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Sit back and relax, will you? Naomi Wolf has got her orgasm back. Yep. I know you were worried. We were all worried. I mean, to lose one’s orgasm at a time like this, what with Syria undergoing mass civilian murder and Romney closing in on Obama, it is really enough to put a liberated gal’s thong in a knot. 你们就放心吧，娜奥米·沃尔夫(Naomi Wolf)把她的高潮找回来了。是的。我知道你们担心着呢。我们都担心。叙利亚在大规模屠杀平民，罗姆尼正步步紧逼奥巴马，这么个节骨眼上有人失去高潮，足以让一个已经获得身心解放的姑娘感到揪心。 But Wolf didn’t just get back one of those little clitoral thingamajigs that Masters and Johnson so laboriously put back on the map after Freud had brushed them aside. Or rather inside, where he felt they belonged. She has reclaimed the Great Big Cosmic I-Am-a-Gorgeous-Goddess (Feminist-Goddess, that is) kind. Phew!
不过沃尔夫找回来的可不只是阴蒂之类的小玩意，当初是马斯特斯和詹森(Masters and Johnson)费尽周折，给这些被佛洛依德扔到一边——或者说，不是扔到一边，而是塞到里面，他认为它们应该在里面——的东西一个名分。她这次挽救回来的，是惊艳寰宇倾国倾城的女神身份（女性主义女神）。呼！ “Vagina: A New Biography” should have been an important book. A very important book. The 5,000-year-old continuing epidemic of unhappy, disrespected female sexuality, as Wolf rightly maintains, not only influences our world, our wars, our cultures, our economies and even our love affairs, but also produces, literally, the lifeblood of humankind: talk about biting the vulva that births you. 《阴道新传》(Vagina: A New Biography)原本应该是本重要的书。一本非常重要的书。沃尔夫说的不错，五千年来始终闷闷不乐、不受尊重的女性，不但影响着我们的世界、我们的战争、我们的文化、我们的经济甚至我们的情事，还要用自己的血肉之躯来生产人类：你们这不是恩将仇报吗？ We’re mad as hell, but we’re going to take it some more. Our rage, and Wolf’s, is beyond justified: it is imperative. And it’s not going away anytime soon. In fact, it will never, ever go away, so deeply does it cut, so great the wound, and we will just keep on chipping away at multiple injustices in our little female ways, punctuated by the occasional big scream. 我们都气鼓鼓的，但是还不够，还要生更多的气。我们的愤怒，沃尔夫的愤怒，已经不仅仅是合情合理的，简直是必须的。它一时半会是不会消失的。事实上，它永远也不会消失，我们受的伤太深、太重，要用女性特有的方式，把一座座不公正的大山一点点铲平，期间偶有大声的尖叫。 Wolf’s scattered new tome wants to be that scream, but instead it provides a blueprint, a valuable negative example, for the important book that will be written one day. But that treatise, unlike Wolf’s, will finally stop spanking men and telling them to be nice to us. That book will, somehow, show women that the world is indeed ours, that the emperor has no clothes while we are gowned in gold. 沃尔夫这本无所不及的大部头新作，是想成为一声尖叫的，但实际上给出的是一幅蓝图，一本很有价值的反面教材，有朝一日有人真的要写一本重要的书时，会用得到。而那本书和沃尔夫这本不一样，它将不再只是一味地鞭挞男人，让他们对我们好一点。那本书将以某种方式告诉我们，世界其实是我们的，皇帝其实一丝不挂，而我们却身穿金色的长裙。
