I think it'll be a relief to some people and a disappointment to others that I'm not going to talk about vaginas today. I began "The Vagina Monologues" because I was worried about vaginas. I'm very worried today about this notion, this world, this prevailing kind of force of security. I see this word, hear this word, feel this word everywhere. Real security, security checks, security watch, security clearance. Why has all this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure? What does anyone mean when they talk about real security? And why have we, as Americans particularly, become a nation that strives for security above all else? In fact, I think that security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure. And that's actually the good news.
我想有些人可以放松了,但有人就要失望了 就是今天我不打算说与阴道相关的事情 我开始写《阴道独白》是因为对与之相关的那些事情感到忧虑 如今让我感到忧虑的是在这个世界上 有一种强大的,类似于强制力的“安全”概念 我到处都能看到、听到、感觉到这个词语 真正的安全、安全检查、安全监视、安全核查 为什么所有这些对安全的关注让我感到更加的不安全? 当人们在谈论“真正的安全”时,他们到底想说的是什么? 另外,为什么我们作为美国人在这方面尤为突出 成为了一个将安全感凌驾一切之上的国家? 事实上,我认为安全是抓不住的,是不可能的 我们都会死。我们都会变老。我们都会生病。身边的人会离开我们 也会令我们改变。没有什么东西是安全的 而这其实是个好消息
This is, of course, unless your whole life is about being secure. I think that when that is the focus of your life, these are the things that happen. You can't travel very far or venture too far outside a certain circle. You can't allow too many conflicting ideas into your mind at one time, as they might confuse you or challenge you. You can't open yourself to new experiences, new people, new ways of doing things -- they might take you off course. You can't not know who you are, so you cling to hard-matter identity. You become a Christian, Muslim, Jew. You're an Indian, Egyptian, Italian, American. You're a heterosexual or a homosexual, or you never have sex. Or at least, that's what you say when you identify yourself. You become part of an "us." In order to be secure, you defend against "them." You cling to your land because it is your secure place. You must fight anyone who encroaches upon it. You become your nation. You become your religion. You become whatever it is that will freeze you, numb you and protect you from doubt or change. But all this does, actually, is shut down your mind. In reality, it does not really make you safer.
事实确实如此,当然除非你一生都要致力于寻求安全 我想如果那(安全)是你生活的重心 下面这些事情就会发生 你无法去很远的地方,或是做些太出格的事情 你无法允许自己脑子里同时有太多冲突的想法 因为这些想法可能会让你迷惑或者受到挑战 你无法敞开心扉去接纳新的人和事 新的做事方式。因为这些可能会让你偏离轨道 你无法认清自己到底是谁,所以你把自己与一些实质的身份连在一起 你成为了一个基督教徒、伊斯兰教信徒或者是犹太教徒 你是印度人、埃及人、意大利人或者美国人 你是异性恋,同性恋,或者你从未有过性行为 或至少,当你向他人介绍自己的时候如此宣称 你成为了某个“我们”之中的一员 为了安全,你对抗“他们” 你一直待在你的地方,因为那是你的安全区 你必须和入侵你地盘的人斗争 你的国家,你的宗教定义了你 那些让你停止不前、让你麻木 让你远离怀疑与改变的东西定义了你 但事实上这些东西所做的便是关上你的思想之门 现实中,这些并没有真的使你变得更安全
I was in Sri Lanka, for example, three days after the tsunami, and I was standing on the beaches and it was absolutely clear that, in a matter of five minutes, a 30-foot wave could rise up and desecrate a people, a population and lives. All this striving for security, in fact, has made you much more insecure because now you have to watch out all the time. There are people not like you -- people who you now call enemies. You have places you cannot go, thoughts you cannot think, worlds that you can no longer inhabit. And so you spend your days fighting things off, defending your territory and becoming more entrenched in your fundamental thinking. Your days become devoted to protecting yourself. This becomes your mission. That is all you do. Ideas get shorter. They become sound bytes. There are evildoers and saints, criminals and victims.
