女權之路:女人何苦爲難女人

Some women don't want to become bishops. They don't even want other women to become bishops. That much is evident from records released by Church House, which show that women made up almost half of the lay people who voted against legislation to allow female bishops in the Church of England. Voting figures show that 33 of the 74 General Synod lay members who voted against the measure were women, most of them conservative evangelicals or members of the church's Anglo-Catholic wing. They had the support of another 2,200 women who signed a petition opposing reform.

一些女性不想成爲主教。她們甚至不希望其他女性也成爲主教。從英國聖公會發布的記錄數據來看這是明顯的，表明女性讓幾乎一半的門外漢來投票反對允許女性擔任英格蘭教會的主教的立法。投票數據顯示74名聖公會外行成員中反對這項法案的有33名是女性，他們中大多數是保守的福音派教會成員或國教教徒。她們獲得了另外2200名簽署了一份請願書來反對改革的女性的支持。

It's hard not to react to these figures by asking why some women appear to be their own worst enemies. Why do they actively oppose what seems to be in their own interest? The General Synod vote runs against the current of history, which suggests that women are increasingly voting for politicians who favour equality, such as President Obama.

面對這些數據很難不爲所動，不禁要問爲什麼一些女性似乎是她們自己的最大敵人？爲什麼她們積極反對似乎符合她們自身利益的事情？總議會投票反對歷史現狀，這表明女性越來越支持倡導平等的政客，比如奧巴馬總統。

Reactionary positions on abortion and contraception were defeated in one contest after another in the US last month, and opinion polls in the UK suggest that women voters are deserting the Conservatives in droves.

對墮胎和節育的反對立場上個月在美國於一輪輪的抗議中被駁倒，而民意調查結果表明英國女性選民成羣結隊地拋棄了保守派。

The idea that placing women in positions of authority over men is somehow against the natural order of things sounds quaint in the 21st century . Yet it still strikes a chord with a surprising number of women – not just in the church but also, shamefully, in politics. On Monday there wasn't a single woman on the government frontbench to hear George Osborne announce the next governor of the Bank of England. Women ministers don't need to bother their little heads about finance, it appears, any more than women in the church need to put on robes and tell male priests what to do in their own parishes. After last week it also seems that women don't need, or don't have the opportunity, to apply for the job of director general of the BBC.

在權位上將女性置於男性之上某種程度上違反自然秩序的想法在21世紀聽起來很可笑。但它仍然在驚人數量的女性中引起共鳴——不僅僅在教堂，可悲的是在政治上。週一沒有一個單身女性在政府議會前座聽到喬治•奧斯本宣佈未來的英格蘭銀行行長。女部長不需要爲金融問題傷腦筋，看來，女人同樣需要在教會穿上長袍，告訴男祭司們在他們自己的教區要做些什麼。上週之後，似乎女性也不需要或沒有機會去申請英國廣播公司總裁的位置。

This goes some way to explaining the power politics behind otherwise inexplicable decisions. Faced with a gap between the rhetoric of equality and what actually happens within organisations, it's not so surprising that some women choose the safe option of identifying with traditional centres of power. Look at those "first ladies" who find it easier to get close to power than seek it on their own behalf. When Carla Bruni-Sarkozy announces in Vogue that women don't need feminism, she's speaking as a woman who's experienced the material advantages of attaching herself to one of the world's most powerful men.

這一定程度上解釋了那些令人費解的決策背後的強權政治。面對關於平等的美好說辭和組織內實際上發生的事情之間的差距，一些婦女在認同傳統權力中心中做出的最安全選擇並不令人意外。看看那些發現接近權力要比爲自己利益追求權力更容易的“第一夫人”們。當卡拉•布魯尼在《Vogue》上宣佈女性不需要女權主義時，她是作爲將自己依附於世界上最有權勢男人之一併享受着優越物質條件的女人在發言。

These women have got where they have – somewhere quite comfortable – without rocking the boat, and they're not keen on women who challenge the status quo. Identifying with men is a traditional means of negotiating patriarchal power, and women who go down that route tend to share reactionary male views of other women. If you're a conservative woman in the Church of England, the prospect of "pushy" women getting power is quite scary, so of course you're going to vote against it. The last thing any traditional woman wants to be accused of is appearing confrontational, even if accepting male power is self-defeating in the long run.

這些婦女已經找到了她們的歸屬——相當舒適的歸屬——沒有搗亂，她們不熱衷於挑戰現狀的女人。認同男人是與家長制權力談判的一種傳統方式，走這條路的女性傾向於分享其他女性保守的男性觀。如果你是英格蘭教會的一個保守女人，“愛出風頭”的女性獲得權力的前景是相當可怕的，所以你當然要投票反對它。任何一個傳統女性想要指責的最後一件事是出現對抗，即使接受男權從長遠來看弄巧成拙。

In many ways, women voting against women is hardly a new phenomenon. Before the first world war, the threat of becoming "unsexed" was used against the suffragettes, scaring some women into joining the Anti-Suffrage League founded in 1908 by the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward.

在許多方面，女性投票反對女性並不是一個新現象。第一次世界大戰前，變成不男不女的威脅被用來對付婦女參政權論者，嚇唬那些加入小說家漢弗萊•沃德女士於1908年成立的反選舉權聯盟的女性。

In her 1983 book Right-Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin argued that some women acquiesce to male authority in order to gain protection from male violence. She was right, but it isn't just fear of violence that makes women act against their long-term interest. There's also the little question of approval and status, as Vogue's interview with Bruni-Sarkozy reveals. "I'm not at all an active feminist," trills the wife of the former president of France. Channelling her inner housewife evidently works for her, even if it's not a role most modern women aspire to.

在她1983年出版的《右翼女性》這本書裏，安德里亞德沃金認爲一些女性默許男性權威是爲了從男性暴力中獲得保護。她是對的，但不只是對暴力的害怕使得女性違反她們的長遠利益。還有一個批准和地位的小問題，正如布魯尼在《Vogue》採訪中透露的。“我一點都不是活躍的女權主義者，”前法國總統的妻子說道。與她內心的家庭主婦磨合對她而言顯然是卓有成效的，即使這不是大多數現代女性渴望的角色。