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enemyofperfectI learned yesterday that the award previously named after Tiptree is being renamed, and I'm so glad.
Content note: discussion of suicide, possible murder, and ableism follows.
The backstory is that in 1987, the author best known under the alias James Tiptree Jr. killed first her husband, Huntington Sheldon, and then herself. This has often been interpreted by others as a suicide pact, but there seems to be a gap in the record -- we have ample testimony from Tiptree that she was planning it, but nothing from her husband confirming that it was his wish as well.
The award has been important to me in the past, and I hope it will continue to be in the future. The exploration of gender in SFF is very relevant to my interests, and of the dozen or more Tiptree winners I've read, I picked up most of them specifically because they'd won it. It's clear as well that Tiptree's writing has influenced many; taken solely by her stature in her field, she was certainly worthy of an award named in her honor.
I think it's important to say that I would never blame Tiptree for ending her own life. Suicidal depression is a kind of unrelenting agony it's hard to understand unless you've experienced it. I wish that there had been some other relief available to her -- that she could have spent more time on this earth and been pleased to do so -- but to blame someone for finally giving way to terrible pain has always struck me as particularly cruel.
I'm not sure, either, we can ever know what exactly happened on that night in 1987. It's not impossible that Huntington Sheldon wanted to die; perhaps he did but was more private about that wish than his wife. It seems strange to me that someone as careful about arranging the aftermath of her own death as she seems to have been -- leaving instructions around the house for whoever discovered them afterwards -- would have neglected to include some kind of evidence that their desire was mutual, but perhaps he wished otherwise and she respected that.
I guess in some sense, that's the better possibility, that neither of them died against their will. That's what their loved ones believe, and maybe I hope that they are right. But it does seem a little strange to me -- and stranger still was the motherboard's attempt to suggest that it truly was a suicide pact, not a murder-suicide.
Both testimonies quoted in their post about the matter -- made earlier this month, before they reached the decision that the name did need to be changed -- mentioned the fact that Huntington Sheldon's health was failing. They also acknowledged that we have no statement from him regarding his desire to live or die, which would seem to suggest that we don't know for sure what he wanted. Nevertheless, they mentioned his failing health as if it was in itself a reason to believe that he had wanted to die, or that it was right for her to kill him.
That's what bothered me the most. Arguments that the award was deliberately named for her alter ego's writing rather than her flawed human self, for example, I was willing to listen to, and I would have welcomed genuine evidence as to his wishes. But the idea that a person whose health was deteriorating was inherently more plausible as someone who wanted to die -- as if his life were less worth living, or he might not have wanted to enjoy what time was left to him? As if, perhaps, these things were so clear that we could take them for granted, without needing even to wonder what he wanted, and could posthumously extend Tiptree the same license?
That really bothered me.
Tiptree's biographer has since said that what Tiptree did cannot be considered a caregiver murder even if it was not a shared agreement, because Huntington Sheldon did not rely on his wife for care in that way. In the same post, she says that the story was originally told that way in an attempt to defend Tiptree's actions -- evidently in the belief that murder would be more excusable if the victim were profoundly disabled. It seems to me that even decades later, even within the little circle of online SFF fandom, we still have some ways to go in valuing all human lives regardless of health or ability level.
I think that's why I'm so relieved that the award will be renamed. Not because I think I know what happened, or because I relish seeing Tiptree stripped of this part of her legacy, but because the way she and her husband died doesn't seem to be something that we can have a conversation about without falling into these terrible ways of thinking.
And we need to do better.
Content note: discussion of suicide, possible murder, and ableism follows.
The backstory is that in 1987, the author best known under the alias James Tiptree Jr. killed first her husband, Huntington Sheldon, and then herself. This has often been interpreted by others as a suicide pact, but there seems to be a gap in the record -- we have ample testimony from Tiptree that she was planning it, but nothing from her husband confirming that it was his wish as well.
The award has been important to me in the past, and I hope it will continue to be in the future. The exploration of gender in SFF is very relevant to my interests, and of the dozen or more Tiptree winners I've read, I picked up most of them specifically because they'd won it. It's clear as well that Tiptree's writing has influenced many; taken solely by her stature in her field, she was certainly worthy of an award named in her honor.
I think it's important to say that I would never blame Tiptree for ending her own life. Suicidal depression is a kind of unrelenting agony it's hard to understand unless you've experienced it. I wish that there had been some other relief available to her -- that she could have spent more time on this earth and been pleased to do so -- but to blame someone for finally giving way to terrible pain has always struck me as particularly cruel.
I'm not sure, either, we can ever know what exactly happened on that night in 1987. It's not impossible that Huntington Sheldon wanted to die; perhaps he did but was more private about that wish than his wife. It seems strange to me that someone as careful about arranging the aftermath of her own death as she seems to have been -- leaving instructions around the house for whoever discovered them afterwards -- would have neglected to include some kind of evidence that their desire was mutual, but perhaps he wished otherwise and she respected that.
I guess in some sense, that's the better possibility, that neither of them died against their will. That's what their loved ones believe, and maybe I hope that they are right. But it does seem a little strange to me -- and stranger still was the motherboard's attempt to suggest that it truly was a suicide pact, not a murder-suicide.
Both testimonies quoted in their post about the matter -- made earlier this month, before they reached the decision that the name did need to be changed -- mentioned the fact that Huntington Sheldon's health was failing. They also acknowledged that we have no statement from him regarding his desire to live or die, which would seem to suggest that we don't know for sure what he wanted. Nevertheless, they mentioned his failing health as if it was in itself a reason to believe that he had wanted to die, or that it was right for her to kill him.
That's what bothered me the most. Arguments that the award was deliberately named for her alter ego's writing rather than her flawed human self, for example, I was willing to listen to, and I would have welcomed genuine evidence as to his wishes. But the idea that a person whose health was deteriorating was inherently more plausible as someone who wanted to die -- as if his life were less worth living, or he might not have wanted to enjoy what time was left to him? As if, perhaps, these things were so clear that we could take them for granted, without needing even to wonder what he wanted, and could posthumously extend Tiptree the same license?
That really bothered me.
Tiptree's biographer has since said that what Tiptree did cannot be considered a caregiver murder even if it was not a shared agreement, because Huntington Sheldon did not rely on his wife for care in that way. In the same post, she says that the story was originally told that way in an attempt to defend Tiptree's actions -- evidently in the belief that murder would be more excusable if the victim were profoundly disabled. It seems to me that even decades later, even within the little circle of online SFF fandom, we still have some ways to go in valuing all human lives regardless of health or ability level.
I think that's why I'm so relieved that the award will be renamed. Not because I think I know what happened, or because I relish seeing Tiptree stripped of this part of her legacy, but because the way she and her husband died doesn't seem to be something that we can have a conversation about without falling into these terrible ways of thinking.
And we need to do better.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-23 05:07 am (UTC)Thank you for wording this the way you did. <3
no subject
Date: 2019-09-23 04:32 pm (UTC)