Doctor Who You Calling Sexist: Bechdel-Wallace

The Bechdel-Wallace test: What and Why?

In the course of the episode,

1)    Do two or more named female characters

2)      Have a conversation

3)      About something other than a man

?

So that’s the test and it’s simple enough. It’s a measure of the breadth and depth of female characters and not really a test of sexism. A fail on the test doesn’t mean that a show is sexist, and a pass doesn’t mean that it’s feminist. It’s simply a gauge to see how a writer’s development of female characters compares to the norm for development of male characters. However, if a writer’s depth and breadth of female characters consistently falls short of that of their male characters, there may be sexism at play.

I may rant a bit in this post because I want to really clarify why this test is used and why it’s important. I see a lot of criticism of it in nearly every article or post I’ve seen about it. Yes, I recognize that the test doesn’t PROVE sexism. We use it because nothing really does. Just because you can’t prove something beyond argument doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an effect, and doesn’t mean that you can’t try to change it. That being said, this test is one of the most objective ways to talk about sexism institutionalized in our literature and media. You can actually look at a show and see that women are not being afforded the same opportunities as men when it comes to character development. Yes there IS a problem when male characters get to interact with male characters about important things and women characters don’t get the same treatment.

If there’s regularly only one girl, this may have negative repercussions on the character's reception (on top of not creating an equal amount of good roles for women). It creates a sort of “Token Girl,” and we all know that no one takes the token character seriously. It may also suggest that a girl can only get things done if she acts like one of the boys; it doesn’t allow for any representations of women getting things done sans-men (because it’s unlikely that anyone working entirely by themselves will succeed); there’s a sad lack of positive examples of groups of women, whether they be housewives or scientists, working together successfully. For the men there are myriad examples: army, politics, and various other professions that we see as male-dominated. The women rarely get to work together as a team, and almost never as a team of all women. The lack of characters experiencing this is sad because studies show that real-life women are very good at teamwork. I’m not saying this never happens, but it is rather rarer. The female characters we see usually have to stand alone, go against everyone else, and very often fail. (Take Suki the freedom fighter on Satellite 5 in the episode The Long Game as an example). Otherwise, they are ridiculed for going with the grain (like Cathica on Satellite 5). Those often seem like the only two options for women in this show, and in the entire sci-fi/fantasy genre if we’re being honest. It misses out on other dimensions that are perfectly plausible but unexplored, making the representation of women less than holistic. 

Similarly, if all the female characters can talk about is men, it really limits them in their development and in their effect on the audience. That means they don’t get to talk about themselves as an independent being—only about themselves as a being that exists in relation to someone else. If that someone else is consistently a man, it creates the implication that the man in question is the character in the position of agency, control, or importance. Since the script is rarely flipped, that translates to a general suspicion that men occupy that role as a rule. This may not always be true on a case-to-case basis, but it certainly does contribute to sexist stereotypes we hold and perpetuate.

Furthermore, the concern with female characters only talking about male characters comes from the experience that very often female characters are just written in to create romance, and don’t exist as a character outside of their relationship to one man. This is problematic and demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of women’s complexity and interests. 

Again, I may not have a problem with romance on a case-by-case basis; my problem comes from an overabundance of these characters who are created to supplement the male character and who put a man before themselves even in their own conversations and in the minds of the audience. How are we expected to have a healthy view of relationships if what we see in the media is this one-sided? How are we supposed to develop a healthy self-concept as women if we only learn how to define ourselves through our romantic relationships? So yeah, I think we have a real problem in our media with representation of female characters. 

Now I obviously don’t think that writers should put this test as the highest priority when writing. It is entirely possible to have a situation that fulfills the test and yet features characters that are poorly written and perpetuate sexist stereotypes.

Some of the most female-focused episodes don’t pass the Bechdel test. Take for example, The Girl Who Waited, which technically could pass if you count Amy talking to herself in a different time stream, but which doesn’t really pass in the spirit of the test. This incredible episode featured Amy surviving for 36 years by herself in a hostile environment; talk about feminist. And because she was by herself, there was no one to talk to. That’s fine, I take no issue with that because it makes sense in the context. The problem is when there’s no reason for the episode to fail, especially because it’s such an easy test to pass.

So now that the rant is out of the way, let’s get to the results.

