These days, I find it easy to look in the mirror. This used to be the case, too, because I learned to be a drag queen alone, Back then, in the early noughties, there was no cultural mirror for someone like me. There was no chance of switching on Netflix and finding someone who looks like you, and Lily Savage never quite made it to the Woolworths bargain bin if she ever made it to the dizzying heights of VHS at all. So there was me and a mirror, and that's the only place I saw myself for a long time.
这些天,我发现照镜子很容易 这也曾经是个难事, 因为我学着独自成为男扮女装的同性恋者 在那时,21世纪初 对于我这样的人来说没有文化镜子 你没有机会打开Netflix 并且找到像你这样的人 而且莉莉·萨维奇不会去 到伍尔沃斯的折扣商品区 如果她能拍出令人眩晕的录像带 所以这里有我和一面镜子 那是我长时间看着自己的唯一地方
It will be over a decade until this part of me became more than a mere reflection. And in that time, what happened would change my relationship with that mirror. In that decade, I came out as gay at a Catholic state comp in the working class North West, and I survived. But as with anything that unsmooths the edges of normal society, that coming out brought with it a daily dose of judgment and therein shame from almost everyone around me, shame that was heard and felt and internalized and often replicated by me.
十多年后,这一部分的我 才不仅仅是一个倒影 在那时, 这一切使我和镜子的关系发生变化 在那十年间,我出柜了 在西北工人阶级的天主教国家公司 并且生存了下来 但就像任何使正常社会边缘 变得不平滑的事情一样, 出轨的事情带来了日常的评判 几乎我身边所有人都为此感到羞耻 这种羞耻感会被听到, 被感受到, 并被内化 也经常被我复制
Commonly, when we think about shame, we imagine it at the extreme end of the spectrum, anything from years of intense dieting to keep up with extreme Western beauty standards, all the way to things like honor violence. But for me, my shame existed at the long end of the tail of the shame monster, as self-hatred. Now, this didn't really affect anyone else. On the surface, I was fat, feminine, gay, spotty, ginger. I didn't really have much going for me, by society's standards. But what I did have was a killer, if not overcompensatory, bitchy gay personality, and I was not afraid to use it. If you were going to throw a rock at me and call me a faggot, then I'll barb you back by telling you that one day when I'm famous, you'll be licking my boots clean and begging me for employment.
一般来说,当我们想到羞耻感, 我们把它看作光谱的极端 从多年的强烈节食 以保持极端的西方美丽标准, 到像尊重暴力的事情 但是对我来说, 我的羞耻感存在于羞愧怪兽的长尾之中, 即自我憎恶 现在,它并不影响其他人 外表上,我肥胖,女性化的, 男同性恋,多斑点,红发(侮辱含义) 我基本不符合社会标准 但我也有迷人的地方, 如果不是过于补偿的, 刻薄的男同性恋个性, 我并不害怕用这样的词。 如果你要向我扔石头 并叫我男同性恋(侮辱含义), 我会回嘴并告诉你有朝一日我出名了, 你要舔干净我的靴子并祈求我给你工作
(Tsk)
(啧)
We all reproduce shameful and shaming behaviors, because we're all trying to escape our own shame. And as the shame monster swallowed me whole, I couldn't find myself in the mirror.
我们都会做出富有羞耻感 和令人羞耻的行为 因为我们都在试图远离自己的羞耻感, 并且当羞耻感怪事将我全部吞噬, 我无法在镜子里找到自己
Eventually, I left my hometown and went to a rather posh university that my whole town had celebrated my acceptance at with glee. And when I arrived there, I started to tell lies about my upbringing. Not big ones. There's only so many vowels you can drop until someone realizes you're not landed gentry. But I started to say things like, "I'd read that book" when I hadn't, I started to tell people I'd grown up in Manchester, when really, it was two hours north of there. I spent time alone in the mirror, like I had with my drag persona all those years ago, trying to change the way I speak just a little. To the world, I was easy. I worked hard to fit myself into a neat storyline, the friendly gay Mancunian, when really I knew that the swathing complexities of my identity couldn't fit inside a storyline. And if I was found out, I was terrified that I'd be cast out. And so the self-hate ensued once again.
