The Transgender Bechdel Test Assessing Trans Representation in Film - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Transgender Bechdel Test

Zoë Violet LeBeau Writing Studies Advisor: Dr. Alison Cardinal

Assessing Trans Representation in Film and Television

Why Is Trans Representation Important?

• Trans people are everywhere
• Heavily Marginalized (esp. trans women of color)
• Vulnerable
• Targets of violence
• Less access to mental health services and support
• Housing discrimination and homelessness (1 in 5)
• Precarious legal standing
• Other countries

Film and Television Have Global Reach

• Transfeminine characters in cinema have traditionally been
• Villainous (Buffalo Bill in Silence of The Lambs, Einhorn in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
• Deceptive (Dill in The Crying Game)
• Mentally Unstable (Mantis)
• The above are also how anti-trans activists caricaturize

trans women in real life

• Fictional media shapes the discourse of transgender

politics

• Most people may never knowingly meet a trans person
• Other than having seen one in film or television

The Bechdel Test

• Based on an issue of Alison Bechdel’s comic, Dykes To

Watch Out For

• Not originally designed as an academic tool
• For a film to pass:
• It must contain a scene featuring two women
• Who have a conversation with each other
• About something other than a man
• Very few films pass

The Trans Bechdel

• Looking at representation through a transfeminist lens
• 1. How does the portrayal humanize transgender people

to a cisgender audience?

• 2. How does the portrayal other transgender people to a

cisgender audience?

• 3. How might the film be hurtful to the trans community?
• 4. Does the film recognize/represent Stryker’s concept of

transgender rage?*

Works Cited

• Blah blah blah