Sometimes people who really hate gender name me as the one who made this up, but that's actually not true.

有時候，那些非常討厭性別的人會把我說成是編造這個故事的人，但事實上並非如此。

You know, in my view, everybody has a theory of gender, and what I mean by that is that everybody has certain assumptions going about what gender is or should be.

你知道，在我看來，每個人都有一套性別理論，我的意思是，每個人對性別是什麼或應該是什麼都有一定的假設。

And at a certain point in life, we ask ourselves, wow, where did that assumption come from?

在人生的某個階段，我們會問自己，哇，這個假設從何而來？

At this point, I'm less concerned about whose theory is right and whose theory is wrong, because the assault on gender is also an assault on democracy.

在這一點上，我不太關心誰的理論是對的，誰的理論是錯的，因為對性別的攻擊也是對民主的攻擊。

We have the power and the freedom to make more livable lives for ourselves, where bodies can be more free to breathe, to move, to love without discrimination and without fear of violence.

我們有能力、有自由為自己創造更宜居的生活，讓身體可以更自由地呼吸、活動、相愛，而不受歧視、不懼怕暴力。

I am Judith Butler, Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley.

我是加利福尼亞大學伯克利分校研究生院特聘教授朱迪斯-巴特勒。

I teach literature, philosophy, and critical theory, and I'm most well known for my two books on gender, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, from the early 1990s.

我教授文學、哲學和批判理論，我最著名的作品是 20 世紀 90 年代初出版的兩本關於性別的書《性別煩惱》和《重要的身體》。

My work has been translated into more than 27 languages.

我的作品已被翻譯成超過 27 種語言。

I insist that what it is to be a woman or indeed what it is to be a man or any other gender is an open-ended question.

我堅持認為，什麼是女人，什麼是男人，什麼是其他性別，都是一個沒有答案的問題。

We have a whole range of differences, biological in nature, so I don't deny them, but I don't think they determine who we are in some sort of final way.

我們有各種各樣的差異，這些差異都是生物性的，所以我不否認它們，但我不認為它們能最終決定我們是誰。

At the heart of these controversies is the distinction between sex and gender, but what is that distinction?

這些爭議的核心是性與性別之間的區別，但這種區別是什麼呢？

How do we think about it?

我們該如何思考？

Sex is generally a category that is assigned to infants that has importance within medical and legal worlds.

性別通常是指嬰兒的一個類別，在醫學和法律界具有重要意義。

Gender is a mix of cultural norms, historical formations, family influence, psychic realities, desires and wishes, and we have a say in that.

性別是文化規範、歷史形成、家庭影響、心理現實、慾望和願望的混合體，我們對此有發言權。

My early life was affected by the 1960s and the social movements that took shape during that time.

我早年的生活受到了 20 世紀 60 年代和當時社會運動的影響。

I grew up on the east side of Cleveland, part of a Jewish community, and by the time I was in high school, I was politically active, but I was also taking university courses in philosophy.

我在克利夫蘭東區長大，屬於一個猶太社區，上高中時，我在政治上很活躍，同時也在大學裡學習哲學課程。

In my 20s, I came to see that it was not just the Jews who were apprehended and extinguished by the Nazi regime.

在我 20 多歲的時候，我發現被納粹政權逮捕和消滅的不僅僅是猶太人。

It was queer people, it was gay and lesbian people, it was people with disabilities, people with illnesses, Polish workers, communists, and my sense was that one needed to widen the lens and see that many people have been subject to genocidal politics and to understand that there are different forms of oppression.

有同性戀者，有殘障人士，有病人，有波蘭工人，有共產主義者，我的感覺是，人們需要擴大視角，看到許多人都遭受過種族滅絕政治，並理解壓迫有不同的形式。

I remain convinced that one does need to know history in order to make sure it does not repeat, and that one wants justice not just for the group to which one belongs, but for any group that suffers in a similar way.

我仍然堅信，人們確實需要了解歷史，以確保歷史不再重演，而且人們不僅希望為自己所屬的群體伸張正義，也希望為任何遭受類似苦難的群體伸張正義。

In the 70s and 80s, I was part of a movement of people who were rethinking gender during that time.

