美國大學開始認可第三性別
Rocko Gieselman looked like any other undergraduate at the University of Vermont but perhaps a little prettier, with pale freckles dancing across porcelain skin and bright blue eyes amplifying a broad smile. Black bra straps poked out from a faded black tank top emblazoned with the logo of the indie band Rubblebucket; a silver necklace with an anchor dangled over ample décolletage.
Gieselman, a 21-year-old senior majoring in gender studies, was chatting cheerfully from a futon, legs tucked sideways, knees forward. In the tidy, poster-filled apartment that Gieselman shares with a roommate near campus, we were discussing the dating landscape. Gieselman, who came out in seventh grade, blushed and smiled shyly: “My partner was born female, feels female. The partners I’m attracted to are usually feminine people.”
吉梭曼，一名主修性別研究的21歲學生，正雙腿分開、跪坐在蒲團上，與我愉快地聊著天。這間整潔並貼滿了海報的公寓位於校園附近，由吉梭曼和一名室友共同居住，我們正在這裡討論約會方面的話題。在七年級時便已出櫃的吉梭曼，臉頰微微泛紅，帶著害羞的微笑說道：“我的上一名伴侶生理性別為女性，心理性別也是女性。我現在交往的伴侶通常都是女性。”Gieselman, too, was born female, has a gentle disposition, and certainly appears feminine (save for a K. D. Lang cut). But Gieselman self-identifies not as a gay woman but as transgender. Unlike men and women who experience a mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities and take steps to align them, Gieselman accepts having a womanly body, and uses the term — along with “genderqueer” — to mean something else: a distinct third gender.
吉梭曼的生理性別同為女性，性情溫和，外表也呈現出明顯的女性特徵（除了與女同歌手凱蒂蓮[K·D·Lang]同樣的髮型之外）。但是吉梭曼並不將自己界定為女同性戀，而是一名跨性別者(transgender)。不同於那些對自己的生理性別和心理性別表現出認知差異，並極力想要將兩者統一起來的男性和女性，吉梭曼接受自己擁有一具女性軀體的事實，並使用“跨性別者”這一名詞——還有“性別酷兒”(genderqueer)——來指代新的性別身份：一種有別於男女之分的“第三性”。
While a freshman at Burlington High School, Gieselman began feeling that the label “girl,” even “lesbian,” didn’t fit. “Every time someone used ‘she’ or ‘her’ to refer to me, it made this little tick in my head. Kind of nails-on-a-chalkboard is another way you can describe it. It just felt wrong. It was like, ‘Who are you talking to?’”
吉梭曼還是伯靈頓高中(Burlington High School)的一年級新生時，就開始覺得“女生”甚至是“女同”的標籤都不適合自己。“每當有人用女性人稱來指代我時，我的腦子裡都會‘咯噔’一下。也可以說有點像指甲在黑板上劃過的那種刺耳聲。這種說法就是讓我覺得不對勁。感覺就像是‘你在跟誰說話啊？’”Being a boy didn’t feel right, either: “I had a couple months where I gave it a go. I tried to bind my chest with an Ace bandage every day. I wore some masculine clothes and told my friends to call me Emmett.”
而以男生自居，同樣讓吉梭曼有種異樣感。“我曾經有兩個月試著把自己當成男生來看待。我每天都會用繃帶把胸部裹起來，穿男式服裝，讓朋友們叫我埃米特(Emmett)。”Neither category applied. “It felt not only like I was invisible but, especially at that time when hormones are aflutter, like no one would really know what I was like for the rest of my life.”
但這兩種性別都不適合。“這樣不僅讓我覺得變成了隱身人，而且會讓我覺得在自己的後半生中，再也沒有人能夠真正瞭解我的真實身份，尤其是在我荷爾蒙旺盛的日子裡。”Gieselman began spending time at Outright Vermont, a trans and queer youth center where the gender lexicon of activists and academe is widely accepted. “As soon as I learned about a genderqueer identity, I was like, ‘Oh! That’s the one!’” said Gieselman, who frequently ends sentences with a gentle laugh. “Before, it had been really difficult to explain how I was feeling to other people, and even really difficult to explain it in my own head. Suddenly, there was a language for it, and that started the journey.”
