Talk:James Tiptree, Jr

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Comments: ^{edit · history · watch · purge}

I'm rating this page as "start" by the biography group's standards because there's only a skeleton of biographical information here; much more material on her writing. She's a very difficult person to document--one of her careers, after all, was intelligence analyst--and she appears to have been intensely private as well--she concealed herself. Julie Phillips's award-winning biography is strongest in the area that "Tiptree" documented. Randwolf 06:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] Backwards

The article should be listed under her actual name and the pseudonym should redirect to her actual name. It's backwards as of now. Quadzilla99 08:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure. She's better known as Tiptree and that was her primary nom de plume. Does wikipedia have a policy on this? I've briefly looked and not found it. --lquilter 18:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)W

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies). The article title is the name by which the person is most commonly known. Undoubtedly Tiptree, for Tiptree. —Cel ithemis 22:50, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I looked but somehow didn't see it! Head cold. --lquilter 23:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

,Well, so much for George Sand, George Orwell, and Voltaire. Please, Quadzilla 99, why create a problem where none exists? Rhinoracer 18:39, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

In a case like Cordwainer Smith it's debatable, but none of the stuff Tiptree did under her own name is still notable. On an unrelated note I read a bit of an excerpt of that recent biography. I guess her being bisexual maybe helped her fool some of the male writers. They'd get a letter from "James" who'd talk about duck hunting and women "he" found attractive so think "nahh can't be a woman." (Granted they did know of LGBT people, but added to the other details of her life masculinity just "fit.") She was a fascinating, if screwed up (as in suicidal, etc), individual so I'm thinking the book might be interesting reading.--T. Anthony 18:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Er, are you suggesting that Allie was ipso facto 'screwed up' because she committed suicide? I find it hard to consider it screwed up for a 70 year-old woman - in circumstances where her beloved husband is becoming increasingly frail, and her own rich life is increasingly constrained - to take the decision calmly and rationally, in consultation with her husband, to end their lives. Indeed, for such a woman to battle on - through years that would clearly have been a time of diminishing returns - seems considerably more screwy.

Just my opinion, but the common tendency to consider suicide as automatic evidence of mental disturbance - regardless of the circumstances involved - seems short-sighted to me. To impute such defect to a woman of Alice's stature, intelligence and fortitude is little short of insulting.--Cdavis999 (talk) 21:28, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I know this is late, but that's not what I meant. I meant that she was suicidal for a long time and had some personal difficulties. She described herself as a child as having "a head full of death" or feeling overwhelmed by her mother. Throughout her life she had moments of extreme despair or hopelessness. I didn't even mean "screwed-up" to be all that judgmental as most of your really interesting people have some trauma or illness that makes them a tad "dysfunctional."--T. Anthony (talk) 11:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Problem with this page as a bio of Sheldon is that Sheldon had at least three major careers: intelligence analyst, academic researcher, and sf writer. (Chicken farmer probably doesn't count.) Her marriage to Huntington Sheldon connects her to significant US history as well. I suppose it's fair to say that her career as a writer was the most significant, but I'm not comfortable with it, nonetheless. Randwolf 18:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of my problem here is that Tiptree was a construct--Sheldon's construct; as much a fictional character as any in Tiptree's published fiction. Sheldon's big masquerade was of a person much saner than herself; I would say that "Tiptree's" sex was, in retrospect, a smaller part of the story. Entering this here, under Tiptree, is, I think, to perpetuate the deception. Then again, perhaps that is appropriate. Randwolf 04:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

Reasonable to merge the more trivial article into the bio. Louisamild 21:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

No-- just delete it. Rhinoracer 20:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

There wasn't any content to What Came Ashore at Lirios so I just redirected it here. Tocharianne 20:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Knocked out the "merger" template on the main page. Randwolf 17:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Description of Works - accusation of ambiguity

"Before the revelation of Sheldon's identity, Tiptree was often referred to as unusually feminist for a male science fiction writer — particularly for "The Women Men Don't See", a story of two women who are visited by aliens and, rather than being abducted, go willingly to escape their limited opportunities on Earth. However, Sheldon's view of sexual politics could be ambiguous, as in the somewhat colorless and ruthless society of female clones in "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?""

This paragraph puzzles and bothers me lots. It seems to suggest that the feminist issues raised by - and the attitudes implicit in - 'TWMDS' and 'HHDYR' are different. I don't see it, m'self.

Both stories are powerful illustrations of the danger to women posed by men. The indictment is the core of both stories, and is the same in both: men inflict horrible, unjust injuries upon the bodies, freedoms and lives of women.