最终,我离开家乡去往相当漂亮的大学 全镇人都兴高采烈地庆祝我被录取 当我到达那里, 我开始为我的教养说谎 不是大谎言 你能丢掉的元音是有限的 直到有人意识到你不是贵族 但是我开始说一些比如 “我读过这书”事实并没有 我开始告诉人们我在曼切斯特长大 而事实是离那里向两小时的地方 我独自照镜子, 就像我多年前变装的时候 试图改变一点点自己说话的方式 对这个世界来说,我很容易 我努力把自己融入到 一个简洁的故事情节中, 友善的曼彻斯特同性恋, 当我真正意识到我身份的复杂 无法融入一个故事情节 如果我被揭穿,我害怕我会被驱逐出去 所以自我憎恶再一起随之而来
Now, what does self-hate look like? What does it feel like? It sounds pretty intense, but it's actually way more boring and way less dramatic than vile gouts of hatred towards who you are. For me, self-hatred was about not believing things that were objectively true. It was about looking in the mirror and seeing something monstrous. It was about looking in the mirror and seeing something not deserving of love or respect from myself and others. It was about looking in the mirror and wanting to change parts of myself: my weight, my gender, my sexuality, my class -- so extremely that you commit acts of self-harm and self-denial. I lied, I judged, I bitched. I changed the way I spoke. And I had so much extreme sex that I would find myself, years later, recalling all the times my consent had been breached because it's what I thought I deserved. Sidebar, to say that extreme sex, when practiced safely and consensually, can be some of the best sex. But as my grandma would have said, I was in a pickle. I looked in the mirror and I saw something monstrous. But I managed to persuade those around me that I was fabulous.
现在,自我憎恶是什么样子? 它是什么感觉? 它听起来很严重,但实际比讨厌的通风 更加无聊也没有那么戏剧化 对我来说,自我憎恶是不信任 那些客观正确的事情 它是看向镜子并且看见可怕的东西 它是看向镜子 并看见不值得我和其他人爱和尊重的东西 它是看向镜子并且想要改变部分的自己: 我的体重,我的性别, 我的性取向,我的阶层- 十分极端以至于做出 自我伤害和自我否定的事情 我撒谎,我批判,我发牢骚, 我改变自己说话的方式 我还有很多极端的性生活 多年之后我回忆起 我并没有同意那些 因为我想我只配如此 顺便说一句,极端的性行为, 当双方同意且安全的情况下, 可以是一些最好的性行为 但正是我外祖母说的, 我正处于困境之中 我看向镜子并看到一些可怕的东西 但我努力说服周围的人我是极好的
The first time I performed in drag, I was 19, and to put it lightly, I was not fabulous. But so was everyone. And the standard back then, in 2011, was much lower than it is now. And, you know, the people of my repressed generation were just pretty happy to see something different. But ... As bad as I might have been, this experience was such a liberatory process, something that Oprah might have called an aha moment, because for the first time, this thing I'd only ever really seen in a mirror was real. She was tangible. And what's more, she was adored by a crowd of people.
第一次变装的时候,我19岁 简单的说, 我不是极好的 但每个人都不是极好的 在2011年,标准比现在更低一些 你知道,我这一代受压抑的人 很高兴能看到不一样的事物 但是 虽然我会很糟糕, 但这是一个解放的过程 奥普拉会称它为一个顿悟时刻 因为这是第一次, 我在镜子里看到的东西是真实的 她是可以触碰到的 而且,她被一群人喜爱
Drag continued this way for a while, until the barrier between the mirror and the real world faded away. I had admitted my most shameful desires to the world, and somewhere in some pockets of some worlds that I never knew existed, she was adored. So I started to drop my vowels more. I started to talk about Lancaster more. I started to wear ball gowns in the street, and I started to fall back in love with what I saw in the mirror. Eventually, everyone around me followed suit -- my friends, my family, my lovers. She became a place of value, and of power, and of uplift. She became what she'd been in the mirror all those years ago -- a savior.
