美国大学开始认可第三性别
Rocko Gieselman looked like any other undergraduate at the University of Vermont but perhaps a little prettier, with pAle freckles dancing across porcelain skin and bright blue eyes amplifying a broad smile. Black bra straps poked out from a faded black tank top emblazoned with the logo of the indie band Rubblebucket; a silver necklace with an anchor dangled over ample décolletage.
Gieselman, a 21-year-old senior majoring in gender studies, was chatting cheerfully from a futon, legs tucked sideways, knees forward. In the tidy, poster-filled apartment that Gieselman shares with a roommate near campus, we were discussing the dating landscape. Gieselman, who came out in seventh grade, blushed and smiled shyly: “My partner was born female, feels female. The partners I’m attracted to are usually feminine people.”
吉梭曼，一名主修性别研究的21岁学生，正双腿分开、跪坐在蒲团上，与我愉快地聊着天。这间整洁并贴满了海报的公寓位于校园附近，由吉梭曼和一名室友共同居住，我们正在这里讨论约会方面的话题。在七年级时便已出柜的吉梭曼，脸颊微微泛红，带着害羞的微笑说道：“我的上一名伴侣生理性别为女性，心理性别也是女性。我现在交往的伴侣通常都是女性。”Gieselman, too, was born female, has a gentle disposition, and certainly appears feminine (save for a K. D. Lang cut). But Gieselman self-identifies not as a gay woman but as transgender. Unlike men and women who experience a mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities and take steps to align them, Gieselman accepts having a womanly body, and uses the term — along with “genderqueer” — to mean something else: a distinct third gender.
吉梭曼的生理性别同为女性，性情温和，外表也呈现出明显的女性特征（除了与女同歌手凯蒂莲[K·D·Lang]同样的发型之外）。但是吉梭曼并不将自己界定为女同性恋，而是一名跨性别者(transgender)。不同于那些对自己的生理性别和心理性别表现出认知差异，并极力想要将两者统一起来的男性和女性，吉梭曼接受自己拥有一具女性躯体的事实，并使用“跨性别者”这一名词——还有“性别酷儿”(genderqueer)——来指代新的性别身份：一种有别于男女之分的“第三性”。
While a freshman at Burlington High School, Gieselman began feeling that the label “girl,” even “lesbian,” didn’t fit. “Every time someone used ‘she’ or ‘her’ to refer to me, it made this little tick in my head. Kind of nails-on-a-chalkboard is another way you can describe it. It just felt wrong. It was like, ‘Who are you talking to?’”
吉梭曼还是伯灵顿高中(Burlington High School)的一年级新生时，就开始觉得“女生”甚至是“女同”的标签都不适合自己。“每当有人用女性人称来指代我时，我的脑子里都会‘咯噔’一下。也可以说有点像指甲在黑板上划过的那种刺耳声。这种说法就是让我觉得不对劲。感觉就像是‘你在跟谁说话啊？’”Being a boy didn’t feel right, either: “I had a couple months where I gave it a go. I tried to bind my chest with an Ace bandage every day. I wore some masculine clothes and told my friends to call me Emmett.”
而以男生自居，同样让吉梭曼有种异样感。“我曾经有两个月试着把自己当成男生来看待。我每天都会用绷带把胸部裹起来，穿男式服装，让朋友们叫我埃米特(Emmett)。”Neither category applied. “It felt not only like I was invisible but, especially at that time when hormones are aflutter, like no one would really know what I was like for the rest of my life.”
但这两种性别都不适合。“这样不仅让我觉得变成了隐身人，而且会让我觉得在自己的后半生中，再也没有人能够真正了解我的真实身份，尤其是在我荷尔蒙旺盛的日子里。”Gieselman began spending time at Outright Vermont, a trans and queer youth center where the gender lexicon of activists and academe is widely accepted. “As soon as I learned about a genderqueer identity, I was like, ‘Oh! That’s the one!’” said Gieselman, who frequently ends sentences with a gentle laugh. “Before, it had been really difficult to explain how I was feeling to other people, and even really difficult to explain it in my own head. Suddenly, there was a language for it, and that started the journey.”