举例来说,在海啸后的三天,我去了斯里兰卡 站在了那儿的海滩上 一切都清晰可见,只消短短五分钟 便可以涨起近十米高的巨浪 吞噬一个民族,令生灵涂炭 所有这些为安全而做出的努力,事实上 已经让你更加的不安全 因为现在你必须时刻提防 那些与你不同的人,那些现在被你称作敌人的人 有些地方你无法去,有些想法你不能有 有些地方你无法再居住 于是你整日忙于排斥异类,捍卫领土 日益深陷在自己的固有想法中 你时时刻刻小心保护自己 这成为了你的任务。这就是你所做的一切 (你的)想法变得简短,化成简单的字节 就是这世上只分好人和坏人,罪犯和受害者
There are those who, if they're not with us, are against us. It gets easier to hurt people because you do not feel what's inside them. It gets easier to lock them up, force them to be naked, humiliate them, occupy them, invade them and kill them, because they are only obstacles now to your security. In six years, I've had the extraordinary privilege through V-Day, a global movement against [violence against] women, to travel probably to 60 countries, and spend a great deal of time in different portions. I've met women and men all over this planet, who through various circumstances -- war, poverty, racism, multiple forms of violence -- have never known security, or have had their illusion of security forever devastated. I've spent time with women in Afghanistan under the Taliban, who were essentially brutalized and censored. I've been in Bosnian refugee camps. I was with women in Pakistan who have had their faces melted off with acid. I've been with girls all across America who were date-raped, or raped by their best friends when they were drugged one night.
这世上不是支持我们的人,就是反对我们的人 伤害别人开始变得简单,因为你不去了解他们内心的感受 把他们关起来、逼他们一丝不挂、羞辱他们 侵占他们、甚至杀死他们也更加容易了 因为他们现在只是你通往安全之路上的障碍 六年里,我因V日活动而拥有了一些特殊的机会。V日活动旨在 全球范围内反对对女性使用暴力 我因此去过了大概60个国家 花了大量的时间在这些不同的地区 走遍这个星球,我见过各种各样的男人和女人 这些人有着不同的境况 经历着战争、贫困、种族主义和各种形式的暴力 他们从不知道何为安全 或者是他们对安全的幻想已经被永远摧毁了 我和生活在塔利班控制下的阿富汗妇女呆过一段时间 这些妇女遭受着肉体上的折磨和精神上的控制 我去过波斯尼亚的难民营 我在巴基斯坦遇到妇女 因为被泼强酸而毁容 我在美国各地都遇到过女孩在约会时遭到强奸 或者某天晚上在被下药后被自己最好的朋友强奸
One of the amazing things that I've discovered in my travels is that there is this emerging species. I loved when he was talking about this other world that's right next to this world. I've discovered these people, who, in V-Day world, we call Vagina Warriors. These particular people, rather than getting AK-47s, or weapons of mass destruction, or machetes, in the spirit of the warrior, have gone into the center, the heart of pain, of loss. They have grieved it, they have died into it, and allowed and encouraged poison to turn into medicine. They have used the fuel of their pain to begin to redirect that energy towards another mission and another trajectory.
我在旅行当中发现的最令人惊奇的事情之一 就是有这么一类人正在崛起 我喜欢听他们谈论现实之外的另一个世界 我在V日的圈子里发现这样的人 我们称之为V勇士 这些特殊的人们,他们没有AK-47步枪 没有大砍刀或者大规模杀伤性武器 他们带着勇士精神,直入苦痛和失落的核心 他们为此经受磨难,甚至牺牲 毒酒变为良药在他们这里成为可能,并一直致力于此 他们将痛苦转化为重新起航的力量 迎向新的使命或者驶向新的航道
These warriors now devote themselves and their lives to making sure what happened to them doesn't happen to anyone else. There are thousands if not millions of them on the planet. I venture there are many in this room. They have a fierceness and a freedom that I believe is the bedrock of a new paradigm. They have broken out of the existing frame of victim and perpetrator. Their own personal security is not their end goal, and because of that, because, rather than worrying about security, because the transformation of suffering is their end goal, I actually believe they are creating real safety and a whole new idea of security. I want to talk about a few of these people that I've met.
这些勇士们正献身于一项事业 他们要确保曾经发生在他们身上的不幸不再发生在其他人身上 在这个星球上,这样的勇士即使没有上百万也有几千人 我做个大胆的猜测,在这间屋子里就有很多 他们有自由的意志和勇往直前的坚定 这些在我看来是一种新范例的基石 他们打破了现有犯罪者和受害人的存在模式 他们自身的个体安全不再是他们的终极目标 正因如此,正是因为没有为安全忧虑 正是因为将苦难转化作为他们的终极目标 我确信他们在营造真正的安全 并为安全注入新的涵义 我想说说我遇到的一些这样的人
Tomorrow, I am going to Cairo, and I'm so moved that I will be with women in Cairo who are V-Day women, who are opening the first safe house for battered women in the Middle East. That will happen because women in Cairo made a decision to stand up and put themselves on the line, and talk about the degree of violence that is happening in Egypt, and were willing to be attacked and criticized. And through their work over the last years, this is not only happening that this house is opening, but it's being supported by many factions of the society who never would have supported it. Women in Uganda this year, who put on "The Vagina Monologues" during V-Day, actually evoked the wrath of the government.
