翻译 | 双性恋是如何被抹除的

Calling her “openly gay” invalidates what she herself has said for years.

称她为“公开出柜者”，使得她多年的言语都变得无效了。

本文来源 Vox 。

Cynthia Nixon，1966年4月9日出生于纽约，美国影视演员。因饰演时尚都市剧《欲望城市》“米兰达”一角为观众熟知，并凭借该角色赢得艾美奖喜剧类最佳女配角。

2018年3月19日，Nixon正式宣布参选纽约州长，将投入民主党初选。她的参选，为好莱坞明星跨足政坛再添一例。

When Cynthia Nixon announced her candidacy for governor of New York, a narrative quickly emerged.

A Sex and the City actor would be running for one of the most powerful offices in the state on the platform of fixing the damn subways — and could very well become the first female, openly gay governor in the state’s history

当Nixon宣布她纽约州州长的候选人的身份时，一个对她的评价很快出现了：

一个《欲望都市》的演员将会竞选这个州，在一个修理着糟糕的地铁的平台之上，最有权力的办公室之一的职位，并且很有可能会成为该州历史上第一个公开出柜的女性州长。

The New York Times said it; the Guardian said it; even Vox said it. The only problem with that narrative, though? Nixon isn’t, in fact, openly gay.

《纽约时报》、《the Guardian》、甚至《VOX》都是这么说的。

但是，这个叙述的唯一问题是，事实上，Nixon并没有公开出柜。

Nixon has been upfront about the fact that she identifies as being far more on the bisexual end of the spectrum — and also about how that fact often gets lost in favor of black-and-white proclamations about her sexuality.

Nixon一直很坦率的表示她认为自己更处于性向光谱上的双性恋的部分——同时她也强调，这个事情常常由于大家对她的性向的非黑即白的断定而被忽视。

When Nixon began dating Christine Marinoni in 2004 after dating a man for 15 years, it was largely treated as the coming-out story of a woman who realized late in life that she was a lesbian. But Nixon herself was always clear that her attraction to her ex-boyfriends was as real as hers to Marinoni, who is now her wife.

当Nixon结束了与一个男人15年的相处后，她开始在2004年与Christine Marinoni约会。在很多人看来，这是一个女人在自己晚年时分才认识到自己是一个女同性恋者身份的故事。

但是Nixon她自己很清楚，前男友们对她产生的吸引力与她现任妻子对她的吸引力一样真实。

“In terms of sexual orientation I don’t really feel I’ve changed,” she told the Telegraph in 2008. “I don’t feel there was a hidden part of my sexuality that I wasn’t aware of. I’d been with men all my life, and I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange. I’m just a woman in love with another woman.”

“我真的不觉得我改变了我的性取向。”她在2008年告诉Telegraph时说道。“我不认为我的性向中有我以前没有察觉到的隐藏部分。我这辈子都和男人在一起，我以为我从来不会没有爱上一个女人。但当我真的爱上了一个女人，我并没有感到非常陌生觉得奇怪。我只是一个爱上了其他女人的女人。”

In 2012, Nixon stumbled into controversy when she told the New York Times that her relationship with Marinoni was “a choice,” which to many implied that she was playing into the pernicious trope that queer people can turn their queerness on and off whenever they want.

“I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice,” she said, “and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” She was, she added, “very annoyed about this issue.”

2012年， 当Nixon告诉纽约时报她与Marinoni的关系是“一种选择”时，她陷入了争议。这个说法给了很多人这样的暗示，好像她在使用一个危险的修辞：  酷儿人群只要喜欢就可以像开关一样随时展现或封闭关闭他们的酷儿的一面。

“我知道对很多人来说它不是一个选择，但对我来说是，”她说道，“并且你没有权力定义我的同性倾向”，她补充道，“这个问题非常恼人。”

The reason why (and the context for her “choice” comment) made more sense with a little more explanation — which, as Nixon quickly learned, was constantly asked of her no matter the purported subject of the interview.

为什么更多的解释会更有意义（她为什么会有这样的说法需要有更多的解释）（以及对于她的“一种选择”的言论）——正如nixon所很快发现那样，这个问题会被持续不断地在任何访问中问起，无论这个采访原本的主题是什么。

Though she clarified in a statement that she believes “bisexuality isn’t a choice” and that her relationship with a woman is, she later told the Huffington Post that she was frustrated because “people were so insistent” that she must identify as gay, that she “had just simply been mistaken about myself for all these years and finally the veil was lifted and I was a lesbian.”

尽管她发表了一篇声明表示她认为“双性恋不是一种选择”，且她与她女友的关系也正是如此。但后来她告诉Huffington Post 她很沮丧，   因为“人们如此坚持” 她必须承认自己是同性恋者。她说：“我只是因为多年以来对自己身份的看法产生误解，所以当最后他们把面纱揭开，我就变成了女同性恋。”

Nixon is far from alone in being frustrated that people look at her relationship and decide her sexuality for her, therefore erasing the actual truth.

