Searching for Eve (Meredith Talusan, Matter)

Illustrations by Miguel Libarnes E ve Park is a model of Asian success.

Miguel Libarnes 绘制的插图 E ve Park 是亚洲成功的典范。

A second-generation immigrant from Korea, she earned a computer science degree from Harvard and now works for a major software company in the Northwest.

她是来自韩国的第二代移民，在哈佛大学获得了计算机科学学位，现在在西北地区的一家大型软件公司工作。

She lives in the suburbs, in a four-bedroom house that’s a bit boxy and generic, but is plenty spacious for her wife and two girls, six and eight.

她住在郊区的一栋四居室的房子里，房子有点四四方方、普通，但对于她的妻子和两个六岁和八岁的女儿来说已经足够宽敞了。

Her wife, a schoolteacher, prepares breakfast in the morning, then brings their eldest to elementary school, while Eve drops off their youngest at kindergarten.

她的妻子是一名学校老师，早上准备早餐，然后带他们最大的孩子去小学，而伊芙则送他们最小的孩子去幼儿园。

After work, Eve has dinner with her family, gives the girls a bath, and puts them to bed.

下班后，伊芙与家人共进晚餐，给女孩们洗澡，然后让她们上床睡觉。

Freed from distractions, she spends an hour or two by herself, wandering aimlessly on the Internet.

没有任何干扰，她会一个人呆上一两个小时，在网上漫无目的地闲逛。

As she does so her thoughts turn inward, and she starts to dwell on the most distressing fact of her life: that the person her family sees and the person she truly is are not the same.

当她这样做的时候，她的思绪转向内心，她开始思考她一生中最痛苦的事实：她家人所看到的人和她真正的样子并不一样。

She’s sure that she’s a woman, but she only gets to live a woman’s life online.

她确信自己是个女人，但她只能在网上过女人的生活。

Though Eve’s time online isn’t confined to late nights.

不过，伊芙的上网时间并不局限于深夜。

In opportune moments between what she calls “work zone” and “family zone,” Eve logs onto Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, where she interacts with her large group of friends as the woman she feels herself to be.

在伊芙所谓的“工作区”和“家庭区”之间的适当时刻，她会登录 Facebook、Twitter 和其他社交媒体，以她认为自己的身份与一大群朋友互动。

Eve has used her female name on these sites for over a decade, and has identified as a woman online for more than 20 years.

十多年来，伊芙在这些网站上使用自己的女性名字，并在网上自称女性身份已有 20 多年。

Most people who engage with Eve assume she presents as a woman offline, too.

大多数与夏娃接触过的人都认为她在线下也以女性的身份出现。

But to her wife, she is a husband, and to her daughters she is Daddy.

但对妻子来说，她是丈夫，对女儿来说，她是爸爸。

Eve relies on her interactions on social media — with people who treat and perceive her as a woman — to sustain herself in both real and virtual worlds.

夏娃依靠她在社交媒体上的互动——与那些对待她、将她视为女性的人——来维持自己在现实和虚拟世界中的生存。

She calls her online social life the “release valve” that eases her gender dysphoria.

她称自己的在线社交生活是缓解她性别焦虑的“释放阀”。

I’ve known Eve since college, before either of us began our transition.

我从大学起就认识伊芙了，当时我们都还没有开始变性。

To outsiders, Eve’s life can seem baffling.

在外人看来，夏娃的生活似乎令人费解。

As an openly trans person, I myself have found it hard to understand at times.

作为一个公开的跨性别者，我自己有时也很难理解。

There’s something profoundly unsettling about the idea of living as one person — the wrong person — for much of the day and only finding solace online.

一天的大部分时间里，作为一个人——一个错误的人——而只能在网上寻找安慰，这种想法让人感到非常不安。

The desire for others to share and affirm one’s sense of reality is fundamental, and it’s hard to imagine living without it, especially for a feature as important as gender.

渴望他人分享和肯定自己的现实感是根本，很难想象没有它的生活，尤其是对于像性别这样重要的特征。

For Eve, investing in online communities under an assumed name allowed her to explore the idea of being female, and then develop a full digital existence as a woman, without jeopardizing the daily order of her physical life.

对于伊芙来说，以假名投资在线社区使她能够探索女性的想法，然后发展出作为女性的完整数字存在，而不会危及她的日常生活秩序。

Frozen by the fear of losing her family, she restrains herself from physically transitioning in any way.