变装照这样持续了一段时间, 直到镜子和真实世界的障碍逐渐消失 我已经向这个世界 承认了我最可耻的欲望, 而在我从不知道存在 的某个世界的某个角落里, 她受到了崇拜 所以我开始丢掉更多的元音 我开始更多地谈论兰开斯特 我开始在大街上穿舞会袍 并且我开始重新爱上 我在镜子里看见的东西 最终,我身边所有人都跟随着-- 我的朋友们,家人们,爱人们 她成为了有价值,有力量,有鼓舞的地方 她变成了多年前镜子里的样子-- 一个救世主
So I did what anyone who found their power source would do, and I leaned in as archcapitalist Sheryl Sandberg would say, and I journeyed to the heart of the queer motherland, East London. There, I had queer sex, I made queer friends, I wore queer clothes, and I built myself a job where I could dress like this every day, worshiping at the feet of the Northern women who raised me, and be celebrated for it. It's kind of a wild thing to get your head around, the idea of being celebrated for something you were so painfully derided for before.
所以我做了任何能发现 自己力量来源的人会做的事, 我就像首席资本家 谢丽尔·桑德伯格所说的, 我来到了奇怪祖国的心脏地带, 东部伦敦 在那里,我有奇怪的性生活, 我交了奇怪的朋友, 我穿着奇怪的衣服, 而且我为自己创建一个 可以每天这样穿着的工作, 拜倒在抚养我长大的北方女人脚下 并为此庆祝 这是一件疯狂的事情, 这个想法意味着 你要为曾经被痛苦嘲笑的事情庆祝
But my journey to shamelessness was not over. Funny how years of deep embedded circuitry takes a little while to untangle. See, I'd made this bubble, this shame-free bubble where everything about me was celebrated. And one night on the way home from a gig in drag, I was beat so badly that I was hospitalized, by a homophobic passer by. The shame flooded out of my internal boxes and filled me up. I went to so many dark places in my head. I'm loathe to repeat them, but I asked myself questions like "What if everyone who's ever said anything bad about me was right? What if I deserve all of this shame?"
但是我通向没有羞耻感的旅程还未结束 有趣的是多年的迂回 需要一点时间才能解开 所以,我会创造一个泡沫, 这个没有羞耻感的泡沫 关于我的所有都会被庆祝 一天晚上,在从一场 变装演出回家的路上, 我被一个恐同路人 打得很惨以至于进医院 羞耻感从我的内心涌上来并将我充满 我的脑海里闪过许多黑暗的想法 我讨厌重复它们, 但是我问了自己一些问题,比如 “如果每个说过我坏话的人都是对的呢? 如果我只配这种羞耻感呢?”
I had some work to do, and I was a bit too shaken to stay around in London, so I took a train from Euston back home to Lancaster, and I spent some time healing. And I worked hard to fall in love with the things I thought I'd left behind, the things I'd loved about Lancaster, growing up. The people there, the way we connect, Jan down the SPAR shop, who sells fags, the boys who give you a bit of a look but respect you nonetheless. And I came back to London with more of an awareness of my value, of my history. I had been dressing differently since the attack. I was wearing all black, plain clothes, trying to blend in, because when I was at home in Lancaster, I realized that safety was more important to me than curing myself of shame, and I can't do the latter if I don't have the former.
