Star Trek (all eps!) Bechdel Test Review!!!

[Plum]

Welp, here it is! Some lucky woman has watched ALL of the Trek episodes (skipped the films) and has reported on the results. Remember - if an episode fails the Bechdel Test, Captain Janeway does a facepalm!

http://www.themarysue.com/star-trek-bechdel-test/

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I admire the breadth of this project!

 

[erastus25]

Given that possibly insane Janeway and skinsuit-wearing-for-no-damned-reason 7 are probably responsible for most of Voyager's passing grades I'm going to go ahead and say these results don't indicate which show actually treated women most fairly.

 

[-Brett-]

Really only highlights how useless the Bechdel test is. Voyager is nothing more than Brannon Braga's weird masturbation fantasy, but because it passes the Bechdel test, it's supposedly the most "progressive" series?

 

[Nebusj]

Really only highlights how useless the Bechdel test is. Voyager is nothing more than Brannon Braga's weird masturbation fantasy, but because it passes the Bechdel test, it's supposedly the most "progressive" series?

Seems rather striking to me, actually: if ``Brannon Braga's weird masturbation fantasy'' can pass the Bechdel Test --- which, remember, can be satisfied by having two named female characters talk about anything, whether their jobs, their health, their space-time anomalies, their fondness for tomato soup, which is not a man --- then why the heck did thirteen whole seasons of various Treks not manage a 50-percent passing rate?

 

[Takeru]

Given that possibly insane Janeway and skinsuit-wearing-for-no-damned-reason 7 are probably responsible for most of Voyager's passing grades I'm going to go ahead and say these results don't indicate which show actually treated women most fairly.

Of course not, the Bechdel test is not a tool to determine quality, that was never the point, misogynistic crap can pass the test easily while great stories with strong female characters can fail.
The point is to show a general lack of representation of female characters.
That's why nobody bothers with a reverse Bechdel test, male characters talk to each other all the time, I'm pretty sure all episodes of the entire franchise would pass a reverse Bechdel test with flying colors.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Assuming the accuracy of the stats, the single most surprising thing for me is that ENT scores lower than every series except TOS, and that it reversed the steadily increasing trend of the previous series.

 

[Forbin]

So a scene with Hoshi and T'Pol smearing decon cream on each other's semi-naked bodies while discussing their favorite snack foods would pass this feminist test?

Hmmmm.

 

[Forbin]

... or Beverly giving Troi a through, gentle, body massage in a mud bath while Deanna describes the warm feeling she gets from eating chocolate?

... or, let's see... B'Lanna teaching Kes some Klingon wrestling holds while talking about, oh, anything will do...

Hang on, I need to philosophize on this for a while...

 

[Kemaiku]

 

[bbailey861]

A great deal of work went into this but is anyone really surprised with the results? It may make for an interesting discussion point if/when the next Trek series gets discussed if for no other reason than there are a great deal of women/girls who like like the genre and are potential viewers.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

So a scene with Hoshi and T'Pol smearing decon cream on each other's semi-naked bodies while discussing their favorite snack foods would pass this feminist test?

Hmmmm.

The test wasn't designed to account for male gaze.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Given that possibly insane Janeway and skinsuit-wearing-for-no-damned-reason 7 are probably responsible for most of Voyager's passing grades I'm going to go ahead and say these results don't indicate which show actually treated women most fairly.

Of course not, the Bechdel test is not a tool to determine quality, that was never the point, misogynistic crap can pass the test easily while great stories with strong female characters can fail.
The point is to show a general lack of representation of female characters.
That's why nobody bothers with a reverse Bechdel test, male characters talk to each other all the time, I'm pretty sure all episodes of the entire franchise would pass a reverse Bechdel test with flying colors.

That is correct. The Bechdel test is a tongue-in-cheek test, designed to show that the majority of films and TV shows and other media fail to clear the lowest possible bar of representation and equality.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Given that possibly insane Janeway and skinsuit-wearing-for-no-damned-reason 7 are probably responsible for most of Voyager's passing grades I'm going to go ahead and say these results don't indicate which show actually treated women most fairly.

