为什么女孩在性爱中很少获得真正的快乐？

GIRLS AND SEX
Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
By Peggy Orenstein
303 pp. Harper. $26.99.

《女孩与性: 探索复杂的新领域》

佩吉·奥伦斯坦/著

303页，哈珀出版社。26.99美元。

（本文作者Cindi Leive是《魅力》(Glamour)杂志主编。）

佩吉·奥伦斯坦这本新书中有这样一个时刻，似乎可以概括出现在十几岁女孩的样子。一个参加了性别研讨班的经济学系学生，正在宿舍里为晚上出去玩化妆打扮，一边兴高采烈地和奥伦斯坦聊起广告里的性别刻板印象，一边穿上迷你裙，拿起一瓶伏特加，打算靠它们达成晚上的目的：“喝个烂醉，找个人睡。”“你很性感，”朋友告诉她，而她显然意识到这一幕很怪异，便转向奥伦斯坦说：“在我们的性别研讨课上，我总是说，‘可憎的父权制度’，”她说。“但是……如果晚上没有男人注意你，那又有什么意思？”她解释说，自己的野心就是“放浪得刚刚好，不拘谨也不淫荡……每个大学女生都梦想能找到这样的平衡，你明白我的意思吗？”

There’s a moment midway through Peggy Orenstein’s latest book that seems to sum up what it’s like to be a teenage girl right now. An economics major taking a gender studies class is getting dressed in her college dorm room for a night out, cheerfully discussing sexual stereotyping in advertising with Orenstein — while at the same time grabbing a miniskirt and a bottle of vodka, the better to achieve her evening goal: to “get really drunk and make out with someone.” “You look hot,” her friend tells her — and the student, apparently registering the oddness of the scene, turns to Orenstein. “In my gender class I’m all, ‘That damned patriarchy,’ ” she says. “But . . . what’s the point of a night if you aren’t getting attention from guys?” Her ambition, she explains, “is to be just slutty enough, where you’re not a prude but you’re not a whore. . . . Finding that balance is every college girl’s dream, you know what I mean?”

《女孩与性》的主题就是探讨这样的想法是如何成了人们的梦想。这个主题是奥伦斯坦所做的一个发人深省的调查，偶尔也让人感到绝望。她的上一本书是研究学校里的性别歧视、“公主病”与其他现象。注意：奥伦斯坦是《纽约时报》杂志的撰稿人，也是一个八九岁女孩的妈妈。她写这些报道是因为担心所谓的“约炮文化”(hookup culture)，然而等写完书之后，她更加担心了。倒不是说女孩们有过太多次性爱（中学女生做爱的比率其实降低了）；就算她们做过爱，奥伦斯坦也小心地不去做评判。她担心的是，女孩子们在性爱中的行为，从口交到“文爱”，大都是为了取悦男孩们，而不是为了她们自己。她说，对于男人们来说，性爱中存在很多乐趣和享受；但是对于女孩们来说（至少是对于异性恋女孩），性爱中身体性的快感很少，总是伴随着许多遗憾，以及男孩掌控了局面的感觉。在奥伦斯坦的书中，半数女孩说她们是被迫进行性行为的，其中不少是被强暴的。顺便说一句，她们当中就有那个学经济学的女孩，强迫她与之发生性行为的男人翌日开车送她时，她对他说：“谢谢，我很开心。”这让她自己感到非常困惑。在奥伦斯坦笔下，性爱的游戏场实在太不公平，没有什么女孩能够取胜。

Exactly how that got to be anyone’s dream is the subject of “Girls and Sex,” a thought-provoking if occasionally hand-wringing investigation by Orenstein, who in previous books has put classroom sexism, princess obsessions and other phenomena under her microscope. Be warned: Orenstein, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the mother of a preteen girl, begins her reporting worried by what she’s heard about “hookup culture” — and ends it even more freaked out. It’s not that girls are having so much sex (the percentage of high-schoolers who have had intercourse is actually dropping); even if they were, Orenstein’s careful to say she wouldn’t judge, really. But the acts the girls are engaging in, from oral sex to sexting, tend to be staged, she argues, more for boys’ enjoyment than their own. For guys, she says, there is fun and pleasure; for girls (at least the straight ones), too little physical joy, too much regret and a general sense that the boys are in charge. Fully half the girls in Orenstein’s book say they’ve been coerced into sex, and many had been raped — among them, by the way, that econ major, who was so confused that when her assailant dropped her off the next morning, she told him, “Thanks, I had fun.” The sexual playing field Orenstein describes is so tilted no girl could win.

