One of us! One of us!

[lolaraincoat]

Well, my brother's wedding was just unspeakably depressing, so let us not speak of it. Heteronormativity gives me an itchy rash, but you knew that. Let us -- and by us I mean me -- instead give thanks to those who cheered me up after, in 24 hours in the City That Cheers Me Up: bowdlerized, cubby66, stillwell, Matty O., Amanda, twotoedsloth and idlerat most of all. I love you and miss you and miss everyone I didn't get to see, too.

But that's not what I wanted to post about. What I wanted to post about is Julie Phillips' biography of the science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr./Alice B. Sheldon. It's not a great book, but it's fascinating me. Phillips is a fine journalist but not a historian, and so she has some difficulty distinguishing what's unusual about Tiptree's life from what's typical for Cold-War era women of Tiptree's race and class. This makes the book a little baggy and shapeless.

The details are gorgeous, though. Phillips quotes extensively from the (apparently voluminous) correspondence between Tiptree and Joanna Russ, and Tiptree and Ursala LeGuin. It was your basic lj-type conversation, smart, flirtatious, wideranging, and with identities of all sorts in play. Also, at least one threat of psuedocide. Internet fandom avant la letre! Seriously, it made me think hard about the historical roots of what we do here, how we adapted the internet to our own purposes rather than having our lives revolutionized by new technology.

The detail I loved most, though, will matter to only a few of you - but those who care will care a whole lot, I bet. So in 1975 Jeff Smith -- a fan who became Tiptree's friend and literary executor -- organized and published a written "symposium" on gender and feminism in science fiction. He came up with a list of questions and then a bunch of writers responded, and then he circulated all the responses and the authors struck up a conversation by mail that (mostly) ended up in print. It wasn't, as far as I can see, all that different from what you might find on the web, a few clicks beyond Making Light or some such, except that the participants included Russ, LeGuin, Tiptree, Samuel Delaney, some SF authors I don't care so much about, and ... "African historian Luisa White." Yeah. Yeah! Luisa White -- who must then have been just starting graduate school -- is one of us.

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

It made me so sad to read that Alice Sheldon thought she didn't have anything to contribute to a correspondence/conversation as Alice, only as Tip.

Tip must have been an absolute *stitch* to correspond with.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Definitely yes, sad. But also it was such an interesting analogy with what some fen do on the web, splitting off their fannish personae from RL identities.

[mincot.livejournal.com]

I'll have to hunt for that -- the conversations must have been amazing.

And *snicker* I knew there was a reason I liked Luise White!!!!!!

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the bio is seriously worth reading, although not a great book.

[jcalanthe]

I just love that you use words like heteronormativity. There's not enough people like that in my world these days. I send my sympathies for your suffering - we're having another spate of weddings this summer, and I fear the heteronormativity already.

The story B tells to this day is that I used the word heteropatriarchy the first time I met her mom (years before we started dating). In retrospective, it's hysterical (all the more so because it made her mom assume I was a lesbian (that plus my short hair ;), so B went on to explain about my boyfriend, blowing her mom's mind a second time), but at the time I was just that earnest that I didn't pause to consider my audience.

I miss you when I'm not on lj much.

That written "symposium" sounds really interesting actually, given the people involved. Even though you're right, a lot of the same ideas can be found online these days. I'll have to track down the biography (or is it published in another form?).

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

I miss you too!

There's been an vast upwelling of usage of the word heteronormativity, I've noticed, in the context of discussion of the new Potter book.

And yes, I've been trying to track down that "symposium," which apparently was reprinted in some slightly more formal way than a low-circulation fanzine. But the book's citations and bibliography are -- here's a real historians' putdown -- vague and disorganized, so I don't have much to go on.

[jcalanthe]

You know, that is a big upside of the Epilogue of Heteronormativity capping off the Series of Heteronormativity, I get to see all sorts of people using that word. :) & I say that generally liking the series.

Vague and disorganized, say it isn't so! I'll be crossing my fingers you can find it anyway.

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

Hey, um--so we're supposed to do a Dungeons thing tonight, right? I, er, seem to lack your email address though, and I'm at work so I can only check my school account. Still--if you wanted to post something that'd be fine, I'll just check the comm occasionally, or you could post to the authcomm to discuss first, or go stalking me on the 'Net for my email. :D Or something.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Augh! I am SO SORRY! I totally forgot! And now it's really late! But I'll throw something up on the comm now just in case.

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

(Um, with the right journal this time...)

It's no problem. :) I almost forgot to post for my DE, so...

Um, except I'm falling asleep, so I'm gonna cut it off at 11, if you don't mind...

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

That's cool. If we can get as far as Charlie getting a chance to complain that Elle started acting strange recently, that would be good but not necessary.

helphelphelp (OT)

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

Lola, I'm looking for a fanfic and I can't seem to find it. I'm pretty sure I read it in the first place because you recommended it. It might have been by bethbethbeth but I can't find it in her stuff.

It's Harry and Petunia talking after the war, while the light turns funny colrs, as things start to shut down. Harry is grilling her for information about his mother. SHe is upset at what is happening. Her family is indoors, unaware, but she has a wee bit of magic in her so she knows what is going on.

I think the last word of the story is "Green." Does that ring a bell? Do you know where I can find this story?

Re: helphelphelp (OT)

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

No clue. Huh. Sounds like a good one, though. Did you check any of the story-finder-type comms?

Re: helphelphelp (OT)

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

Checked a few. Don't have time to devote to this now. Want to find the story BEFORE I read book 7. Not a big deal though.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Heteronormativity and heterosexual reasons are among the reasons I didn't push to get legally married--sheer laziness was the primary reason, mind you. With the rise of domestic partnership legislation and legal marriage in some countries, I don't feel as guilty about marrying a man myself. We've been together for almost twenty years, and are doing this for pragmatic as well as romantic reasons (so he can get my health insurance). Of course we decided to do this just before my company *finally* decided to extend coverage to domestic partners of either gender, so we could have simply signed a domestic partnership thingy. But if we were going to go to that trouble, we might as well have a courthouse marriage ANYWAY...so that's what we're doing.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get that. We're not in an analogous situation ourselves purely through luck in our location.

Fishwhistle and I have the luxury of not marrying because as far as we can tell, in Canada, common-law status gives you exactly the same set of privileges and benefits as legal marriage (that's one reason why same-sex marriage has been so much less controversial here - same-sex common-law status already existed.) But if we were to move back to the States and it was a question of tax benefits or health insurance or protecting our interests in case of divorce ... oh, we would certainly be putting on the white dresses and waving bits of cake around, you bet.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I'm drawing the line at a white dress, however. I decided I did not want a white wedding dress when I was five years old and saw a bride in a church doorway in the evening, wearing (what I thought was) a pink dress. "I can be a bride and wear a colored dress instead of boring old white?" I thought. "YES!" So my dress, which I bought ten years ago for thirty dollars, is floral blue and lacy and a) I hope I can find it again (it's in my room. Somewhere) and b) I can still fit into it.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that white wedding dresses only came into fashion because white was the fashionable color in the early 1800s, right?