吉梭曼开始抽出时间参与佛蒙特出柜联盟(Outright Vermont)的活动，这是一间面向跨性别者和同性恋者的青年中心，活动分子和学术界的性别用语在这里广为接受。“在我了解到‘性别酷儿’这一概念的瞬间，我立刻有种‘哦！就是这个！’的感觉。”经常用一阵轻柔的笑声作为话语结尾的吉梭曼说道，“以前我一直很难对别人解释清楚我的感觉，甚至很难在心里对自己解释清楚。突然之间，就出现了一种专为这种感觉而定制的语言，这是我这段人生旅程的开端。”Gieselman dumped the girlie name bestowed at birth, asked friends and teachers to use Rocko, the tough-sounding nickname friends had come up with, and told people to use “they” instead of “he” or “she.” “They” has become an increasingly popular substitute for “he” or “she” in the transgender community, and the University of Vermont, a public institution of some 12,700 students, has agreed to use it.
吉梭曼抛开自己出生时得到的女性名字，让朋友和老师们改用“洛可”来称呼自己，这个拗口的昵称是吉梭曼的朋友们一同想出来的；吉梭曼还让大家使用第三人称复数“they”来指代自己，而非第三人称单数的“he”或“she”。这一代词在跨性别者群体内，已日渐成为对“他”或“她”最常用的替代人称，而佛蒙特大学——这间总共拥有约12,700名学生就读的公立大学，也已同意采用这种表述。While colleges across the country have been grappling with concerns related to students transitioning from one gender to another, Vermont is at the forefront in recognizing the next step in identity politics: the validation of a third gender.
当全美的各所大学还在设法应对学生性别转换所带来的相关顾虑时，佛蒙特大学却已站在了最前沿，看清了身份政治的下一步行动——对第三性的认可。The university allows students like Gieselman to select their own identity — a new first name, regardless of whether they’ve legally changed it, as well as a chosen pronoun — and records these details in the campuswide information system so that professors have the correct terminology at their fingertips.
佛蒙特大学允许吉梭曼这样的学生选择自己的身份，重新登记一个新的名字——无论他们是否办理过更名的法律手续，还可以让他们自己选择名字的发音，并将这些详细资料登记在校内的信息系统里，让教授随时都可方便地获知正确的用辞。For years, writers and academics have argued that gender identity is not a male/female binary but a continuum along which any individual may fall, depending on a variety of factors, including anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and feelings. But the dichotomy is so deeply embedded in our culture that even the most radical activists had been focused mainly on expanding the definitions of the two pre-existing categories.
多年来，著者和学者一直主张，性别身份并非仅有男女两极，而是一条连续的带状分布，任何人均可在其中找到自己性别的一席之地，具体则取决于多种因素，包括解剖学、染色体、荷尔蒙和主观感受。只是性别二元论在我们的文化中已经如此根深蒂固，就连最激进的活动分子，一直也来也只是将关注焦点放在拓展现有两种性别分类的定义上而已。Today, a growing number of students are embracing the idea that when it comes to classifying gender, there should be more than two options — something now afforded by the dating website OkCupid and by Facebook, which last year added a tab for “custom” alongside “male” and “female,” with some 50 options, including “agender,” “androgyne,” “pangender” and “trans person,” as well as an option for controlling who can see the customized version.
如今，越来越多的学生都开始接纳这样的观念：在性别分类上，应该有两种以上的选项——约会网站OkCupid和社交媒体网站Facebook均已采用了这样的体系，在去年时与“男”和“女”的性别选项一同，提供了一个“自定义”的标签，包括“无性别”、“双性人”、“泛性别者”和“跨性别者”在内，总共有50个选项，同时还有相应选项，可以控制都有谁能看到用户自定义的性别内容。Activists on campuses as diverse as Penn State, University at Albany, University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and University of California, Riverside, are laying claim to a degree of identity freedom nearly unimaginable when the first L.G.B.T student centers were established. Today’s students, who grew up with Gay-Straight Alliances in their high schools, with transgender people represented in the media and with transgender rights percolating through the courts, arrived on campuses already L.G.B.T.-friendly and, in many cases, equipped with gender-neutral housing and bathrooms.