How Doctor Who Measures Up

Here's the infographic that launched a thousand posts: 

This infographic comes from a blog, and was part of a university research project. However, it doesn't include any of Clara's run, or Classic Who—so I kept looking. The next one I found was done by Sarah Barrett on DoctorWho TV and went through all 117 episodes of New Who. This one’s results were a little different from the first (probably owing to differences in what counts as a named female and how conversation was defined). The separate postings both addressed some of the difficulties in deciding what counts as a pass, especially since the show features lots of hybrid humans like cyber-people, at least one bodiless consciousness, and even characters holding conversations with a future version of themselves.

Anyway, this one came up with 80% as an overall pass rate and also included a comparison between companions as well as some other infographics.

And finally, I found this blog, which examines Classic Who.

I would recommend that you take a look at these three sites and read about their methodologies and conclusions if you’re interested. I don’t think I really have time to go through it all here, I just want to talk about my reaction to the findings and see what your reactions are.

My Reactions

I’m actually quite surprised that Classic Who is basically on par with New Who. I would have thought that New Who’s pass rates would be higher, especially because New Who features a lot more female day player roles. This may have come from the way the episodes were viewed as requiring one pass per series instead of one per episode. But it does make sense that the highest rates from Classic Who mostly came from episodes where the Doctor had two female companions, which hasn’t happened in New Who except for when River’s there. And that makes it doubly interesting that River and Amy don’t have higher pass rates (Amy’s was the lowest of New Who), since you would think they would pass every episode they shared just by talking to each other. Although I guess most of River’s episodes do pass, which means that Amy must have failed nearly all the ones where River wasn’t there. It’s too much to look through all of River’s episodes, but her two episodes with Donna pass, as do the ones with Clara so I would guess that means that the two episodes she failed were during Amy’s seasons. (Update: I finally took a closer look and River's two failing episodes were with Amy: they were Day of the Moon and The Angels Take Manhattan). This correlates with some of the disappointment I feel regarding Amy and River’s relationship. The disappointment being that it was left so unexplored. Their relationship really revolved around the Doctor and they never got a chance to relate on any other level. 

In general, I’m a little disappointed that the results aren’t higher. I think they are probably very good relative to other TV shows, especially shows in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. This is just an inkling, but I’ve always thought Doctor Who seemed much more progressive in this regard than other shows, not taking into account any data on the matter. It’s a little sad though, if this is one of the best and 80% is the highest we’ve gotten in a show like this.

There could also be many reasons for the low number. For one, I think the show often sacrifices female interaction in favor of the relationship between the Doctor and the Companion. This is a very important aspect of the show, and it’s fine to give that priority. However, in the interest of equal treatment I wonder whether the Doctor’s interactions with males are curbed in the same way. (Update: they're not).

Similarly, a big theme in the show is the idea of the Doctor vs. Domesticity. This translates to the companion leaving her family and friends to travel with the Doctor. This cuts out the biggest (and most common) opportunities for female/female interaction. Although again, the Doctor doesn’t have much in the way of friends and family either. I wonder if it might be possible that writers have trouble writing interactions between females that aren’t family/friends more than they do for males, because most conversations a female character has usually are with her romantic partner, her mother, or her best friend. Male characters, on the other hand, are regularly seen to converse with anyone and everyone. In my experience, it is rarer to see a female character talk to female characters she doesn’t know than for a male character to talk to male characters he doesn’t know.

Time travelling to certain settings would also plausibly result in fewer females present. For example, Clara is the only female in the episode Cold War, which takes place on a Russian submarine full of (presumably) soldiers during the Cold War. Although, to be fair, the Alien could have been female just as easily as male—and that would have created another role for a female and created an opportunity for female interaction.

