Editing Otherwise Award (section)

==Background==
===Choice of the Tiptree name===
By choosing a masculine ''nom de plume'', having her stories accepted under that name and winning awards with them, Alice Sheldon helped demonstrate that the division between male and female science fiction writing was illusory. Years after "Tiptree" first published science fiction, Sheldon wrote some work under the female pen name "Raccoona Sheldon"; later, the science fiction world discovered that "Tiptree" had been female all along. This discovery led to widespread discussion over which aspects of writing, if any, have an intrinsic gender. To remind audiences of the role gender plays in both reading and writing, the award was named in Sheldon's honor at the suggestion of [[Karen Joy Fowler]].

===Controversy and name change===
In 2019, controversy arose over the appropriateness of naming an award after Tiptree. In 1987, Alice Sheldon shot and killed her ailing husband [[Huntington Sheldon]] before killing herself in the same manner. Although some have called the killing a "[[suicide pact]]" based on Sheldon's personal writings, others characterize the act as "caregiver murder"—i.e., the murder of a disabled person by the person responsible for caring for them. In light of these allegations, the Tiptree Motherboard received requests to change the name of the award. On September 2, 2019, in response to these requests, the Motherboard made a statement that "a change to the name of the Tiptree Award is [not] warranted now"; but nine days later, on September 11, they announced that the award "can't go on under its existing name".<ref name="sep2019">{{cite web|url=https://tiptree.org/2019/09/alice-sheldon-and-the-name-of-the-tiptree-award|title=Alice Sheldon and the name of the Tiptree Award|last=Lothian|first=Alexis|date=September 2, 2019|access-date=September 15, 2019|website=James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award}}</ref>

On October 13, 2019, the Tiptree Motherboard released an announcement stating that the Tiptree Award would become the Otherwise Award. The name refers to "the act of imagining gender otherwise" at the core of what the award has always honored, as well as being "wise to the experience of being the [[Other (philosophy)|other]]". The title also draws from the Black queer scholarship of [[Ashon Crawley]] around what is termed "otherwise politics".<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://tiptree.org/2019/10/from-tiptree-to-otherwise|title=From Tiptree to Otherwise « James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award|last=Lothian|first=Alexis|date=October 13, 2019|website=James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award|language=en-US|access-date=October 13, 2019|archive-date=October 27, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191027064045/https://tiptree.org/2019/10/from-tiptree-to-otherwise|url-status=live}}</ref> According to the statement, "''Otherwise'' means finding different directions to move in—toward newly possible places, by means of emergent and multiple pathways and methods."<ref name=":0" />