吉梭曼開始抽出時間參與佛蒙特出櫃聯盟(Outright Vermont)的活動，這是一間面向跨性別者和同性戀者的青年中心，活動分子和學術界的性別用語在這裡廣為接受。“在我瞭解到‘性別酷兒’這一概念的瞬間，我立刻有種‘哦！就是這個！’的感覺。”經常用一陣輕柔的笑聲作為話語結尾的吉梭曼說道，“以前我一直很難對別人解釋清楚我的感覺，甚至很難在心裡對自己解釋清楚。突然之間，就出現了一種專為這種感覺而定製的語言，這是我這段人生旅程的開端。”Gieselman dumped the girlie name bestowed at birth, asked friends and teachers to use Rocko, the tough-sounding nickname friends had come up with, and told people to use “they” instead of “he” or “she.” “They” has become an increasingly popular substitute for “he” or “she” in the transgender community, and the University of Vermont, a public institution of some 12,700 students, has agreed to use it.
吉梭曼拋開自己出生時得到的女性名字，讓朋友和老師們改用“洛可”來稱呼自己，這個拗口的暱稱是吉梭曼的朋友們一同想出來的；吉梭曼還讓大家使用第三人稱複數“they”來指代自己，而非第三人稱單數的“he”或“she”。這一代詞在跨性別者群體內，已日漸成為對“他”或“她”最常用的替代人稱，而佛蒙特大學——這間總共擁有約12,700名學生就讀的公立大學，也已同意採用這種表述。While colleges across the country have been grappling with concerns related to students transitioning from one gender to another, Vermont is at the forefront in recognizing the next step in identity politics: the validation of a third gender.
當全美的各所大學還在設法應對學生性別轉換所帶來的相關顧慮時，佛蒙特大學卻已站在了最前沿，看清了身份政治的下一步行動——對第三性的認可。The university allows students like Gieselman to select their own identity — a new first name, regardless of whether they’ve legally changed it, as well as a chosen pronoun — and records these details in the campuswide information system so that professors have the correct terminology at their fingertips.
佛蒙特大學允許吉梭曼這樣的學生選擇自己的身份，重新登記一個新的名字——無論他們是否辦理過更名的法律手續，還可以讓他們自己選擇名字的發音，並將這些詳細資料登記在校內的資訊系統裡，讓教授隨時都可方便地獲知正確的用辭。For years, writers and academics have argued that gender identity is not a male/female binary but a continuum along which any individual may fall, depending on a variety of factors, including anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and feelings. But the dichotomy is so deeply embedded in our culture that even the most radical activists had been focused mainly on expanding the definitions of the two pre-existing categories.
多年來，著者和學者一直主張，性別身份並非僅有男女兩極，而是一條連續的帶狀分佈，任何人均可在其中找到自己性別的一席之地，具體則取決於多種因素，包括解剖學、染色體、荷爾蒙和主觀感受。只是性別二元論在我們的文化中已經如此根深蒂固，就連最激進的活動分子，一直也來也只是將關注焦點放在拓展現有兩種性別分類的定義上而已。Today, a growing number of students are embracing the idea that when it comes to classifying gender, there should be more than two options — something now afforded by the dating website OkCupid and by Facebook, which last year added a tab for “custom” alongside “male” and “female,” with some 50 options, including “agender,” “androgyne,” “pangender” and “trans person,” as well as an option for controlling who can see the customized version.
如今，越來越多的學生都開始接納這樣的觀念：在性別分類上，應該有兩種以上的選項——約會網站OkCupid和社交媒體網站Facebook均已採用了這樣的體系，在去年時與“男”和“女”的性別選項一同，提供了一個“自定義”的標籤，包括“無性別”、“雙性人”、“泛性別者”和“跨性別者”在內，總共有50個選項，同時還有相應選項，可以控制都有誰能看到使用者自定義的性別內容。Activists on campuses as diverse as Penn State, University at Albany, University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and University of California, Riverside, are laying claim to a degree of identity freedom nearly unimaginable when the first L.G.B.T student centers were established. Today’s students, who grew up with Gay-Straight Alliances in their high schools, with transgender people represented in the media and with transgender rights percolating through the courts, arrived on campuses already L.G.B.T.-friendly and, in many cases, equipped with gender-neutral housing and bathrooms.