I suspect that 86.9% is still low, particularly when you account for the fact that you had a female captain. I am willing to guess that if you did the reverse Bechdel test, despite the female captain 99% of the episodes would have two men speaking with one another about something other than a woman. And the remaining 1% would only be a result of Tom Paris talking with Harry Kim about the Delaney sisters too much, not of bigger woman presence in the episode.

 

[T'Girl]

by having two named female characters talk about anything

This would include Naomi Wildman talking to Seven of Nine, yes?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The only episode I can think of that would stand any chance of failing the reverse Bechdel test might be the one where Janeway and Chakotay are stranded on that planet due to a virus and all the conversation on the ship revolves around whether to go back for her.

Or, some others might depend on whether you regard the Doctor to be male.

 

[BigJake]

Really only highlights how useless the Bechdel test is. Voyager is nothing more than Brannon Braga's weird masturbation fantasy, but because it passes the Bechdel test, it's supposedly the most "progressive" series?

All the Bechdel Test measures is the mere presence of women in the story. What it's mostly useful for is throwing into sharp relief how many stories basically fail to include women as anything but props to the male characters at all, let alone achieve "progressiveness."

The Bechdel Test certainly is not a measure of "progressiveness," although it may often map roughly to it. (Whatever its other flaws, it would be hard to argue that VOY wasn't more progressive than TOS. Likewise, of the half-dozen TOS episodes that pass the Test, one is Turnabout Intruder -- probably the series most blisteringly sexist outing, and that's saying something.) But you wouldn't want people measuring progressiveness by the Bechdel Test alone, because it would be very easy -- as Forbin correctly, if kinda creepily, points out -- to game it while still producing incredibly sexist and degrading material.

 

[Forbin]

Yoeman Rand and Uhura trying on various flowery-patterned panties while planning Nurse Chapel's birthday surprise party...

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Really only highlights how useless the Bechdel test is. Voyager is nothing more than Brannon Braga's weird masturbation fantasy, but because it passes the Bechdel test, it's supposedly the most "progressive" series?

All the Bechdel Test measures is the mere presence of women in the story. What it's mostly useful for is throwing into sharp relief how many stories basically fail to include women as anything but props to the male characters at all, let alone achieve "progressiveness."

The Bechdel Test certainly is not a measure of "progressiveness," although it may often map roughly to it. (Whatever its other flaws, it would be hard to argue that VOY wasn't more progressive than TOS. Likewise, of the half-dozen TOS episodes that pass the Test, one is Turnabout Intruder -- probably the series most blisteringly sexist outing, and that's saying something.) But you wouldn't want people measuring progressiveness by the Bechdel Test alone, because it would be very easy -- as Forbin correctly, if kinda creepily, points out -- to game it while still producing incredibly sexist and degrading material.

To take these points a bit further, the bar for passing the Bechdel Test is incredibly minimal, and I believe intentionally so, in order to emphasize just how many works fail to pass even so minimal a test.

One reason that I think it's too easy to overinterpret results of the test is because the test itself represents an almost sarcastic understatement of the problem of disproportionality.

Another reason though is that the results are most significant in aggregate. In certain specific cases, disproportionality may be quite justified; you don't have women wading ashore to fight on Iwo Jima any more than you'd have men in a nunnery. In many individual cases, though, one has to wonder why the disproportionality. Star Trek in particular has no excuse, and the under-representation of women can really only be understood in the context of aggregates of the period that reflect the culture and time in which it was made.

 

[Gaith]

Assuming the accuracy of the stats, the single most surprising thing for me is that ENT scores lower than every series except TOS, and that it reversed the steadily increasing trend of the previous series.

I don't find it surprising at all. Hoshi was very much a secondary character, and Polly rarely had a reason to speak with her, so yeah, ENT's low pass rate is... logical.