明天我要去往开罗 我很激动将能见到那些开罗妇女 是她们,组织参与V日活动,建立了第一家收容所 收容那些中东地区受虐的妇女们 之所以这样是因为开罗的妇女们做了决定,要站起来 团结一致 告诉人们在埃及暴力的严重程度 同时她们愿意面对攻击和批评 通过她们过去几年的努力 不仅仅是建立了收容所 收容所同时也得到了许多社会团体的支持 这些团体以前从未做过类似举动 今年,乌干达的妇女 在V日活动时上演《阴道独白》 事实上这一举动惹恼了当地政府
And, I love this story so much. There was a cabinet meeting and a meeting of the presidents to talk about whether "Vaginas" could come to Uganda. And in this meeting -- it went on for weeks in the press, two weeks where there was huge discussion. The government finally made a decision that "The Vagina Monologues" could not be performed in Uganda. But the amazing news was that because they had stood up, these women, and because they had been willing to risk their security, it began a discussion that not only happened in Uganda, but all of Africa. As a result, this production, which had already sold out, every single person in that 800-seat audience, except for 10 people, made a decision to keep the money. They raised 10,000 dollars on a production that never occurred.
我非常喜欢接下来的故事 政府召开了一次内阁会议和一次首脑会议 讨论是否能在乌干达上演《阴道独白》 媒体也对此进行了长达几周的报道 经过两周的激烈讨论 政府最后做出决定 不允许《阴道独白》在乌干达上演 但是令人惊喜的是,因为这些人为维护妇女权利作出了努力 并且甘愿用自已的安全去冒险 这不仅激起乌干达全国上下的讨论 更是引起全非洲的广泛讨论 最后,已经卖光的演出票 除了10个人,800位购票的观众 都决定不把钱收回 他们因一场没有发生的演出而筹集了一万美元
There's a young woman named Carrie Rethlefsen in Minnesota. She's a high school student. She had seen "The Vagina Monologues" and she was really moved. And as a result, she wore an "I heart my vagina" button to her high school in Minnesota.
在明尼苏达州有个叫凯瑞•路佛森的女孩 她是一个高中生 在看过《阴道独白》后非常感动,结果 她戴着一个印着“我爱我的阴道”的徽章去了她在明尼苏达州的高中
(Laughter)
(笑声)
She was basically threatened to be expelled from school. They told her she couldn't love her vagina in high school, that it was not a legal thing, that it was not a moral thing, that it was not a good thing. So she really struggled with this, what to do, because she was a senior and she was doing well in her school and she was threatened expulsion. So what she did is she got all her friends together -- I believe it was 100, 150 students all wore "I love my vagina" T-shirts, and the boys wore "I love her vagina" T-shirts to school.
学校警告说要把她开除 告诉她不可以在高中时爱她的阴道 这是违法的,是违反道德的 是不好的 这让她很挣扎,到底要如何去做 由于她是个高年级生,在学校里表现不错 面对要开除的警告,她的做法是,召集她所有的朋友 我想有100到150个学生 这些人全都穿上写有“我爱我的阴道”T恤 而男生们就穿着“我爱她的阴道”的T恤到学校
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Now this seems like a fairly, you know, frivolous, but what happened as a result of that, is that that school now is forming a sex education class. It's beginning to talk about sex, it's beginning to look at why it would be wrong for a young high school girl to talk about her vagina publicly or to say that she loved her vagina publicly.
现在听起来这一切有些不真实,你们知道的,有些轻率冲动 但这件事的结果是,现在这所学校 正要开设关于性教育的课程,开始公开地谈论性 开始正视这个问题,告诉学生为什么 对于高中女生来说,公开谈论她的阴道 或者说爱她的阴道是错的
I know I've talked about Agnes here before, but I want to give you an update on Agnes. I met Agnes three years ago in the Rift Valley. When she was a young girl, she had been mutilated against her will. That mutilation of her clitoris had actually obviously impacted her life and changed it in a way that was devastating. She made a decision not to go and get a razor or a glass shard, but to devote her life to stopping that happening to other girls. For eight years, she walked through the Rift Valley. She had this amazing box that she carried and it had a torso of a woman's body in it, a half a torso, and she would teach people, everywhere she went, what a healthy vagina looked like and what a mutilated vagina looked like. In the years that she walked, she educated parents, mothers, fathers. She saved 1,500 girls from being cut.
