eating cucumbers without permission...

[Alison Bechdel's strip] popularized what is now known as the Bechdel Test, also named the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel's Law. Bechdel credits Liz Wallace for the test. The test appears in a 1985 strip entitled The Rule in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it, who
2. talk to each other about,
3. something besides a man.

You would be amazed, once you start watching for it, how very very rare this kind of scene is in movies, violent and non-.

That the Hellmouth is "a manifestation of male insecurity" is ridiculous, and the analysis of dual-form Xander is almost as bad, but it's an interesting analysis.