{"id":27939,"date":"2015-01-23T07:43:59","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T18:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=27939"},"modified":"2015-01-23T07:43:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T18:43:59","slug":"an-interesting-observation-re-james-tiptree-jr-from-jo-waltons-among-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/01\/23\/an-interesting-observation-re-james-tiptree-jr-from-jo-waltons-among-others\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interesting Observation Re James Tiptree, Jr From Jo Walton’s “Among Others”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Among<\/a>Over this past week I’ve been reading Jo Walton’s Among Others <\/em><\/strong>and\u00a0<\/strong>one of the interesting aspects of the story is that it’s centered around a protagonist (our heroine, Mori) who is an avid SFF reader. This aspect of the book, and the fact that Mori is lame and walks with a cane, like the author, Jo Walton, may be why it was described to me as “self-referential.”<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, I enjoy some of the literary reflections in the story, such as Mori’s response to the discovery that James Tiptree, Jr is not a man, but a woman:<\/p>\n

“James Tiptree, Jr. is a woman! Gosh!”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Left<\/a>Gosh indeed–but what struck me about the subsequent discussion, a la 1979,\u00a0 around women authors using their own names or male\/ non gender-specific psuedonyms is that we’re still having it in 2015.<\/p>\n

“I suppose I can see doing that so as to get respect, but Le Guin didn’t, and she got the respect. She won the Hugo.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

What is meant here (I believe) is that Tiptree chose a male psuedonym because she believed her writing would receive a better reception if believed to be a male writer’s work and be taken\/treated more seriously. Contemporary analysis of patterns of book publication, reviewing, and recognition suggest that Tiptree had a point then and the same point remains valid today.<\/p>\n

\"DownbelowStation20thAnnCover\"<\/a>Other writers also appear to have shared or share that view. Authors such as CJ Cherryh and JK Rowling publish using initials only, a practice which disguises gender, as do pseudonyms such as “Robin Hobb”, where the spelling of “Robin” is gender ambivalent—in fact I recently met a reader who consistently referred to Robin Hobb as “he.”<\/p>\n

On the the other hand, as Mori rightly reflects, “[Ursula] Le Guin didn’t, and she got the respect. She won the Hugo.” <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Doomsday<\/a>So, too, did such great names of Science Fiction-Fantasy as Lois McMaster-Bujold, Vonda McIntyre, Anne McCaffrey, Connie Willis, Joan Vinge,<\/em> and more recently Susana Clark and Jo Walton herself (for Among Others<\/em>, in fact), as well as the most recent winner, Ann Leckie for Ancillary Justice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So I am inclined to agree with Walton, through Mori, that if Tiptree’s choice was solely about gender then she was “taking the easy option.” <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ancillary<\/a>Because statistics or no, so long as women authors hide behind male pseudonyms then I cannot help feel we are giving in, if not outright pandering to the perception that women’s writing is of lesser merit.<\/p>\n

Which clearly, looking at the array of Hugo Award luminaries listed above, is not<\/em> the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over this past week I’ve been reading Jo Walton’s Among Others and\u00a0one of the interesting aspects of the story is that it’s centered around a protagonist (our heroine, Mori) who is an avid SFF reader. This aspect of the book, and the fact that Mori is lame and walks with a cane, like the author, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27941,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27939\/revisions\/27941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}