我知道我以前在这里已经说过关于艾格尼丝的事情了 但现在我要告诉你们一些她的最新消息 我三年前在东非大裂谷地区遇见了艾格尼丝 当她还是一个小女孩的时候,在违反她意愿的情况下被施行了割礼 阴蒂的割除 显然影响了她的一生 在某种程度上来说,毁灭性地改变了她的生活 她做了个决定,与其拿起剃刀或者玻璃碎片来结束自己的生命 她决定一生致力于阻止同类事情发生在其他女孩身上 八年来,她步行穿越东非裂谷 她带着一个让人惊异的盒子,盒子里面 一块是女性完整的器官,另一块是被割过的 她走到哪里,就告诉那里的人们 一个正常的阴道是什么样的,而被割过的是什么样的 在步行的途中,她把信息传递给那些母亲们和父亲们 让1500个女孩免受刀割
When V-Day met her, we asked her how we could support her and she said, "Well, if you got me a Jeep, I could get around a lot faster." So, we bought her a Jeep. In the year she had the Jeep, she saved 4,500 girls from being cut. So, we said, what else could we do? She said, "If you help me get money, I could open a house." Three years ago, Agnes opened a safe house in Africa to stop mutilation. When she began her mission eight years ago, she was reviled, she was detested, she was completely slandered in her community. I am proud to tell you that six months ago, she was elected the deputy mayor of Narok.
当V日组织接触到她,问她我们能提供什么帮助的时候 她说:“好吧,如果你们能帮我弄来一台吉普车, 我能更快地去到不同地方。”于是我们给她买了辆吉普 在她有了吉普的那一年,她让4500个女孩免于刀割 于是我们问她,还有什么我们能做的吗 她说:“如果你们能帮我筹到钱,我就能开一家收容所 三年前,艾格尼丝在非洲开了一家旨在阻止女性割礼的收容所 八年前当她刚开始她的拯救行动时,遭到了辱骂 被人们仇视,在她的社区中被骂的体无完肤 我非常骄傲的告诉你们,就在六个月前 她当选为那罗克市的副市长
(Applause)
(掌声)
I think what I'm trying to say here is that if your end goal is security, and if that's all you're focusing on, what ends up happening is that you create not only more insecurity in other people, but you make yourself far more insecure. Real security is contemplating death, not pretending it doesn't exist. Not running from loss, but entering grief, surrendering to sorrow. Real security is not knowing something, when you don't know it. Real security is hungering for connection rather than power. It cannot be bought or arranged or made with bombs. It is deeper, it is a process, it is acute awareness that we are all utterly inter-bended, and one action by one being in one tiny town has consequences everywhere. Real security is not only being able to tolerate mystery, complexity, ambiguity, but hungering for them and only trusting a situation when they are present.
我想我在这里要说的就是 如果你的终极目标是安全 而你只关注安全本身,那结果就是 你不只让其他的人感到更加的不安全 也让你自己愈发没有安全感 真正的安全状态不是对死亡视而不见,而是对它进行思考 不是对失去的东西视而不见,而是直面伤悲 真正的安全不是对自己不了解的事物妄下评判 真正的安全是渴望密切的联系而非追逐权力 真正的安全无法购买,也无法安排,更无法用炸弹确保 它是更深层的,一种过程,一种强烈的意识 这种意识就是我们全都是紧密相连的 一个小镇上的某个人的小举动 会对世界各地造成影响 真正的安全不只是能够 包容离奇复杂和模棱两可的事物,还要渴望它们 相信一个充满绝对和清晰的状态是不存在的
Something happened when I began traveling in V-Day, eight years ago. I got lost. I remember being on a plane going from Kenya to South Africa, and I had no idea where I was. I didn't know where I was going, where I'd come from, and I panicked. I had a total anxiety attack. And then I suddenly realized that it absolutely didn't matter where I was going, or where I had come from because we are all essentially permanently displaced people. All of us are refugees. We come from somewhere and we are hopefully traveling all the time, moving towards a new place. Freedom means I may not be identified as any one group, but that I can visit and find myself in every group. It does not mean that I don't have values or beliefs, but it does mean I am not hardened around them. I do not use them as weapons. In the shared future, it will be just that, shared. The end goal will [be] becoming vulnerable, realizing the place of our connection to one another, rather than becoming secure, in control and alone. Thank you very much.
