故事就像被大多數(shù)女人認為的那樣-處女生育會缺乏自由。只會給我們帶來很多麻煩?
Powerful gods and demi-gods impregnating humanwomen—it's a common theme in the history ofreligion, and it's more than a little rapey.
強大的神和半神血統(tǒng)的人類女性-這是在宗教史上的一個共同的主題,就非常怪異了。
Zeus comes to Danae in the form of a golden shower, cutting "the knot of intact virginity" andleaving her pregnant with the Greek hero, Perseus.
宙斯看到了達那厄后乘她睡覺的時候化做一陣金雨與達那厄交配(結束了達那厄童貞)并生育了珀耳修斯。
Jupiter forcibly overcomes Europa by transforming himself into a white bull and abducting her.He imprisons her on the Isle of Crete, over time fathering three children.
宙斯變成了一頭白牛并且說服了歐羅巴,綁架了她。他禁錮她在克里特島,隨著時間的推移,他們生下三個孩子。
Hermes copulates with a shepherdess to produce Pan.
赫爾墨斯交配牧羊女生下潘。
The legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are conceived when the Roman godMars impregnates Rea Silvia, a vestal virgin.
羅馬傳奇的創(chuàng)始人,羅穆盧斯和瑞摩斯是當時羅馬戰(zhàn)神讓西爾維亞公主懷孕(一個處女)的結果。。
Helen of Troy, the rare female offspring of a god-human mating, is produced when Zeus takesthe form of a swan to get access to Leda.
特洛伊的海倫,當宙斯化妝成天鵝勾引麗達時,一個罕見人神交配的雌性后代產生了。
In some accounts Alexander the Great and the Emperor Augustus are sowed by gods in theform of serpents, by Phoebus and Jupiter respectively.
在有些傳說中,偉大的亞歷山大和奧古斯塔斯大帝各自是由日神菲博斯和宙斯化身蛇播種生下。
Though the earliest Christians had a competing story, in the Gospel of Luke, the Virgin Marygets pregnant when the spirit of the Lord comes upon her and the power of the Most Highovershadows her.
即使最早的基督教,也流行著一個故事,即在盧克福音中,上帝遇到圣母瑪利亞,并且使圣母成功受孕。
The earliest accounts of Zoroaster's birth have him born of a human father and mother, muchlike Jesus,; but in later accounts his mother is pierced by a shaft of divine light.
最早的傳說中,拜火教圣人是人類父母的兒子,很像耶穌。但隨后流傳的故事中講到他母親是由神靈受孕而產下了他。
The Hindu god Shiva has sex with the human woman Madhura, who has come to worship himwhile his wife Parvathi is away. Parvathi turns Madhura into a frog, but after 12 years in a wellshe regains human form and gives birth to Indrajit.
印度教中的造物主席爾瓦令人類女孩馬杜拉受孕。在他的妻子帕爾瓦蒂離開時,馬杜拉基于對席爾瓦的崇拜使兩人處在一起。之后帕爾瓦蒂將馬杜拉變成了青蛙。但12年后在一口井中,她又恢復人形,并生下了因陀羅。
The Buddha's mother Maya finds herself pregnant after being entered from the side by a god ina dream.
釋迦摩尼的母親瑪雅夜里夢見與一個神仙交歡后懷孕。
Underneath this remarkably enduring and widespread trope lie two assumptions that, in theirmost primitive form, may trace their roots all the way back to evolutionary biology.
在這些不同尋常并且廣為流傳的故事中,存在兩個假設,即以最原始的方式,追尋生物進化論的根源。
The biology hypothesis, much oversimplified, goes something like this: Males and females ofeach species have instincts that maximize their genes in the next generation. Among humans,females seek the highest quality sperm donors that they can attract. They maximize thequality and survival of their children by mating with high status, powerful males. Males, on theother hand, maximize the quality and quantity of their offspring by seeking young fertilefemales (with beauty signaling fertility), controlling some females and fending off other maleswhile also spreading their seed around if they can get away with it.