由于害怕失去家人，她克制自己不以任何方式进行身体上的转变。

This balance has worked for 14 years.

这种平衡已经持续了 14 年。

Though she claims to be in a “holding pattern” as of late, there are clear signs that this balance may be tipping, as transgender issues have come to the foreground of public consciousness.

尽管她声称最近处于“停滞状态”，但有明显迹象表明，随着跨性别问题已成为公众意识的焦点，这种平衡可能正在倾斜。

This growing visibility fuels her desire for both community and the possibility of freedom — freedom from the feeling that she’s a fraud for being a trans woman without any physical manifestation of her womanhood, and freedom from the gender she’s perceived to be, but Eve’s fundamentally alienated from.

这种日益增长的知名度激发了她对社区和自由可能性的渴望——不再因为自己是一个跨性别女性而没有任何女性特征的身体表现而觉得自己是个骗子，也不再认为自己的性别是伊芙从根本上疏远的。

She’s been pushing her limits online, revealing more clues that could link Eve with her physical self.

她一直在网上挑战自己的极限，揭示了更多可能将夏娃与她的肉体联系起来的线索。

And with each detail she adds, the careful walls she’s built between her two lives threaten to crumble.

随着她添加的每一个细节，她在两段生活之间精心筑起的围墙都面临着崩溃的危险。

E ve’s first inkling that she was different came unexpectedly, while watching a Disney movie when she was about seven years old.

伊芙第一次意识到自己与众不同，是在她七岁左右看一部迪士尼电影时，出乎意料地出现的。

“This may be the only trans narrative that starts out with a viewing of The Shaggy Dog ,” she told me .

“这可能是唯一一个以观看《毛茸茸的狗》开始的跨性别叙事，”她告诉我。

“I was sitting there, and I was like, wow, there’s this magic amulet, and it turns the wearer into whatever spirit was in the amulet.

“我坐在那里，我当时想，哇，这是一个神奇的护身符，它可以将佩戴者变成护身符中的任何灵魂。

I guess this was the a-ha moment.

我想这就是顿悟时刻。

I was like, well, I want an amulet like that, but I wouldn’t become a dog!” Eve wanted to be a girl.

我当时想，好吧，我想要一个这样的护身符，但我不会变成一只狗！”夏娃想成为一个女孩。

From that point on, Eve could recount a whole list of movies and books she saw and read throughout her childhood and teenage years, which explore the idea of body and mind swapping — Freaky Friday, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Heinlein’s I Will Fear No Evil are just a few examples.

从那时起，伊芙可以回忆起她在童年和青少年时期看过和读过的一整套电影和书籍，这些电影和书籍探讨了身心交换的想法——《怪异星期五》、埃德加·赖斯·巴勒斯、罗伯特·海因莱因的《我不会害怕邪恶》只是几个例子。

When Eve was 12 years old, she joined her Methodist church group on a trip to a large Midwestern university.

当伊芙 12 岁时，她加入了卫理公会教会团体，前往中西部一所大型大学旅行。

The retreat sought to bring young Christians together, but Eve found herself wandering off to the college library.

这次静修活动试图将年轻的基督徒聚集在一起，但夏娃发现自己漫步到了大学图书馆。

“They had a computerized card-catalogue, which was something I’d never seen, ’cause this was 1986 or something,” Eve told me.

“他们有一个计算机化的卡片目录，这是我从未见过的东西，因为那是 1986 年什么的，”伊芙告诉我。

She found a book called The Number of the Beast , by Heinlein, in which an astronaut becomes cryogenically preserved in space.

她发现了海因莱因写的一本名为《野兽的数量》的书，书中一名宇航员在太空中被低温保存。

The astronaut’s genetic material is so damaged that aliens must replace the astronaut’s Y-chromosomes with X chromosomes.

宇航员的遗传物质严重受损，外星人必须用 X 染色体取代宇航员的 Y 染色体。

“And he is reborn as a woman,” Eve explained, emphatically.

“他重生为女人，”夏娃强调地解释道。

“That was the first time I saw the word transsexual…I was here in a library full of books, and I had a word, and I had a computerized card-catalogue.

“那是我第一次看到变性人这个词……我在一个装满书籍的图书馆里，我有一个词，我有一个计算机化的卡片目录。

So I just put the word into the card-catalogue…”

所以我就把这个词放进卡片目录里了……”

She pulled every book from the shelf that came up under transsexual.