Wolf details the personal trouble that led to this study. After extensive diagnoses it was revealed that she had lost her kamikaze orgasm owing to a pinched pelvic nerve. She submitted to the implantation of a 14-inch(!) metal plate in her lower back, and now she loves the world again. Who says size doesn’t count? 沃尔夫详细地描述了她的个人困扰，本次研究就是围绕这个困扰展开的。经过全面的诊断，她得知自己没法再得到那种神风自杀机一般的性高潮了，原因是骨盆神经损伤。她接受了一项手术，在下背部植入了一块35厘米长（！）的金属片，现在她又重新爱上这个世界了。谁说大小不重要来着？ She finds “delight” with herself once more, colors are “heightened,” “connections” reverberate, and her postcoital chattiness is back — and I know how much you chaps love a real Chatty Cathy after you’ve had your own little lowbrow, gutter-dwelling, four-second shot at -immortality. 她发现自己又有“欢愉”了，颜色都“明快起来”，“情感联系”再次活跃起来，性事后话又多起来了——经过你那一场放荡、狂野的战斗和持续四秒的永生体验后，你变成了嘴皮子翻动不停的小姑娘，我看你的小伙子一定高兴坏了吧。 So begins Wolf’s “journey” (so many women are taking journeys these days that I am surprised anyone is ever at home), a kind of “In Search of My Lost Hoo Ha.” And, of course, yours: Wolf is incapable of not going global, pitching, as it were, from her own front yard. If we must play the euphemism game for the great female down-thereness of it all, I would vote for the little-used, but rather evocative, Lawrence of a Labia: makes me think of Peter O’Toole and his camel traversing my Sahara. 然后沃尔夫的“旅程”开始了（这年头在旅途中的女人真多啊，偶尔见到待在家里的女人会吓我一跳的），某种“找回我失去的欢愉”之旅。当然，也包括你们的：像往常一样，沃尔夫不可能憋着不让别人知道，势必会站在自家院子里向全世界宣讲。一定要给伟大的女性下体一个委婉称呼的话，我推举很少使用、但相当鲜活的“拉伯的劳伦斯”（Lawrence of a Labia，变自著名电影《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》[Lawrence of Arabia]，labia为阴唇。——译注）：脑中浮现的是彼得·奥图(Peter O’Toole)骑着他的骆驼穿越我的撒哈拉。 Wolf’s ideas and suggestions in “Vagina” are valuable ones, and she repeats much truth, particularly in the territory of Helen Fisher and Louann Brizendine, about the full-body, chemical grenade that is lust. Her premise is that “the vagina is the delivery system for the states of mind that we call confidence, liberation, self--realization and even mysticism in women.” 沃尔夫在《阴道》一书中提到的观念和建议是有价值的，另外，她重申了不少事实，尤其是海伦·费舍尔(Helen Fisher)和露安·布里岑丁(Louann Brizendine)曾说过的那些，比如欲望是一颗全身性的、化学性的炸弹。她的立论之本是：“我们所说的女人的自信、解放、自我觉醒、甚至神秘主义等心态，是通过阴道这个系统来传达的。” Wolf’s book, however, is undermined by the fact that she has rendered herself less than unreliable over the past couple of decades, with one rant more hysterical than another — Fascist America!, great sex behind the burqa!, the “Stalinist” plot against Occupy Wall Street!, and a particularly loathsome, self-victimizing and vindictive piece about the Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom. 然而，沃尔夫以往的作为，让我们没法信任她，从而削弱了本书的说服力。在过去几十年里，她的咆哮一次比一次歇斯底里——法西斯美国！蒙着面纱做爱真棒！“斯大林主义者”图谋破坏“占领华尔街运动”！还有一篇讲莎士比亚研究学者哈罗德·布鲁姆(Harold Bloom)的文章，一副苦大仇深的样子，格外招人厌恶。 The large bully pulpit Wolf garnered after her impressive 1991 debut with “The Beauty Myth” has shrunk with each new outburst. Here, in her eighth book, she presents a “vagina” inevitably, sadly defanged from its real raging, sweet power. And with her graceless writing, Wolf opens herself to ridicule on virtually -every page: “an overtakenness with disinhibition.” Huh? 1991年她用精彩的处女作《美丽迷思》(The Beauty Myth)筑起了一个气势汹汹的讲坛，不过每一次爆发都会让这讲坛显得更渺小一些。