校园活动分子遍及各地院校，包括宾州州立大学(Penn State)、纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校(University at Albany,)、芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)、威斯康星大学密尔沃基分校(University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)和加州大学河滨分校(University of California, Riverside)，当第一间LGBT学生中心建成后，他们一直在要求校方在学生的性别身份方面提供近乎不可想像的自由度。如今的学生在高中时代就在同直联盟(Gay-Straight Alliances)的陪伴下成长，亲眼目睹着跨性别者公开出现在媒体上，还有在法院内悄然蔓延的跨性别者人权意识，他们所进入的大学校园，也已经对LGBT群体抱持着友好态度，并且有很多都专门配备了不分性别的宿舍和卫浴设施。In hopes of raising consciousness of the biases built into social structures and into the language we use to discuss them, students are organizing identity conferences and inventing new vocabularies, which include pronouns like “ze” and “xe,” and pressing administrations to make changes that validate, in language, the existence of a gender outside the binary.
为了提升对于社会结构中和我们讨论相关话题时所用语言里所带偏见的觉察，学生们开始不断组织各类性别大会，以及发明一些新的词汇，包括指代无性别者的第三人称“ze”和指代跨性别者的第三人称“xe”，他们还极力要求校方管理层做出相应改变，在语言上认可两元以外性别的存在。Certainly, there’s a long line of people throughout history whose traits have put them outside norms, and some cultures long ago formalized the existence of a gender that isn’t purely female or purely male, like the American Indian’s two-spirits or India’s hijras. But the binary is a belief system at least as old as Adam and Eve, and most people don’t even realize it’s there. “It’s like a constant coming-out process, educating those around you that there is a gender binary, and this is what it means to identify outside of it,” said Gieselman, who works on campus planning gender-related events.
显然，在整个人类历史上，有太多人物都拥有无法归类为常态的性格特质，有些文化甚至在很久以前就已正式认可了男女以外性别的存在，例如美洲印第安人的“双灵”观念，还有印度的“海吉拉”(hijras)。但是性别二元论是一套起码早在亚当夏娃时代就已成形的信仰体系，大部分人甚至都没有意识到这一思维定势的存在。“这就像是一个持续出柜的过程，从而让你身边的人了解到，在他们的观念中存在着一种性别二元论，这样才能让他们超越二元论思维来看待身份问题，”时常参与校园各类性别相关活动筹备的吉梭曼说。Identifying as genderqueer is an opportunity to self-invent, unburdened from social expectations about dress and behavior. Occasionally Gieselman wishes for a lower voice and flatter chest, but other times feels O.K. with, even happy about, having a feminine physique.
将自己归类为性别酷儿，是一次实现自我创造的机会，彻底摆脱着装、举止方面的社会期待所带来的禁锢。有的时候，吉梭曼会希望自己的嗓音再低一些，胸部更平一些，但在其他的时候则不介意，甚至十分乐于拥有一副女性化的身躯。“Even within the same day or the next day I can suddenly really love how my chest looks in a sundress,” said Gieselman, who wears two small nose rings. In the bedroom closet hang T-shirts, flannels, dresses and a rack of bow ties.
“可能就在同一天内或者第二天时，我会突然真心爱上自己包裹在无袖背心裙下的胸部的模样，”戴着两枚小鼻环的吉梭曼说。吉梭曼的卧室衣柜里挂着T恤、法兰绒衬衫、连衣裙和一架子的领结。It might seem a simple turn of events, but adding gender-neutral options to the University of Vermont’s information system took nearly a decade of lobbying, the creation of a task force of students, faculty members and administrators, and six months and $80,000 in staff time to create a software patch.
佛蒙特大学在信息系统中添加无性别选项之举，或许看上去只是一次简单的形势变化，但却是一批学生、教职员工和校方管理层共同游说了近十年的成果，校方则用了六个月的工作时间，耗资8万美元来开发相应的软件补丁。One key to the developments is Dorothea Brauer, a plain-spoken, big-hearted mental health counselor known to everyone as Dot. Ms. Brauer spent nine years working at the campus counseling center before becoming, in 2001, the director of what was then called the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning & Ally Center.
