Star Wars, The Last Jedi has got people talking about its exciting characters and battles and how iconic characters achieve their glory or meet their end. And for the first time there are plenty of female speaking roles in a Star Wars film: Rey, Rose and Paige Tico, Vice Admiral Holdo, Maz Kanata, Captain Phasma, and of course Princess Leia.

Some people claim, though, that reactions to the film are split along gender lines—that men hate it and women love it, because it's the first Star Wars film to ask and answer the question, "What happens when men don't listen to women?"

Well, obviously there are women who hate the film and men who love it (me included), but rather than argue about love-hate gender percentages that no one has actually measured, why not just ask some remarkable women what they thought about the female characters, their personalities and deeds, and whether the film does them justice?

So I did. On today's MF GALAXY you'll hear from Lisa Yaszek, science fiction scholar at Georgia Tech; Sylvia Douglas, a lead organiser of Lady Geeks Unite in Edmonton, and SG Wong, speculative crime novelist and community organiser, also from Edmonton.

Together, they'll cover:

• Who the most-short-changed character since Boba Fett is
• What it means to say that Star Wars suffers from the "Highlander Syndrome"
• What fashion has always revealed about the morality of Star Wars characters, and what it means to them
• And the disturbing significance in the age of Trump of who excuses lethal mutiny, and why, and who has already paid the price

Sylvia Douglas + Lady Geeks Unite

twitter.com/lgnyeg

Lady Geeks of #YEG – How feminist fans empower women + girls + upgrade fandom

 

SG Wong

sgwong.com

SG Wong on world building + going indie when publisher does nothing

Cooking the Books: NaloHopkinson, Ekaterina Sedia + SG Wong on food, cyborgs+feminism

 

Lisa Yazek

pwp.gatech.edu/lyaszek (copy and paste this link into your browser)

Lisa Yaszek and Patrick Sharp on Sisters of Tomorrow: The true story of SF women pioneers + the men who fought them

 

Jeff Quest

spywrite.com

spybrary.com/tag/jeff-quest

 

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