上世紀七八十年代，我參加了一場重新思考性別問題的運動。

Queer theory was emerging.

同志理論正在興起。

It was in a complicated conversation with feminism.

它與女權主義的對話很複雜。

Trans issues had not yet surfaced as part of our contemporary reality, so it was a moment in which we asked questions like, what has society made of us and what can we make of ourselves?

變性問題尚未成為我們當代現實的一部分，是以，在這一時刻，我們提出了這樣的問題：社會把我們變成了什麼，我們又能把自己變成什麼？

There were a number of versions of feminism that I tended to oppose.

我傾向於反對一些版本的女權主義。

One of them held that, well, women are fundamentally mothers and that maternity is the essence of the feminine.

其中一種觀點認為，女人從根本上說是母親，母性是女性的本質。

And then a second one thought that feminism was about sexual difference, but the way they And both of them struck me as wrong.

第二個人則認為女權主義是關於性別差異的，但他們的方式讓我覺得都是錯的。

I was pretty committed to the idea that people ought not to be discriminated against on the basis of what they do with their body, who they love, or how they move, or how they look.

我非常堅定地認為，人們不應該因為自己的身體、所愛之人、行動方式或長相而受到歧視。

All I was saying is that the sex you're assigned at birth and the gender that you are taught to be should not determine how you live your life.

我想說的是，出生時被分配的性別和被教導的性別不應該決定你的生活方式。

Sometimes people point to gender trouble as the inception of gender theory, but people were working on gender before me, Gail Rubin and Juliet Mitchell and Simone de Beauvoir herself.

有時，人們會把性別麻煩作為性別理論的開端，但在我之前，蓋爾-魯賓、朱麗葉-米切爾和西蒙娜-德-波伏娃本人都在研究性別問題。

Simone de Beauvoir was an existential philosopher and a feminist philosopher who wrote The Second Sex in the 1940s.

西蒙娜-德-波伏娃（Simone de Beauvoir）是一位存在主義哲學家和女權主義哲學家，她在 20 世紀 40 年代寫下了《第二性》一書。

The basic point was that one is not born a woman, but rather born a man.

其基本觀點是，人不是生來就是女人，而是生來就是男人。

Gender becomes one, that the body is not a fact.

性別融為一體，身體並非事實。

She opened up the possibility of a difference between the sex you're assigned and the sex you become.

她揭示了被分配的性別和你成為的性別之間存在差異的可能性。

Gail Rubin was an anthropologist and remains an anthropologist who wrote an extremely influential article called The Traffic in Women.

蓋爾-魯賓是一位人類學家，現在仍然是一位人類學家，她寫過一篇極具影響力的文章，名為《販賣婦女》。

What she tried to say was that the family was a structure whose task it was to reproduce gender.

她想說的是，家庭是一種結構，其任務是繁衍性別。

And one of the aims it had was to kind of keep heterosexuality looking really normal.

它的目的之一就是讓異性戀看起來非常正常。

And although it was part of feminist anthropology at the time, it allowed us to start thinking about gender as something that could be reproduced, crafted, cultivated, and that there were systems, frameworks to which gender belongs.

儘管這在當時屬於女性主義人類學的一部分，但它讓我們開始思考性別是一種可以被複制、加工、培養的東西，而且性別有其所屬的系統和框架。

There was one other dimension of Rubin's work, which was, interestingly, psychoanalysis.

有趣的是，魯賓的工作還有一個方面，那就是精神分析。

She basically said, well, maybe there's a whole lot of repression going into becoming a man and a whole lot of repression going into becoming a woman.

她基本上是說，也許在成為男人的過程中會有很多壓抑，而在成為女人的過程中也會有很多壓抑。

And that one of the things we have to do is to conform with existing gender norms is to being, feeling, doing, loving that don't line up with the gender norms that are governing our lives.

我們必須做的事情之一，就是要符合現有的性別規範，就是要讓自己的存在、感受、行為和愛與支配我們生活的性別規範不一致。

So anthropology, psychoanalysis, they all had their place in that moment way before gender trouble emerged on the scene.

