Introduction, Pt. 2
I have decided, after four reviews, that I need to add some info to the "My Rating" section. This is something I watch for in every book I read, but which I don't necessarily discuss in every review.
Bechdel Test: Pass/Fail
Johnson Test: Pass/Fail/Unable to determine
To pass the Bechdel test, the book must:
1. Have two named* female characters
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a man.
It was originally formulated here.
The Johnson Test is essentially the Bechdel Test for race; I first saw it formulated by Alaya Dawn Johnson (hence the name) here. To pass it, the book must:
1. Have two named* characters of color
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a white character.
*I have added the "named" component, because many of the difficulties I've seen in assigning a pass/fail grade to a particular work surround whether or not a walk-on character with one or two lines counts. Because I err on the side of saying a walk-on character shouldn't count, requiring the character be named seems sensible to me for a novel-length work.
Neither of these tests is designed to be a definitive answer to whether or not a work is sexist or racist. They simply provide me (and hopefully you) with additional information about that work. There will be plenty of novels that I love that fail one or both of the tests; there will be plenty of novels that I hate that pass one or both of the tests; there will probably even be novels that I find both sexist AND racist that PASS both tests. But I like to track this information because the pattern of book after book failing these tests is deeply problematic.
The reason I have added the "Unable to determine" option to the Johnson Test is that I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and occasionally I run into a book where I literally cannot tell what race/ethnicity the characters are. For instance, Yarn is a science fiction novel where none of the characters are ever physically described, and none of their names convey any particular ethnic origin (to me at least). I could, of course, say that Yarn fails for this reason; the cover art depicts a white man, and the author is a white man, so extrapolating from how my (culturally white, if not ethnically) brain works it would probably be safe to assume that his default is white characters. But I think that assumption would help reinforce the idea that "white skin" = "neutral," or "universal," and any aberration from "white" is "abnormal" -- an idea which is, to be frank, racist. So if I really cannot tell what color skin any of the characters have, and if there is never any mention of different ethnicities or racially-demarcated cultures, I will give the book an "Unable to determine" grade. (Also, it's always possible that the author has deliberately removed any indications of race from his/her novel in an effort to be truly colorblind, and in that case I would feel that assigning a "Fail" grade would not truly represent the work.) However, if I can tell some characters' race/ethnicities but not others, I will assume that the ones whose race/ethnicity I cannot discover are white.**
The reason I feel no need to provide myself an "Unable to determine" grade for the Bechdel Test is that English has no true gender-neutral pronouns, so unless an author performs some serious acrobatics I can always determine the character's gender.
I will be adding this information retroactively to my previous reviews, and creating a tag for books that pass each test.
**ETA, 3/13: I think I phrased this sloppily. I am basically saying I will use my best judgment on characters' ethnicities. So if (for example) I read a novel set in our future where some characters' names indicate an ethnic origin I recognize, and the author's description of those characters matches the ethnicity of their names, then I will assume that the author has essentially left the world's racial make-up the same as it is now. Then, if that same author (in that same book) goes out of his/her way to describe some character as having brown skin, I will assume that the author is assuming I will read the characters who have not had their skin color described as white, and so I will do so.
Gods that's circuitous. Basically, I am assuming that most authors operate from that paradigm I described above, where generally in (American) media white is neutral, and so when there is a character of color that fact is highlighted. I'm always open to learning that an author isn't operating from that place, but if there are clues in the text that support that assumption (for instance, having recognizably ethnic names that match peoples' ethnicities and/or deliberately describing characters of color as such) then I feel I'm on solid ground in reading a character whose race isn't made explicit as white for that book.
Bechdel Test: Pass/Fail
Johnson Test: Pass/Fail/Unable to determine
To pass the Bechdel test, the book must:
1. Have two named* female characters
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a man.
It was originally formulated here.
The Johnson Test is essentially the Bechdel Test for race; I first saw it formulated by Alaya Dawn Johnson (hence the name) here. To pass it, the book must:
1. Have two named* characters of color
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a white character.
*I have added the "named" component, because many of the difficulties I've seen in assigning a pass/fail grade to a particular work surround whether or not a walk-on character with one or two lines counts. Because I err on the side of saying a walk-on character shouldn't count, requiring the character be named seems sensible to me for a novel-length work.
Neither of these tests is designed to be a definitive answer to whether or not a work is sexist or racist. They simply provide me (and hopefully you) with additional information about that work. There will be plenty of novels that I love that fail one or both of the tests; there will be plenty of novels that I hate that pass one or both of the tests; there will probably even be novels that I find both sexist AND racist that PASS both tests. But I like to track this information because the pattern of book after book failing these tests is deeply problematic.
The reason I have added the "Unable to determine" option to the Johnson Test is that I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and occasionally I run into a book where I literally cannot tell what race/ethnicity the characters are. For instance, Yarn is a science fiction novel where none of the characters are ever physically described, and none of their names convey any particular ethnic origin (to me at least). I could, of course, say that Yarn fails for this reason; the cover art depicts a white man, and the author is a white man, so extrapolating from how my (culturally white, if not ethnically) brain works it would probably be safe to assume that his default is white characters. But I think that assumption would help reinforce the idea that "white skin" = "neutral," or "universal," and any aberration from "white" is "abnormal" -- an idea which is, to be frank, racist. So if I really cannot tell what color skin any of the characters have, and if there is never any mention of different ethnicities or racially-demarcated cultures, I will give the book an "Unable to determine" grade. (Also, it's always possible that the author has deliberately removed any indications of race from his/her novel in an effort to be truly colorblind, and in that case I would feel that assigning a "Fail" grade would not truly represent the work.) However, if I can tell some characters' race/ethnicities but not others, I will assume that the ones whose race/ethnicity I cannot discover are white.**
The reason I feel no need to provide myself an "Unable to determine" grade for the Bechdel Test is that English has no true gender-neutral pronouns, so unless an author performs some serious acrobatics I can always determine the character's gender.
I will be adding this information retroactively to my previous reviews, and creating a tag for books that pass each test.
**ETA, 3/13: I think I phrased this sloppily. I am basically saying I will use my best judgment on characters' ethnicities. So if (for example) I read a novel set in our future where some characters' names indicate an ethnic origin I recognize, and the author's description of those characters matches the ethnicity of their names, then I will assume that the author has essentially left the world's racial make-up the same as it is now. Then, if that same author (in that same book) goes out of his/her way to describe some character as having brown skin, I will assume that the author is assuming I will read the characters who have not had their skin color described as white, and so I will do so.
Gods that's circuitous. Basically, I am assuming that most authors operate from that paradigm I described above, where generally in (American) media white is neutral, and so when there is a character of color that fact is highlighted. I'm always open to learning that an author isn't operating from that place, but if there are clues in the text that support that assumption (for instance, having recognizably ethnic names that match peoples' ethnicities and/or deliberately describing characters of color as such) then I feel I'm on solid ground in reading a character whose race isn't made explicit as white for that book.