to the Bechdel Test, ever. It is so very flawed. Two male characters can have a feminist conversation, a movie without women can still be meaningful and beautiful and not patriarchal. The Bechdel test is just as bad as men saying that they don’t want to listen to women speak.
Ummm…no.
You can pass the Bechdel test and have a ton of conversations involving men. The test asks for one. lousy. conversation. between women about something that is not men.
It doesn’t say you can’t like movies that fail it, or that you have to hate movies that like it. It just suggests that this is something you might want to pay attention to.
Also…while I’m obviously not adverse to the idea of guys sitting around talking about feminism (as happens to some extent on this thread!) I think it’s worth pointing out that if women are entirely excluded from that conversation, it makes a lot of sense for feminists to call bullshit. (Tania Modleski’s “Feminism Without Women” is a good place to start reading if you want more of an explanation of why that is.)
“Ummm…no.”
Ummmm…yeah :D (see, I can do that too.)
That branch of feminism is misguided and antiquated. I think it’s more progressive not to make assumptions based on what’s between a person’s legs. You are just carrying on gender roles, otherwise. The test is flawed.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I think the most important bit is where, at the end, you say that evolution is “surely the most important” factor, basically because you, in your common sense wisdom, have decided it must be…
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No, because it’s clearly obvious; in the same way that “gravity is the most important factor keeping us from floating off the Earth.”
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Why should anybody be convinced by that?
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40% of the American people think the world is 10,000 years old, Obama is a Muslim, and other utter follies. No, I don’t remotely expect anyone to be swayed even minutely by the greatest mass of evidence.
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Why do you think that that sort of ad hoc, “this must be so” statement has anything to do with science or shows anything except your particular prejudices?
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Because it has a great deal to do with science?
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Also…eliminating sexism hasn’t happened. Therefore when you claim that gender differences have persisted despite the elimination of sexism, you are spewing utter nonsense.
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You really ought to check out Russ Maheras’ responses on the various political TCJ message board threads. Insisting that all views contrary to his are due to prejudice; dismissing hugely detailed and backed-up arguments with a “that’s bullshit.”
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You seem to think that science can find truths about human behavior the way it can about chemicals in a lab. It doesn’t work that way for a lot of reasons —
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Ah, the old “accuse the other side of saying/thinking some absurdity they never said, then attack them for supposedly making a ridiculous assertion” bit. (See Russ again…)
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…not least because your understanding of lab work is, as far as I can tell, hopelessly naive and unrealistic.
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I have a great deal of knowledge and understanding about how scientific studies work. Anything which doesn’t fit your PC worldview is to be dismissed…
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JRBrown says:
As a biologist, let me jump in here:…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Oh, thank goodness. I kept hoping someone who actually knew something would weigh in.
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Oh, so you admit you know nothing about the subject?
(Will come back to JRB’s points later…)
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Julia Serrano’s “Whipping Girl” is really interesting in this regard. She’s a biologist and a male to female trans woman;…
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Considering the gender “variations” which you’re pretty fascinated by, it’s no wonder you reject any arguments that humans have certain powerful, innate tendencies, biologically-programmed.
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…the part of the book where she discusses how taking hormones affected her outlook/emotions/color sense/etc. is fascinating.
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Sounds like it! So do you accept that hormones can affect one’s outlook and emotions? Then, meet estrogen and testosterone…
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JRBrown says:
I thought “Whipping Girl” was interesting, but she gets some of her facts wrong…
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Since biologists as individuals are clearly fallible, I’d prefer to go with what the consensus of them as a group on the subject is; can anyone point where to look?
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1. There are some traits that show consistent differences which appear to be innate, but these are only a minority of the traits that are culturally coded as gender-typed, and do not necessarily line up with gender stereotypes…
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Which ones are those, please? (Be warned that anything reeking of non-PC-ness will be taken to indicate personal prejudice; be brushed aside as “hopelessly naive and unrealistic.”)
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2. Most of the traits that appear to have innate differences have large within-sex variation compared to their between-sex variation, and so do not support the “all boys are competitive, all girls are nurturing” tripe that Leonard Sax et alia deliver,
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“All boys are competitive, all girls are nurturing” is indeed tripe. Yet no one in all the reading of all the studies I’ve come across has ever made such a ridiculously sweeping statement. Sounds like the old “accuse the other side of saying/thinking some absurdity they never said (aside from at least one screwball exception), then attack them for supposedly making a ridiculous assertion” bit.
There certainly exists “large within-sex variation,” but because one guy may be an emaciated shrimp, and one woman body-builder a towering mass of muscle, doesn’t dispel that as a group, for better or worse (mostly for worse, unfortunately) men are bigger and more muscular on the average than women.