是以，在性別問題出現之前，人類學、精神分析學都在那個時代佔有一席之地。

I think at the time that I wrote Gender Trouble, people treated gender as if it was a natural fact or a sociological reality, but they didn't treat it as something that you could make and remake.

我認為，在我寫《性別問題》的時候，人們把性別當作一種自然事實或社會學現實，但並沒有把它當作一種可以製造和重塑的東西。

Performance is important to the extent that we do enact who we are.

表現的重要性在於，我們確實要表現出我們是誰。

And anybody in performance studies actually knows that there are performances that we do in our lives that are not mere performance, they're not fake.

實際上，任何一個研究表演的人都知道，我們在生活中所做的一些表演並不是單純的表演，也不是虛假的。

When performative was first coined as a word, the philosopher J.L.

當 "表演"（performative）首次作為一個詞被創造出來時，哲學家 J.L.

Austin was trying to understand legal utterances.

奧斯汀正試圖理解法律用語。

So when a judge says, I declare you man and wife, you become man and wife once that declaration has happened.

是以，當法官說 "我宣佈你們結為夫妻 "時，你們就成為夫妻了。

That's not fake.

這不是假的。

That happened.

就這樣發生了。

Now, what if we were to say that in enacting our lives as a particular gender, we are actually realizing that gender anew.

現在，如果我們說，在以特定性別的身份生活時，我們實際上是在重新認識自己的性別，那又會怎樣呢？

We are making something real happen.

我們正在做一些實實在在的事情。

When gay and lesbian people started coming out or when trans people started living openly, something changed in the world.

當男同性戀和女同性戀開始出櫃，當變性人開始公開生活，世界發生了一些變化。

By appearing, speaking, acting in certain ways, reality changed and it has changed.

通過以某種方式出現、說話和行動，現實改變了，而且一直在改變。

We are seeing the changing of terms.

我們看到了術語的變化。

We no longer speak about family, woman, man, desire, sex in the same way.

我們不再以同樣的方式談論家庭、女人、男人、慾望和性。

Even the Cambridge Dictionary acknowledges that something has changed.

就連《劍橋詞典》也承認，有些東西已經發生了變化。

Okay, so when we talk about performative, we're talking about an act that makes something come into being or an act that has real consequences.

好吧，當我們談到表演性時，我們說的是一種使某物產生的行為，或者是一種產生實際後果的行為。

We're talking about the changing of reality.

我們說的是現實的改變。

Even among progressive and liberal people I know, there can sometimes be a real resistance to thinking about trans rights or lesbian and gay rights, or even women's rights.

即使在我所認識的進步和自由派人士中，有時也會對思考變性人權利或女同性戀和男同性戀權利，甚至是婦女權利產生真正的牴觸情緒。

They sometimes say that these are secondary issues or it simply makes them uncomfortable.

他們有時會說，這些都是次要問題，或者只是讓他們感到不舒服。

Why should I have to refer to someone as a he or a she or a they?

為什麼我必須把某人稱為 "他"、"她 "或 "他們"？

And yet, at least in the U.S., we've learned how to talk about Black people differently or we talk about women differently.

然而，至少在美國，我們學會了如何以不同的方式談論黑人，或者以不同的方式談論女性。

And sure, it was probably hard to learn how to use new language.

當然，學習如何使用新語言可能很難。

Maybe we had to adjust our habits, but stumbling is part of learning and making an error is part of learning, especially when we're learning something new.

也許我們必須調整自己的習慣，但磕磕絆絆是學習的一部分，犯錯誤也是學習的一部分，尤其是在我們學習新東西的時候。

Sometimes we can all be vitriolic, right?

有時候，我們都會尖酸刻薄，對嗎？

Certain statements will set me off and I will scream.

某些言論會讓我發火，我會尖叫。

But if I only were to do that, then I would never be having a conversation with anyone.

但如果我只是這樣做，那我就永遠不會與任何人交談。

I think we all want to be the moral center of our universe, like, that's right, that's wrong, you're canceled, you're not, you're with me, you're against me.

