Sady Doyle: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011
Sady Doyle is a writer and the proprietor of Tiger Beatdown.
Sady Doyle 是一位作家,也是《Tiger Beatdown》的所有者。
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There is no slogan more misunderstood, or more widely abused, than “the personal is political.” This phrase was one of the most transformative ideas to emerge from second-wave feminism, or from the 20th century.
没有什么口号比“个人即政治”更容易被误解、或更广泛地滥用了。这句话是第二波女权主义或二十世纪出现的最具变革性的想法之一。
It’s the underpinning assumption of all my own work.
这是我自己所有工作的基础假设。
What it means is this: You take the most intimate, difficult, unseemly moments from your own life.
它的意思是:你从自己的生活中获取了最亲密、最困难、最不体面的时刻。
You look to see if anyone else has experienced anything like them.
你看看其他人是否也经历过类似的事情。
You look for what you have in common with those people — your gender, your socioeconomic status, your career, your race.
你寻找你与这些人的共同点——你的性别、你的社会经济地位、你的职业、你的种族。
And then, you speak about what that means for the world.
然后,你谈到这对世界意味着什么。
“The personal is political” is how the unspeakable, “private” issues of women—the men in the radical protest group who made rape jokes, the arrogant dismissals at the mostly-boy punk rock shows, the boss who made weird sexual comments, the date who raped you, the husband who beat you—became political concerns.
“个人即政治”是女性难以言表的“私人”问题——激进抗议团体中开强奸玩笑的男性、在男孩为主的朋克摇滚演出中傲慢地解雇、发表奇怪的性评论的老板、强奸你的约会对象、殴打你的丈夫——如何成为政治关注点。
It’s how “my problem” becomes “our problem.” It’s the catalyst for bringing marginalized experiences to light, and for finally understanding that it’s not happening because of who you are; it’s happening because of what you are, and that is something else entirely.
这就是“我的问题”变成“我们的问题”的原因。它是让边缘化经历曝光的催化剂,并最终让你明白,这一切的发生并不是因为你是谁;它的发生是因为你是什么,而那完全是另一回事。
Something which all of the people in your “what” have a vested interest in changing.
改变你的“内容”中的所有人都有既得利益的东西。
“The personal is political” is also, I eventually came to realize, the essential factor in all of the essays I remembered from 2011.
我最终意识到,“个人即政治”也是我 2011 年记忆中所有文章的基本要素。
The pieces I’ve chosen are all about personal matters, in one way or another, and they all address huge social problems by focusing on one woman’s specific experience.
我选择的作品都以某种方式涉及个人事务,它们都通过关注一位女性的具体经历来解决巨大的社会问题。
They all raise questions without easy answers: About the identity of the reporter, and how that plays a role in what he or she reports; about whether personal responses to trauma can be evaluated in political terms; about how our identities come into conflict, and how to create a workable solidarity; about who we are, who we think we are, and who we would like others to think we are, and what the distance between those three things might be.
他们都提出了一些没有简单答案的问题:关于记者的身份,以及该身份在他或她的报道中如何发挥作用;关于个人对创伤的反应是否可以用政治术语来评估;关于我们的身份如何发生冲突,以及如何建立可行的团结;关于我们是谁,我们认为自己是谁,我们希望别人认为我们是谁,以及这三件事之间的距离可能是多少。
In every case, I was struck by the author’s candor, bravery, and willingness to say some very uncomfortable things in public.
在每一个案例中,作者的坦率、勇敢以及愿意在公共场合说出一些非常不舒服的事情都让我印象深刻。
And in every case, these pieces—and the reactions to them—taught me something new about how to see the world.
在每种情况下,这些作品以及对它们的反应都教会了我一些关于如何看待世界的新东西。
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“Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played With Fire,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone
《琪琪坎尼拔:玩火的女孩》,萨布丽娜·鲁宾·埃尔德利,滚石杂志
Kirsten Ostrenga was a lonely, home-schooled fourteen-year-old who started a MySpace page to connect with people.
克尔斯滕·奥斯特伦加 (Kirsten Ostrenga) 是一个孤独的、在家接受教育的 14 岁女孩,她创建了一个 MySpace 页面来与人联系。
Four years later, she was receiving daily messages calling her things along the lines of “rape-enjoying pathetic bitch,” she was receiving other messages from middle-aged men who wanted to fuck her, she was being impersonated online by dozens of people, she had her house vandalized, she had her cat disappear shortly after someone threatened to kill it, she had been punched in the face by a “fan” posing for a picture with her, she had been raped, and she had been publicly called a “murderer” in connection with the death of her rapist, who tripped and fell while fleeing the police who were there to arrest him for raping Kirsten.
