Dammit, how could I miss this thread? Practically made for a hairy-legged bra-burning gobshite like me
Since I'm at work, I'll keep it brief. The Bechdel test is just one of many tools I use in order to satisfy my own insistence upon writing three-dimensional female characters. And it is a useful tool, on one condition: that it's not the only tool you use.
The Bechdel test isn't suggesting that your FC's can't or shouldn't talk about men. That would be unrealistic, and realism should be what we're aiming for, for the most part. But it's equally unrealistic for FC's to
only talk about the men in their lives - when I get together with my (one) female friend, we sometimes talk about our significant others. But more often, we talk about music, or tea, or the books we've read, or the pros and cons of veganism or whatever's on our minds at that time. We don't have one-track minds just because we're women, and there is a tendency - not just in books, but in other media as well - to show female characters only in the context of the male characters (i.e either in their presence, or talking about them when not in their presence.)
The best portrayals of women, imo, offer balance. Michonne in 'The Walking Dead' TV series has (so far) been a good example of this. She has spoken to men, and about men, but she's also focused on survival, and there are several scenes between her and Andrea in which they don't mention men at all. So far, so passing the Bechdel.
The point I'm trying to make, and waffling endlessly about instead, is that we oughtn't discount the Bechdel test as a useful marker - not of 'strength', which is a hugely subjective quality, but of
agency. Are your female characters able to connect with one another without a man/men as their common ground? If so, that's a good sign. That doesn't mean they
can't have a man as their common ground; it only means that there should be more to their interactions than 'hey, there's a scene between two women but let's talk about the men instead'.
But like I said. The Bechdel test is just one tool, and employing it exclusively as a means to empowering your female characters is going to end up making things wonky. There are other tools required here too, and we should seek to use them all.
(that wasn't brief at all. Damn.)