校園活動分子遍及各地院校，包括賓州州立大學(Penn State)、紐約州立大學奧爾巴尼分校(University at Albany,)、芝加哥大學(University of Chicago)、威斯康星大學密爾沃基分校(University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)和加州大學河濱分校(University of California, Riverside)，當第一間LGBT學生中心建成後，他們一直在要求校方在學生的性別身份方面提供近乎不可想像的自由度。如今的學生在高中時代就在同直聯盟(Gay-Straight Alliances)的陪伴下成長，親眼目睹著跨性別者公開出現在媒體上，還有在法院內悄然蔓延的跨性別者人權意識，他們所進入的大學校園，也已經對LGBT群體抱持著友好態度，並且有很多都專門配備了不分性別的宿舍和衛浴設施。In hopes of raising consciousness of the biases built into social structures and into the language we use to discuss them, students are organizing identity conferences and inventing new vocabularies, which include pronouns like “ze” and “xe,” and pressing administrations to make changes that validate, in language, the existence of a gender outside the binary.
為了提升對於社會結構中和我們討論相關話題時所用語言裡所帶偏見的覺察，學生們開始不斷組織各類性別大會，以及發明一些新的詞彙，包括指代無性別者的第三人稱“ze”和指代跨性別者的第三人稱“xe”，他們還極力要求校方管理層做出相應改變，在語言上認可兩元以外性別的存在。Certainly, there’s a long line of people throughout history whose traits have put them outside norms, and some cultures long ago formalized the existence of a gender that isn’t purely female or purely male, like the American Indian’s two-spirits or India’s hijras. But the binary is a belief system at least as old as Adam and Eve, and most people don’t even realize it’s there. “It’s like a constant coming-out process, educating those around you that there is a gender binary, and this is what it means to identify outside of it,” said Gieselman, who works on campus planning gender-related events.
顯然，在整個人類歷史上，有太多人物都擁有無法歸類為常態的性格特質，有些文化甚至在很久以前就已正式認可了男女以外性別的存在，例如美洲印第安人的“雙靈”觀念，還有印度的“海吉拉”(hijras)。但是性別二元論是一套起碼早在亞當夏娃時代就已成形的信仰體系，大部分人甚至都沒有意識到這一思維定勢的存在。“這就像是一個持續出櫃的過程，從而讓你身邊的人瞭解到，在他們的觀念中存在著一種性別二元論，這樣才能讓他們超越二元論思維來看待身份問題，”時常參與校園各類性別相關活動籌備的吉梭曼說。Identifying as genderqueer is an opportunity to self-invent, unburdened from social expectations about dress and behavior. Occasionally Gieselman wishes for a lower voice and flatter chest, but other times feels O.K. with, even happy about, having a feminine physique.
將自己歸類為性別酷兒，是一次實現自我創造的機會，徹底擺脫著裝、舉止方面的社會期待所帶來的禁錮。有的時候，吉梭曼會希望自己的嗓音再低一些，胸部更平一些，但在其他的時候則不介意，甚至十分樂於擁有一副女性化的身軀。“Even within the same day or the next day I can suddenly really love how my chest looks in a sundress,” said Gieselman, who wears two small nose rings. In the bedroom closet hang T-shirts, flannels, dresses and a rack of bow ties.
“可能就在同一天內或者第二天時，我會突然真心愛上自己包裹在無袖背心裙下的胸部的模樣，”戴著兩枚小鼻環的吉梭曼說。吉梭曼的臥室衣櫃裡掛著T恤、法蘭絨襯衫、連衣裙和一架子的領結。It might seem a simple turn of events, but adding gender-neutral options to the University of Vermont’s information system took nearly a decade of lobbying, the creation of a task force of students, faculty members and administrators, and six months and $80,000 in staff time to create a software patch.
佛蒙特大學在資訊系統中新增無性別選項之舉，或許看上去只是一次簡單的形勢變化，但卻是一批學生、教職員工和校方管理層共同遊說了近十年的成果，校方則用了六個月的工作時間，耗資8萬美元來開發相應的軟體補丁。One key to the developments is Dorothea Brauer, a plain-spoken, big-hearted mental health counselor known to everyone as Dot. Ms. Brauer spent nine years working at the campus counseling center before becoming, in 2001, the director of what was then called the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning & Ally Center.