在这一过程中的一个关键人物，便是桃乐丝·布劳尔(Dorothea Brauer)，她是一位说话直白、为人善良的心理辅导师，大家都叫她多特(Dot)。布劳尔女士曾在校内辅导中心工作了九年，然后在2001年时成为当时的LGBTQA中心(Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning & Ally Center)主任。While in her 20s and living in New Jersey, Ms. Brauer, who wears her hair cut short with a single, long braid down her back in tribute to a Cherokee grandmother, was spending time with a woman when an acquaintance changed the course of her life by inquiring about the relationship, and then pointedly but nonjudgmentally asking, “Honey, are you gay?”
布劳尔女士剪了一头短发，只留有一条发辫垂在后背上，以此纪念身为彻罗基族人的祖母。她在二十多岁的时候居住在新泽西州，那时的她常与一名女子来往，后来一个熟人改变了她的人生轨迹——那人问起她与那名女子的关系，意有所指但又不带评价地问道：“宝贝，你是同性恋吗？”“I said, ‘Well, yeah, but only with Anita,’ ” recalled Ms. Brauer. (Anita would turn out to be her life partner — 32 years and counting.) “That’s how clueless I was,” she said, chuckling over a taco salad lunch at the Penny Cluse Café in downtown Burlington. “I was 24, 25, and scared to death. I came out to my mother, only my mother, because I became physically ill with depression.”
“我说，‘呃，是的，但只限和安妮塔(Anita)在一起时。’”布劳尔女士回忆道。（安妮塔后来成为了她的终身伴侣——两人已共同生活了32年，并且来日方长）“当时的我就是这么无知，”在柏灵顿市中心的咖啡馆Penny Cluse Café内吃着墨西哥玉米饼沙拉午餐的她说道，并且笑出声来，“我当时只有二十四五岁，简直怕得要死。我对我母亲出柜了，只告诉了我母亲，因为我当时的身体状况出现了异常，并且陷入了抑郁状态。”A decade later, as one of the few out women on campus in the 1990s, she treated students with debilitating identity issues, some of whom attempted suicide or faced a psychotic break. (L.G.B.T.Q. youth are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Ms. Brauer’s first act upon being installed as the center’s director was to assign a graduate student to research and catalog the unmet needs of the transgender community.
十年后，作为20世纪90年代在校园出柜的少数女性之一，她负责治疗那些在个人身份认知上存在障碍的学生，其中有些曾试图自杀，或者陷入了精神崩溃。（据疾病控制与预防中心[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]数据，LGBTQ群体的年轻人的自杀倾向，要比同龄的异性恋者高出一倍还多）布劳尔女士担任中心主任后的第一项举措，就是让一名研究生调查和登记跨性别者群体尚未得到满足的各种需要。Among the difficulties faced by transgender students: inability to use bathrooms marked “men” or “women” for fear of a confrontation with a confused classmate; being accused of using a stolen student ID in the cafeteria because the name printed on it didn’t match someone’s gender appearance; and having the faculty rely on a student-information system that listed only legal names, leading to occasions when a student might be embarrassed or inadvertently outed. Ms. Brauer heard about one distraught transgender freshman whose professor, while calling roll, first read the student’s feminine legal name, then announced the male nickname.
跨性别者学生所面临的诸多难题包括：无法使用被标注为“男用”或“女用”的卫生间，因为害怕在那里遇到不明就里的同学；在自助餐厅内遭人指责使用偷来的学生证，因为上面所印的名字与他们的打扮所表现出的性别身份不符；所在院系完全依赖仅登记学生正式姓名的学生信息系统，导致某些场合下，学生或许会因此而感到尴尬或遭到无意中的排挤。布劳尔女士就曾听说有一名跨性别者新生因其教授在课堂上点名时，先念出了这名学生的女性合法姓名，又接着公布了该生的男性昵称，而感到无所适从。Ms. Brauer reached out to the registrar, Keith P. Williams, who worked with the university’s lawyers to allow transgender students to change their first name in the schoolwide system, but doing so required an in-person visit to the dean of students’ office and filling out paperwork. She then set to work waging a campaign to educate, face to face, members of the faculty, staff and administration on why language sensitivity was so important to a student’s self-respect — and assisted students in getting school policy amended to specifically prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
布劳尔女士找到了教务主任基思·威廉姆斯(Keith P. Williams)，此人曾与佛蒙特大学的律师们携手合作，允许跨性别者学生更改登记在校内系统中的名字，但是要求学生必须亲自到这位主任的办公室填写相关文书。她接着开始着手发动一项宣传运动，面对面地教导教职员工、工作人员和管理人员，为何措辞上的敏感态度对于学生的自尊心如此重要——她还协助学生修补学校的政策漏洞，明文禁止基于性别身份的歧视言行。By 2009, faculty members themselves began pushing for a broader solution to the identification issue, and Mr. Williams created a task force to look into how students could register a preferred first name without having to make a special request. The task force realized that the only way to guarantee a professor would properly refer to a student was to supply the student’s pronoun on class rosters and advisee lists. Then came the question of which gender-neutral pronoun to offer.