四年后,她每天都会收到这样的信息,称她为“喜欢强奸的可悲的母狗”,她还收到其他中年男子想要操她的信息,她在网上被数十人冒充,她的房子被破坏,她的猫在有人威胁要杀死它后不久就消失了,她的脸被一个与她合影的“粉丝”打了一拳,她被强奸了,她被公开称为“ “凶手”与强奸者的死亡有关,强奸者在逃离因强奸克尔斯滕而逮捕他的警察时绊倒了。
That rapist also happened to be her first boyfriend.
那个强奸犯也恰好是她的初恋男友。
They’d met through MySpace.
他们是通过 MySpace 认识的。
Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s piece about all this is harrowing and astonishingly empathetic; the month it came out, I read it about ten or fifteen times.
萨布丽娜·鲁宾·埃尔德利(Sabrina Rubin Erdely)关于这一切的文章令人痛心,但又令人惊讶地富有同理心。它出版的那个月,我读了大约十到十五遍。
It’s not only about “Internet bullying,” or sexual violence, or even Kirsten Ostrenga; it’s also about the difficult-to-measure, often profound distance between Internet persona and person, and what we hope to find by making our lives public.
这不仅仅是关于“网络欺凌”或性暴力,甚至是克尔斯滕·奥斯特伦加(Kirsten Ostrenga);它还涉及到互联网人物与人之间难以衡量的、通常是深远的距离,以及我们希望通过公开自己的生活找到什么。
Read it, and see if your voice doesn’t sound a little quieter the next time you go to write a snippy blog post about some public figure—if you don’t find yourself pulling certain punches, or asking whether you really know, or can ever know, what they’re actually going through at the moment.
读一下它,看看当你下次写一篇关于某个公众人物的尖酸刻薄的博客文章时,你的声音是否听起来会更安静一些——如果你没有发现自己在采取某些行动,或者问你是否真的知道,或者是否能够知道他们此刻实际上正在经历什么。
There are a lot of big magazine articles about Young People And The Internet.
有很多关于年轻人和互联网的大型杂志文章。
This year, no one did it better than Sabrina Rubin Erdely.
今年,没有人比 Sabrina Rubin Erdely 做得更好。
“‘I Can Handle It:’ On Relationship Violence, Independence, and Capability,” Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, Feministe
“‘我能应付’:关于关系暴力、独立和能力”,奥特姆·怀特菲尔德-马德拉诺,女权主义者
and
和
“I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD,” Mac McClelland, GOOD
“我需要你在这件事上与我斗争:暴力性行为如何帮助缓解我的创伤后应激障碍”,Mac McClelland,好
I always think of these two pieces as connected to each other, so that’s how I recommend you read them.
我一直认为这两篇文章是相互关联的,所以我建议你阅读它们。
They’re both about violence, and the ways that violence can change you.
它们都与暴力以及暴力改变你的方式有关。
They’re both painful to read.
它们读起来都很痛苦。
And they’re both notable for being comprised of about ten separate things that female journalists, or feminists, are never supposed to say in public.
值得注意的是,它们都由大约十件不同的事情组成,而女记者或女权主义者永远不应该在公共场合说这些事情。
Whitefield-Madrano writes about visiting the emergency room, after her boyfriend beat her up, with blood streaming down her face.
怀特菲尔德-马德拉诺(Whitefield-Madrano)写道,她被男友殴打,血流满脸,随后前往急诊室。
“The only words that make sense are the ones that spill out of my mouth over and over again,” she says, “the only words that will let the receptionist and the nurses and my friends and my parents know that this isn’t what it looks like, that I’m not one of those women, those women in abusive relationships, those women who can’t help themselves enough to get out: I went to college, I went to college, I went to college.” Meanwhile, McClelland leads with “It was my research editor who told me it was completely nuts to willingly get fucked at gunpoint,” and goes on from there.
“唯一有意义的话语就是从我嘴里一遍又一遍地说出来的话语,”她说,“只有那些话语能让接待员、护士、我的朋友和我的父母知道事情并非表面上的那样,我不是那些处于虐待关系中的女性、那些无法自拔地摆脱困境的女性中的一员:我上过大学,我上过大学,我上过大学。”与此同时,麦克莱兰以“我的研究编辑告诉我,心甘情愿地在枪口下被操是完全疯狂的”开头,然后继续说道。
Whitefield-Madrano was a feminist who organized Take Back the Night marches, published op-eds criticizing “the notion that a woman’s greatest personal threat lay outside the home,” and stayed in her relationship after her boyfriend started to hit her.