在這一過程中的一個關鍵人物，便是桃樂絲·布勞爾(Dorothea Brauer)，她是一位說話直白、為人善良的心理輔導師，大家都叫她多特(Dot)。布勞爾女士曾在校內輔導中心工作了九年，然後在2001年時成為當時的LGBTQA中心(Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning & Ally Center)主任。While in her 20s and living in New Jersey, Ms. Brauer, who wears her hair cut short with a single, long braid down her back in tribute to a Cherokee grandmother, was spending time with a woman when an acquaintance changed the course of her life by inquiring about the relationship, and then pointedly but nonjudgmentally asking, “Honey, are you gay?”
布勞爾女士剪了一頭短髮，只留有一條髮辮垂在後背上，以此紀念身為徹羅基族人的祖母。她在二十多歲的時候居住在新澤西州，那時的她常與一名女子來往，後來一個熟人改變了她的人生軌跡——那人問起她與那名女子的關係，意有所指但又不帶評價地問道：“寶貝，你是同性戀嗎？”“I said, ‘Well, yeah, but only with Anita,’ ” recalled Ms. Brauer. (Anita would turn out to be her life partner — 32 years and counting.) “That’s how clueless I was,” she said, chuckling over a taco salad lunch at the Penny Cluse Café in downtown Burlington. “I was 24, 25, and scared to death. I came out to my mother, only my mother, because I became physically ill with depression.”
“我說，‘呃，是的，但只限和安妮塔(Anita)在一起時。’”布勞爾女士回憶道。（安妮塔後來成為了她的終身伴侶——兩人已共同生活了32年，並且來日方長）“當時的我就是這麼無知，”在柏靈頓市中心的咖啡館Penny Cluse Café內吃著墨西哥玉米餅沙拉午餐的她說道，並且笑出聲來，“我當時只有二十四五歲，簡直怕得要死。我對我母親出櫃了，只告訴了我母親，因為我當時的身體狀況出現了異常，並且陷入了抑鬱狀態。”A decade later, as one of the few out women on campus in the 1990s, she treated students with debilitating identity issues, some of whom attempted suicide or faced a psychotic break. (L.G.B.T.Q. youth are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Ms. Brauer’s first act upon being installed as the center’s director was to assign a graduate student to research and catalog the unmet needs of the transgender community.
十年後，作為20世紀90年代在校園出櫃的少數女性之一，她負責治療那些在個人身份認知上存在障礙的學生，其中有些曾試圖自殺，或者陷入了精神崩潰。（據疾病控制與預防中心[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]資料，LGBTQ群體的年輕人的自殺傾向，要比同齡的異性戀者高出一倍還多）布勞爾女士擔任中心主任後的第一項舉措，就是讓一名研究生調查和登記跨性別者群體尚未得到滿足的各種需要。Among the difficulties faced by transgender students: inability to use bathrooms marked “men” or “women” for fear of a confrontation with a confused classmate; being accused of using a stolen student ID in the cafeteria because the name printed on it didn’t match someone’s gender appearance; and having the faculty rely on a student-information system that listed only legal names, leading to occasions when a student might be embarrassed or inadvertently outed. Ms. Brauer heard about one distraught transgender freshman whose professor, while calling roll, first read the student’s feminine legal name, then announced the male nickname.
跨性別者學生所面臨的諸多難題包括：無法使用被標註為“男用”或“女用”的衛生間，因為害怕在那裡遇到不明就裡的同學；在自助餐廳內遭人指責使用偷來的學生證，因為上面所印的名字與他們的打扮所表現出的性別身份不符；所在院系完全依賴僅登記學生正式姓名的學生資訊系統，導致某些場合下，學生或許會因此而感到尷尬或遭到無意中的排擠。布勞爾女士就曾聽說有一名跨性別者新生因其教授在課堂上點名時，先念出了這名學生的女性合法姓名，又接著公佈了該生的男性暱稱，而感到無所適從。Ms. Brauer reached out to the registrar, Keith P. Williams, who worked with the university’s lawyers to allow transgender students to change their first name in the schoolwide system, but doing so required an in-person visit to the dean of students’ office and filling out paperwork. She then set to work waging a campaign to educate, face to face, members of the faculty, staff and administration on why language sensitivity was so important to a student’s self-respect — and assisted students in getting school policy amended to specifically prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
布勞爾女士找到了教務主任基思·威廉姆斯(Keith P. Williams)，此人曾與佛蒙特大學的律師們攜手合作，允許跨性別者學生更改登記在校內系統中的名字，但是要求學生必須親自到這位主任的辦公室填寫相關文書。她接著開始著手發動一項宣傳運動，面對面地教導教職員工、工作人員和管理人員，為何措辭上的敏感態度對於學生的自尊心如此重要——她還協助學生修補學校的政策漏洞，明文禁止基於性別身份的歧視言行。By 2009, faculty members themselves began pushing for a broader solution to the identification issue, and Mr. Williams created a task force to look into how students could register a preferred first name without having to make a special request. The task force realized that the only way to guarantee a professor would properly refer to a student was to supply the student’s pronoun on class rosters and advisee lists. Then came the question of which gender-neutral pronoun to offer.