到2009年时，佛蒙特大学的教职员工开始主动寻求一种更具广泛意义的方案来解决身份认知问题，威廉姆斯先生创建了一支团队，研究如何能让学生无需提出特别申请，便可方便地登记他们自己偏好的名字。这支团队意识到，足以确保每名教授都能恰当称呼每名学生的唯一办法，就是在班级名单和辅导名单上提供学生的正确人称。于是便又引发了应该提供哪种无性别人称的问题。“Students proposed ‘they/them’ pronouns, but the faculty vetoed the idea because they said it is grammatically incorrect,” Mr. Williams recalled. “They said, ‘You don’t put a plural pronoun with a single individual.’” A second option, also being used in various trans communities, was “ze” (pronounced ZEE), a riff on the German pronoun “sie,” with “hir” replacing “his/her.”
“学生们提议使用第三人称复数‘they’及其宾格形式‘them’作为代称，但是系里否决了这个想法，他们给出的理由是这种措辞在语法上是错误的，”威廉姆斯先生回忆道，“他们说，‘你不能用复数人称来指代一名单独的个体。’”另一种选择也是许多跨性别者群体内常用的说法，就是“ze”（发音同“ZEE”），典出德语中的女性第三人称单数和第三人称复数代词“sie”，对应的宾格形式则是“hir”。Bowing to the faculty, the task force selected “ze” and revised its information system, becoming the first school in the nation at which students could select their pronoun. They could also leave the field blank, or opt for “name only,” indicating a preference for being referred to by name instead of by pronoun.
威廉姆斯先生的团队顺从了系里的这一提议，选择了“ze”作为代称，并据此更新了校内的信息系统，成为全美第一所能让学生自主选择适用人称的学校。学生还可以在代称一栏留白不填，或者选择“仅使用名字”，籍此表示更希望人们用名字而非人称代词来指代他们。The change fueled gender-awareness campaigns by students all over the country. So many administrators were receiving requests that, in 2012, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers convened a task force to draft a list of best practices for handling transgender student records.
这一变化推动了美国各地学生发起的性别认知运动。有太多大学的管理层都在源源不断地收到相关请求，乃至于在2012年时，美国大学注册和招生办公室协会(American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers)专门召集了一支团队，负责起草一系列的最佳举措，用于处理跨性别者学生的登记。So far, about 100 schools now allow students, and sometimes employees, to indicate a moniker other than their legal first name, according to the Consortium of Higher Education L.G.B.T Resource Professionals, and hundreds more have contacted Vermont on how to implement the pronoun choice.
据高校LGBT资源专业人士联合会(Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals)统计，迄今为止，约有100所院校都已允许学生（有时也一并涵括学校员工）在自己的正式名字之外，再单独给出一个用于称呼他们的绰号，还有数百所院校曾联系过佛蒙特大学，咨询该如何应用这些新的人称代词。In September, the university’s pronoun options were expanded yet again to include “they,” as grammarians have reminded naysayers that the English language is constantly evolving. Since 2009, 1,891 University of Vermont students have specified a preferred pronoun, with 14 opting for “ze,” 10 for “they” and another 228 for name only.