And the last reason also shows the limitations of the test. It’s possible that some characters won’t want to interact with other females, and that’s part of their character development. (Since the Bechdel test is supposed to measure character development, we see looking at this that it doesn’t do that perfectly). First of all, I want to say that this explanation worries me, as it can easily be used as a trump card to explain away biases and make excuses for lack of female representation. Again, if there is a consistent lack of good representation, there may be an actual problem that you shouldn’t be explaining away. Furthermore, it’s extremely easy to have two of the speaking side characters interact with each other and be female even if your main girl isn’t feeling very talkative. So anyway, for example, as Sarah Barrett points out, this may partially explain Amy’s low score. Amy was more isolated from her family than any other companion, because the crack was eating everyone around her. She also sports a “spiky personality” as Barrett calls it, which I think is an important part of her character. And, again, coming from Barrett, “a female character who relates more to men than to other women is still a perfectly valid female character.” Though as I said earlier, this doesn’t explain her lack of relationship with her own daughter, River. In fact, I think Amy’s preference for men would have been much more interesting and powerful (and seemed much less accidental) if we had seen her change from being that way at the beginning to understanding women more as she got to know River. And also, it doesn’t really make that much sense once Mels comes into the picture, because it shows Amy did have a relationship with a female and they just pushed it into the story and didn’t develop it at all. Again, it would have been way more powerful of a reveal that Mels and River were the same person if we had seen Mels all along.

*************Update*************

There's one other thing I wanted to address in this post. It has to do with another reason why some of the 23 episodes failed the original Bechdel test. 

I recognize that this show is about the Doctor, as it IS called "Doctor Who." So I suppose it makes sense if it focuses on his relationships and development and not that of the companions. Except I don't think it really does. I mean, we get to see a lot more of the Companions' family and friends than we do of the Doctor's. They have more relationships than he does. The Doctor has a bigger and more longstanding character arc, but I don't think it requires sacrificing the development of other characters. And I don't think people want that. With the improvements we've been seeing in TV the last few years, we really expect to see the supporting characters get the same kind of treatment that main characters do. So I'm still not convinced that this is a good reason for failing the Bechdel test.

I also think this focus on the Doctor is compounded by something the writers tend to do in New Who. They use the companions as plot devices and audience surrogates more than as characters that helm their own development. I think this is different from what I observed in Classic Who, where the characters seemed to exist outside of their relationship to the Doctor much more than they do now. Although, I think it works for New Who. We all want to imagine ourselves as the Doctor's companion, because it's sometimes hard to relate to the Doctor. The writers know that, so they have the companions go through exactly what we might be thinking as audience members (for example, concern over the Doctor's new regenerations). I think this also often translates to companions talking about the Doctor and how amazing he is a lot. So I decided to look at the failed episodes and see why they failed. I hypothesized that it would be because the conversations were about the Doctor. However, I found that only 5 of the 23 episodes had at least one conversation between named characters that failed because it was about the Doctor. On the other hand, 13 of the 23 had at least two named females but failed because they never exchanged more than 2 lines with each other, and the other 5 only had one named female character in them at all. Interestingly, there were no episodes that even came close to failing the Reverse-Bechdel test because there was only one named male, and none that came close to failing because the only conversations between characters was about a female. 

Anyway, there’s definitely room for improvement. While I think that the female characters are generally pretty strong and interesting, it would be very nice to see more female interaction a la Kill the Moon, which I enjoyed very much.

The Reverse-Bechdel Test

Just a quick note about the so-called “Reverse-Bechdel” test to head off any people who want to use that to say my argument is useless. (This is where you apply the same test to men to see if a show is *really* sexist.) First of all, I am currently investigating this question. So far the first 7 episodes of New Who pass. (Most of them with flying colors, a few just barely.) I’ll update when I’ve seen a few more. Second of all, I kind of resent that I have to do this (I “have” to because on every other blog I’ve seen on this topic it comes up in the comments and the blog is labeled entirely useless). But here’s why I resent it: We know that most movies/shows pass the Reverse test easily. Because it’s really common sense that an exchange like this will happen (unless you only have two characters and they are different sexes) and if they aren’t going to the women, they are definitely going to the men. It also seems to be true that male characters are generally better written than female characters, whether these types of exchanges happen for either sex. So anything to improve writing for female characters and give them a leg-up is a step in the right direction. And lastly, I just have almost no respect for the “reverse-sexism” argument. I say it’s fine if a show has better female representation than male representation, because this is so rare. They’re just making up for what women have been missing out on and men have been enjoying for the entirety of moviemaking. It’s not going to cause a trend that will eliminate good representation of male characters, and it just might make female characters better! This may seem a little retaliatory, but I’m tired of watching shows about men that sacrifice interesting women. I want to watch a show about women because I’m starved for it. If that means I have to go off men for a bit until people learn how to write female characters well enough to represent the sexes equally, then so be it.