现在到了第八本书，她奉上了一个“阴道”——这个阴道势必要被遗憾地解除它真正愤怒、甜美的武装。沃尔夫用她粗俗的文笔展开了肆意地嘲弄，基本上每一页都是如此：“一种有去抑效果的超越。”嗯？ The trouble begins on the dust jacket with her title, “Vagina: A New Biography.” (It remains unclear if this biography was authorized.) A quick geography lesson is in order: the word “vagina” refers uniquely, and only, to the cylindrical passage that leads from the external world to the internal world of a woman’s sexual arena, and why it has now come to mean, erroneously, the entire shebang is beyond me. Not that praising any of the other equipment in the female arsenal — labia, clitoris, urethra — is exactly what a girl wants to hear in the back of your pickup truck either. 第一眼看到封皮上的书名就已经有问题了，《阴道新传》。（这传记有没有经过授权尚不得而知。）这里需要先普及一下地理知识：“阴道”这个词专指、只能指那条由外部世界通往女性身体内部性爱体育场的圆筒形通道，至于为什么会被错误地用做那一整套系统的代名词，我就不清楚了。我倒不是说赞美女性军火库里的其他装备——阴唇、阴蒂、尿道——就是女孩子多愿意听的话。 Continuing our tour, heading in and up, we find the cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries, with those pesky little eggs, and then, making a u-ey, down and back out again to the perineum and anus and let’s not forget all the hair that used to be there. You still with me? These many parts are controlled by numerous pelvic muscles and so many firing nerve pathways that they make the German autobahn look like a pedestrian promenade. 继续我们的科普之旅，向里再向上，我们可以找到宫颈、子宫、输卵管和卵巢，还有那些老惹麻烦的卵子，然后我们绕过一个U形弯，向后向下绕出来，到会阴和肛门，我们不要忘记那里曾经长满毛发。你们跟得上么？这些部位是由大量的骨盆肌肉和无数传达信号的神经通道控制的，跟这套系统比起来德国高速公路简直是供人散步的走道。 All these lower-body components are being micromanaged by the brain, which is saturated in hormones and an über-powerful neurotransmitter cocktail that includes norepinephrine, oxytocin and dopamine, which Wolf calls “the ultimate feminist chemical . . . involved in leadership and confidence building.” So now you see not only that the poor little “vagina” is just a small cog in Operation Sexual Woman but, one might point out, that it is the one part of the whole that men are most interested in for their own pleasure. Suspicious, no? 所有这些下身的部件都是处在大脑的微管理之下的，这个大脑沉浸在荷尔蒙以及各种神经递质调制而成的一种劲道十足的鸡尾酒里，其中包括去甲肾上腺素、催产素、多巴胺等等，最后这种物质被沃尔夫称为“终极女性化学物质……与领袖气质和信心建立有关”。现在你明白了吧，那个可怜的小“阴道”不但只是性感女人行动中的一个不起眼的小零件，而且可以说它是男人最感兴趣的那部分——为的是他们自己的感官愉悦。不觉得可疑吗？ The female counterpart to your penis is not (spoiler alert) our vagina, and calling a book about the female sex “Vagina” is like calling a book about the male sex “Scrotum.” Talk about a near miss. The clitoris is the diva at our party, and she sports the most sensitive millimeters of flesh — male or female — in human existence. Her 8,000 nerve endings — let me repeat that: 8,000 — outnumber those on your circumcised penis by a mere 100 percent. No wonder the clitoris keeps getting lost, depending on the century, the religion and the man, though mine — and I am willing to go on the record about this — has always been in the same place. 