很多關于進化論的假說都過于簡單,大體上都這樣表述:每個物種的雄雌兩性都具備本能,最大程度地把他們的基因傳遞給下一代。在人類中,女性追求她們所能吸引到的最高質量的精子貢獻者。通過與強壯俊美的男性交配,保證繁衍出最佳質量的下一代。另一方面,男性通過尋找年輕的生殖能力出眾的女性(美麗容貌象征著生育能力),從質量和數(shù)量兩方面保證繁衍出自己的最佳后代。他們控制住某些女性,并且防止周邊其他男性的介入。
Biology may be the starting point, but over time, human impulses are embellished andinstitutionalized and made sacred by culture and religion. The mythic trope of gods matingwith human females embodies powerful cultural and religious beliefs about sexuality. Familiarstories of this type derive from male dominated societies, which means they legitimize malereproductive desires: Powerful men not only want to control the valuable commodity offemale fertility, they should. Gods ordain it and model it. And they prescribe punishments forthose—especially females—who violate the proper order of things.
進化論或許是起點,但歷經(jīng)滄桑,人類的本性沖動受到修飾和系統(tǒng)化加工,并且被文化和宗教賦以神話論。神話中的上帝與人間女子的交合便體現(xiàn)出強大的文化和宗教對性本身的信念理解。類似的故事從父系社會中流傳下來,意味著子承父業(yè)的繁衍。強大的男子希望控制女性的繁殖權,他們也能夠做到。上帝賜給他們權力并且成為典范。他們?yōu)榇私⒘藨土P機制,尤其對于婦女,那些要違反正確規(guī)律的人。
The miraculous conception stories I listed may have roots in pre-history, in early religionscentered on star worship and the agricultural cycle, but they emerged in modern form duringthe Iron Age. By this time in history, most women were chattel. Like children, livestock andslaves, they were literally possessions of men, and their primary economic and spiritual valuelay in their ability to produce purebred offspring of known lineage. The men at the top ownedconcubines and harams, and virgin females were counted among the spoils of war. (See, forexample, the Old Testament story of the virgin Midianites in which Yahweh commands theIsraelites to kill the used women but keep the virgin girls for themselves.)
我列出的這些神話故事或許扎根于史前時代,早期的宗教以人神崇拜和世代農耕為中心,但在石器時代融入了現(xiàn)代的形式。在那段歷史時期,大多數(shù)婦女作為貨品,像兒童、工具和奴隸一般,他們幾乎是屬于男性的財產,他們基本的經(jīng)濟和意識形態(tài)價值在于是否具有能夠為名門望族進行生育的能力。高高在上的男人們妻妾成群,處女們被當做戰(zhàn)爭中的戰(zhàn)利品。(例如,舊約故事中,耶和華命令以色列士兵殺死米甸人中已為人婦的女子,而留下處女為其享用。)
It was also a time when gods picked favorites and meddled in the affairs of tribes and nations,and great men were born great. Small wonder, then, that so many powerful men claimedpowerful paternity. In the tradition of the ancient Hebrews, this took the form of an obsessionwith lineage and pure, favored bloodlines. Writers of the Hebrew Bible trace the genealogy ofKing David back to Abraham, for example, and the genealogy of Abraham to the first man,Adam. In the Greek and Roman worlds, entitlement claims took the form of assigningsupernatural paternity to public figures. The Christian tradition, somewhat awkwardly, triesto lay claim to both of these—tracing the lineage of Jesus through his father Joseph back toKing David, while simultaneously denying that he had a human father.
還是在那個時期,上帝來挑選喜歡的東西,并且插手部落和宗族事務,使得偉大男人天生便偉大。因此,很多強權男人們可以憑借父輩擁有權力。在古老的希伯萊傳統(tǒng)中,以血統(tǒng)和純粹的天賦血脈而擁有權力。希伯萊圣經(jīng)的作者們將戴維大帝的族譜追溯到亞伯拉罕身上。例如,亞伯拉罕傳承到下一代是亞當。在希臘和羅馬世界,皇權天賦凌駕于普通大眾之上。基督傳統(tǒng)有些尷尬,試圖將耶穌的血統(tǒng)追溯到其父親耶和華以及戴維大帝的身上,而同時否認耶穌有一個人類父親。
This is the context for the miraculous conception stories, and in this context, the consent ofa woman is irrelevant. Within a society that treats female sexuality as a male possession, theonly consent that can be violated is the consent of a woman's owner, the man with the rightsto her reproductive capacity—typically her father, fiancé, or husband. Many Christians aresurprised when told that nowhere in the Bible, either Old Testament or New, does any writersay that a woman's consent is necessary or even desirable before sex.