************Update**************
 I finished applying the Reverse-Bechdel test to all 117 episodes and am ready to share my results!
 In doing this I realized how hard it is to decide what is a pass so I'm giving this in a range.

The Reverse-Bechdel pass rate is somewhere between 99.5 and 100%.

I found 5 episodes that were questionable, so I tried to evaluate them by the same standards that Sarah Barrett applied in the original test. I also went through all of the 23 episodes she assigned failing grades to, and I feel that all but maybe one of these 5 passed better than all of those 23. Just so you know, I count the Doctor as a named character because I think it would be ridiculous not to.

Here are the weakest episodes so you can decide for yourself which ones fail:

1) 1.2 The End of the World
This one has a conversation between the Doctor and the Steward. Besides this conversation, all of the exchanges were either too short, or definitely aimed at both the Doctor and Rose. I did not count any of the Order of the Repeated Meme as male. The reason I counted the Steward is because I felt it was analogous to Sarah counting "The Hostess" in her analysis of Midnight. Her reasoning was that it should count if there was a good reason for the character remaining unnamed. This one was the closest to a fail besides Turn Left.


2) The Girl in the Fireplace
This one had only one exchange that I felt really comfortable saying was between two men. Here is the exchange:

MICKEY: You said this was the fifty first century.
DOCTOR: I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the universe. I think we just found the hole. Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink.
MICKEY: What's that?
DOCTOR: No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say magic door.

Rose is technically here for this exchange, but the two are definitely talking to each other for this part. Again, this is analogous to passes in the original test.

This episode doesn’t pass the original Bechdel test because for most of it, Mickey and Rose are together, separated from the Doctor, who is with Reinette. The Doctor has an exchange with King Louis but it is about Reinette. And I didn’t count the droid as male, though it was basically presenting as a man.

3) 4.11 Turn Left

I would say that this one, if not an outright fail, is definitely the closest to failing. If you recall, this is the episode where the Doctor dies in the beginning of the episode and Rose and Donna work together to put time right. As this is the only episode without the Doctor, it makes sense that it struggles to pass. The only exchange between named men is between Rocco and Wilf, but they are really talking to an unnamed male character and not each other (although obviously they are listening to each other and responding to what they hear).

ROCCO: Hey! Firing at the car is not so good. You, you crazy or what?

SOLDIER: It's this ATMOS thing, it won't stop. It's like gas. It's toxic.

WILF: Well, switch it off.

SOLDIER: I have done. It's still going. It's all the cars. Every single ATMOS car, they've gone mad. You, lady. Turn round! Turn around now!

(The soldier aims his weapon at Donna.)

ROCCO: Are you crazy, boy?

WILF: Put the gun down!

   

There was something sort of analogous to this that I found in The Time of the Doctor (between Clara and Linda and Gran) that failed the original test. Besides this exchange, there is also a conversation between a soldier and his captain but I don't think they are technically named, so I didn't count it.

4) 7.7 The Rings of Akhaten

This one is hard because they are kind of talking to each other, but the first line is mostly addressed to the God (who they call Grandfather, and I can't decide if he counts as a named male character or not) and the last line is addressing everyone, not just the Doctor. When you watch it, it also just doesn't seem much like a conversation.

 

CHORISTER: Old God, rest your weary, holy head.
DOCTOR: He's trying to sing the Old God back to sleep, but that's not going to happen. He's waking up, mate. He's coming, ready or not. You want to run.
(The Chorister stops chanting.)
DOCTOR: That's it, then. Song's over.
CHORISTER: The song is over. My name is Chorister Rezh Baphix, and the Long Song ended with me.

In this episode there is also a sort of conversation between the Doctor and the God, but the God doesn't actually say words so I didn't count that.

5) 8.7 Kill the Moon
I think this one is on par with some of the passes in the original test, but I admit that it is just weak. Here is the conversation:

DOCTOR: Messages? Mayday? SOS?
DUKE: Pretty much all the satellites had been whacked out of orbit. They managed to send back some screams.
DOCTOR: So then you came up here to rescue them with your bombs?
DUKE: Not quite.

So, there are the weakest episodes. If you want to know more, feel free to comment below and I can share more of my research with you. In case you're wondering, I'd say at least 75% of the episodes were passed by the Doctor himself, though I didn't keep track of that specifically.