去年9月份，佛蒙特大学的人称选项再次得到了拓展，添加了第三人称复数形式的代词“they”，因为语法学家曾提醒那些反对派，英语本身是一门不断演化的语言。自2009年以来，共有1,891名佛蒙特大学在校生指定了自己偏好的代词，其中有14人选择了“ze”，10人选择了“they”，还有另外228人选择了仅用名字称呼。On campuses across the country gender-conscious students have adopted the earnest, P.C. practice of starting social interactions by introducing themselves by name and “P.G.P.,” or preferred gender pronoun. (The most semantically obsessed still object to the word “preferred.”)
美国各地校园内，性别意识已然觉醒的学生纷纷采纳了严谨的PC做法，在与人来往的最初，使用名字和“个人偏好的性别代词”来介绍自己。（那些极度在意用辞的人仍然反对“偏好”这种说法）Robyn Ochs, an educator who helped found an early L.G.B.T. faculty and staff group at Harvard, believes that Vermont’s changes are nothing less than lifesaving.
罗宾·奥克斯(Robyn Ochs)是一名教育工作者，曾在哈佛大学协助创建了一家早期的LGBT组织及员工队伍，她认为，佛蒙特大学做出的政策变化完全不亚于拯救生命。“Some people try to reduce this whole topic to kids trying to be cool or they’re just acting out or whatever, just trying to be different or new,” said Ms. Ochs, who has visited some 500 campuses to speak on L.G.B.T. issues, and often facilitates a discussion she calls “Beyond Binaries.” “But there have always been people who have felt profoundly uncomfortable in their assigned gender roles,” she said. “Anything we can do to make them safer, or make them feel recognized, heard, seen, understood, we should do. To validate their identity and experience could, in fact, save their life.”
“有些人试图简化这个话题的全部内容，将其归结为只是小孩子扮酷，或者只是他们在发泄之类，只是想要表现得与众不同，或者足够新潮，”奥克斯女士说，她曾到大约500所校园内发表过LGBT主题的演讲，并且常常会引发一场被她称之为“超越二元论”的讨论。“但是总会有人对自己被社会赋予的性别身份感到极度不适，”她说，“如果我们有任何办法能让他们更加安全，或让他们感到被认可、被倾听、被关注、被理解，我们就应该去做。认可他们的性别身份和遭遇，实际上足以拯救他们的生命。”How does one explain to family members what it means to be neither male nor female? Once, at age 15, in conversation with an aunt at the kitchen table, Gieselman tried unsuccessfully to diagram the concepts of gender and sex on a napkin, with gender referring to the attitudes and behaviors a society associates with a person’s biological sex, and sex referring to a person’s biological status (not to be confused with sexual orientation, one’s romantic interests). “I don’t even know what it was I was trying to show,” Gieselman, an eighth-generation Vermonter, recounted with a laugh. Gieselman’s grandmother, too, had a few questions about the napkin. “They were very confused,” Gieselman said, “and still are.”
一个人要如何向自己的家人解释，既不是男性也不是女性到底意味着什么？吉梭曼在15岁的时候，曾经在家中的餐桌旁，与一位伯母进行了一番对话。当时的吉梭曼试着在一张餐巾纸上用图解的方式来说明“性别”(gender)与“性征”(sex)的概念：性别指的是一个人的生理性别在社会认知中对应的态度举止，而性征指的则是一个人的生理状态（勿将其与“性取向”也就是个人在性与感情方面的喜好相混淆）。“我甚至都不明白自己想要说明的是什么，”身为第八代佛蒙特州人的吉梭曼笑着讲述道。吉梭曼的祖母也对这张餐巾纸上的解说抱有若干疑问。“他们都被我搞糊涂了，”吉梭曼说，“到现在也依然如此。”Sara Miller, Gieselman’s mother, said that when her teenager first came out to her and offered to provide a pronoun chart for reference, she scoffed.
吉梭曼的母亲米勒表示，当孩子第一次对她出柜，并且给出了一个代词表供她参考时，却遭到了她的嘲弄。“At the time, it irritated me to no end,” said Ms. Miller, a social worker. “I was like, ‘Really? This is what our struggle is going to be about? Pronouns?’”
