Saying Gina Carano Was Fired for Being “Conservative” Reveals A Lot About Her Base

February 11, 2021 Angel Wilson

Cara Dune Gina Carano

According to Lucasfilm, Gina Carano, who played Cara Dune on The Mandalorian, ‘is not currently employed,’ by them.  They’ve also stated that they find her recent social media posts ‘abhorrent.’ This statement comes after months of offensive tweets and Instagram posts from the actress.

Gina Carano has made many social media posts over the past few months that have included mockingly transphobic sentiments, dangerous COVID-19 and election conspiracy theories, and incredibly insensitive comparisons between our current political climate and the Holocaust. By some accounts, she was scheduled to have her own show on Disney+ before she began making controversial tweets back in November.

Many speculate she was supposed to play the lead in the upcoming Rangers of the New Republic, which would have likely made her the main star and solidify her place in Star Wars for many years to come while making herself a ton of cash. But instead of keeping these wild opinions in check on social media (or, dare I say, genuinely changing her views when presented with new information), she just had to keep going with this nonsense and flush this potentially lucrative Star Wars career down the drain.

For some reason, her defenders are making the argument she was fired for ‘being conservative’ or ‘Republican’ without actually outlining the type of behavior that led to this. She was not fired because of what political party she is registered as, or even some innocuous opinion on something like tax rates or infrastructure or, you know, normal political disagreements between liberals and conservatives that, while important, don’t cross the line into bigotry or conspiracy theories.  She was fired for tweets that were offensive and dangerous, many of which are part of a larger toxic environment that has actively led to people being killed. 

But making this argument reveals much more about them than it does those of us who have been calling out her behavior. Are they really saying that all these vicious and offensive social media posts are standard conservative behavior? Is this your argument? Let’s take a look at what you’re claiming here.

The first incident that really made waves (though there could have been more posted prior that didn’t garner much attention) occurred back in September. Had this been the only incident, and had she handled it better, the movement to get her fired may have faded away. The emotions about it likely would have lingered, but when a celebrity makes one mistake and owns up to it, people’s attention tends to shift away from them and towards repeat offenders. Unfortunately, this was only the first of many incidents, and she continually refuses to listen to how these sentiments are harmful, basically doubling down on it all, becoming a repeat offender herself.

Back in September, there was a pretty severe dust-up about pronouns on her Twitter account that just got progressively worse as she responded to the backlash. Some fans have taken to social media to encourage actors to include pronouns in their Twitter bios, which is part of an effort to normalize the practice so that trans people can state their pronouns more safely. If everyone has their pronouns in their bios, it becomes just something people do instead of a signifier that the user is trans.

This makes a lot of sense in regards to the effort to make social media a more accepting place. It’s possible that some people may or may not have been too aggressive with their requests, which I can’t say for sure as I didn’t see every tweet, but the basic suggestion in and of itself comes from a good place.  

Gina Carano’s response to this request was to mock the practice and claim “Beep/Bop/Boop” as her pronouns, which struck many as insulting to a very serious issue around acceptance and respect for the trans community. She states that this wasn’t an attempt to belittle trans people, and that could have been a believable defense had she listened to those who were hurt and changed her behavior.

She did not do this, however, and continued to call those who attempted to explain it to her ‘bullies.’ Instead of realizing that this effort was an attempt to protect a vulnerable community, she framed herself as the vulnerable one in this situation, which is not a good look.

So is mocking a vulnerable population for trying to make the world a little more accepting of them just ‘being conservative?’ Remember, this is their argument, not mine. They are claiming this as typical Republican behavior.  

The horrible social media posts continued. Gina Carano is also an election conspiracy theorist, which, as I sit here and type out this article with the impeachment hearings playing in the background, is inarguably harmful and dangerous rhetoric.

This message is so toxic, many people who identify as conservative have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from it since then, going as far as to leave to the Republican party in response to it. We’re currently neck-deep in an impeachment trial in the Senate going over how this type of rhetoric led up to the violence. This exact brand of conspiracy led to an incident that killed five people, left hundreds injured, and led to a very real threat to our democracy.

On November 5th, shortly after the election, she made a tweet echoing some of these now de-bunked conspiracy theories, such as there being large-scale ‘fake votes’ that needed to be investigated. We now know that these were talking points spread to inspire the type of violence we saw on January 6th at our Capitol.