到2009年時，佛蒙特大學的教職員工開始主動尋求一種更具廣泛意義的方案來解決身份認知問題，威廉姆斯先生建立了一支團隊，研究如何能讓學生無需提出特別申請，便可方便地登記他們自己偏好的名字。這支團隊意識到，足以確保每名教授都能恰當稱呼每名學生的唯一辦法，就是在班級名單和輔導名單上提供學生的正確人稱。於是便又引發了應該提供哪種無性別人稱的問題。“Students proposed ‘they/them’ pronouns, but the faculty vetoed the idea because they said it is grammatically incorrect,” Mr. Williams recalled. “They said, ‘You don’t put a plural pronoun with a single individual.’” A second option, also being used in various trans communities, was “ze” (pronounced ZEE), a riff on the German pronoun “sie,” with “hir” replacing “his/her.”
“學生們提議使用第三人稱複數‘they’及其賓格形式‘them’作為代稱，但是系裡否決了這個想法，他們給出的理由是這種措辭在語法上是錯誤的，”威廉姆斯先生回憶道，“他們說，‘你不能用複數人稱來指代一名單獨的個體。’”另一種選擇也是許多跨性別者群體內常用的說法，就是“ze”（發音同“ZEE”），典出德語中的女性第三人稱單數和第三人稱複數代詞“sie”，對應的賓格形式則是“hir”。Bowing to the faculty, the task force selected “ze” and revised its information system, becoming the first school in the nation at which students could select their pronoun. They could also leave the field blank, or opt for “name only,” indicating a preference for being referred to by name instead of by pronoun.
威廉姆斯先生的團隊順從了系裡的這一提議，選擇了“ze”作為代稱，並據此更新了校內的資訊系統，成為全美第一所能讓學生自主選擇適用人稱的學校。學生還可以在代稱一欄留白不填，或者選擇“僅使用名字”，籍此表示更希望人們用名字而非人稱代詞來指代他們。The change fueled gender-awareness campaigns by students all over the country. So many administrators were receiving requests that, in 2012, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers convened a task force to draft a list of best practices for handling transgender student records.
這一變化推動了美國各地學生髮起的性別認知運動。有太多大學的管理層都在源源不斷地收到相關請求，乃至於在2012年時，美國大學註冊和招生辦公室協會(American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers)專門召集了一支團隊，負責起草一系列的最佳舉措，用於處理跨性別者學生的登記。So far, about 100 schools now allow students, and sometimes employees, to indicate a moniker other than their legal first name, according to the Consortium of Higher Education L.G.B.T Resource Professionals, and hundreds more have contacted Vermont on how to implement the pronoun choice.
據高校LGBT資源專業人士聯合會(Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals)統計，迄今為止，約有100所院校都已允許學生（有時也一併涵括學校員工）在自己的正式名字之外，再單獨給出一個用於稱呼他們的綽號，還有數百所院校曾聯絡過佛蒙特大學，諮詢該如何應用這些新的人稱代詞。In September, the university’s pronoun options were expanded yet again to include “they,” as grammarians have reminded naysayers that the English language is constantly evolving. Since 2009, 1,891 University of Vermont students have specified a preferred pronoun, with 14 opting for “ze,” 10 for “they” and another 228 for name only.
