Will Your Books Pass the Lutgendorff Test?
While it may be constitutionally impossible for a white rodent of a certain advanced age and degree of living fossilization to write anything that isn't at least sort of sexist at some level... I hope to hell I never write a novel that utterly fails the Lutgendorff Test. Oh, wait, what's that you ask? See the article here in the New Statesmen.
Lutgendorff read the entire NPR list of 100 best Sci-Fi/Fantasy books, but didn't have to go very far in before she noticed the rampant misogyny and so forth in the sea of nostalgia. So she started keeping track of what she was reading, and came up with a test. (Note: Yes, I'm still stereotypically assuming that Liz Lutgendorff is a woman, even after doing a quick Google search, but I will happily come back and edit this if she isn't a she; or if she turns out to be a computer program.)
As you can see below, this is sort of riffin' on the Bechdel Test we all know and love.
The Lutgendorff Test asks three good questions of a book:
1: Does it have at least two female characters?
2: Is one of them a main character?
3: Do they have an interesting profession/level of skill like male characters?
Here I shall openly confess that I have not read most of the books on that NPR list; and most of them don't interest me on the face of things, so I don't even feel any loss. (Less than two handfuls of the books were penned by women, by the way.) Of those on the list I have read, I wouldn't put very many on a list of 100 greatest anything.
But I was gratified to see that The Left Hand of Darkness made the cut.
Lutgendorff read the entire NPR list of 100 best Sci-Fi/Fantasy books, but didn't have to go very far in before she noticed the rampant misogyny and so forth in the sea of nostalgia. So she started keeping track of what she was reading, and came up with a test. (Note: Yes, I'm still stereotypically assuming that Liz Lutgendorff is a woman, even after doing a quick Google search, but I will happily come back and edit this if she isn't a she; or if she turns out to be a computer program.)
As you can see below, this is sort of riffin' on the Bechdel Test we all know and love.
The Lutgendorff Test asks three good questions of a book:
1: Does it have at least two female characters?
2: Is one of them a main character?
3: Do they have an interesting profession/level of skill like male characters?
Here I shall openly confess that I have not read most of the books on that NPR list; and most of them don't interest me on the face of things, so I don't even feel any loss. (Less than two handfuls of the books were penned by women, by the way.) Of those on the list I have read, I wouldn't put very many on a list of 100 greatest anything.
But I was gratified to see that The Left Hand of Darkness made the cut.
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Thank you PJ for the thoughtful comments... And adding to the list of things to look for. One could probably do a whole thesis on comparative physical descriptions in novels...And regarding not only to how the culture is perceived, but to what one imagines it could be... That's one thing I found so interesting about Lutgendorff's observation (which I'm not well-read enough in "best-of" datasets to have observed myself) about cultures that develop all of this fabulous technology and never get beyond what we might term pre-modern sexist attitudes...
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Your posting made me realize that I have my tests of my own that I’d not really consciously identified until now:
- Are there physical descriptions of the women in terms of sex appeal that is over and beyond how male characters in the book are described? In fact, are there any women who have a role in the narrative who aren’t described in terms of their relative attraction?
- If there are any characters that go about without clothing for no discernible narrative purpose, how many are female?
As it’s been said many times before, books and movies often give us insight about the people and culture who create them (and of those who embrace and popularize them) as much as they do about the works themselves. I think it’s particularly true for science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. Those categories speak not only to how the culture is perceived, but to what one imagines it could be, for better or worse. A world where a woman can be a powerful fighter or a heroic person who saves humanity – but needs to be acknowledged as sexy before she can play her role – is still pretty limiting. But I suppose it’s like the overly beefed-up male super heroes. That’s why I'm really grateful for the intriguing and enchanting stories out there that do go beyond these limits. I don’t think we should suppress what’s gone on before, or going on now subconsciously, but I applaud and support those dreaming and creating on the outer limits where how one might look is not a requirement for a protagonist that we want to idolize. Where imaginations exist, the universe is infinite.