她把书架上所有关于变性人的书都撤了。

“And I thought to myself, finally, I’ve found something that describes what I am.”

“我心想，终于，我找到了一些能够描述我的东西。”

Eve began to see herself as a girl in her imagination, wishing she could experience what it would be like to swap bodies with a woman, like in Freaky Friday .

伊芙开始在想象中将自己视为一个女孩，希望自己能体验一下与女人交换身体的感觉，就像《辣妈星期五》中那样。

As she burrowed deeper into her mind, the person she saw in her thoughts grew more important than her real-life presentation.

当她深入思考时，她在脑海中看到的人变得比她现实生活中的表现更重要。

In high school, Eve created her first email account.

高中时，伊芙创建了她的第一个电子邮件帐户。

“I chose a feminine-leaning username, Lylla,” she explained, “and it raised eyebrows and I shrugged it off with some jokey explanation.” At Harvard, where the two of us became friends, we both participated in an online newsgroup that some of the alternative kids on campus frequented, mostly theater, sci-fi, and computer folks.

“我选择了一个女性化的用户名 Lylla，”她解释道，“这引起了人们的注意，但我用一些玩笑的解释耸了耸肩。”在哈佛，我们两个成为了朋友，我们都参加了一个在线新闻组，校园里的一些另类孩子经常光顾该新闻组，其中大多数是戏剧、科幻和计算机爱好者。

In that group Eve first encountered discussions with other people who identified as transgender.

在这个群体中，伊芙第一次遇到了与其他自认为跨性别者的讨论。

“It was super valuable in terms of making me realize that other people I went to school with were having the same kinds of identity dilemmas that I was having,” Eve told me.

“这让我意识到和我一起上学的其他人也面临着和我一样的身份困境，这非常有价值，”伊芙告诉我。

But at the time, she kept her feelings of dysphoria to herself.

但当时，她把不安的感觉藏在心里。

For many trans folks, knowledge of one’s true identity doesn’t always mean that the best course of action is physical transition.

对于许多跨性别者来说，了解自己的真实身份并不总是意味着最好的行动方针是身体转变。

In my case, I only realized my trans identity after college, but took the medical and legal steps to feel comfortable living as a woman within two years.

就我而言，我在大学毕业后才意识到自己的跨性别身份，但在两年内采取了医疗和法律措施，让自己能够以女性的身份舒适地生活。

But trans people who decide not to disclose their trans identity are not always simply closeted.

但决定不公开自己跨性别身份的跨性别者并不总是简单地封闭自己。

Many people exist in limbo, having significant transgender feelings, yet remaining unsure that disclosure or physical transition is right for them.

许多人处于不确定状态，有明显的变性感受，但仍然不确定披露或身体变性是否适合他们。

Eve existed in this liminal state throughout college and a few years after.

伊芙在整个大学期间以及几年后一直处于这种阈限状态。

She kept her trans identity a secret, in part because she was afraid of coming out — but also because she wasn’t sure how her trans identity would manifest in the real world.

她对自己的跨性别身份保密，部分原因是她害怕出柜，但也因为她不确定自己的跨性别身份在现实世界中会如何体现。

In 2002 Eve started carving out a larger space for herself online.

2002 年，伊芙开始在网上为自己开拓更大的空间。

She created a female persona in a massive multiplayer online game called Game Neverending , a now-defunct simulation game in which the sole goal was for players to interact.

她在一款名为《Game Neverending》的大型多人在线游戏中创造了一个女性角色，这是一款现已停产的模拟游戏，其唯一目标是让玩家互动。

When people in the game began keeping blogs, she started one, too.

当游戏中的人们开始写博客时，她也开始写博客。

Eve’s blog was a space where she could interact with players outside of the game.

Eve 的博客是她可以与游戏之外的玩家互动的空间。

It was a place where she could indulge in a “female identity,” where she could bask in pastel colors, animé women, and her obsession with Japanese candy and Korean romcoms.

这是一个她可以沉迷于“女性身份”的地方，在那里她可以享受柔和的色彩、动漫女性以及她对日本糖果和韩国浪漫喜剧的痴迷。

For Eve, it made sense to write in the persona of her character in Game Neverending.

对于伊芙来说，在游戏永无止境中写下她的角色角色是有意义的。

Eve knew a few folks from the game in real life.

