Star Wars Author Claudia Gray Disavows “Sexist” Star Wars Survey

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Jun 20, 2019

Star Wars author Claudia Gray disavowed the recent Star Wars survey claiming fans who did not like The Last Jedi are sexist.

Gray has written a number of Star Wars novels. They include: [easyazon_link identifier=”1484724984″ locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars[/easyazon_link], [easyazon_link identifier=”1101885262″ locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Star Wars Bloodline[/easyazon_link], [easyazon_link identifier=”0525619372″ locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Star Wars Master & Apprentice[/easyazon_link], and [easyazon_link identifier=”1484780787″ locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Leia: Princess of Alderaan[/easyazon_link]. She also had a story published in the Star Wars Anthology [easyazon_link identifier=”0345511476″ locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]From A Certain Point of View[/easyazon_link]. Gray has also written her own series with [easyazon_link identifier=”B0089LOGKM” locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Spellcaster[/easyazon_link], Evernight, and Firebird.

Back in May, Gray promoted a survey from social scientist Mark H. White II.

The results of that survey were just released recently and White concluded that “some people might have been predisposed to hate [The Last Jedi] —regardless of the film’s quality—due to main female characters demonstrating skill, bravery, and leadership.”

In fact, White concluded that his “data support the excess anecdotal evidence (tweets, comments, articles) that sexism plays a major role in the backlash to Disney’s sequels.”

However, as my colleague Spencer Baculi points out White’s “small sample size of 5,000 people with 27% of the respondents being anonymous Twitter users, the conclusions reached by this survey tell us little about the general opinions of the overarching Star Wars fandom.”

Not to mention the survey questions White asked were rather loaded. They included asking participants to rate the following statements on a scale of Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Some of the statements included: “Feminists are making unreasonable demands of men,” “Many women have a quality of purity that few men possess,” “Needing to be ‘politically correct’ creates an atmosphere in which the free exchange of ideas is impossible,” and “Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.”

Since White’s survey conclusions and his methods have gone public, Gray publicly denounced the survey on her Twitter with her assistant named Sarah taking the blame for promoting it.

In Gray’s tweet allegedly from her assistant Sarah, she implies White’s survey is illegitimate, “I thought the poll was coming from a legit source, though I did not take the survey before posting. I did not do my due diligence on this matter and I am so sorry.”

She then apologized and made clear that Gray does not endorse the survey, “I am sorry for any anger or pain I may have caused. Claudia Gray does not endorse that survey, and I am fully to blame.”


Finally, she concluded that she hopes to learn from the mistake.

This is radically different behavior from a Star Wars creator than what we’ve seen in the past. It could provide hope for many fans who were previously attacked by those employed by Disney and Lucasfilm.

Famously, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson called fans “manbabies.” Johnson would go on to blame the negative reaction to The Last Jedi on the fans. He even promoted conspiracy theories that blamed Russian trolls for the negative reaction to the film.

Ron Howard would recently echo that sentiment claiming “trolling” was to blame for the box office failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Star Wars author Paul Kemp declared that certain Star Wars fans are “detestable.”

Chuck Wendig notoriously called for violence against Donald Trump supporters. This was after he declared that Star Wars fans were white supremacists.

What do you make of Claudia Gray’s statement regarding this survey? Do you think Star Wars creators are turning a corner in how they interact with fans? Or is Claudia Gray simply an outlier?

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