I would like to think that this wasn’t Carano’s intent, but she has not disavowed these sentiments or even bothered to delete the tweet in retrospect. She has not, from what I can find, done anything to denounce this. She has yet to say that she was wrong with her initial assumption or connect this type of rhetoric to the violence we saw play out at our seat of government.

As a disclaimer, I agree that our election system needs to be fixed, but my criticism largely revolves around fighting against voter suppression and disenfranchisement. Pushing back on this broken system is probably one of my top issues and I spend a lot of time reading about the various flaws that keep people from exercising their right to vote.

Somehow, based on her inclusion of the voter ID portion of her tweet, I don’t think she agrees with my particular criticisms of the electoral process. So yes, Gina Carano, I agree ‘fix the system,’ but she’s pretty far off about what the real issues are and her rhetoric is actively harmful.

So to the people who are saying she was fired for being a conservative, are you claiming that rhetoric that led to the assault on our Capitol is just ‘being conservative?’ Maybe it is? How horrifying. 

Her harmful rhetoric continued later on in November, however, this time taking aim at precautions meant to protect people from the COVID-19 pandemic. She mocked the practice of wearing masks, which helps reduce the spread of the virus. This particular meme can also be seen as coming back to the harmful conspiracy theories about the election, too, so it’s kind of a two-for-one deal.

Up until the most recent post, this was by far her most harmful social media blunder. People are dying, Gina. America alone has lost almost half a million citizens to the virus, which is one of the largest losses of life compared to the population on earth. At the time of this writing, nearly one in a hundred people (27.3 million out of 330 million) have been confirmed to have been infected with the virus, which is likely an underestimate. The conspiratorial rhetoric has caused people to actively shut down vaccination sites, taking away people’s ability to protect themselves from the virus long-term. This is getting people killed on a large scale.

Is THIS ‘conservative?’ This is what you want to claim as part of mainstream conservative beliefs? Maybe it is. 

Now here we are in February and it seems there’s finally been a social media post that broke the proverbial camel’s back. This time the post was made via her Instagram stories and has since been removed.

The insinuation here is that Republicans are currently being treated like Jewish people were treated during the Holocaust. Honestly? I have no words for this. It is so monumentally offensive and off the mark that I feel like I’d be belittling the gravity of the situation merely by trying to break it down. It’s just too preposterous so unlike the other tweets, I’m not going to offer much commentary on it. I’ll just ask those of you who don’t see it as offensive to reflect on that stance for a bit. I just… can’t explain to you how bad this is.

So again I ask, is this ‘conservative?’ Transphobia, election conspiracies, COVID denial, and offensive Holocaust comparisons? This is what they are saying, not me. If this is what people want to claim as a normal part of their political beliefs, that says a lot more about them than it does those of us who wanted to see Lucasfilm sever ties with her over it. They are making the claim that this is a common sentiment on their side of the aisle, and that’s sad as hell.

I guess at this point it’s clear there’s a significant portion of people who do see these things as being synonymous as simply being ‘conservative.’ We’re seeing a very real split on that side of the aisle between those who see this sort of rhetoric for the horrifically offensive and dangerous thing that it is, and those who choose to normalize it. They need to, uh, sort that out. They do. Not us. If they want to separate this type of rhetoric out from who they want to be as a party they need to get on that soon and denounce it loudly.

But hey, look, Republicans seem to be embracing it…

Oops? There’s a Senator claiming her as one of their own. I guess this is what your party believes. Or at least it’s what the loud ones believe.

I’m really tired, guys. But at least we had a victory here and future Star Wars content won’t be tainted by Gina Carano’s problematic rhetoric. That’s something and it feels good that Disney and Lucasfilm are outright rejecting this rhetoric as something they don’t want to be associated with. The people involved in Star Wars have had our backs for a long time, though, and I’m incredibly grateful. It’s almost like pushing back against a violent and totalitarian regime is a central theme of the franchise or something. Weird, right?

Was Gina Carano fired for being a Republican, or was she fired for bigoted and inflammatory rhetoric on social media? Is it the same thing? You conservatives need to sort that out yourselves. It’s not my job, but I’m doing it for you here anyway. And honestly, I’m not going to do it again. If you don’t speak out about these two things being conflated, that’s on you.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.


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1 thought on “Saying Gina Carano Was Fired for Being “Conservative” Reveals A Lot About Her Base”

  1. Honestly, I am NOT surprised at the people defending Gina Carano. As indicated by her social media posts, she has a HISTORY of being problematic and her last post about Jews was the final nail in the coffin.

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