伊芙在现实生活中认识了一些游戏中的人。

If they asked about her identity on the blog, she simply explained that since other players assumed her to be a woman, she was just fulfilling their expectations.

如果他们在博客上询问她的身份，她只是简单地解释说，因为其他玩家认为她是女性，所以她只是满足了他们的期望。

“Part of me wanted to convince myself that was true, too,” Eve said.

“我内心也想说服自己这也是真的，”伊芙说。

“‘Oh, you know, people are forcing me to be this way.’”

“‘哦，你知道，人们强迫我这样做。’”

Over time, Eve began to discuss her lived life on her blog, including details of the trips she took, her musings about her long-distance relationship with her future wife, and her passions for food and photography.

随着时间的推移，伊芙开始在博客上讨论她的生活，包括她旅行的细节、她对与未来妻子的异地关系的思考，以及她对美食和摄影的热情。

The only thing she didn’t do was specify her gender.

她唯一没有做的就是明确自己的性别。

“Eventually, it just kind of transitioned.

“最终，事情发生了转变。

I keep using that word, but that’s what it did, it transitioned into like, basically just being me.

我一直用这个词，但这就是它的作用，它变成了，基本上就是我。

With nobody the wiser.”

没有人比他更明智。”

Eve wrote so much about her lived life on the blog that she found herself, both for her own clarity and those of her readers, needing to separate posts in the voice of her online character and those that were her “real” self when she wrote about her lived life — the “real” self that people assumed to be a woman.

伊芙在博客上写了太多关于她生活的内容，以至于她发现自己，无论是为了自己的清晰性，还是为了读者的清晰度，都需要将她在线角色的声音和她在写自己的生活时的“真实”自我（人们认为是女性的“真实”自我）分开。

So, she came up with another name to identify that woman.

于是，她想出了另一个名字来识别那个女人。

The name she chose was Eve.

她选择的名字是夏娃。

Around the time that Eve began writing her blog, she also started exploring her female identity on Flickr, which was originally a photo-sharing feature of Game Neverending.

在 Eve 开始写博客的时候，她也开始在 Flickr 上探索自己的女性身份，Flickr 最初是 Game Neverending 的一个照片共享功能。

Because Eve’s Flickr account evolved from her extensive community in the online game, the site was so much more to her than just an anonymous photo-sharing tool.

由于 Eve 的 Flickr 帐户是从她在在线游戏中的广泛社区发展而来的，因此该网站对她来说不仅仅是一个匿名照片共享工具。

Members of her network left personal comments on her pictures — her contemplative urban still lifes from home, or her images from trips around the world.

她的网络成员对她的照片留下了个人评论——她在家中沉思的城市静物，或者她在世界各地旅行时拍摄的照片。

They praised Eve’s obsession with small, seemingly inconsequential details, whether it was the vein of a leaf or a lone bird perched on a ledge at the airport.

他们赞扬伊芙对看似无关紧要的小细节的痴迷，无论是树叶的叶脉还是栖息在机场壁架上的孤独的鸟。

She’s also taken many pictures of women’s mannequins — it’s hard not to think of them as substitutes for herself.

她还拍摄了许多女性模特的照片——很难不将它们视为自己的替代品。

Missing from Eve’s timeline are selfies, so when she shared a photo of a girl friend, who was also Asian, Eve’s Flickr community assumed it was her.

Eve 的时间线中缺少自拍照，因此当她分享了一位亚洲女友的照片时，Eve 的 Flickr 社区认为就是她。

Comments such as “Hi, you” and “Right back atcha” popped up underneath the photo.

照片下方弹出了诸如“嗨，你”和“右后atcha”之类的评论。

“I never intended the implication that someone else was me,” Eve said, “but it was a nice feeling to be validated as female.” Over the next couple of years, Eve posted three more pictures of other female friends, none of whom were the same woman.

“我从来没有想过暗示别人就是我，”伊芙说，“但被认可为女性的感觉很好。”在接下来的几年里，伊芙又发布了三张其他女性朋友的照片，其中没有一个是同一个人。

She even posted an image of a woman in front of a mirror without revealing her face, which I assumed to be her, and which I only later learned was an image of a friend.

她甚至贴了一张女人在镜子前的照片，但没有露出她的脸，我以为是她，后来我才知道这是一个朋友的照片。

Other people also assumed these pictures of different women were Eve.