和你们的阳具相对应的不是（剧透来了）我们的阴道，一本关于女性性爱的书叫“阴道”，就相当于管一本男性性爱的书叫“阴囊”。失之毫厘。阴蒂才是我们这个派对的女王，她是用人体——无论男女——中敏感度最高的几毫米肌肉制成的。她的8000根神经末梢——看清楚了：8000根——比你那根切了包皮的阴茎多了整整一倍。难怪阴蒂这东西的存在会随着时代、宗教和男人的不同而改变，时而出现时而消失，不过我可以明确告诉你们，我的阴蒂一直都在原地没有动过。 This leads to the inevitable question: Is the ubiquitous use of the word “vagina” by women yet another insidious male plot unconsciously abetted by maso-chistic women in their own subjugation? Hey, this is a job for Naomi Wolf, fearless feminist whistle-blower! Yet here she is not only absent from her own cause, but simply climbs up on the old Eve Ensler vagina bandwagon. She knows she is wrong but goes right ahead anyway. 这样一来我们不免要面对一个问题：女人到处用“阴道”这词，会不会又是男人设下的一个阴险的圈套，而后不知不觉地被受虐成性的女人拿去当成了自己的武器？咦，这正是无所畏惧的女性主义干将娜奥米·沃尔夫该挺身而出的时候啊！可是她现在置自己的伟大事业于不顾，反倒要去抢伊芙·恩斯勒(Eve Ensler)那杆阴道大旗。她知道自己错了，但还是不顾一切走了下去。 “When I use the term ‘vagina’ in this book,” she explains, “I am using it somewhat differently from its technical definition. . . . I am using it . . . for the entire female sex organ, from labia to clitoris to introitus to mouth of cervix.” Now pseudo-science is just fine with me, but Wolf’s inconsistencies — she then cites many studies by actual scientists — muddy the vaginal waters, and we can’t tell if this is a serious book or a girly-girl, vajayjay book. “我在本书中用了‘阴道’这个词，”她解释道，“我的用法跟它在学术上的定义是有些不同的……我指的是……整个女性性器官，从阴唇到阴蒂到阴道口到宫颈口。”是这样，我不在乎玩伪科学，但沃尔夫的前后不一——她后来引用了许多正经科学家的研究——把这一大堆的阴道给搅和乱了，我们已经分不清这是本严肃的著作，还是某个傲娇女神谈私处的读物。 In typical contradictory fashion, Wolf proceeds to accentuate the importance of words. “Words about the vagina can either help or hurt actual vaginal response,” she writes, reporting how “ill and weak” she felt after reading Henry Miller but how “the world glowed” after she read Ana"is Nin, even though “the same bougainvillea” was “waving over my head.” At least Wolf is not claiming to be a good judge of literature, waving bougainvillea aside. 沃尔夫强调了言语的重要性，不过用的是一种典型的自相矛盾的方式，“一切对阴道的言语描述，阴道都会做出生理上的反应，有的是促进，有的是伤害，”她写道，虽然“在我的头顶舞动着的”“还是那簇三角梅”，但读亨利·米勒(Henry Miller)让她感到“不适和虚弱”，读阿娜伊丝·宁(Ana"is Nin)却能让“整个世界焕发光彩”。至少沃尔夫没有声称自己对文学有多好的判断力吧，舞动的三角梅就另断了。 Alas, Wolf has neither the soul of a sexual Simone Weil nor a serious researcher’s discipline, referring frequently to some obscure catchall called “the new science.” She is a dilettante assuming a mantle of authority, and time and again she pre-sents her notion du jour and then reports the information that agrees with her, shoehorning her evidence to fit her “vagina.” 哎，沃尔夫既没有肉欲版西蒙娜·薇依(Simone Weil)的灵魂，也没有严肃学术研究的规范，只是频繁地提到一种叫“新科学”的虚头巴脑的万宝箱。她是一个自诩为权威的半吊子，她的观点说变就变，只列举符合她的想法的信息，把她的证据硬生生塞到她的“阴道”里去。 Witness the following inane exchange between her and Nancy Fish, vulvodynia counselor and patient: 我们来看看她和南希·费什(Nancy Fish)之间的一次空洞的谈话，后者是外阴痛医疗咨询师，本身也患有此病。 Wolf: “Your brain is connected to your vagina.” 沃尔夫：“你的大脑和阴道是相连的。” Fish: “It definitely is.” 费什：“绝对是。” This is “the new science”? Is the earth round? 