怀特菲尔德-马德拉诺是一位女权主义者,她组织了“夺回夜晚”游行,发表评论文章批评“女性最大的个人威胁在于家庭之外的观念”,并在男友开始打她后维持了自己的关系。
McClelland was a human rights journalist whose job was to faithfully witness the pain of others; after being threatened with rape in Haiti, and witnessing the aftermath of severe sexual violence, she contracted post-traumatic stress disorder and needed her ex-boyfriend to simulate a rape with her as part of her recovery.
麦克莱兰是一名人权记者,他的工作是忠实地见证他人的痛苦;在海地受到强奸威胁并目睹严重性暴力的后果后,她患上了创伤后应激障碍,需要前男友与她一起模拟强奸,作为她康复的一部分。
Both women focus, to a large degree, on the internal aftereffects of the trauma.
两位女性在很大程度上都关注创伤的内部后遗症。
McClelland gagged and vomited, cried constantly, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop drinking.
麦克莱兰作呕、呕吐、不停地哭泣、无法入睡、无法停止饮酒。
Whitefield-Madrano missed work, forgot her own phone number, moved in a permanent daze: “I’d been depressed before, and this was different.
怀特菲尔德-马德拉诺错过了工作,忘记了自己的电话号码,永远处于茫然状态:“我以前很沮丧,但这次不一样。
This was a fog of having no idea who I was, where I’d gone, or if I might return.”
这是一片迷雾,我不知道我是谁,我去了哪里,或者我是否会回来。”
And they both produced astonishingly skilled, un-self-indulgent pieces of writing out of those experiences.
他们都根据这些经历写出了令人惊叹的技巧性、不自我放纵的作品。
(This was particularly easy to miss in the backlash to McClelland’s piece, which ranged from legitimate concerns—her representation of Haiti, her treatment of sources—to publishing her ex-boyfriend’s full name and place of employment, calling her a “geisha,” and claiming that she was somehow faking her PTSD to get attention and/or a book deal.) The experiences of trauma, abuse and post-traumatic stress are often literally impossible to describe.
(在对麦克莱兰文章的强烈反对中,这一点特别容易被忽视,其中包括合理的担忧——她对海地的代表、她对待消息来源的方式——到公布前男友的全名和工作地点、称她为“艺妓”,并声称她以某种方式假装患有创伤后应激障碍以引起关注和/或出书。)创伤、虐待和创伤后压力的经历通常是无法描述的。
The very nature of what they call an “acute stress response”—“a feeling of detachment, disorientation, inability to concentrate or respond sensibly;” “the mind ‘going blank’;” “the person appears to be out of contact with others but is not unconscious;” these are symptoms, which sound fairly mild until you realize (as I once did, in my own experience of traumatic shock) that the strange hollow object by the metal basin is a cup, and is intended to hold water, which is why it is by the sink, and that you have been figuring this out for twenty minutes, ever since you set the cup down there—induces a fundamental disconnect from language.
他们所谓的“急性压力反应”的本质是“一种疏离、迷失方向、无法集中注意力或做出明智反应的感觉”; “头脑‘一片空白’;” “该人似乎与他人失去了联系,但并未失去知觉;”这些症状听起来相当温和,直到你意识到(正如我曾经在我自己的创伤性休克经历中所做的那样)金属盆旁的奇怪空心物体是一个杯子,旨在盛水,这就是为什么它位于水槽旁边,并且自从你把杯子放在那儿以来,你已经花了二十分钟来弄清楚这一点——导致与语言的根本脱节。
McClelland and Whitefield-Madrano plunge us into that experience with their nightmarish descriptions, but they also analyze it in lucid detail.
麦克莱兰和怀特菲尔德-马德拉诺通过噩梦般的描述让我们陷入了这段经历,但他们也对它进行了清晰的细节分析。
It’s a remarkable achievement: Two clear, rational, coherent accounts of what it’s like to lose coherence, clarity, and reason.
这是一项了不起的成就:对失去连贯性、清晰度和理性的感觉进行了两个清晰、理性、连贯的描述。
“SO REAL IT HURTS: Notes on Occupy Wall Street,” Manissa McCleave Maharawal, Facebook (republished at Racialicious)
“如此真实的伤害:关于占领华尔街的笔记”,Manissa McCleave Maharawal,Facebook(在 Racialicious 重新发布)
For about a month this fall, every single professional journalist who cared about social justice or protest in any way whatsoever was busy writing or filing their Pieces On Occupy Wall Street.
今年秋天大约一个月的时间里,每一位关心社会正义或以任何方式抗议的专业记者都忙着撰写或归档有关占领华尔街的文章。
None of us wrote a better piece than Manissa McCleave Maharawal, who initially posted this on her personal, semi-private Facebook page.