去年9月份，佛蒙特大學的人稱選項再次得到了拓展，添加了第三人稱複數形式的代詞“they”，因為語法學家曾提醒那些反對派，英語本身是一門不斷演化的語言。自2009年以來，共有1,891名佛蒙特大學在校生指定了自己偏好的代詞，其中有14人選擇了“ze”，10人選擇了“they”，還有另外228人選擇了僅用名字稱呼。On campuses across the country gender-conscious students have adopted the earnest, P.C. practice of starting social interactions by introducing themselves by name and “P.G.P.,” or preferred gender pronoun. (The most semantically obsessed still object to the word “preferred.”)
美國各地校園內，性別意識已然覺醒的學生紛紛採納了嚴謹的PC做法，在與人來往的最初，使用名字和“個人偏好的性別代詞”來介紹自己。（那些極度在意用辭的人仍然反對“偏好”這種說法）Robyn Ochs, an educator who helped found an early L.G.B.T. faculty and staff group at Harvard, believes that Vermont’s changes are nothing less than lifesaving.
羅賓·奧克斯(Robyn Ochs)是一名教育工作者，曾在哈佛大學協助建立了一家早期的LGBT組織及員工隊伍，她認為，佛蒙特大學做出的政策變化完全不亞於拯救生命。“Some people try to reduce this whole topic to kids trying to be cool or they’re just acting out or whatever, just trying to be different or new,” said Ms. Ochs, who has visited some 500 campuses to speak on L.G.B.T. issues, and often facilitates a discussion she calls “Beyond Binaries.” “But there have always been people who have felt profoundly uncomfortable in their assigned gender roles,” she said. “Anything we can do to make them safer, or make them feel recognized, heard, seen, understood, we should do. To validate their identity and experience could, in fact, save their life.”
“有些人試圖簡化這個話題的全部內容，將其歸結為只是小孩子扮酷，或者只是他們在發洩之類，只是想要表現得與眾不同，或者足夠新潮，”奧克斯女士說，她曾到大約500所校園內發表過LGBT主題的演講，並且常常會引發一場被她稱之為“超越二元論”的討論。“但是總會有人對自己被社會賦予的性別身份感到極度不適，”她說，“如果我們有任何辦法能讓他們更加安全，或讓他們感到被認可、被傾聽、被關注、被理解，我們就應該去做。認可他們的性別身份和遭遇，實際上足以拯救他們的生命。”How does one explain to family members what it means to be neither male nor female? Once, at age 15, in conversation with an aunt at the kitchen table, Gieselman tried unsuccessfully to diagram the concepts of gender and sex on a napkin, with gender referring to the attitudes and behaviors a society associates with a person’s biological sex, and sex referring to a person’s biological status (not to be confused with sexual orientation, one’s romantic interests). “I don’t even know what it was I was trying to show,” Gieselman, an eighth-generation Vermonter, recounted with a laugh. Gieselman’s grandmother, too, had a few questions about the napkin. “They were very confused,” Gieselman said, “and still are.”
一個人要如何向自己的家人解釋，既不是男性也不是女性到底意味著什麼？吉梭曼在15歲的時候，曾經在家中的餐桌旁，與一位伯母進行了一番對話。當時的吉梭曼試著在一張餐巾紙上用圖解的方式來說明“性別”(gender)與“性徵”(sex)的概念：性別指的是一個人的生理性別在社會認知中對應的態度舉止，而性徵指的則是一個人的生理狀態（勿將其與“性取向”也就是個人在性與感情方面的喜好相混淆）。“我甚至都不明白自己想要說明的是什麼，”身為第八代佛蒙特州人的吉梭曼笑著講述道。吉梭曼的祖母也對這張餐巾紙上的解說抱有若干疑問。“他們都被我搞糊塗了，”吉梭曼說，“到現在也依然如此。”Sara Miller, Gieselman’s mother, said that when her teenager first came out to her and offered to provide a pronoun chart for reference, she scoffed.
吉梭曼的母親米勒表示，當孩子第一次對她出櫃，並且給出了一個代詞表供她參考時，卻遭到了她的嘲弄。“At the time, it irritated me to no end,” said Ms. Miller, a social worker. “I was like, ‘Really? This is what our struggle is going to be about? Pronouns?’”