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3. These potentially innate differences are greatly reinforced and exaggerated by social influences, which start extremely early in life and are strongly peer-derived even in the face of parental encouragement towards gender-neutral or gender-atypical behavior; i.e., boys with ““non-sexist” parents” still play with guns because other boys play with guns, ads for toy guns show boys, and guns are male-coded, while their peers (and less-tolerant adults) will tease them or ostracize them if they play with “girl stuff”, regardless of whet their parents say.
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Indeed all those influences are very strong. But, “potentially innate differences”? What a feeble assertion; never mind that not only human history and prehistory reinforces all that, but so does behavior of the two genders throughout the animal world. Males tend to be larger, more aggressive, sexually promiscuous, territorial; females are far more focused on nurturing and rearing the young; males must dance and prance in order to attract the females’ attention; and so forth…
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For a good, readable overview, I suggest Lise Eliot’s Pink Brain, Blue Brain. It’s a bit focused on an educational perspective, but it has a solid take on the science.
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Sounds interesting. ( http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troublesome/dp/0618393110 ). But again, what is the consensus of scientists in the field? Millions have dismissing that HIV causes AIDS and global warming, because an exceedingly small portion of scientists made claims that went contrary to what virtually all others did.
ScrumYummy — I take it you don’t use male or female pronouns then in conversation, right?
Pretending that sexual difference doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. Pretending that inequality isn’t there doesn’t make it vanish. Refusing to discuss the ways gender works in our society just makes you unable to think about them or change them.
Mike — you’ve got some bizarre idea that I don’t believe in gender difference. You also think that trumpeting your own belief in science and shouting “evolution!” at the top of your lungs means that you know what you’re talking about on even a rudimentary level. I respectfully disagree with you on each of these points.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mike — you’ve got some bizarre idea that I don’t believe in gender difference.
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I wouldn’t go that far; more like I get the idea you’re dismissive of the huge effect that things like the differences in male and female brains (never mind biological programming, hormones, DNA), can have on the behavior of the genders.
An astrologer said, “The stars impel, they do not compel.” Likewise, those fleshly influences don’t mean we’re utterly will-less robots doomed to follow our evolutionary destiny.
Still; those separated-at-birth identical twins would’ve sworn on a stack of Bibles that they were exercising their “free will” when they…
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….both sought law-enforcement training…each had married women named Linda. They both had sons whom one named James Alan and the other named James Allan. The twin brothers also divorced their wives and married other women – both named Betty. And they both owned dogs which they named Toy…
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But if you’ve clearly articulated in detail your thoughts on the subject of gender difference, and how much influence biology has, I’ve not seen where you wrote it. (I must admit I’ve passed on your thorough dissection of “Wonder Woman” stories, though what I’ve seen of them has been enjoyable.)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
You also think that trumpeting your own belief in science…
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Unlike the most widely “believed” in thing, religion, with billions of “believers,” science is a “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” No need for any remotely educated person in the civilized world to “trumpet” their “belief” in it; that can be taken for granted. Unless one is living with, say, some African tribe, where “believing in science” would be outré.
Though experimental methodologies can be flawed, results distorted or inconclusive, science is a system where new experimental results and discoveries regularly swipe away incorrect ideas. (Highly recommend my latest bit of science reading, the splendid “Introducing Stephen Hawking,”* which contains many examples of this process at work.) Unlike religion or politics, where the more sacred beliefs are proved as nonsense, the more the “faithful” hold on to them. (“What the recent economic crash proved is…we need LESS government regulation of the financial sector!” [Yes, Free Market True Believers have actually said this.])
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…and shouting “evolution!” at the top of your lungs means that you know what you’re talking about on even a rudimentary level.
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You clearly don’t have the remotest idea of my own knowledge and understanding of science, a subject I’ve been fascinated with and eagerly read about in massive quantities since childhood.
That on a subject where you can claim a good degree of knowledge, comics, you can make the absurd critical statements you’ve done in the past**, could be taken as indicating “that you don’t know what you’re talking about on even a rudimentary level.”
Instead, I think that different personalities, with different ways of perceiving the world, can have the same body of knowledge at hand and come to wildly diverging conclusions. Even ones that another may find utterly, grotesquely wrong.
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I respectfully disagree with you on each of these points.
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Dunno how much respect there can be (not that I care) after announcing, in effect, that “you [don’t] know what you’re talking about on even a rudimentary level.” Am reminded of the old “Dear sir (you cur)” letter opening.
However, I’m all for a reasonable degree of conviviality, and don’t mean to throw various HU threads off-kilter as we launch fusillades of verbiage back and forth at each other***. I’ll strive to be more diplomatic (I’d actually chopped away a great deal of harsh commentary from my first post, believe it or not), and take it easy on bringing in science.
* http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Stephen-Hawking-J-McEvoy/dp/1874166250 ; and, anticipating dismissive “What? Your idea of ‘science reading’ is a comic book?” comments, might I add I’ve also got plenty of “serious format” science books on my bookshelves, Hawking’s own “A Brief History of Time” among ’em.
