时代周刊:何为女人(2)（在线收听）

The intersection of those two conditions arguably marks the status of belonging to womanhood in ways that do not depend on reproductive biology.

可以说，这两种情况的相互交织代表的是属于女性，但并非是从生殖生物学的角度获得了这一身份的属性。

The “What is a woman?” question can stretch the bounds and bonds of womanhood in messy yet vital directions—

“何为女人”这一问题让“女性”这一概念的范畴与纽带往一个混乱却又十分重要的方向做了延伸——

as in the case of Marsha P.Johnson, a feminine gender-nonconforming person

玛莎·P·约翰逊的情况便是如此，几十年来，

who graced the streets of New York City as a self-proclaimed “street transvestite action revolutionary” for decades.

与传统二元性别相斥的她一直自诩“街头异装癖革命人士”，也一直以这样的形象穿梭在纽约的大街小巷。

She’s now hailed as a transgender icon,

如今，她被世人誉为“跨性别人士的偶像”，

but Johnson fits awkwardly with contemporary ideas of transwomanhood, let alone womanhood more generally.

问题是，她与当代跨性别女性观念难以对应，更不用说广泛的女性观念了。

She called herself “gay” at a time when the word transgender was not common, and lived as a man from time to time.

在她那个时代，“跨性别人士”一词尚不常见，她给自己的称呼是“（男）同性恋”，她也会时不时以男性的身份生活。

She used she/her pronouns but thought of herself as a “queen,” not as a “woman,” or even a “transsexual.”

她会用代词“她”，但她认为自己是一个“女王”，并不是一个“女性”，甚至连“跨性别人”也不是。

While some people now embrace a rainbow of possibilities between the familiar pink and blue,

尽管部分人现在已经接纳了大家熟悉的“粉色”（代表女性）和“蓝色”（代表男性）两大象征之间还存在其他种种可能性的观点，

others hew even tighter to a biological fundamentalism.

但也有一些人选择了向生物原教旨主义进一步靠近。

Those willing to recognize new forms of gender feel anxious about misgendering others,

那些愿意承认新的性别形式的人会对弄错他人性别感到担忧，

while those who claim superior access to the truth are prepared to impose that truth upon those who disagree.

而那些声称自己获取真相的途径高人一等的人却时刻准备将他们的真相强加于与他们看法相左的人身上。

What’s right—even what’s real—in such circumstances is not always self-evident.

这些时候，何为正确？甚至是何为真实？答案都已经不再那么明显。

Labeling others contrary to how they have labeled themselves is an ethically loaded act,

给他人贴上与他们自己所贴的标签相反的标签是一种充满道德色彩的行为，

but “woman” remains a useful shorthand for the entanglement of femininity and social status regardless of biology—

但“女性”一词依然有效概述了女性气质与不考虑生理因素情况下的一种社会身份之间的纠葛，

not as an identity, but as the name for an imagined community that honors the female,

此语境下，“女性”不再是一种身份，而是一个想象中的群体，一个尊重女性，

enacts the feminine and exceeds the limitations of a sexist society.

塑造女性，超越存在性别歧视的社会的重重局限的群体。

Why can’t womanhood jettison its biocentrism to expand its political horizons and include people like Marsha P.Johnson?

“女性”一词何不抛弃其“生物中心主义”论调，扩宽其政治视野，将玛莎·P·约翰逊之类的人也接纳过来呢？

After all, it’s we the living who say collectively what “woman” means,

毕竟，“女性”一词的含义，是要我们活着的人集体来定义的，

hopefully in ways that center the voices and experiences of all those who live as women, across all our other differences.

而我希望，我们在定义的时候，能够超越我们在其他方面的所有差异，把目光放在以女性身份生活的所有人的心声及生活经历上。