我知道，我知道，每一代人都觉得，从他们年轻时起，世事就变得太复杂（这也是父母们普遍接受的真理之一，比如孩子们再也不去外面玩了）。但《女孩与性》这本书中最有意思的核心问题并不是现在的世界对女孩来说是变得更好还是更糟了，而是在这个女人大学毕业率高于男性、男女工资差距日益缩小的时代，年轻女人为什么对亲密关系更不满意了。“女孩们在公共领域内有了如此之多的变化，”奥伦斯坦写道，“为什么……私人领域内的变化寥寥无几？”

I know, I know: Every generation thinks things have gotten more complicated since they were young (it’s one of those universally accepted parental truths, like the fact that kids don’t go outside and play anymore). But the interesting question at the heart of “Girls and Sex” is not really whether things are better or worse for girls. It’s why — at a time when women graduate from college at higher rates than men and are closing the wage gap — ­aren’t young women more satisfied with their most intimate relationships? “When so much has changed for girls in the public realm,” Orenstein writes, “why hasn’t more . . . changed in the private one?”

为了回答这个问题，奥伦斯坦走访了70多位年龄在15到20岁之间的年轻女性。她列出的其中一些原因是最被人熟知的：色情制品让男孩们期待能有时刻渴望性爱、全身去毛的伴侣，女孩们则会模仿那些拱起后背的动作，以及电影里完美的呻吟（对不起，大学男生们，研究表明你的女性伴侣假装高潮的百分比率还在稳步上升）。过去二十年来，人们只有禁欲的性课程，她认为这宣扬了耻辱感与错误的信息；甚至开明的父母也不会和女儿探讨她们在性爱中应该得到什么的话题，这当然更加于事无补（“父母除了说‘不许’以外，奥伦斯坦说，‘很多都不知道该说什么别的话。’”）。

To answer this question, Orenstein interviews more than 70 young women between the ages of 15 and 20. Some of the culprits she locates are more familiar than others: There’s pornography, which teaches boys to expect constantly willing, fully waxed partners, and girls to imitate all those arched backs and ­movie-perfect moans. (Sorry, male college students, but studies show that the percentage of your female peers who fake orgasm has been steadily rising.) There are the ­abstinence-only sex-ed programs of the last two decades, which she argues encourage shame and misinformation; and the unhelpful tendency of even liberal parents to go mute with their daughters on the subject of what they deserve in bed. (“Once parents stopped saying ‘Don’t,’ ” Orenstein observes, “many didn’t know what to say.”) 

Michael Todd

还有酒，太多的酒了，野格炸弹与龙舌兰酒让人丧失判断力。还有自拍文化，奥伦斯坦控诉说，这种文化鼓励女孩子们把她们视为“被赞”或者“不被赞”的对象，这本是一个非常简单的现象，却有着惊人深刻的涵义，因为物化自我的倾向总是与抑郁、高风险的性行为等等相联系的。还有那些全裸着扭动着身体的女人图片，以及那种脱掉衣服是一种权力象征的想法。（“我爱碧昂斯，”一个女孩告诉奥伦斯坦。“她就像女王一样。但我想，如果她不美，如果人们不觉得她性感，她还能发表她那些女权主义观点吗？”）尽管女孩们花了很多时间在“模仿性感”上，奥伦斯坦发现，她们的世界里没有真正的女性性意识——那就是发现自己想要什么，然后去做。她总结道，社会给了女孩做了“精神阴蒂切除术”。

There’s alcohol, so much alcohol, a judgment-dulling menu of Jäger bombs and tequila shots. There’s selfie culture, which Orenstein charges encourages girls to see themselves as objects to be “liked” (or not) — a simple-sounding phenomenon with surprisingly profound implications, since self-objectification has been linked with everything from depression to risky sexual behavior. There are the constant images of naked, writhing women, as well as the idea that taking your clothes off is a sign of power. (“I love Beyoncé,” one girl tells Orenstein. “She’s, like, a queen. But I wonder, if she wasn’t so beautiful, if people didn’t think she was so sexy, would she be able to make the feminist points she makes?”) And despite all the time girls spend “impersonating sexiness,” Orenstein finds that absent from their universe is a sense of actual female sexuality — figuring out what you want and doing it. Society is giving girls, she concludes, a “psychological clitoridectomy.”