我想我們都想成為宇宙的道德中心，比如，那是對的，那是錯的，你被取消了，你沒有，你支持我，你反對我。

But we have to allow ourselves to be challenged and accept the invitation to revise our ways of thinking, because that's the only way of being open to people who are trying to make their claim, sometimes for the very first time, to be heard, to be known, to be acknowledged.

但是，我們必須允許自己接受挑戰，接受邀請來修正我們的思維方式，因為只有這樣，我們才能向那些試圖表達自己訴求的人敞開大門，他們有時是第一次表達自己的訴求，希望被傾聽、被瞭解、被認可。

Now, I'm less interested in defending a theory of gender.

現在，我對捍衛性別理論不那麼感興趣了。

I'm much more concerned with finding creative and effective ways of countering the attack on gender.

我更關心的是如何找到創新而有效的方法來反擊對性別的攻擊。

One problem is that many people who refuse to allow trans people to define themselves is that they feel that their own self-definition is destabilized.

一個問題是，許多拒絕讓變性人定義自己的人覺得自己的自我定義不穩定。

The idea that we can change reality, transform reality to be more open, inclusive, just, less violent, there's an instability in that that's very frightening to people who want to understand their genders as fixed.

我們可以改變現實，讓現實變得更開放、更包容、更公正、更少暴力，這種想法中蘊含的不穩定性讓那些希望將自己的性別理解為固定不變的人感到非常恐懼。

But is anybody's gender necessary and universal, or is it a complicated emergence that happens with each of us?

但是，任何人的性別都是必然的、普遍的，還是我們每個人都會出現的複雜現象？

Our deepest sense of self is also formed in time, and we can't always know in advance what that will be.

我們最深刻的自我意識也是在時間中形成的，而我們並不總能提前知道那將會是什麼。

Freedom is a struggle because there's so much in our world that's telling us not to be free with our bodies.

自由是一場鬥爭，因為在我們的世界裡，有太多的東西在告訴我們不要自由地對待自己的身體。

And if we are seeking to love in a free way, to live and move in a free way, we actually have to struggle to claim that freedom.

如果我們想要以自由的方式去愛，以自由的方式生活和行動，我們實際上就必須努力爭取這種自由。

When we live in a democracy, we assume that we're living according to certain principles, equality, freedom, justice.

當我們生活在民主社會中時，我們假定我們的生活遵循著某些原則，平等、自由、公正。

And yet we're constantly learning what freedom is and what equality is and what justice can be.

然而，我們一直在學習什麼是自由，什麼是平等，什麼是正義。

And those challenges, right, the anti-slavery movement, the suffrage movement, the movement for LGBTQIA plus rights, I mean, each of those struggles involve challenging people's existing ideas of who's equal, who has the right to be free, and how do we define justice?

這些挑戰，對吧，反奴隸制運動、選舉權運動、LGBTQIA 加權利運動，我的意思是，每一場鬥爭都涉及挑戰人們現有的觀念，即誰是平等的，誰有權獲得自由，以及我們如何定義正義？

We are all the time struggling to achieve that goal.

我們一直在為實現這一目標而奮鬥。

We need to reoccupy these notions and show that concerns with racial justice and gender equality and gender freedom are an integral part of any democratic struggle, especially if we want to rethink who the people are and what it means for them to live in freedom without fear.

我們需要重新認識這些概念，並表明對種族正義、性別平等和性別自由的關注是任何民主鬥爭不可分割的一部分，特別是如果我們想要重新思考人民是誰以及他們在沒有恐懼的情況下自由生活意味著什麼的話。

Let's just wrap up the gender stuff.

讓我們先來總結一下性別問題。

Unless you want to take a break from gender, we can go back to that.

除非你想從性別問題上休息一下，否則我們可以繼續討論這個問題。

Do you want to get, let me give you the prompt for the last few minutes.

我給你最後幾分鐘的提示。

My whole life I've wanted to take a break from gender.

我一生都想從性別中解脫出來。

I can never take a break from gender.

我永遠無法從性別中解脫出來。

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要想從世界上最偉大的思想家那裡學到更多，請為您的企業獲取 Big Think Plus。