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清醒洛丽塔

 圆角望 2019-10-12

我们翻译这篇文章的理由

这个世界远比我们以为的要复杂得多。不是每个人都和你一样幸运。

                                                                                    ——刘蕊

👇

有一种职业叫“性工作者”

作者:Tamara Macleod

译者:刘   蕊

校对:崔   颖

策划:宋一 & 唐萧

Lolita understood that some sex is transactional. So did I.

洛丽塔明白某些性可以用来交易,我也明白。

There is a moment in Adrian Lyne’s film Lolita (1997) that is burned onto my memory. I was probably around 12, up late, watching it on terrestrial television. Lolita and her guardian, lover or captor have been moving between seedy motels, the romantic aesthetics waning until they wrestle on distressed sheets in a darkened room. The bed is covered with coins. Humbert has discovered Lolita has been stashing away the money he has ‘become accustomed’ to paying her, and he suddenly fears she is saving it in order to leave him, something that has not yet occurred to him. The shots are intimate, violent and jarring, ruptured by a later scene in which Lolita shouts: ‘I earned that money!’ We realise that Lolita has learned that sexual acts have monetary value. 

阿德里安·莱恩的电影《洛丽塔》中有这样一幕场景,始终令我记忆深刻。当时我大概12岁,晚上熬夜在旧电视机上看完的这部电影。洛丽塔和她的监护人、情人或者说是占有她的人不停地往来于各种破旧的汽车旅馆,浪漫渐渐消失殆尽,最后他们在黑暗的房间里,在破旧的床单上扭打了起来。床上撒满了硬币。亨伯特发现洛丽塔将自己“习惯性”付给她的钱存了起来。他突然开始害怕,害怕洛丽塔存钱是为了离开自己,这是他之前从未想过的。这一幕幕场景亲密、残忍又冲突,镜头随后一转,洛丽塔大叫:“这是我挣来的钱!”这时,我们才意识到,洛丽塔已经明白性行为是有金钱价值的。

My own realisation came through different circumstances. Like Humbert, some of the men who exploited my vulnerability were probably unconscious of the role they played in the power struggle between an impoverished young woman and the men who could offer her resources. Humbert is exploitative. He also believes in the love between himself and Lolita. To him, the commodity-exchange or transactional aspect of their relationship is the perversion. Its articulation shocks him, the truth of it (or the mere fact that Lolita understands it herself) threatens him so much that he strikes her across the face. He immediately regrets it and submits to her blows, insisting that she be silent.

我的认识又有些不同。这是一场一个年轻却贫穷的女人和可以给她提供资源的男人们之间的权力斗争。和亨伯特一样,那些利用了我的脆弱的男人们,他们根本没有意识到,在这场斗争中,自己到底扮演着怎样的角色。亨伯特乘虚而入,但他相信自己和洛丽塔之间是有爱的。在他看来,这段关系中的物质交换或者说是物质交易只是一种误解。哪怕提到交易这个词,都让亨伯特震惊不已,更不用说当交易的事实赤裸裸地展现了出来(甚至仅仅只是洛丽塔明白了交易的含义),亨伯特倍感威胁,他狠狠地打了洛丽塔一巴掌,但很快又后悔了,任洛丽塔拳打脚踢,但坚持要让她闭嘴。

Humbert’s violence, his refusal to accept the whore, stands for the ages. From religious fundamentalists to certain kinds of radical feminists, a lot of different types of people agree that work is respectable and even noble, and that sex work is degraded and criminal. In truth, sometimes sex work is degrading, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it is illegal, often it’s legally complex; but why is sex work not understood to be work?

亨伯特的激烈反应,他对“妓女”这个概念的抗拒,都有其背后的时代内涵。从宗教原教旨主义者到某些激进的女权主义者,人们的信仰和主张或许不同,但大家却一致认为工作是可敬的,甚至是高尚的,性工作却是堕落的,是犯罪。确实,性工作有时是可耻的,有时又不是。有时是违法的,但更多时候从法律角度来看,是复杂的。为什么性工作不能被认为是一种职业呢?

I understand that sex work is work because it is the work I do. I watched Lolita long before I became a sex worker, but not long before I began exchanging sex for things: something to eat, something to smoke, a place to sleep, a job opportunity. I identified with Lolita; I also knew that I sympathised with Humbert. This is Vladimir Nabokov’s talent after all, to have us still torn apart well into the 21st century. I see the monstrosity of the man who abducts Lolita, but I am more interested in Lolita the sex worker. I read the book (originally published in 1955) when I was 14 and it made me uncomfortable, but I’ve always been comfortable with being made uncomfortable. The novel I read was about a young girl whose unfortunate circumstances forced her to grow up too fast, as they say; who was resourceful as much as she was a victim. Criticism of Lolita often demands that we make binary decisions: is Lolita a victim or a whore? Is Humbert tragic or a monster? Why can’t both be true? After all, I grew up in a world that insisted I occupy a sexualised body, and then punished me for doing so without shame.