其他人也认为这些不同女性的照片是夏娃。

“Each time it happened, I didn’t do anything to specifically refute it,” she said.

“每次发生这种事，我都没有做任何具体的反驳，”她说。

“I was scared that saying one way or another would cause more scrutiny about what I actually looked like.”

“我害怕这样或那样的说法会引起人们对我的真实面貌进行更多的审视。”

Only once did Eve present her physical self on Flickr: a photo of her real eye.

夏娃只在 Flickr 上展示过一次她的真实自我：一张她真眼的照片。

It was an expression of her desire to express her “real” self as female, but without so much risk that it might expose her male-presenting real-life self.

这是她表达自己作为女性的“真实”自我的愿望的表达，但又没有太大的风险，以至于可能暴露她在现实生活中呈现的男性自我。

This has become part of a pattern for Eve — exposing herself enough so that people might recognize her, but not so much that she might get fully exposed.

这已经成为夏娃模式的一部分——充分暴露自己，以便人们可以认出她，但又不至于让她完全暴露。

She’s established a policy of telling people the truth if they ask her directly about whether she’s trans.

她制定了一项政策，如果人们直接问她是否是跨性别者，她就会告诉他们真相。

This allows her to find people who recognize her identity without the psychological difficulty and awkwardness of her having to directly bring it up.

这使她能够找到认可她身份的人，而无需直接提出来而产生心理困难和尴尬。

“That was really scary for me,” Eve said, about posting a picture of her real eye.

“这对我来说真的很可怕，”伊芙在发布一张她真眼的照片时说道。

“I had to ‘fluff’ my lashes a little.” Her Flickr community responded with excitement and confirmation, writing notes such as, “ Such large pupils!

“我不得不稍微‘弄松’我的睫毛。”她的 Flickr 社区做出了兴奋和肯定的回应，并写下了这样的注释：“学生这么大！

I’d love to have that eye,” and “ I’m so jealous you have no wrinkles, and you don’t even use night cream!

我很想拥有那只眼睛”和“我很嫉妒你没有皱纹，而且你甚至不使用晚霜！

Xo ” Like the other female portraits, this photo simply merged with people’s aggregate perceptions of Eve’s physical self.

Xo”就像其他女性肖像一样，这张照片简单地融入了人们对夏娃身体自我的总体认知。

I’ ve only seen Eve in person once since college, in 2012, when I came to her city for a conference.

自大学以来，我只见过伊芙一次，那是 2012 年，当时我来到她所在的城市参加一个会议。

She looked pretty much the same to me as she did at Harvard, presenting as male in a polo shirt, using her long bangs to shield herself from the world.

在我看来，她和她在哈佛时的样子几乎一样，穿着马球衫，以男性的身份出现，用长刘海来保护自己与世隔绝。

I had always interpreted Eve’s downcast eyes as shyness, but I’ve come to realize that it’s about something more: she doesn’t want people to pay attention to a body she doesn’t feel belongs to her.

我一直把伊芙低垂的眼神理解为害羞，但我逐渐意识到这还有更多的原因：她不希望人们注意到她不属于她的身体。

In a cafeteria at the convention hall, while disconsolately spearing beans with a plastic fork, she came out to me as trans.

在会议厅的自助餐厅里，当她沮丧地用塑料叉子叉豆子时，她向我坦白自己是跨性别者。

“Facebook has become my lifeline,” she explained in her naturally high voice.

“Facebook 已经成为我的生命线，”她用自然高亢的声音解释道。

It’s there that she’s built the trans community she lacks in real life, a community that affirms her female identity.

在那里，她建立了她在现实生活中所缺乏的跨性别社区，一个肯定她女性身份的社区。

Facebook and Twitter allow Eve to maintain relationships with online friends and interact with more members of the trans community, who often friend each other for support even when they’ve never met in real life.

Facebook 和 Twitter 使 Eve 能够与网上朋友保持关系，并与跨性别社区的更多成员互动，即使他们在现实生活中从未见过面，他们也经常互相加好友以寻求支持。

“I can basically live a full social life [online],” she explained.

“我基本上可以在网上过上完整的社交生活，”她解释道。

Eve uses Facebook the way many people do, as a way to share information about her life, articles of interest, and to message with friends.