The first story shows the two sides of life for women who are respectively a) sexually attractive; and b) not. Both situations are intolerable, for similar reasons - enough to make escape to an alien world devoutly to be wished, despite all the risks.

The second story enacts - cleverly, via a subthread to the main SF plot - a Final Judgement on Man: should women keep us around, given a choice? The answer, from the denouement, is No: we're too dangerous.

Are the clone people of the future all-female society 'colorless and ruthless'? They're less gung-ho than the male astronauts, but that's the point. Ruthless? They're able to kill, in self-defence.

As someone of the male persuasion myself, I found both stories shocking and revelatory, and too well-observed to argue against. These are serious points: Tiptree is not a rabid SCUM_Manifesto-style feminist, and she's not averse to men - some of her best husbands are male. Nevertheless she thinks we're mortally dangerous to her sex.

The two stories seem to me to present an entirely consistent feminist attitude and message. Move to strike the suggestion of ambiguity. --Cdavis999 (talk) 16:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. In the first story, the male protagonist is (though sexist) a nice chap, and the women are fleeing into an unknown, possibly awful future. Tip seems to be warning against 'opt-out' feminism, a futile escapism. As for 'Houston', you can't deny the rather repellant nature of the society depicted. To sum up, I think Tip's stories are rich in potential readings, and ambiguity is a fair description of this richness. User:Rhinoracer —Preceding comment was added at 11:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the ambiguous nature of the feminism in her stories. Houston shows that men are unremittingly violent, but that the world without them is stagnant. This is ambiguous, in that the reader cannot say if Tiptree is for or gainst the society. Similarly, Your Face, Oh my Sisters, shows a character living in a lovely feminist utopia, but actually simply being mentally deluded, and walks into her own gang-rape and murder. NONE of the stories are the unambiguous feminism (women are great, everything is mens fault) of say Nicola Griffith, or even Joanna Russ.Yobmod (talk) 16:45, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

@Rinoracer & Yobmod: I'm fascinated and baffled. We seem almost to have read different stories.

I didn't find the central character in TWMDS 'a nice chap' at all - in the context of the story. I'm sure he'd be a delightful and interesting person to share a Substance with of a Saturday night, but it seems to me that this was JT's point: he's perfectly normal and typical, but he's also an armed, dangerous, paranoid predator. From the PoV of the women, he's a scary person to be worked around.

Nor did I find the all-female society in HHDYR particularly 'repellent'. I'm going to have to find out where I've hidden it, and read it again, because my recollection was of an intriguingly self-actualised society where everyone knew themselves - their potentials, their defects, loves and hates - perfectly, and could optimise their lives around that knowledge. Different, certainly, but no more repellent than an Elizabethan would find our society, I suspect. The men, on the other hand, were horrible.

(BTW, Yobmod, I assume you're not really suggesting that in order to be other than an 'ambiguous feminist', one must believe that 'women are great, everything is mens fault'. You would accept, I hope, that a sane and happy medium exists that includes a rational feminist outlook?)

I'll study further, and thanks to you both. I'm not convinced, though.--Cdavis999 (talk) 13:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The all female society in HHDYR wasn't so repellant, but it was stagnant (I remember that hardly any new chess gambits were invented etc). In SF, it is generally assumed that such stagnation is bad, and surely Tiptree knew this would be the opinion of most SF fans of the time.

This is in stark contrast with the majority of women only societies written by unambiguously feminist writers, like Griffith (women form a lesbian feminist utopia and gain superpowers) or Tepper (only men instigate wars, only solution is eugenics to fix them). (hence why Tiptree is the better writer). I agree some of her stories can be read as feminist, but clearly people disagree in some cases, so the feminism is ambiguous.

As to the man-hating feminist stereotype, maybe Tiptree should be called a "true feminist", in that she shows men and women to be equal (-ly flawed). But when critics point to a work of SF and call it feminist, they never mean that genders are treated equally. To call Tiptree's work (simply) feminist would misinform the reader imo. We cannot educate the reader as to what feminism SHOULD mean, it is pretty firmly used to mean reverse-sexism in SF, imo.Yobmod (talk) 14:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

In Love is the Plan (my favourite story ever!), gender roles are shown to be pre-programmed, neither males or mothers being able to resist their nature, even if they know it to be detrimental. Females are in no sense opressed, and end up killing their mates. This is a very different view of sexualpolitics to TWMDS

Oh, final thought - you imply that ambiguous means inconsitent above; but i find that Tiptree's writing are consistently ambiguous :-)Yobmod (talk) 14:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)