这就是“新科学”？地球是圆的？ On another occasion she tells an actress about her search for “a possible link between female orgasm and creativity,” and — eureka! — the actress confesses that when she goes “deeply into the character, my orgasms change. They start to become more, more. . . . ” “Transcendental?” Wolf offers. “Exactly,” the actress confirms. This kind of vague verification of something equally vague is typical of Wolf’s shoddy research methodology. 还有一次，她对一个女演员说起她的研究，说她在寻找“女性高潮和创造力之间的潜在联系”，然后——啊哈，我说对了吧！——女演员坦承“一旦深入到角色中去，我的高潮就不一样了。它们变得越来越……”“超凡？”沃尔夫提示道。“完全正确，”女演员表示肯定。像这样不清不楚地证实某个同样不清不楚的东西，是沃尔夫的低劣研究方法论的典型代表。 She likes to coin phrases, as with the “-vagina-brain connection” that populates her book. Call it what you like, but the fact that a woman’s genitals are connected to her brain is not news. It never even was news. It is a ridiculous redundancy so basic that even bonobos know it — and act accordingly. 她喜欢自组新词，比如她书中反复出现的“阴道-大脑联系”。不管你叫它什么，女人的生殖器和大脑相连不是什么新闻。它从来就没成为新闻过。它是句非常初级的废话，初级到黑猩猩都懂——而且身体力行。 Wolf’s sexual journey lands her, and us, in Goddess Land (dust off those Donovan cassettes!), but not before she preps us with a haphazard history lesson: the shame of “the Judeo-Christian vagina,” the chastity belt of the Middle Ages, the whore prisons of the Victorians and systematized rape during war. She then revisits pornography’s propagation of “vaginal illiteracy.” (Frankly, I didn’t even know you could read in there — but can you download?) 沃尔夫——以及我们——沿着她的性旅程来到女神之地（把那些积满尘土的多诺万[Donovan]专辑磁带拿出来再听听！），不过在此之前她要先向我们奉上一堂颠三倒四的历史课：“犹太-基督传统之阴道”的耻辱，中世纪的贞操带，维多利亚时期的妓女监狱以及战争中的有组织强奸行为。然后她回顾了色情作品对“阴道无知”的宣传。（说实话我压根就不知道我下边还能看书呢——不过可以从网上下载吗？） One amusing report in Wolf’s otherwise humorless book involves the measuring of the “vaginal pulse” using a “vaginal photometer” (now girls, do not post those shots on Facebook), which records the “V.P.A.” (“vaginal pulse amplitude”). From her “online survey” (that ever-reliable source) she reports occasions when a woman felt that special “thump”: when her man remembered to buy cat food, cooked breakfast and, in one extraordinary act of valor, when one husband “gave me his pillow, so he didn’t have one.” Ah, romance. One excited woman confesses to having felt a thump “at the dump!” Her man had “lifted up an old couch” and tossed it “off the back of the truck.” I bet he did. 在沃尔夫这本毫无幽默感的书里，有一处叙述还是有些意思的，她提到用“阴道光度计”来测量“阴道脉搏”（听好了姑娘们，别再把那些照片往Facebook上贴了），这种光度计可以记录“V.P.A.”（阴道脉搏幅度）。根据她的“网络调查”（一个从来都很可靠的来源），她记述了一些女人遇到的某种被“击中”的特殊瞬间：就是当她男人没忘记买猫粮的时候，或者做了早餐的时候，还有一个举动格外英勇无畏，有一个丈夫“把他的枕头给了我，结果自己没枕头了”。噢，罗曼蒂克。有一个女人兴奋地叙述了她“在垃圾堆边”被“击中”的事！她男人“把一个旧沙发举起来”，一把扔到“卡车的车斗里”。这我相信。 