Eve 与许多人一样使用 Facebook，作为分享生活信息、感兴趣的文章以及与朋友发送消息的方式。

The only difference is that many of those friends assume they’re interacting with a person who also presents as female in the physical world.

唯一的区别是，许多朋友认为他们正在与一个在现实世界中也以女性身份出现的人互动。

“All of my identity as Eve is based on these services right now,” Eve said.

“我作为 Eve 的所有身份现在都基于这些服务，”Eve 说。

“They’re the only viable way to maintain the relationships that I do.

“它们是我维持人际关系的唯一可行方式。

So if I were to lose that, well, it would be like losing the entire Internet.

因此，如果我失去了它，那就相当于失去了整个互联网。

It would be devastating.

这将是毁灭性的。

It would be like actually losing Eve.”

这就像真的失去了夏娃一样。”

Eve views her female identity as complete and all-encompassing.

夏娃认为她的女性身份是完整且包罗万象的。

“I don’t think people can peg Eve as a fabricated identity, at least not on casual inspection,” she told me over Gchat, which lets her present as female without her body getting in the way.

她通过 Gchat 告诉我：“我认为人们不能将 Eve 认定为捏造的身份，至少在随意检查时是这样。”Gchat 可以让她以女性身份出现，而不会妨碍她的身体。

In the physical world, Eve’s masculine characteristics fuel her gender dysphoria.

在现实世界中，夏娃的男性特征加剧了她的性别不安。

Putting a dress on her male body and looking in the mirror just reminds Eve that she would never live up to her own expectations of what a woman should look like.

把衣服穿在自己的男性身体上，照镜子只是提醒伊芙，她永远不会辜负自己对女人应该是什么样子的期望。

The most Eve’s ever done is wear jeans that were made for women; she’s also bought a bra and a gaffe (a device to hide male genitals when wearing women’s clothes) but has never used them.

Eve 做过的最多的事就是穿专为女性设计的牛仔裤；她还买了胸罩和失态器（穿女装时隐藏男性生殖器的装置），但从未使用过。

“I feel good dressing.

“我感觉穿得很好。

I don’t feel good looking at myself dressed,” Eve told me.

我看着自己穿的衣服感觉不太好，”伊芙告诉我。

She yearns for transition, yet insists she’s unlikely to go through with it.

她渴望转型，但坚称自己不太可能实现这一目标。

And one reason is that the body she has doesn’t align with the body she and others imagine Eve having.

原因之一是她的身体与她和其他人想象的夏娃的身体不一致。

Eve was able to hide her feelings of dysphoria from her wife for a long time, but, six years into their marriage, her wife eventually found the bra and gaffe.

伊芙长期以来一直对妻子隐瞒自己的不安情绪，但结婚六年后，她的妻子最终发现了胸罩和失态。

In a fraught conversation, Eve finally told her wife about her feeling that she was meant to be a woman.

在一次令人担忧的谈话中，伊芙最终告诉妻子她觉得自己注定要成为一个女人。

Eve assured her wife that she wouldn’t physically transition, and they’ve barely discussed the issue since.

伊芙向她的妻子保证，她不会在身体上变性，从那以后他们几乎没有讨论过这个问题。

They have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which is easier to maintain when there is virtually no physical evidence of Eve’s womanhood.

他们有一个“不问，不说”的政策，当几乎没有夏娃女性身份的实物证据时，这一政策更容易维持。

Though Eve’s wife knows she’s seeing a gender therapist for her dysphoria, they don’t discuss the details of her treatment.

尽管伊芙的妻子知道她正在看性别治疗师治疗她的烦躁不安，但他们没有讨论她的治疗细节。

Eve cares for her wife deeply.

夏娃非常关心她的妻子。

She’s an immigrant like Eve, from China instead of Korea, and they met in college and dated for a long time before getting married.

她和伊芙一样是移民，来自中国而不是韩国，他们在大学里认识，约会了很长时间才结婚。

She considers her wife the person she’s meant to be with, except that Eve is with her in the wrong body.

她认为她的妻子是她注定要在一起的人，只是夏娃以错误的身体与她在一起。

A huge part of why Eve doesn’t feel like she can transition is because of the pain it would cause the most important person in her life.

夏娃觉得自己无法变性的很大一部分原因是这会给她生命中最重要的人带来痛苦。

And then there is Eve’s family.

然后是夏娃的家人。

Physical transition would be a grave affront to her traditional parents, who belong to a Korean Methodist church and lead predictable lives, with her father working as a pediatrician while her doting mom stays at home.

