[pyronite]

It's fair to point out that Simpsons dialogue is 75% male and 9 out of 10 of their most prolific writers are male. That's a significant data finding.

There is a gender imbalance in The Simpsons. There's also a gender imbalance in film (1). That doesn't indicate ill-intent but it may be reflective of society and media as a whole.

1. http://polygraph.cool/films/

[antonyrn]

Servere fallacies detected in your argument.

1. The Simpsons, as a microcosm (an individual show among a broad selection of shows) is not required to adhere to distributions and averages or promote any particular reality. To point out that it deviates from a pre-supposed preference for "normal" represents a needling criticism of an invalid detail.

2. As a property of a larger organization, and indeed The World At Large, the show is an individual offering available within a selection of many other offerings that cater to a broad array of tastes and preferences. That it's being attacked for "not being average and normalized" seems to be part of an effort silence anything which is not gruel.

3. In what way does the enduring popularity of a single show, one that has outlasted so many others, reflect poorly on society? Shows like The Simpsons do well, not because of artificial constraints preserved by some gender bias conspiracy. That the authors are male for THIS show, and that males write male characters well, is not a symbol of malevolence, when there were thousands of other shows which had just as much budget and opportunity, and have aged even worse than The Simpsons, despite having perhaps more preferable themes that cater to a different audience.

4. Why not shine a light on the horrific gender bias of other shows? If we're picking out targets, I have my own. Are those also perfectly fair, valid and sensible? Want to hear them?

[anotheryou]

pyronite didn't criticize the simpsons for it and as you say, an individual show should not be criticized for this.

It is fair to say though, that there are more movies that fail the bechdel test¹ than there should be. If you compare it to the reverse of the bechdel test you can see there is a bias so large, it can't be founded in the preference of movie viewers alone.

I believe very much that everyone falls prey to biases, stereotypes or even outside factors like a possible gender imbalance in voice acting. I would not criticize anyone for this, because if you fall prey to something it is never ill intend. I do however also believe that these biases are harmful to society at large and in many cases could be easily avoided by more awareness of content creators.

I'm not against stereotypes, they are even valuable to get a story across, but you should be aware of how you are utilizing them.

¹ https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bechdel_test

[pekk]

Why is the Bechdel test morally important?

The Bechdel test can be failed by a movie which simply only had one woman in it, or was about a genderless robot, or was mostly about a heterosexual romance, or any number of other possibilities that have nothing to do with misogyny or any other form of gender bias.

[anotheryou]

As said, no individual movie should be criticized based on it.

It is however very relevant when half of all movies have no real female characters in it, while something like 95% do have strong male characters in them. It's really sad when disneys "Frozen" becomes the positive outlier.