First appearing in the 1985 queer comic Dykes To Watch Out For, the test simply asks: Are there two or more women, with character names, in a movie? Do they speak with each other? Is this conversation about something other than a man? The test is just an interrogation of the lack of meaningful roles for women and points out that too many movies come with the same point of view-that being cisgender, straight, white, and male, though the “test” only deals with that equation in part. Do we just ignore the drab lesbian stereotypes bc cute gay Asian boys?” This prompted some understandable backlash, and now even an amendment to the “test” by its creator.īefore even getting into the racial dynamics of that terrible take, let’s do a refresher on what the Bechdel-Wallace test (sometimes just called the Bechdel test) is.
In now-deleted tweet, author and critic Hanna Rosin wrote, “So #FireIslandMovie gets an F- on the Bechdel test in a whole new way. If you’re wondering who would see the gay Asian romance movie Fire Island and think it’s appropriate to bash it in the name of the Bechdel-Wallace test, we unfortunately have the answer.