“當時，這件事讓我惱怒不已，”身為社會工作者的米勒女士說，“我的反應就好像，‘真的？這就是我們要爭取的東西？人稱代詞？’”But Ms. Miller has learned to accept the person her former little girl has become. “It’s grown out of the process of really seeing how Rocko has grown as an individual and an adult, seeing how Rocko is their own person, and not a child,” Ms. Miller said. “This is how they presents themself to new friends and colleagues and employers and students. That group knows Rocko only that way.”
不過米勒女士已經學會接受她原來的小女兒如今所變成的模樣。“這是一個過程，真切地看到洛可成長為一個獨立的個體，一名成年人，看到洛可擁有怎樣的獨立人格，而不再是個孩子，”米勒女士說道，“這就是洛可在新朋友、新同事、新老闆、新同學面前所表現出的樣子。這些人只認識這種模樣的洛可。”Although Ms. Miller tries her best to always use “they/them” pronouns, she often slips up, but Gieselman isn’t bothered. “Rocko and I have an understanding. She knows I try,” said Ms. Miller, slipping up again.
儘管米勒女士盡最大努力堅持使用第三人稱複數代詞，但她還是常常會說漏嘴，但是吉梭曼並不因此而感到困擾。“洛可和我擁有一種默契。她知道我盡力了，”米勒女士說道，同時又帶出了一次口誤。At last summer’s orientation for new faculty members, Ms. Brauer handed out pocket-size pronoun charts created by the L.G.B.T. Resource Center at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She also gave out her cellphone number and words of support: “If you’re struggling with it, give me a call any time and I’ll walk you through it, and give you time to practice, and walk you through any questions you might have.”
在去年夏季面向新入教職員工的迎新活動中，布勞爾女士發放了一張由威斯康星大學密爾沃基分校LGBT資源中心(LGBT Resource Center)設計的袖珍代詞表。她還同時提供了自己的手機號碼和言語上的鼓勵。“如果你有這方面的困擾，隨時都可以撥打我的電話，我會指導你如何應對，並且給你時間練習，指導你解決你可能遇到的任何問題。”Use of “they/them” is so widely accepted in the politically correct enclave that is Burlington that a colleague at Feldman’s Bagels, where Gieselman works part time, recently asked if it was O.K. to correct a customer who uses the wrong pronoun because she knew Gieselman wouldn’t.
使用第三人稱複數代詞的做法，在伯靈頓這塊講究政治正確的飛地上得到了廣泛的接受，就連吉梭曼打工的貝爾德曼麵包店(Feldman’s Bagels)，都有一名同事主動詢問，自己能否在顧客使用錯誤的人稱代詞時予以糾正，因為她知道吉梭曼自己一定不會開口。“I know if something might be bothering them, they wouldn’t necessarily say something about it,” said Alexa Ciecierski, a morning-shift co-worker.
“我知道如果有事可能在困擾著吉梭曼，吉梭曼也未必會開口發表意見，”在麵包店負責早班的亞莉克沙·切切爾斯基(Alexa Ciecierski)說。At the apartment that afternoon, Gieselman talked excitedly about finally receiving documentation of a legal name change, which arrived in the mail that afternoon, and showed off several gig posters brought home by a roommate, who manages local bands. On the coffee table, a collection of Angel Cards filled a small bowl, each billet offering a single word like “discernment” or “balance” or “integrity,” meant to be chosen and read for a daily dose of inspiration.
那天下午，就在那間公寓裡，吉梭曼興奮地提起，自己終於收到了正式更改名字的法律通知。通知函在當天下午以郵遞的方式送達，夾在一名玩樂隊的室友帶回來的幾張現場演出海報裡。咖啡桌上的一隻小碗中擺放著一套天使卡，每一張上都給出了一個詞語，例如“洞察力”，“平衡”，或“正直”，供人抽選並念出，作為一天一次的心靈啟示。“Do you want to pick one?” Gieselman asked me. I reached in the bowl and pulled out “strength.”
“你要不要抽一張？”吉梭曼問我。我將手伸到碗中，抽出了一張“堅強”。Gieselman leaned forward off the futon, swished the cards around, plucked one from the center, smiled, then read it aloud: “Freedom.”
吉梭曼跪在蒲團上俯身向前，拿著卡片揮舞了一番後，從中央抽出一張，微微一笑，然後大聲地念了出來：“自由。”
