It's because next to everything else it makes no sense. It just strikes as me as a petty thing. Why would the Emperor care what gender (or even species) you were if you served him with absolute loyalty? I feels shoe horned in. The movies did a decent job showing the Empire doing it's thing (Lukes Uncle and Aunt are a prime example) and the need to say "Well, they also hate aliens and women too!".For myself, I've never understood why the Empire can be generaly oppressive, have storm troopers, torture prisioners, and destroy planets, but "sexist" is just comic-book-villin stuff.
It just feels tacked on and is part of the crappy EU we had for years. It needs to either be rethought or scrapped like the rest of the EU.
I don't think it's tacked on. The Nazis were highly sexist too, and the Empire resembles them a lot. Even today's 'inclusive' military and politics are still highly sexist. And I don't doubt that the Empire was specieist either, see the reaction to Chewbacca and what not.
But I also enjoyed most parts of the Legends EU, where a lot of the speciesism came from. So I'm pretty biased.
I'm glad the New Order seems to be more inclusive. I always like it when bad guys are female. It's so tiring to see the boring old trope that all women are fragile, precious, unfighting creatures.
The reaction to Chewbacca always struck me as the guy literally didn't know what he was. And if that's your case I wish to point out the alien Imperial spy in a new hope whom sold out Han, Luke, Obi-wan before they leave Tatooine. With the universe we have now with the prequels, the Empire couldn't be a "Humans first" society purely due to the fact there are more aliens then humans. You can't favour such a small population over everyone else and expect nothing out of that.
I know the Empire is based on Nazi Germany, but you need to remember it is NOT Nazi Germany. Everyone seems to forget that being based on something doesn't mean it's a 1-1 replica.