**Thought I’d look up the first that came to mind, “In The Shadow of No Talent” ( http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2008/09/shadow-of-no-talent.html ), but it turns out on rereading – I’d mostly forgotten its details – to be a rich, delightful essay. The only point that sticks like a bone down one’s craw is the “No Talent” part of the title. While Art Spiegelman’s 9/11 book was as boneheadely wrought as comprehensively delineated, it’s not because he lacked talent…
*** I don’t mean to be your personal heckler, who follows you from speech to speech, or Noah’s own bête noire:
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French, literally ‘black beast’.
An anathema; someone or something which is particularly disliked or avoided; an object of aversion, the bane of one’s existence
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I think that neuroscientist blogger linked to earlier is right in separating cognitive structures from the wetware in which they’re instantiated. To put sole emphasis on the brain in understanding behavior (“neurofetishists”) is like trying to understand literature by looking at the properties of ink and paper, only a whole lot more difficult.
Anyway, it’s been awhile since I read this stuff, but in the area of socio-developmental cognition and the role of nature and nurture, an influential theory (at least, I guess it’s still influential) is Scarr and McCartney’s model of genotype to environment effects (and the researchers are both women if that matters). They suggest that genotype selects an environment in which it might flourish. Complicating our ability to suss out what’s environmental and what’s biological is that the biological parents tend to supply the child with its genotype and nurturing environment. These genotypic effects on the environment are called passive, the influence of which decreases as the child ages (and begins to move away from the parents). Active effects are the situations chosen by child and, of course, increase with age. The third effect is evocative, which refers to the dispositions of the child that effect types of responses from parents and others in the growing social network. In other words, at all times environment is shaping a child’s development, but the environment tends to not be some random set of circumstances into which the child is thrown. Even though this theory comes from behavioral genetics, a discipline that many might see as reductionistic, it’s still a beautifully complicating idea. Apply these considerations to the question of why there are fewer women in science and mathematics or why more men prefer violent videogames, and you hardly get something as simple as that’s just the way our brains work.
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Charles Reece says:
… To put sole emphasis on the brain in understanding behavior (“neurofetishists”) is like trying to understand literature by looking at the properties of ink and paper,..
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Sure. But again, who here is putting “sole emphasis on the brain in understanding behavior”? Why, go back to my Oct. 4th quote from “10 Big Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Brains” and look at all the caveats and qualifications. In #1 alone, there’s “Women tend to,” “men tend to,” “men have a more difficult time,” “women tend to” again, “men and women sometimes have difficulty”…
The extremist argument that “the brain TOTALLY CONTROLS MALE AND FEMALE BEHAVIOR” is not to be found here.
Erica, the test doesn’t apply to books you’re interested in, it’s not a barometer of quality. If that were the case, it’s purpose would be to create a circle of ‘safe’ media or determine whether or not you can pat yourself on the back or not, both leading causes of the death of true activism.
It applies to what the lowest common denominator is interested in on the cultural battlefield beyond your bookcase at home.
Great article–very thoughtfully written. I’m
glad to see this applied to anime/manga. :)
I get so annoyed with Hollywood because there are so many movies that I think could have more female characters, but for whatever reason, if all/most of the main characters were female, it’d be written off as a chickflick/girlband movie. Like Inception–one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s coworkers (other than Ellen Page) could have EASILY been a woman. Ken Watanabe’s character could have been a woman. The heir’s father could have been his mother, etc. But if a bunch of the main cast were women, I swear it would have been compared to Charlie’s Angels, even though the sex and gender of all of the characters had NOTHING to do with the plot. If the main character were a woman being chased by her dead husband (or wife), the character would have been a “weak woman” instead of a “flawed man.”
Why is a man a neutral, unmarked body? ARGH.
This is why I like BeruBara so much–even though Oscar is the “hero” and all the women in it are in love with her, Rosalie and Marie Antoinette are other main characters and talk to other named women about things that are not men. (Rosalie, her mother, and sister; Oscar and Sophie von Fersen; Antoinette and Mme. Polignac and so on.) It’s an example of how to do a Bechdel-pass with flying colors.
What bothers me is that men are not encouraged to read or like these stories. I don’t think a lot of straight-identified men would pick up BeruBara, Emma, or Ooku, even though in the former two there is equal time given to male characters. (Emma is called Emma, but it’s more like Emma and William, honestly.) Even guys I know who are attracted to Oscar-like women don’t really enjoy watching BeruBara (though how much of that is a fault of the anime/style/changing the story is unclear.)
Even Ouran, which has a main cast of nearly all
boys, passes the test. That did make me feel
better, because female characters are treated
like humans, and Haruhi is not just the
female hero leading a group of men.
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