八年前在我刚开始V日旅行的时候,发生了一件事。我迷失了 我记得我当时正在从肯尼亚去往南非的飞机上 但我却完全不知道自己身在哪里 我不记得自己要去哪,从哪来 我当时吓着了,陷入了一种焦虑发作的状态 然后我突然意识到从哪来,到哪去 这些其实完全不重要 因为我们所有人在本质上都是永远移动的 我们全都是流浪之人 我们来自某个地方,然后带着希望一直旅行 向着一个新地方前行 自由意味着我可以不属于任一个团体 但是我又可以在每个团体中来去和找到自己的位置 自由不意味着我没有价值观或者信仰 但意味着我不执拗于它们 我不把价值观和信仰用做武器 在共享的未来中,这些都将只是共享 最终的目标是大家互相都没有防备 意识到我们自己的地方与他人的紧密相连 而不是仅仅让自己感到安全,掌控一切却孤独无依 非常感谢你们
(Applause)
(掌声)
Chris Anderson: And how are you doing? Are you exhausted? On a typical day, do you wake up with hope or gloom? Eve Ensler: You know, I think Carl Jung once said that in order to survive the twentieth century, we have to live with two existing thoughts, opposite thoughts, at the same time. And I think part of what I'm learning in this process is that one must allow oneself to feel grief. And I think as long as I keep grieving, and weeping, and then moving on, I'm fine. When I start to pretend that what I'm seeing isn't impacting me, and isn't changing my heart, then I get in trouble. Because when you spend a lot of time going from place to place, country to country, and city to city, the degree to which women, for example, are violated, and the epidemic of it, and the kind of ordinariness of it, is so devastating to one's soul that you have to take the time, or I have to take the time now, to process that.
你怎么样?有没有觉得累坏了? 通常早上,你起来的时候是满怀希望的还是充满阴郁的? 你们知道,心理学家荣格曾经说过 为了在20世纪生存 我们不得不同时活在两个相反的想法中 我想我在这个过程中学到的是 一个人必须允许自己感到悲伤 只要我能够悲伤哭泣 然后继续前进,那样我就过得很好 如果我开始假装看到的东西对我并没有造成影响 假装对那些东西没有感觉,那时我就有麻烦了 因为当你花大量的时间从一个地方去到另一个地方 从国家到国家,从城市到城市 认识到妇女遭到侵犯的严重程度 涉及地区之广,存在之普遍 会让一个人的灵魂受到严重的冲击,需要一段时间才能平复 至少对于我来说,必须经过一段时间才能平复
CA: There are a lot of causes out there in the world that have been talked about, you know, poverty, sickness and so on. You spent eight years on this one. Why this one? EE: I think that if you think about women, women are the primary resource of the planet. They give birth, we come from them, they are mothers, they are visionaries, they are the future. If you think that the U.N. now says that one out of three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in their lifetime, we're talking about the desecration of the primary resource of the planet, we're talking about the place where we come from, we're talking about parenting. Imagine that you've been raped and you're bringing up a boy child. How does it impact your ability to work, or envision a future, or thrive, as opposed to just survive? What I believe is if we could figure out how to make women safe and honor women, it would be parallel or equal to honoring life itself.
在这个世界上,有许多事业被人们所提及 诸如解决贫穷、疾病问题等等,而你花了八年时间在这个上面 为什么是这个呢? 我认为,提起妇女我们就会想到 妇女孕育着这个星球上的生命,是她们把孩子生出来 我们的生命由她们赐予,她们是母亲,她们是前瞻者 她们是未来。如果你思考一下联合国现今所说的 世界上三分之一的妇女 将会遭遇强奸或者殴打 我们讨论的是这个星球上的生命之源的正在遭受亵渎 我们讨论的是生命的源起,讨论的是生命的哺育 想象一下,如果你曾遭受强奸,并为此抚养了一个男孩 这将怎样影响你的工作能力,或者对未来的展望 是不断成长还是艰难维生?我相信 如果我们能够想办法让妇女们更加安全,让她们得到尊重 这就是尊重生命本身。