啊，但是有一件事——奥伦斯坦采访的很多女孩根本不这么看，她们认为她的观点太老派，值得称道的是，她把她们的反驳都记录了下来（她们告诉她，妮琪·米娜[Nicki Minaj]一点都不性感，她是个自封的超级明星而已）。这些对话其实是《女孩与性》中最有意思，最出人意料的部分。女孩子们同意，没完没了的勾搭和约炮让她们心烦，但是比起“捕捉男人的情感”来，她们当中很多人还是更喜欢约炮，因为琢磨男人的情感让她们显得脆弱（这些访谈还透露出一种近乎喜剧性的代沟。一个刚刚从中学毕业的女孩向奥伦斯坦解释，口交“有点像钱或者现金……你就是靠它和那些受欢迎的男孩子们交朋友……它比性爱更加非个人化。”奥伦斯坦写道，“我可能已经属于是完全不同的上一代人了，但是，坦白地说，我很难认为嘴里含着阴茎是一种‘非个人化’的事。”）

Oh, but just one thing — plenty of the girls Orenstein interviews don’t see it that way at all, and it’s to her credit that she documents them pushing back against what they view as her old-school assumptions. (No, they tell her, Nicki Minaj isn’t a sex object — she’s a self-determining superstar.) These conversations are the most interesting, least expected part of “Girls and Sex,” as when girls share that while an endless string of hookups can bum them out, many of them prefer it to “catching feelings” for a guy, which would make them more vulnerable. (The interviews also reveal an almost comical generation gap. When one recent high school graduate explains to Orenstein that performing oral sex is “like money or some kind of currency. . . . It’s how you make friends with the popular guys. . . . It’s more impersonal than sex,” Orenstein writes, “I may be of a different generation, but, frankly, it’s hard for me to consider a penis in my mouth as ‘impersonal.’ ”)

这句话的确令人捧腹，但奥伦斯坦是完全不同的另一代人，她觉得青少年都是受害者，年轻人们可能并不买账。她去看麦莉·塞勒斯(Miley Cyrus)的演唱会，觉得这个半裸的明星完全是“独特”的“反义词”，而是“形象与观念的一团抹布”，你知道她是什么意思。但是这团抹布真正解决了奥伦斯坦书中的女孩们所面临的不少问题（这也能解释她走红的原因：她在MTV音乐录像颁奖礼上胜过了罗宾·西克[Robin Thicke]，遭到“荡妇羞辱”，但她坚持自己的立场，这堪称一个少女的复仇传奇）。还有，现实生活中的少女世界不仅仅都是卡戴珊那一套，洛德(Lorde)这样的名人走红靠的并不是走奥伦斯坦抨击的性感娃娃路线；如今年轻人的衣橱里往往既有二手店服装和匡威鞋，也有迷你裙和高跟鞋；就连倍耐力(Pirelli)日历今年都放弃了裸体模特，改为拍摄获得极高社会成就的女人，比如年轻的博客写手塔维·吉文森(Tavi Gevinson)，而且都穿着衣服。金·卡戴珊(Kim Kardashian)最近确实在Twitter上发了一张裸体自拍，也确实有些年轻女人为她叫好，但是不少人也回复她一个白眼。真相是，如今的女性文化远比《女孩与性》中所呈现的更加多样化，更加叛逆。

It’s a laugh-out-loud line, but Orenstein is of a different generation, and teenagers themselves may bristle at her judgment of them as victims. When she attends a Miley Cyrus concert and dismisses the half-naked star as “the opposite” of “unique,” and a “lint trap of ­images and ideas,” you know what she means — but that lint trap is also an actual young woman who is working out many of the same issues facing Orenstein’s subjects (a fact that surely accounts for some of her popularity: “Slut-shamed” after her romp with Robin Thicke on the MTV Video Music Awards, Cyrus has held her own — a teen-girl revenge fantasy). What’s more, the real-life teenage world isn’t all Kardashians, anyway: Celebrities like Lorde have become popular without embracing the sex-doll style Orenstein frets over; thrift-shop dresses and Converse high-tops now mingle with minis and stilettos in teenage closets everywhere; even the Pirelli calendar dumped its nude models this year for shots of high-achieving women like the young blogger Tavi Gevinson, clothed. When Kim Kardashian tweeted a nude selfie recently, sure, some young women cheered her on — but plenty posted the Twitter version of an eye-roll. The truth is, female culture is more varied and rebellious than “Girls and Sex” lets on.