So where does Wolf take us before she rests in her final pages in the labial folds of Greece? (“The path I followed wove parallel to the Aegean, which was on my right; the great soft hills were to my left. My path led over a small bridge.” Get it?) Searching for “a working ‘Goddess’ model,” she lands us back in the ’60s with little update but sans the free love part. This time it’s going to cost you. In Mistress Wolf’s Tantra 101 class she teaches “the Goddess Array”: candles, flowers, soft music, cuddling, eye contact and “tell her she’s beautiful,” and thus “the female heterosexual journey” begins. (Lesbians don’t like flowers?) 她将全书的最后几页放在了一条希腊的阴唇褶皱里（“我沿着这条爱琴海边的蜿蜒小路前行，海在我的右边；柔和的高山在我左边。我的路通向一座小桥。”懂我的意思了吗？），但是在此之前沃尔夫带我们去哪里了呢？为了寻找“一个可行的‘女神’模型”，她把我们带回到了60年代，这个60年代基本没有什么新东西，只是把“爱的自由”那部分给略去了。不过这次回归可是不便宜。在她的怛特罗修行速成班里，沃尔夫夫人会教你如何配齐“女神套装”：蜡烛、鲜花、柔和的音乐、搂抱、眼神交流，还有“告诉她她很美丽”，这样才能踏上“女性异性恋之旅”。（女同性恋不喜欢花？） You guys know the drill, you simply must try, yet again, and try harder this time — more slowly — to worship at the “Goddess-shaped” “hole,” so that your woman will have a “showers of stars” orgasm. Are any of you men still reading this, or are you already surfing the Web for some good, speedy, get-to-it, disgusting hot porn? Some nasty girl-girl might be soothing right now. Hold on. 小伙子们，这一套你们都熟了，只是得继续努力，你们这次要更使劲地——更缓慢地——膜拜那个“女神形状的”“洞”，这样你们的女人将得到一次“沐浴在点点繁星中”的高潮。有没有男人一直坚持读到这里的，还是你们早就跑去上网搜索一些又快又好、直达重点、令人作呕的热辣色情片了？弄点淫秽的女女对战足够安抚你们受伤的心灵了吧。坚持住。 Wolf gives you a choice: do you “want to be married to a Goddess — or a bitch?” O.K., don’t answer that. In truth, you have no say, since all the problems of the world are pretty much your fault and, God knows, your equipment is very mismatched to ours: your five minutes to takeoff does not suit our 20-minute minimum. Reading Wolf’s book can -really make a woman foot-stomping mad about all those lovers who want to have sex the way men like to have sex. Who do you think you are: men? Don’t you know that only the girly-man can really ring our bell? But stay plenty manly while running our bubble baths because “a happy hetero-sexual vagina requires, to state the obvious, a virile man.” That’s right, you can’t win. Surrender, Dorotheus! 沃尔夫让你们自己选择：你们是“想要娶一个女神——还是一个荡妇”？注意，不要回答她。实际上，你们没有发言权，因为这世上所有的问题基本上都是你们的错，而且，天可怜见的，你们的设备跟我们的太不匹配了：你们五分钟起飞，我们起码20分钟，不合适。女人看了沃尔夫的书真的会气得直跺脚，想到她们的爱人总是要用男人喜欢的方式跟她们做爱。你以为你是谁：男人？你难道还不明白，能找到你身上的按钮的男人，都是娘娘腔？但是你要他和你一起泡泡浴，同时又要保持够雄性的样子，因为“很显然，一个异性恋阴道需要有阳刚的男子才能快乐起来”。没错，你怎么都是个输。投降吧，多萝修斯！（出自电影《绿野仙踪》[1939]中的著名台词：“投降吧，多萝西。”作者此处给女性人名多萝西(Dorothy)加上了希腊语男性人名后缀“修斯”(eus)。——译注） Herein lies the problem of Wolf’s admirable attempt to straddle two worlds. She wants to connect the science of female sexuality to tantric sexual knowledge to prove that this knowledge is indeed true and effective. Now, any man or woman who has experienced sexual tantric practice knows it is irrefutably powerful (guilty and charged) — but it’s a tough sell to everyone else, because even the best literary attempts to teach it appear silly or simply absurd. 沃尔夫这种两性通吃的努力令人钦佩，不过是有问题的。她想把女性的性科学和怛特罗式的性知识联系起来，证明后者是正确的，有效的。