When most of her stories came out, gender and sexuality were very black and white. Women did housework while men joined the army. Men went off to start their careers, and their wives stayed home with the children; that's just how it was. The cultural climate of the '60s and '70s is essential when beginning to understand how Tiptree came to be. Three years into Tiptree's career, a critical riot in the Gay rights movement broke out, known as the Stonewall Riots. Police raided an openly gay club in New York City named The Stonewall Inn. It was a shocking display of vicious behavior the LGBTQ community faced (Gay Rights). Even if she had been confident in her sexual identity, it would have been a difficult time to be openly lesbian.
	Later in her career as a writer, she adopted Racoona Sheldan as a new pen name. Racoona published a few well-known stories such as "The Screwfly Solution" and " Your Haploid Heart" (Lefanu). As time passed, gender roles began to blur, and the Gay Rights movement made some headway. For example, in 1977, Renée Richards became the first trans woman to play on an American Tennis team (Gay Rights). People were finally warming up to the idea of feminism and equal rights in general. Racoona allowed Alice to express her newer ideas about gender in a way James Tiptree Jr could not. Essentially she adopted a female persona to break free from James Tiptree Jr and his traditional masculinity. 
Unfortunately, her mother died in October 1976; Alice wrote an obituary which became the demise of her writing career. Tiptree mentioned in a letter about his own mothers passing, which was linked to Mary Hastings obituary, outing Tiptree for the sixty-one-year-old woman she was. This had a somewhat traumatic effect on her writing, and she struggled to write as herself. I believe she missed missing the freedom that Tiptree and Racoona gave her, as she ultimately didn't have to admit who she was truly.

Items