身体上的转变对她的传统父母来说是一个严重的侮辱，他们属于韩国卫理公会教堂，过着可预测的生活，她的父亲是一名儿科医生，而她溺爱的母亲则留在家里。

Eve has a younger brother and sister who both also went to Harvard.

伊芙有一个弟弟和妹妹，他们也都毕业于哈佛大学。

Eve’s entire family is thus an iconic image of immigrant Asian success, and Eve fears that her parents and siblings cannot absorb the knowledge of her transition.

因此，伊芙的整个家庭是亚洲移民成功的标志性形象，伊芙担心她的父母和兄弟姐妹无法吸收她的转变知识。

Eve’s daughters are too young to know what the person they think of as their dad struggles with.

夏娃的女儿们还太小，不知道她们在与父亲斗争时对这个人的看法。

It’s particularly hard for Eve to see her daughters grow up.

对于夏娃来说，看到自己的女儿们长大尤其困难。

“My daughters are far away from adolescence, but they continue to look eerily similar to me when I was a child,” Eve said.

“我的女儿们已经远离青春期了，但她们看起来仍然与我小时候惊人地相似，”伊芙说。

“So it’s hard not to imagine that I’m witnessing the what-if in front of my very eyes.”

“所以很难不想象我正在亲眼目睹这个假设。”

At the same time, Eve fears that she would risk losing too much if she transitions.

与此同时，伊芙担心如果她变性，她会面临失去太多的风险。

“I’ve known since I was very young that I wanted to have a family, find a soulmate, have children,” she said.

“我从很小的时候就知道我想要一个家庭，找到一个灵魂伴侣，生孩子，”她说。

“And I’ve basically managed to achieve all of these things.

“我基本上已经实现了所有这些目标。

I love my children more than anything in the world, and I love my wife.

我爱我的孩子胜过世界上的一切，我也爱我的妻子。

I’ve never felt more sure of anything, except for the feeling that I should have been born female.”

我从来没有对任何事情感到更加确定，除了我应该生为女性的感觉。”

E ve may not be able to sustain her holding pattern much longer.

伊芙可能无法再维持她的坚持模式太久了。

She has been putting more real-life details on her Facebook, which identifies her place of work but doesn’t associate her with her real-life male identity.

她一直在 Facebook 上发布更多现实生活中的详细信息，该 Facebook 标识了她的工作地点，但并未将她与现实生活中的男性身份联系起来。

The image of Eve’s eye was her only flirtation with the physical world until a few months ago, when she posted a picture of half of her real face, with her chin tucked and eyes gazing shyly at the camera.

伊芙眼睛的图像是她与现实世界唯一的调情，直到几个月前，她发布了一张半张真实脸的照片，下巴缩着，眼睛害羞地凝视着镜头。

The image is in black and white and highly posterized, clearly and convincingly designed to present Eve as female.

图像是黑白的，高度海报化，清晰而令人信服地展示了夏娃的女性形象。

But another thing it does is make it possible for people who don’t know she’s trans to identify her.

但它的另一件事是让那些不知道她是跨性别者的人能够识别她的身份。

The people who only know Eve online might begin to discover that she has a male counterpart, and those who know her in the real world and think of Eve as a character or persona might now realize she is a trans woman.

那些只在网上认识伊芙的人可能会开始发现她有一个男性对手，而那些在现实世界中认识她并认为伊芙是一个角色或角色的人现在可能会意识到她是一名跨性别女性。

A month ago, Eve drew a fake tattoo on one of her co-workers who was going as a video game character to a gaming convention, and posted it to her Twitter profile.

一个月前，伊芙在她的一位同事身上画了一个假纹身，这位同事正以视频游戏角色的身份参加游戏大会，并将其发布到她的 Twitter 个人资料中。

The makers of the game picked up the tweet, and it got retweeted hundreds of times.

游戏的制作者收到了这条推文，并被转发了数百次。

Eve was sure some of her co-workers saw the tweet and realized that it belonged to a co-worker whom they knew by a different name and gender.

伊芙确信她的一些同事看到了这条推文，并意识到它属于一位他们认识的同事，但他们的名字和性别不同。

“I’m begging to be asked, actually,” Eve said.

“实际上，我恳求有人问我，”伊芙说。

“That’s the reason I’m dropping hints…because I’m begging to be asked.