是这样，任何一个尝试过怛特罗派性爱手法的人都知道，它无疑是很强大的（让人有罪恶感，同时又精神焕发）——但要推销给其他人就非常困难了，因为即便有再好的文采，教授这东西的时候也会显得愚蠢，或者根本就是荒唐。 Here, during her book’s climax, Wolf suddenly loses her nerve and fails us. And perhaps herself. She signs up for both a private session and a workshop with several highly respected tantric masters, “convinced that tantra had some answers to the question of how female sexuality was best understood.” But then she re-fuses on both occasions to experience the core practice they all teach, “sacred spot massage” — a loving, healing ritual that requires only fingers just inside the vagina, stroking the front wall (the G spot, “the South Pole of the clitoris”), that can bring on endless waves of emotional release as well as orgasmic energy and pleasure. 可在她这本书步入高潮之时，沃尔夫突然挺不住了，辜负了我们。可能也辜负了她自己。她约了一次私人咨询，还参加了一个讲习班，都有数位德高望重的怛特罗大师在场，他们“让我相信怛特罗能帮助我，为理解女性之性找到最佳答案”。但是在这两个场合里，她都拒绝去修炼他们所教授的核心内容，“圣点按摩”——一种治愈的、情爱的仪式，需要将手指伸入阴道，抚摩前壁（G点，“阴蒂的南极”），这样做可以带来无穷无尽的情感释放，同时还有性高潮的能量和愉悦。 Wolf confesses that while negotiating a session with Mike Lousada, the tantra guru of London, “the nice monogamous Jewish girl in me once again drew a line,” and she persuades him to “work with me nonsexually.” Hey, are we getting healed here or not? 沃尔夫承认，在和伦敦的怛特罗古鲁迈克·卢萨达(Mike Lousada)商量咨询内容的时候，“内心深处那个坚守妇道的犹太小甜妞再一次站出来，告诫我不要越界”，她说服他“和我无性地合作”。喂，咱们到底还要不要治病？ After attending a workshop given by Charles Muir and Caroline Muir, leaders of the American tantra movement for more than 30 years, where sacred spot massage is taught and offered, Wolf tells us, “I couldn’t imagine doing it myself.” Seriously? Is Naomi Wolf, enfin, a prude? 沃尔夫上了查尔斯·穆尔(Charles Muir)和卡洛琳·穆尔(Caroline Muir)的讲习班，三十多年来这两位一直是美国怛特罗运动的领袖，在他们的讲习班上是有圣点按摩的教学和实践的，但沃尔夫告诉我们：“我没法想象自己做这种事。”什么？到头来，娜奥米·沃尔夫，是这么一个矜持的人儿？ Wolf’s cowardice here in no way detracts, however, from the fact that she is correct that women are, despite feminism, vibrators, monologues and metrosexual men — these might actually be the culprits — still not having good, much less transformative, sex. Witness the rising sales of “arousal gels,” the new diagnosis of “Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder” that will appear in next year’s revised DSM-5 and the pharmaceutical companies’ desperate race to develop a female Viagra. I wish them luck. But one really need look no further than the orgasmic sales of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy — more than 40 million worldwide — which stands alone as the largest, and most accurate, poll ever taken that women are choosing impossible erotic fantasy over that other impossible: an erotic reality. 不过，沃尔夫的怯懦丝毫没有影响到她对女人的判断，她是对的，纵有女性主义、颤动按摩器、自慰和如花美男——这些可能恰恰是祸根——女人还是缺乏优质的性爱，更别提革新性的性爱了。眼看着“催情啫喱”销量步步高升，定于明年出版的《精神病诊断与统计手册》第五版(DSM–5)将引入“女性性趣/兴奋障碍”的诊断，还有各大公司在女用万艾可开发上进行着殊死搏斗。我祝他们好运。但其实我们只需要看看《五十道阴影》(Fifty Shades)三部曲那高潮迭起的销量——全球总销量已经超过4000万册——就知道了，这其实是有史以来规模最大、最准确的一次民意测验，表明女人更倾向于选择不可能的情色幻想，而不是另一种不可能：一个情色的现实。 