而且《女孩与性》也不是关于所有女孩的。尽管同性恋青少年也被包括进来（她们似乎比同龄的异性恋更享受恋爱关系），奥伦斯坦的受访者主要都是中上阶层的女孩。她主要关注性对她们情感世界的影响，而不是对于她们身体健康的影响——怀孕和性病在她的采访中鲜少提及，更没有谈到如今的堕胎许可问题。而且，要考虑到低收入年轻女性更加没有能力负担州际旅行至堕胎诊所的费用，你不禁会想，如果把各种收入阶层的女孩都写进来，那么性爱及其背后的一系列后果又会是怎样的一幅图景。度过一个糟糕的夜晚是一回事，17岁就生孩子又是另一回事了。

And “Girls and Sex” isn’t really about all girls: Though gay teenagers are included (and seem generally happier in their relationships than their straight peers), Orenstein’s interviewees are mostly upper-middle-class, and she is mainly concerned with sex’s impact on their emotional lives, not physical well-being — pregnancy and S.T.D.s come up rarely in her interviews, and current-day abortion access not at all. But given that low-income young women are less able to pay, say, to travel across state lines to an open abortion clinic, you wonder how the picture of sex and its implications would have looked if girls of all incomes had been included. A bad night is one thing; a baby at 17 is another.

不管怎么说，《女孩与性》的真正读者也根本不是女孩——而是试图理解女孩子的家长们。所以父母如果希望女儿在性方面拥有良好心态，他们应该怎么做呢？“有一个办法，”奥伦斯坦提议，不过有点像开玩笑，“搬到荷兰去吧。”她指出，比起美国，荷兰女孩更乐于在恋爱关系中进行性爱，而不仅仅是为满足男孩子们的期望。荷兰人有这样一些值得借鉴的做法：她说，荷兰的父母和老师们会和孩子们谈论性——不仅是生殖器官和避孕套，而是性快乐与性满足，以及怎样表示拒绝或同意；荷兰女孩甚至被允许在家做爱，不用到处偷偷摸摸。奥伦斯坦举的这些例子都很有帮助（尽管做起来可能很不容易：每次我想和13岁的女儿讨论这本书，她都把门反锁起来，这本书可能也被她扔到内布拉斯加州去了）。但是她在书中指出的大部分问题是不可能仅仅通过餐桌和教室里的谈话就能得到解决的。

At any rate, the true audience for “Girls and Sex” isn’t girls at all — but parents trying to understand them. So what should a mother or father hoping for a sexually well-adjusted daughter do? “Here’s a solution,” Orenstein offers, only somewhat in jest. “Move to the Netherlands.” Dutch girls, she points out, are more likely to have sex in the context of loving relationships, and less because of boys’ expectations, than here at home. There are useful lessons from the Dutch examples: Parents and teachers there, she explains, talk to kids about sex — not just the birds and bees and condoms, but also pleasure and consent and exactly how to say no, or yes; they even endorse in-home sleepovers versus sneaking around. Orenstein makes an excellent case that all this will help (though it may not be easy: My own 13-year-old bolted from the room every time I tried to talk about this book with her and is probably in Nebraska by now). But the sweeping issues her reporting illuminates clearly can’t be solved by dinner-table or classroom conversations alone.

为了真正解决问题，就需要更大的解决方案。我不禁希望奥伦斯坦能够放下她的记者笔记本，为女孩子们自己，而不是她们的父母，写一本目标更明确的权利法案，让可以保护她们的性爱。《女孩与性》中充满着深沉的忧虑与富于同理心的问题：如果女孩们能够了解，她们自己的性冲动和男孩的性冲动一样重要会怎样？如果调情在清醒的情况下发生会怎样？等等……但是奥伦斯坦拥有独一无二的优势，她不应当止步于提出问题；希望她的下一本书能够告诉我们：应该这么办，我们就这么做吧。

To really fix things, you’ll need bigger solutions, and it’s tempting to wish Orenstein would put down her reporter’s notebook to write a more focused sexual bill of rights that girls themselves, and not just their parents, can get behind. “Girls and Sex” is full of thoughtful concern and empathetic questions: What if girls learned that their sex drives mattered as much as boys’? What if hookups took place sober? What if? But Orenstein is uniquely positioned to do more than ask questions; you want her next book to tell us: Here’s how. Let’s go.

翻译：董楠

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