我认为性工作也是一种职业,因为我就是一名性工作者。《洛丽塔》是我在成为性工作者很久以前看的电影,但看过电影后不久我开始用性来做交换:换食物,换烟,换睡觉的地方,换工作机会。我能和洛丽塔产生共鸣,我也同情亨伯特。这就是弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫的天才之处,都21世纪了,我们仍在为两位角色感到难过。我看到了这个诱拐洛丽塔的男人的丑恶嘴脸,但我更关心的是身为性工作者的洛丽塔。14岁那年,我读了《洛丽塔》这本书(最初出版于1955年),它让我感到很不舒服,不过,我一直就很擅长在不舒服里找自在。而这本书讲的恰好就是一个年轻女孩——或者说一个聪明伶俐却又饱受折磨的女孩——在不舒服的环境下被迫成长过快,如人们说的那样。对洛丽塔持质疑态度的人总是要求我们做出绝对的选择:洛丽塔到底是受害者还是妓女?亨伯特到底是悲剧还是禽兽?为什么不能二者都是呢?毕竟,在我成长的这个世界里,人们认同我性感的身段,却又因为我不知羞耻地利用它而惩罚我。

The first time I noticed a grown man’s sexual interest in me, I was 11 years old. Something awoke in me that day, and I learned to flirt. I spent the next few years knowing that there was something I could gain in return if I stopped blushing and accepted my position as a sexualised body. I existed on the outskirts of abject poverty, and every prolonged glance, every catcall, became an opportunity. I became conscious of a world of men eager to provide money, comfort and an escape route in exchange for what I had: beauty and youth. Perhaps if I’d had a father, a stable home, the recognition of that first flirtation would have stopped there, but it didn’t. Circumstances made me a young woman with a firm grasp on the fact that my sexual appeal could get me what I needed to survive. I also had my own sexual desires in abundance, only twofold: once as desire, twice as currency.

我11岁的时候第一次意识到了成年男性对我的“性”趣。就在那一天,我的内心被某种东西唤醒了,我开始学着去(与男人)调情。在接下来的几年里,我逐渐了解到,只要我不再害羞,接纳我的性感,我就可以得到某些回报。我生活在贫困的边缘。每一个异性的注视,每一次口哨声,都成了一次机会。我意识到,世界上的男人渴望用金钱、舒适和出路来换取我的青春和美丽。如果我有父亲,有个稳定的家,那么对于初次调情的认识或许就到这为止了,但我没有父亲,也没有个稳定的家。我的成长环境让我成为了一位坚信性吸引力才是我的生存之道的年轻女人。当然,我也有很多对性的需求,但只表现在两方面:一是单纯的性欲,二是金钱诱惑下的性欲。

Sex-positive feminism helped to guard me against the most corrosive shame, but I’m not ignorant of the structural reasons that led me to trade sex in the first place. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to do sex work, I wouldn’t have to do any work I didn’t really want to do. But we are a long way from Eden. It is perfectly consistent to be deeply critical of the economic and gender inequalities that give rise to sex work, and still advocate for sex workers. The way to deal with cognitive dissonance is to tilt your head a little.

支持性的女权主义帮助我抵御了那些最具腐蚀性的羞辱。我知道最初让我开始进行性交易的外部原因是什么。如果世界足够理想,我不会从事与性交易相关的工作,我不会做任何我不想做的事情,但毕竟理想的伊甸园远在天边。我们应该谴责,经济和性别不平等导致越来越多的人被迫从事性工作,同时我们也应该为性工作者摇旗呐喊,这两者并不矛盾。要想解决认知失调的问题,稍稍歪下你的脑袋即可。

In 2018, the US actress Ashley Judd, along with a number of wealthy celebrities, aligned herself with the movement to criminalise sex work. It’s an action that flouts the views of the overwhelming majority of current sex workers, Amnesty International and the World Health Organization. Judd made a statement on Facebook that is representative of a kind of feminism that generally excludes working-class women: ‘one cannot consent to one’s exploitation’. The statement equates consent with satisfaction, and exploitation with something like ‘less than I’m worth’. The reality, under capitalism, is that most of us consent to our own exploitation in order to survive. This is the nature of labour under capitalism. A preoccupation with how women use their own bodies should not blind us to the ways that sex work is like other work.

2018年,美国女演员艾什莉·贾德和许多有钱的名人一起发起了一项将性工作定为犯罪的运动。这项运动是对目前大多数性工作者、大赦国际(Amnesty International)和世界卫生组织(World Health Organization)所持观点的蔑视。贾德在脸书上的声明代表着一类特定的女权主义,这种女权主义将劳动阶级女性拒之门外:“一个人不能同意自己被利用。”这种说法把同意等同于满足,利用等同于“我不值得”。但事实上,在资本主义下,大多数人都同意利用自己来以此谋生。这就是资本主义下劳动的本质。人们关注女性如何利用自己的身体,但这并不意味着我们就应该对性工作与其他工作的相似之处视而不见。

It is important to distinguish (sex) work from slavery, and what we do for pleasure from what we do to survive. We should understand that these things can intersect sometimes without being the same. This insight enables us to see the demands of current sex workers (generally to be left alone to work in communities with no regulatory or carceral intervention) as righteous and urgent, while at the same time acknowledging that it is important to find effective ways to tackle sex trafficking.