当人们选择如何看待对她的同性交往关系且帮她决定她的性取向，从而抹杀了真正的事实时，这远远不止Nixon一人因此感到沮丧，

Bisexual, pansexual, and otherwise queer people are constantly having to reassert, explain, and justify our sexuality so that it doesn’t become invisible.

For men, coming out as bisexual is often seen as just a temporary speed bump on the way to coming out as gay;

双性恋者，泛性恋者和其他酷儿人群经常不得不重申，解释以及证明为他们的性向辩护，这样才不至于使他们被透明化。

对于男人来说，公开自己是双性恋者通常会被看作是在公开成为男同性恋的路上的一个减速带。

For women, bisexuality is often treated as nothing more than a sexy experiment. Those in relationships with someone of another gender are read as straight; those in relationships with someone of the same gender are read as gay.

对于女人来说，双性恋经常会被认为不过是是一个性尝试。那些与另一个不同性别的人发生关系的人通常会被认为是异性恋。那些与同一性别发生关系的人通常会被认为是同性恋。

When you don’t identify as either straight or gay, there’s rarely any explanation you can give to satisfy people — and Nixon knows it.

当你不是在证明自己是直人或者同性恋者的时候，就很少有其他可以使别人满足的解释了。Nixon就深知这一点。

“I think for gay people who feel 100 percent gay, it doesn’t make any sense. And for straight people who feel 100 percent straight, it doesn’t make any sense,”

Nixon told the Daily Beast’s Kevin Sessums with more than a little bit of exasperation in 2012. “I don’t pull out the ‘bisexual’ word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.”

在2012年，Nixon有点恼怒地告诉DAILY BEAST’的记者 Kevin Sessums ：“我没有使用“双性恋”这个词，因为没有人喜欢双性恋。大家都喜欢攻击双性恋者”

“但是这是LGBT的B”，Sessums说到。

“我知道，但是我们没有得到任何尊重。”

Nixon then went out of her way to emphasize a crucial point that often gets lost when people are confronted with a coming-out story that doesn’t, for lack of a better term, pick sides.

“I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her,” she said. “I am completely the same person, and I was not walking around in some kind of fog.”

Nixon然后竭力强调，当人们面对一个出柜的故事，而故事中的主人公没有“站队”，即因为缺乏相应身份选择而只剩异性恋或者同性恋的身份时，往往会迷失方向。

“我的确完全感觉到当我与男人在一起时我是爱他们的，并且会与他们发生关系。而且在之后我遇到Christine时我也爱她，也会与她发生关系，”她说道，“我完完全全就是同一个人，我也并没有未曾在雾中漫步行走”

Over the years, Nixon’s indignant responses to questions about her sexuality have become more dismissive than anything else.

When promoting her Emily Dickinson biopic in 2017, Nixon again remarked that people “don’t really believe in” bisexuality, but also shrugged that “there are worse problems out there in the world than whether people get the exact shade of my sexuality.”

That’s true, but honestly, who can blame her for taking a step back given all the grief she got for trying to clarify her own sexuality?

这些年来，相比于其它事情，Nixon关于对她的性向问题的回答由早年的愤怒变得越来越不屑一顾。

在2017年Nixon宣传她的EM传记片时再次表示人们“不是真的相信”双性恋，但也耸耸肩说“世界上还有更多比人们是否真正了解我的性取向更糟糕的问题”

的确事情的确如此，但事实上，考虑到她试图澄清自己性取向后遭受了这么多的非议，谁又能责怪她退后了一步呢？

Whether from the world at large or our own internalized shame, bisexual people are constantly told that our sexuality is a result of “some kind of fog” that, once lifted, will reveal a stark “gay” or “straight” truth.

And even if we don’t buy into that, others will gladly do it for us, assigning us to one box or another solely based on whom they see us dating.

But this kind of assumption, as Nixon puts it, is simply not true.

无论从整个世界或我们内心中的羞辱感来看，双性恋者总是被告知双性恋是一种“某种迷雾”的结果，而这个迷雾一旦被拨开就会揭示出一个鲜明的弯或直的真相。

并且即使我们不想买这个帐，别人也会很乐意帮我们做这件事，把我们独自分配到这个或那个盒子里，完全仅仅根据他们想所看到的来选择我们的约会对象。

但是这种假设正如Nixon所说，根本不是事实。

So when someone tells you they’re bisexual or queer, go ahead and skip the mental gymnastics of trying to make them fit into a gay-straight dichotomy.

It’s so much simpler to just believe queer people when they say they know themselves.