About

1. The project

BechdelViolence.com graphs movies based on the women’s speaking roles and how much physical violence occurs to the members of either gender.

2. The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test, courtesy of cartoonist Allison Bechdel, started as a comic strip joke but has taken off as a decent, unironic measure of how well a movie treats women. As official analysis sites define it, the three prongs of the Bechdel Test are
a. two named women
b. speaking to each other
c. about anything other than a man

Movies that pass some but not all parts of the test are noted individually.

In an effort to avoid spoilers, the images on this site are generally of the first instance that qualifies as a pass. Unless otherwise noted, it’s safe to assume that the women have more dialogue together.

3. Violence

Every instance of violence in a movie is noted, recorded, and counted toward a total.  See exact definitions here. Official rankings for violence are determined by the worst thing that happens to anyone onscreen.

4. The Animal Exception

Some movies featured on this site do not have any human or human-like characters. I am still counting the dialogue of the characters designated as female, but I am not counting acts of violence towards them or the male nonhuman characters. It’s hard to watch a man bite into another man’s leg; it’s much less worrying to watch dinosaurs do the same.

In movies with mixed casts, dialogue and violence between the humans is counted as usual. Dialogue passes among the non-humans are noted individually.

5. The Reverse Bechdel Test

It is incredibly rare to see a movie not contain
a. two named men
b. speaking to each other
c. about anything other than a woman

As of right now, this applies to less than 1% of the titles.

If the supply increases, I will create a page to match the same.