What Wolf lacks in her quest to put the “vagina” front and center is the poetry that might actually convey the real depth and magnitude of her heartfelt cri de coeur. The V.P.A.’s, the hormones, even yummy, pheromoney male armpits are, in the end, only left-brain facts alluding to the very real, paradoxical, right-brain event that is a woman ceding her power so as to attain it. 沃尔夫在努力让“阴道”扬威立名的过程中，欠缺一种诗意，她内心深处的呼号，也许只有通过诗意才有望释放出真正的深度和力度。抗癫痫药物V.P.A.，荷尔蒙，甚至男性那满溢着费洛蒙的、令人垂涎的腋窝，到头来无非是掌管真相的左脑在向看上去很真实的、自相矛盾的右脑发出暗示，女性为了追求后者而放弃了自己的权力。 If you really want to know what it takes to make a woman orgasm, to watch her soul explode and her identity ignite, then take a look at Harold Brodkey’s 1973 short story “Innocence.” I know it’s by a dead, white, bisexual, Jewish man, but try to pity his fivefold handicap, for it is the best female orgasm ever described by any writer — male or female. 如果你真的想知道如何让一个女人高潮，想引爆她的灵魂，点燃她的自我认同，去看看哈罗德·布罗德基(Harold Brodkey)作于1973年的短篇小说《纯真》(Innocence)。是的，它的作者是一个死人、白人、双性恋者、犹太男子，但是请尝试用怜悯之心对待这种五重残疾，因为在描写女性性高潮方面，天底下的作家都不是他的对手——无论男女。 There is crazy Wiley Silenowicz at the front lines of the very real war that is love — the one between a woman and herself, that is — where the innocent Orra Perkins, “a ludicrous beauty,” lies fighting to the death against the pleasure the noble Wiley perpetrates upon her: 疯狂的威利·席伦诺维奇在一场惨烈的爱情战争前线——这是一个女人和她自己之间的战争——纯真的奥拉·帕金斯，“一个荒诞的美人”，和高高在上的、玩弄她的威利带给她的欢愉，展开殊死抗争： “Then all at once, it happened. . . . She was the center and the source and the victim of a storm of wing beats; we were at the top of the world; the huge bird of God’s body in us hovered; the great miracle pounded on her back, pounded around us; she was straining and agonized and distraught, estranged within this -corporeal-incorporeal thing, this angelic other avatar, this other substance of herself . . . and she screamed.” “突然之间，开始了……她是这场狂乱的暴风雨的中心、源头、和受害者；我们在世界之巅；神的身体如巨鸟在我们体内盘旋；宏伟的奇迹撞击着她的背，撞击我们的周身；她紧绷挣扎癫狂，这肉体-非肉体的东西，天使般的他者化身，自我的另一个实体，都与她不相干了……她尖叫起来。” Amen. Woman. 阿门。女人。 I think, ultimately, this is what Wolf is looking for, what all us gals are looking for: the explosion that signals the birth of a woman’s deepest, truest self. But it’s no easy game to play, wading through those 5,000 years of our sisters’ suppression, that great abyss of loss, every time. So you guys, fix that roof, do the dishes, buy her roses, take her dancing and hold her really tight. And don’t forget that date at the dump. Whatever it takes. What price the world? 我想这才是沃尔夫最终想寻找的东西，我们女人都在寻找的东西：一次爆炸，昭示一个女人最深刻、真实的自我的诞生。但这不是一个简单的游戏，每玩一次，我们都要跋涉穿越5000年的压抑，那迷茫的万丈深渊。所以你们这些男人，修好屋顶，洗净碗碟，给她买玫瑰，带她去跳舞，紧紧抱住她。还有，别忘了垃圾堆边的那场约会。不计一切代价。这代价到底有多大？ Toni Bentley在纽约市芭蕾舞团度过了十年舞蹈生涯，迄今著有五本书。她的回忆录《投降》(The Surrender)现以电子书形式发售。 本文最初发表于2012年9月16日。 翻译：经雷 |
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