“这就是我给出暗示的原因……因为我恳求被问到。

I decided that if anyone was going to ask me point-blank, I was going to be truthful and just, you know, say yes, I’m trans, I identify as a woman.”

我决定，如果有人要直截了当地问我，我会诚实、公正地说，是的，我是跨性别者，我认为自己是一名女性。”

Eve went on to say that it secretly gave her pleasure, “in a way,” to see the borders of her identities touching.

伊芙接着说，“在某种程度上”，看到自己身份的边界相互接触，这让她暗自感到高兴。

But only “in a way.” She behaves as if she wants to be found out, but she won’t go so far as to declare it.

但只是“在某种程度上”。她表现得好像她想被人发现，但她不会表白。

The name Eve Park is not Eve’s real name, neither online nor in the physical world.

无论是在网络上还是在现实世界中，Eve Park 这个名字都不是 Eve 的真名。

When we agreed to work on this story, she considered using her affirmed online name, but decided that it was too big a step.

当我们同意处理这个故事时，她考虑使用她确认的在线名称，但认为这一步太大了。

Agreeing to be the subject of this article is her latest ambivalent move towards reconciling her fragmented identities.

同意成为本文的主题是她为调和自己支离破碎的身份而采取的最新矛盾举措。

I often compare myself to Eve, because we’re both trans and have so much in common, from our immigrant Asian backgrounds to our love of Disney movies and musicals.

我经常将自己与夏娃进行比较，因为我们都是跨性别者，并且有很多共同点，从我们的亚洲移民背景到我们对迪士尼电影和音乐剧的热爱。

We both rely on other people to affirm our identity, and even picked our names in the same year.

我们都依靠别人来确认我们的身份，甚至在同一年就取了我们的名字。

But she wrote hers on a blog, while I wrote mine in an e-mail to an entire department at MIT, where I worked.

但她在博客上写了她的，而我在给我工作的麻省理工学院整个部门的电子邮件中写了我的。

By choosing women’s names both of us were asking people to imagine us the way we wanted to be imagined.

通过选择女性的名字，我们都要求人们按照我们想要的方式来想象我们。

Because that is where we exist, ultimately — in the minds of others.

因为这就是我们最终存在的地方——在别人的心目中。

I wanted others to see me as I saw myself all the time, so I took control over my body and became the woman I was inside my head.

我希望别人看到我就像我一直看到自己一样，所以我控制了自己的身体，成为了我脑海中的女人。

Eve faced different needs, so she sought disembodiment.

夏娃面对不同的需求，所以她寻求脱离肉体。

In order to feel herself, she relies on the minds of people who can’t see her.

为了感受自己，她依赖于那些看不到她的人的思想。

I don’t celebrate the anniversary of my womanhood, because I’m often too busy living my life to even remember.

我不庆祝我的女性周年纪念日，因为我常常忙于生活，甚至忘记了。

To me, it’s just an, oh yeah, it’s around this time that I changed my name or had surgery, recalled a couple of weeks or even months after the anniversary.

对我来说，这只是，哦，是的，就在这个时候，我改了名字或做了手术，在周年纪念日几周甚至几个月后回忆起来。

But Eve is different.

但夏娃不同。

She remembers the precise anniversary of her birth from the mind of the person who made her, maybe because Eve’s still not completely the woman she longs to be.

她从创造她的人的脑海中记住了她出生的确切周年纪念日，也许是因为夏娃还没有完全成为她渴望成为的女人。

On the tenth anniversary of identifying as a woman online, Eve wrote in her journal: “[Eve] is as close an expression of who I really am as I’ve got, and no matter how scared I am, the thought of losing her is even worse.

在网上自我认同为女性十周年之际，伊芙在她的日记中写道：“[伊芙]是我迄今为止最真实的自我表达，无论我多么害怕，一想到失去她就更糟糕。

Happy birthday, [Eve].

生日快乐，[伊芙]。

May you find yourself someday.”

愿你有一天能找到自己。”

This story was written by Meredith Talusan .

这个故事的作者是梅雷迪思·塔卢桑。

It was edited by Madison Kahn and Sandra Upson , and fact-checked by Emily Loftis .

它由麦迪逊·卡恩和桑德拉·厄普森编辑，并由艾米丽·洛夫蒂斯进行事实核查。

Illustrations by Miguel Libarnes for Matter.

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