时代周刊:何为女人(1)

Who We Are

我们是谁

By Susan Stryker

文/苏珊·斯特莱克

Stryker is a presidential fellow and visiting professor of women’s, gender¹ and sexuality studies at Yale University.

斯特莱克是耶鲁大学女性、性别及性行为研究方向的带头研究员兼客座教授。

What is a woman?

何为女人？

An “adult human female,” according to a seemingly commonsense² slogan seen on the Tshirts and laptop stickers of those who oppose the idea that transgender women are women.

根据反对跨性别女性也是女性这一理念的那些人的T恤和笔记本贴纸上那些看似常识一般的标语来看，女人就是“成年的人类女性”。

They argue that gender itself is a false ideology³ masking the truth of biological sex difference.

他们声称，性别这一概念本身就是一种错误的意识形态，它掩盖了生理性别差异的真相。

But “woman” is complicated in ways that have little to do with transgender issues.

问题是，“女人”这一概念之复杂与跨性别问题并无太大关联。

Only the delusional⁴ would deny biological differences between people,

只有凭空臆想之徒才会否认人与人之间的生理差异，

but only the uninformed can maintain that what the body means, and how it relates to social category, doesn’t vary between cultures and over time.

但只有一知半解之徒能声称，身体的含义，以及这一含义与社会范畴的关系，不会随着文化或时间的推移而变化。

The Caribbean novelist and intellectual Sylvia Wynter opposes the “biocentric” ordering of the world that emerged from European colonialism;

加勒比海小说家/智者西尔维亚·温特反对欧洲殖民主义带到当地的“以生物为中心”的世界秩序；

the transatlantic slave trade depended, after all, on the idea that certain biological differences meant a person could be treated like property.

毕竟，跨大西洋的奴隶贸易依赖的便是这样一种观念：某些生物差异便意味着一个人也可以被视为一笔财产。

The black 19th-century freedom fighter Sojourner⁵ Truth’s famous, perhaps apocryphal⁶, question “Ain’t I a woman?”

在争取废除奴隶制的斗争中，19世纪黑人自由斗士索杰娜·特鲁斯那句著名（但真实性存疑）发问“我不是女人吗？”

challenged her white sisters in the struggle for the abolition⁷ of slavery to recognize that what counted as “woman” counted, in part, on race.

便是向她的白人姐妹们发出的一项挑战，看她们是否会意识到“女人”一词的含义一定程度上还要视种族而定。

A century later in the Jim Crow South, segregated⁸ public toilet doors marked men, women and colored

一个世纪后，在“吉姆·克劳（过去美国社会对黑人的蔑称）的南部”，门上标有男性，女性，有色人种的隔离公厕

underscored how the legal recognition of a gender binary⁹ has been a privilege of whiteness.

便凸显了法律对二元性别的承认不过是白人才有的特权。

In 1949, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir asserted that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman”;

1949年，法国哲学家西蒙妮·德·波伏娃宣称，“一个人并非一生下来便是女人，而是出生之后才变成了女人”；

in doing so, she grasped how the raw facts of our bodies at birth are operated on by social processes to transform each of us into the people we become.

自出生之日起，我们的身体便被社会社会伦理操控了并最终将我们每个人变成了我们今天的样子，波伏娃的上述定论堪称准确地把握了这一残酷的事实。

Who gets “womaned” by society and subjected to misogynistic¹⁰ discrimination as a result,

是谁被社会“变成了女人”并因此遭受厌女人群的歧视？

and who answers yes to the question, posed publicly or in the innermost realms of thought, as to whether they’re a woman or not?

又是谁对社会公开提出或是在内心深处暗自发出的，她们究竟是否是女性这一问题给出了肯定的回答？

1 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

2 commonsense   

adj.有常识的；明白事理的；注重实际的

参考例句：

• It is commonsense to carry an umbrella in this weather.这种天气带把伞是很自然的。
• These results are no more than a vindication of commonsense analysis.这些结果只不过是按常理分析得出的事实。

3 ideology   

n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识

参考例句：

• The ideology has great influence in the world.这种思想体系在世界上有很大的影响。
• The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration.我的理想是在意识思想和灵感鼓动之间找到一个折衷。

4 delusional   

妄想的

参考例句：

• You became delusional and attacked several people trying to escape. 你产生了错觉并攻击了许多人还试图逃走。 来自电影对白
• He is incoherent, delusional, suffering auditory hallucinations. 他出现无逻辑的，妄想的，幻听的症状。 来自电影对白

5 sojourner   

n.旅居者，寄居者

参考例句：

• The sojourner has been in Wales for two weeks. 那个寄居者在威尔士已经逗留了两个星期。 来自互联网
• A sojourner or a hired servant shall not eat of it. 出12:45寄居的、和雇工人、都不可吃。 来自互联网

6 apocryphal   

adj.假冒的，虚假的

参考例句：

• Most of the story about his private life was probably apocryphal.有关他私生活的事可能大部分都是虚构的。
• This may well be an apocryphal story.这很可能是个杜撰的故事。

7 abolition   

n.废除，取消

参考例句：

• They declared for the abolition of slavery.他们声明赞成废除奴隶制度。
• The abolition of the monarchy was part of their price.废除君主制是他们的其中一部分条件。

8 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

9 binary   

adj.二，双；二进制的；n.双(体)；联星

参考例句：

• Computers operate using binary numbers.计算机运行运用二进位制。
• Let us try converting the number itself to binary.我们试一试，把这个数本身变成二进制数。

10 misogynistic   

参考例句：

• And it brings out everything that is most noxious and misogynistic about the right. 而且，这种情绪也流露出右派思想中最为保守有害，歧视女性的那一面。 来自互联网