這構成了這些神話的背景。在這種背景下,取得婦女同意無關緊要。在一個把婦女的性權利當做男人財產看待的年代,唯一需要同意的便是婦女的主人,男人們有權主宰婦女的生育,通常是她的父親、未婚夫或丈夫。很多基督徒感到吃驚,因為在圣經(jīng)中,無論是舊約還是新月,沒有任何作者寫道在與婦女交歡前需要取得他們的同意。
This omission is more than regrettable, it is tragic. Two thousand years after Hebrew andAramaic texts were assembled into the modern Jewish Bible, 1600 years after a Roman Catholiccommittee voted books in and out of the Christian Bible, 1400 years after Muhammad wrote theKoran (which draws heavily on the moral framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition), we stillstruggle with the question of female consent. Our struggle is made immeasurably harder by thepresence of ancient texts that have become modern idols— texts that put God's name onmen's desires.
這種疏漏非常令人遺憾,造成了悲劇。希伯萊和阿拉伯教義合并成現(xiàn)代猶太圣經(jīng)后已經(jīng)過去了2000年,羅馬天主教委員會表決選用圣經(jīng)已經(jīng)過去了1600年,穆罕穆德完成古蘭經(jīng)(很大程度上借鑒了猶太教與天主教的共同道德經(jīng)典)已經(jīng)過去了1400年,我們還在為征求婦女同意這一問題而苦苦斗爭。古老的經(jīng)文直到今天也是崇拜的對象,它們以神的名義為男人的欲望背書,這使得我們不得不付出多得多的努力。
The most extreme example may be a document published by the Islamic State, outlining rulesfor the treatment of sexual slaves, rules drawn from the Koran. Closer to home for mostAmericans is the awkward but widespread existence of Christian leaders who teach that awoman's glory is in childbearing, and that a woman who fails to service her husband wheneverhe desires is failing to serve God.
最為極端的例子莫過于伊斯蘭國家頒布的法令,古蘭經(jīng)的條文規(guī)定對待性奴的處理方法。說到底,大多數(shù)美國人會有些尷尬,但基督教領袖們廣泛宣揚婦女們最高榮耀是生育子孫,而且沒能在丈夫有需求的時候服侍好丈夫的女人,也是對上帝的忠實。
But even closer to home for many is the shocking prevalence on college campuses and insociety at large of sexual manipulation and coercion perpetrated by males who otherwiseseem morally intact. One can't help but notice that a large number of high-profile cases involvehigh-status males: fraternity members, a famous actor, a radio host, small-town football starsand big-league professional athletes—men, in other words, who think they are gods. Thesemen are so convinced of their own deific qualities, they believe the object of their attentionshas gotta want it—and if she doesn't, well, that's fine too, because when a god wants a woman,consent isn't really part of the story.
但進一步觸及痛處,令很多美國人震驚的是放眼國內,美國高校和社會中存在大量男性性侵和強制猥褻事件,而且實施者表面上看卻并非作惡多端,行為下流之人。我們不禁要注意到,大量廣受注目的案件發(fā)生在知名男性身上,包括:大學兄弟會成員、著名演員、廣播主持人、小鎮(zhèn)足球明星以及大聯(lián)盟球星。換句話說,認為自己是上帝的男人們,非常自信自己具備神一般的素質,以至于他們相信自己所關注的目標會愿意讓他們?yōu)樗麨椤H绻辉敢?,那么好吧,因為傳說中上帝需要女人時是不需要征得同意的。