区分(性)工作和奴役是很重要的,“为了愉悦”和“为了生存”是不同的。我们应该明白,他们有时会有交集,却完全不同。这种观点让我们认识到,目前性工作者的需求是正确而又紧迫的 (性工作者通常孤零零地在社区里工作,没有监管),同时也让我们认识到,我们必须找到方法有效地解决性贩运问题。

In her book Playing the Whore (2014), Melissa Gira Grant offers an excellent analysis of the ways in which the fight by 20th-century feminists to have the boundaries between the home and not-home dissolved, with both recognised as workplaces, set the stage for myriad labour-rights efforts. Such was the move by feminists to have their labour – largely resigned to the home and disregarded – understood as legitimate work. However, I think that it is the middle-class consciousness of liberal feminism that excluded sex work from its platform. After all, wealthier women didn’t need to do sex work as such; they operated within the state-sanctioned transactional boundaries of marriage. The dissatisfaction of the 20th-century housewife was codified as a struggle for liberty and independence as an addition to subsidised material existence, making a feminist discourse on work less about what one has to do, and more about what one wants to do. A distinction within women’s work emerged: if you don’t enjoy having sex with your husband, it’s just a problem with the marriage. If you don’t enjoy sex with a client, it’s because you can’t consent to your own exploitation. It is a binary view of sex and consent, work and not-work, when the reality is somewhat murkier. It is a stubborn blindness to the complexity of human relations, and maybe of human psychology itself, descending from the viscera-obsessed, radical absolutisms of Andrea Dworkin.

梅丽莎·基拉在2014年出版的《扮演妓女》一书中,对20世纪女权主义者为消除家庭和非家庭之间的界限所作出的斗争进行了精彩的分析。她将两者都视作工作场所,这为日后无数的劳动权利斗争奠定了基础。女权主义者通过努力,将自己的劳动——很大程度上屈服于家庭并遭到忽视——合法化。但是,我认为正是这种中产阶级的自由女权主义将性工作挡在了门外。毕竟,有钱的女性不需要从事性工作,她们靠着婚姻就能达到目的,还受法律认可。人们认为,20世纪的家庭主妇有所不满,于是开始争取自由与独立,而这都是她们靠着丈夫得来的富裕物质生活外的额外消遣罢了,这也使得女权主义者在讨论工作的时候,更多地是在关注一个人想要做什么,而非一个的不得已要做什么。于是,女性工作上的区别就出现了:如果你不喜欢和丈夫做爱,这只是婚姻问题。如果你不喜欢和客户做爱,那是因为你不允许自己被利用。这是一个关于性与同意,工作与非工作的二选一的问题,而现实在这个问题上的态度却远要模糊得多。我们固执地对人类关系的复杂性,或者说对人类心理本身选择视而不见,这种视而不见源于安德丽娅·德沃金那种痴迷于内心、极端绝对论的思想。

The housewife who married for money and then fakes orgasms, the single mother who has sex with a man she doesn’t really like because he’s offering her some respite: where are the delineations between consent and exploitation, sex and duty? The first time I traded sex for material gain, I had some choices, but they were limited. I chose to be exploited by the man with the resources I needed, choosing his house over homelessness. Lolita was a child, and she was exploited, but she was also conscious of the function of her body in a patriarchal economy. Philosophically speaking, most of us do indeed consent to our own exploitation.

有的家庭主妇为了钱结婚,婚后假装高潮;有的单亲母亲和不那么喜欢的人发生关系,因为对方能带来某些好处:同意和利用,性和责任之间的界限又在哪里呢?第一次用性来进行物质交换的时候,我其实是有其他选择的,但这些选择十分有限。于是,我选择被男人利用,以此换取我想要的东西,我选择住在他的家里,这样我就不会无家可归了。洛丽塔还小,她是被利用了,但是她同时也意识到了,在父权经济下,她的身体是有用的。从哲学上来说,我们大多数人都是同意自己被利用的。

Juno Mac and Molly Smith provide a remarkable analysis in their book Revolting Prostitutes (2018). The voices of those in their book should not be ignored; more than most, we know that the exchanges of sexual politics are complex, that people often have mixed motives and, perhaps most of all, that the global economy is failing people. We need to reconsider our relationships to liberty, consent, enjoyment and work.

朱诺·麦克和莫利·史密斯在他们2018年出版的《妓女的反抗》一书中进行了精彩的分析。书中那些人物的声音不应当被忽视:我们比大多数人更清楚,性别政治的交换是复杂的,人们的动机通常也是复杂的,更重要的是,全球经济让人们越来越失望。我们需要重新考虑自己与自由、同意、愉悦和工作之间的关系。

  • 本文原载于 Aeon

  • 原文链接:https:///ideas/lolita-understood-that-some-sex-is-transactional-so-did-i

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