我们中没有人比 Manissa McCleave Maharawal 写过更好的文章,她最初将这篇文章发布在她的个人半私人 Facebook 页面上。
Covering protests is tricky.
报道抗议活动是很棘手的。
You don’t want to undermine or demonize them by reporting the wrong scenes or speaking to the wrong people.
你不想通过报道错误的场景或与错误的人交谈来破坏或妖魔化他们。
You don’t want to gloss over their problems by ignoring the less flattering facts on the ground.
你不想通过忽视现实中不那么令人高兴的事实来掩盖他们的问题。
You don’t always know, frankly, whether you are there to report or support, and depending on what happens to you—as in the case of the writers who went to Occupy Wall Street to protest, and wound up filing pieces about getting arrested; or, the other writers who went to report, and wound up being victimized by the police like any other protester—that role can change within the space of an hour.
坦率地说,你并不总是知道你是去报道还是支持,这取决于你发生了什么——就像那些去“占领华尔街”抗议并最终提交有关被捕的文章的作家一样;或者,其他去报道的作家,最终像其他抗议者一样成为警察的受害者——这个角色可以在一小时内改变。
And I will be even more frank with you: In the early weeks of Occupy Wall Street, I sometimes felt that I was seeing a lot of supporting, and not always enough reporting.
我会更坦率地告诉你:在“占领华尔街”运动的最初几周,我有时觉得我看到了很多支持,但并不总是有足够的报道。
It was communal, it was wonderful, it was revolutionary, absolutely no-one was smoking any pot whatsoever because that was a right-wing lie, everyone was so equal, etc. It was usually only on the smaller blogs that you could find stories like McCleave Maharawal’s: Men “dancing up on” women at drum circles without consent, radical activists responding to education about gender pronouns with outright bafflement, people of color being told to direct their concerns to someone’s email inbox rather than bringing them up at General Assembly, a man including a line about there being “one race, the human race, formerly divided by race, class,” etc., in the promotional materials, and responding to objections (namely that we were hardly “formerly” divided on those fronts) with “[it’s] scientifically true.” McCleave Maharawal was not “just” writing a personal essay; she was performing a public service, by giving people a genuinely nuanced view of the occupation.
它是公共的,它是美妙的,它是革命性的,绝对没有人吸食任何大麻,因为那是右翼谎言,每个人都是平等的,等等。通常只有在较小的博客上,你才能找到像麦克利夫·马哈拉瓦尔这样的故事:男人未经同意在鼓圈里“跳舞”到女人身上,激进分子对性别代词的教育感到彻底的困惑,有色人种被告知将他们的担忧直接发送到某人的电子邮件收件箱,而不是通过电子邮件收件箱。在大会上,一个人在宣传材料中加入了一句关于“一个种族,人类,以前被种族、阶级等划分”的台词,并以“[它]在科学上是正确的”来回应反对意见(即我们“以前”在这些方面几乎没有划分)。麦克利夫·马哈拉瓦尔“不仅仅是”写一篇个人文章;他还“只是”写一篇个人文章。她正在履行一项公共服务,让人们对职业有一个真正细致入微的看法。
But this is not an anti-Occupy piece.
但这不是反占领的作品。
It is not an attack piece.
它不是攻击件。
And it is not an example of undermining.
这不是破坏的例子。
Precisely because she was willing to cover the gritty and sometimes unflattering details of how solidarity was actually being worked out among “the 99%” at Occupy Wall Street, McCleave Maharawal actually wrote a far more convincing and meaningful argument for it than I had yet read.
正是因为麦克利夫·马哈拉瓦尔愿意报道“占领华尔街”运动中“99%”的团结实际上是如何实现的、坚韧的、有时甚至是不讨人喜欢的细节,所以麦克利夫·马哈拉瓦尔为此写了一篇比我读过的更有说服力、更有意义的论点。
It’s a model for anyone who wants to advocate—for a cause, for a community, for a protest, for an idea—without slipping into boosterism; for anyone who wants to speak about the facts on the ground, without losing sight of what those facts really mean.
对于任何想要倡导某种事业、社区、抗议、想法而又不想陷入支持主义的人来说,这是一个典范;对于任何想要谈论实地事实而又不忽视这些事实的真正含义的人来说。
“With The Ladies In The Back At An Odd Future Show,” Emma Carmichael, The Awl
“与后面的女士们一起参加一场奇怪的未来秀”,艾玛·卡迈克尔,《锥子》
2011 was, in many ways, the Year Of Unpleasant Conversations About Odd Future.