“当时，这件事让我恼怒不已，”身为社会工作者的米勒女士说，“我的反应就好像，‘真的？这就是我们要争取的东西？人称代词？’”But Ms. Miller has learned to accept the person her former little girl has become. “It’s grown out of the process of really seeing how Rocko has grown as an individual and an adult, seeing how Rocko is their own person, and not a child,” Ms. Miller said. “This is how they presents themself to new friends and colleagues and employers and students. That group knows Rocko only that way.”
不过米勒女士已经学会接受她原来的小女儿如今所变成的模样。“这是一个过程，真切地看到洛可成长为一个独立的个体，一名成年人，看到洛可拥有怎样的独立人格，而不再是个孩子，”米勒女士说道，“这就是洛可在新朋友、新同事、新老板、新同学面前所表现出的样子。这些人只认识这种模样的洛可。”Although Ms. Miller tries her best to always use “they/them” pronouns, she often slips up, but Gieselman isn’t bothered. “Rocko and I have an understanding. She knows I try,” said Ms. Miller, slipping up again.
尽管米勒女士尽最大努力坚持使用第三人称复数代词，但她还是常常会说漏嘴，但是吉梭曼并不因此而感到困扰。“洛可和我拥有一种默契。她知道我尽力了，”米勒女士说道，同时又带出了一次口误。At last summer’s orientation for new faculty members, Ms. Brauer handed out pocket-size pronoun charts created by the L.G.B.T. Resource Center at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She also gave out her cellphone number and words of support: “If you’re struggling with it, give me a call any time and I’ll walk you through it, and give you time to practice, and walk you through any questions you might have.”
在去年夏季面向新入教职员工的迎新活动中，布劳尔女士发放了一张由威斯康星大学密尔沃基分校LGBT资源中心(LGBT Resource Center)设计的袖珍代词表。她还同时提供了自己的手机号码和言语上的鼓励。“如果你有这方面的困扰，随时都可以拨打我的电话，我会指导你如何应对，并且给你时间练习，指导你解决你可能遇到的任何问题。”Use of “they/them” is so widely accepted in the politically correct enclave that is Burlington that a colleague at Feldman’s Bagels, where Gieselman works part time, recently asked if it was O.K. to correct a customer who uses the wrong pronoun because she knew Gieselman wouldn’t.
使用第三人称复数代词的做法，在伯灵顿这块讲究政治正确的飞地上得到了广泛的接受，就连吉梭曼打工的贝尔德曼面包店(Feldman’s Bagels)，都有一名同事主动询问，自己能否在顾客使用错误的人称代词时予以纠正，因为她知道吉梭曼自己一定不会开口。“I know if something might be bothering them, they wouldn’t necessarily say something about it,” said Alexa Ciecierski, a morning-shift co-worker.
“我知道如果有事可能在困扰着吉梭曼，吉梭曼也未必会开口发表意见，”在面包店负责早班的亚莉克沙·切切尔斯基(Alexa Ciecierski)说。At the apartment that afternoon, Gieselman talked excitedly about finally receiving documentation of a legal name change, which arrived in the mail that afternoon, and showed off several gig posters brought home by a roommate, who manages local bands. On the coffee table, a collection of Angel Cards filled a small bowl, each billet offering a single word like “discernment” or “balance” or “integrity,” meant to be chosen and read for a daily dose of inspiration.
那天下午，就在那间公寓里，吉梭曼兴奋地提起，自己终于收到了正式更改名字的法律通知。通知函在当天下午以邮递的方式送达，夹在一名玩乐队的室友带回来的几张现场演出海报里。咖啡桌上的一只小碗中摆放着一套天使卡，每一张上都给出了一个词语，例如“洞察力”，“平衡”，或“正直”，供人抽选并念出，作为一天一次的心灵启示。“Do you want to pick one?” Gieselman asked me. I reached in the bowl and pulled out “strength.”
“你要不要抽一张？”吉梭曼问我。我将手伸到碗中，抽出了一张“坚强”。Gieselman leaned forward off the futon, swished the cards around, plucked one from the center, smiled, then read it aloud: “Freedom.”
吉梭曼跪在蒲团上俯身向前，拿着卡片挥舞了一番后，从中央抽出一张，微微一笑，然后大声地念了出来：“自由。”