我需要做些事情, 而且我很害怕留在伦敦, 所以我从尤斯顿坐火车回兰开斯特, 并且我花了些时间疗伤 我努力尝试爱上 我可能留下的东西 那些在兰切斯特成长中热爱的东西 那里的人,我们连接的方式 在SPAR商店卖烟的简, 那些会看你一眼的男孩但却依然尊重你 我回到伦敦带着更多认识 关于我的价值, 我的曾经 自从被攻击我有着不同的打扮 我穿着全黑的便衣,试图融入, 因为当我在兰切斯特的家时, 我意识到安全比治愈 自己的羞耻感更重要, 如果我做不到前者,也不会做得到后者
But while I was up in Lancaster, I'd also had another realization. I realized that everybody suffers with shame. Even my attacker. This was another aha moment, a moment so liberatory that it confused me for a while. The fact that I wasn't alone in this, that everyone suffers from shame. Normality is God and everyone's a sinner, I realized. I got obsessed with that. I started looking everywhere and seeing shame in people's behaviors, from their silence to their violence, from their gender-reveal parties to their big white weddings. Even my attacker. He was so filled with shame because of what masculinity had done to him that upon seeing my difference, he lashed out at me with his fists. Rather than curing my shame, I had to work hard to reimagine it as something that we all carry around with us, like little pebbles attached to our back in a rucksack. It's something that affects us all, that causes harm in us all and causes us to perpetuate harm outwards to others too. I also realized I was existing in a complicated interplay of narcissism, self-hate and shame too, where I wanted everyone to accept everything about me. And until then, until that moment, I would see something monstrous in the mirror. But I realized that I don't need everyone to accept everything about me. Jan down the SPAR shop who sells fags has way bigger problems than my gender, my class, my sexuality. She's got her own shame to deal with. But what we do need -- well, I need -- is the ability to live safely. The ability to walk down the street in drag and not have some homophobic passerby do what he did to me. And the way we do that is by doing some shame-work. It's about looking inside and realizing that all the boxes that had been put there by the world are a lie. All the things that you've had to shave off to make yourself smooth, bring them back. There's power there, there's value there. There's beauty there. Shame-work is social work -- it's time we all did a bit. These days, I find it easy to look in the mirror.
但是在兰切斯特时,我还有另一个想法 我意识到所有人都遭遇着羞耻感 甚至攻击我的人 这是另一个顿悟时刻, 一个如此自由的时刻 以至于让我困惑了一会儿 事实是我并不是独自一人, 每个人都遭遇着羞耻感 我意识到正常是上帝, 每个人都是罪人 我变得沉迷于此 我开始看着每个人 并看见每个人行为中的羞耻感, 从他们的无声到暴力, 从他们的性别揭晓派对到纯白的婚礼 甚至是攻击我的人 他充斥了羞耻感由于男子气概对他的影响 让他一看到我的不同就挥拳打我 不再是治愈羞耻感,我努力将它 重新想象成每个人都背负的东西, 就像背包里的小鹅卵石一样 它影响我们每个人, 对我们产生了伤害, 也让我们伤害了他人 我还意识到我存在于一个复杂的 自恋、自我憎恨和羞耻的相互作用中, 我想要每个人都接受我的全部 直到那时,直到那个时刻, 我会在镜子里看到一个畸形的东西 但我意识到我不需要每个人接受我的一切 在SPAR商店卖同性恋的简 有比我的性别, 阶级,性取向更大的问题 她有她需要解决的羞愧感 但是我们需要的--我需要的-- 是有能力安全地生活下去。 变装走在路上的能力 和不要让害怕同性恋 的路人像对我做的那样 我们的办法是做一些羞耻感-工作 它是关于看向内在 并且意识到所有的被世界放在那里的盒子 是一个谎言 你为了让自己更加光滑而剃掉的所有东西 将它们带了回来 这里有力量,有价值。这里有美丽 羞耻感-工作是社会性工作-- 我们是时候都做出一点行动 这些天,我发现照镜子很容易
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
感谢倾听我的TED演讲