从很多方面来说,2011 年都是关于“奇怪的未来”的不愉快对话的一年。
The group just brings up a lot of sticky subjects: The relationship between art and artist, the relationship between creation and social responsibility for what one has created, the white fear of black masculinity, men’s disregard for violence against women.
这个团体提出了很多棘手的话题:艺术与艺术家之间的关系、创作与对自己创作的社会责任之间的关系、白人对黑人男子气概的恐惧、男性对针对女性的暴力行为的漠视。
And, you know what?
而且,你知道吗?
Those conversations were just as unpleasant for me as they were for you.
这些谈话对我来说和对你来说一样不愉快。
I don’t exactly look forward to having any of them again.
我并不期待再次拥有他们中的任何一个。
But, if I ever teach that long-imagined seminar on Journalism, Pop Culture, and Gender, I think our final assignment is going to consist of a 10-page paper on the difference between two short passages in two reviews of the exact same show: Amos Barshad’s “Odd Future Live Show Surpasses the Hype,” for Rolling Stone, and Emma Carmichael’s “With the Ladies In The Back at an Odd Future Show,” for The Awl.
但是,如果我要教授关于新闻学、流行文化和性别的长期想象的研讨会,我认为我们的最终作业将包括一篇 10 页的论文,讨论同一节目的两篇评论中的两个短段落之间的差异:阿莫斯·巴沙德 (Amos Barshad) 为滚石乐队创作的《奇怪的未来现场秀超越了炒作》,以及艾玛·卡迈克尔 (Emma Carmichael) 为 The Awl 创作的《在奇怪的未来秀中与后面的女士们》。
In fact, let’s just do that now.
事实上,我们现在就这样做。
Better one?
更好的一个吗?
At one point, a fresh-faced blond girl roughly the same age as Tyler landed on the stage and accosted him for a kiss; he complied, wondered aloud if he might now have herpes and then tossed her off, too.
有一次,一位与泰勒年龄相仿的金发碧眼女孩登上舞台,向他搭话并亲吻了他。他答应了,大声地想知道自己现在是否患有疱疹,然后也把她扔掉了。
Or better two?
还是两个更好?
[Just] after two in the morning, a blonde girl surfed her way onstage and kissed Tyler, who announced, “I might legit have herpes.” The crowd laughed and started a “show your titties” chant, and she refused, looking bashful.
凌晨两点刚过,一名金发女孩冲上舞台并亲吻了泰勒,后者宣布:“我可能患有疱疹。”人群大笑并开始高呼“秀出你的奶子”,但她拒绝了,看起来很害羞。
“Then get the fuck off the stage!” Tyler yelled.
“那就滚下舞台吧!”泰勒喊道。
Class: Which of these passages was written by a man?
班级:下列哪一段是由男人写的?
How can you tell?
你怎么知道?
Which writer made note of whether the girl in question was attractive (“fresh-faced”), and how do you think cultural norms around gender, presentation and gaze affected this choice?
哪位作家注意到了这个女孩是否有吸引力(“面容清新”),您认为有关性别、外表和目光的文化规范如何影响这一选择?
What is the difference between “accosted [Tyler]” and “kissed Tyler;” who is portrayed as an aggressor in each of these passages, how does it differ between passages, and what does that mean?
“搭讪[泰勒]”和“亲吻泰勒”有什么区别?在这些段落中谁被描绘为侵略者,段落之间有何不同,这意味着什么?
Why did both writers choose to describe the girl as “blonde,” and which cultural narratives are supported by that choice?
为什么两位作家都选择将这个女孩描述为“金发女郎”?这种选择支持了哪些文化叙事?
Would your answer be different if the writers substituted “white” for “blonde?” How?
如果编剧用“白人”代替“金发女郎”,你的答案会有所不同吗?如何?
Do you think Amos Barshad joined in the “show us your titties” chant?
你认为阿莫斯·巴沙德加入了“向我们展示你的乳头”的口号吗?
If not, why didn’t he tell us that it happened?
如果没有,他为什么不告诉我们这件事发生了?
Are you really angry right now?
你现在真的很生气吗?
At whom, and why, and what does that tell you?
针对谁,为什么,这告诉你什么?
Please remember to demonstrate in your response that the personal is political.
请记住在您的回复中表明个人是政治性的。
Papers due whenever you think you know what all of this means, and can say it.
每当你认为你知道所有这些意味着什么并且能够说出它时,论文就到期了。
I might never turn mine in.
我可能永远不会交出我的。
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Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December.
整个 12 月,分享您自己的 2011 年 5 首长读作品。
Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
只需在 Twitter、Tumblr 或 Facebook 上标记#longreads 即可。