乍見這篇刋登於紐約時報的文章，內容與當年碩士論文的議題有所關聯，頗有舊識重逢的溫故感。
畢業迄今一直沒有再接觸相關文獻，心癢手殘，試著把中文版的譯文句讀重分配，
目的就是希望創造「讀懂」，不過這不是科普讀物，眼高手低的Jacky似乎不容易把脈絡清楚呈現。
The Redistribution of Sex性工作者、性愛機器人和性的重分配 by Ross Douthat 2018/ 05/ 02 The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/opinion/incels-sex-robots-redistribution.html?_ga=2.175612194.1644333118.1529033067-234294446.1529033067
紐時中文網https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20180504/incels-sex-robots-redistribution/
“獨董”已修訂中文譯文以求更易理解，為免以辭害意故提供原譯文網址
One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion.
從近年西方歷史中或可得出這樣一個教訓：
有時極端、激進分子和怪人看世界，要比正派、克制、理智的人更清楚。
遠自伊拉克戰爭和歐元危機時期已有跡可循，在民粹主義時代則加速發展，
用反動派和激進派的視角來分析，會比宣揚建制觀點體系的闡述更合理。
註
radical一詞，在女性主義中須譯作「基進」
This is part of why there’s been so much recent agitation over universities and op-ed pages and other forums for debate. There’s a general understanding that the ideological mainstream isn’t adequate to the moment, but nobody can decide whether that means we need purges or pluralism, a spirit of curiosity and conversation or a furious war against whichever side you think is evil.
這就是近年來大學、專欄和其他論壇顯得如此焦慮的部分成因。
人們普遍認為，主流意識形態不足以解釋當下的情況，
但沒人能確定，這意味著我們需要的是排斥清理還是容納多元；
是秉持好奇與對話精神，還是和你認為邪惡的一方展開慘烈的廝殺。
For those more curious than martial, one useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign that there’s something interesting going on.
對於那些好奇多於好鬥的人來說，要弄清這種複雜情況的一條有效途徑，
就是看看那些來自不同世界的極端分子和怪人，其談論同一話題的方式。
在這些重合部分裡，雖不一定能發現智慧，但它往往能表示出一些有趣的事情正在進行。
Which brings me to the sex robots.
於是我就想到了性機器人。
Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?
事實上，我首先想到喬治•梅森大學的經濟學家羅賓•漢森，
他是自由意志主義者和也是出了名的聰明怪人。
在評論不久前發生的多倫多恐怖主義暴力事件時，漢森提出一個具挑釁意味的觀點—
如果我們在意財產和金錢的分配正義，憑什麼假定籲求某種性的重分配必屬荒誕？
多倫多暴力攻擊事件中，行為人自認為「incel」，也就是「非自願獨身」者，
覺得女人和整個社會剝奪了他應有的婚前性交機會，故而決定進行報復。
註：
25歲的Alex Minassian，4 / 24以租來的廂型車在Yonge街瘋狂衝撞,致10人死亡16人受傷。https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/04/29/violence-against-women-in-all-forms-is-terror.html
After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.”
畢竟，以漢森的說法：「性機會較少的人所遭受的折磨，與收入偏低者相當，是說得通的，
兩者可能同樣希望從圍繞這一身份的重組中受益，故沿著這條脈絡對重分配展開遊說，
而在需求得不到滿足時至少可以發出隱性的暴力威脅。」
This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly. A representative response from Slate’s Jordan Weissmann, “Is Robin Hanson the Creepiest Economist in America?”, cited the post along with some previous creepy forays to dismiss Hanson as a misogynist weirdo not that far removed from the franker misogyny of toxic online males.
對此，思想上貼近主流的人的反應，以客氣地講法是有比較激烈的迴響。
一個代表性的回應來自Slate網站的喬丹•韋斯曼：
「羅賓•漢森是美國最讓人發毛的經濟學家嗎？」
並引用漢森的文章，及之前一些驚悚觀點，
指責漢森是一個憎恨女人的怪胎，與網上那些更坦率的厭女毒男並無二致。
But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.
但漢森的文章，讓我立刻想到了艾米婭•斯裡尼瓦桑，
前不久她在《倫敦書評》上的一篇文章：「任何人都有性權利嗎？」
斯裡尼瓦桑是牛津大學的哲學教授，她也表達了類似的觀點（一開始也提到「非自願獨身」殺手），
但她把爭論擴展到了男性沙文主義群體之外，
考慮到《倫敦書評》的左傾女權主義讀者會更同情的那些群體，
包括超重者和失能者，多數群體視為不具有性吸引力的少數族群，
無法找到伴侶的跨性別女性，以及社會上其他受害者—
在她看來，這個社會依然把我們規制成父權體制和種族主義性別歧視下恐同的性慾囚徒。
Srinivasan ultimately answered her title question in the negative: “There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want.” But her negative answer was a qualified one. While “no one has a right to be desired,” at the same time “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t instantiate a formal right to sex, exactly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary architects intended, sex would be more justly distributed than it is today.
斯裡尼瓦桑最終以否定的方式回答了她題目中的問題：
「性不是應得權利，人有權去想要得到他們嚮往的東西。」
但她的否定答案是有限制的。
在「沒有人有權利當慾望的對象」的同時，「什麼人可當欲望的對象，什麼人不可，實屬政治問題」，左翼和女性主義政治將來也許能提供社會一個異於當前的回答。
這等宣示雖然不能當作性的正式權利的例證，倘若果真能實現革命建築師所設想的新秩序，
則性的分配在將來會比現在更合理。
A number of the critics I saw engaging with Srinivasan’s essay tended to respond the way a normal center-left writer like Weissmann engaged with Hanson’s thought experiment — by commenting on its weirdness or ideological extremity rather than engaging fully with its substance. But to me, reading Hanson and Srinivasan together offers a good case study in how intellectual eccentrics — like socialists and populists in politics — can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates.
就我所見，對斯裡尼瓦桑文章與漢森思想試驗的許多批評，
都與韋斯曼這種常見中間偏左派作者的說詞互相呼應—。
他們的矛頭是指向意識形態的極端或其怪誕之處，而不是議題的實質內涵。
但對我來說，把漢森和斯裡尼瓦桑的文章放在一起讀，倒是很好的案例研究，
展現出非主流的知識份子（就跟政治中持社會主義和民粹主義者一樣），
是用什麼方式把更多潛藏在主流辯論下的議題浮上枱面。
By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a recurring pattern in liberal societies.
我這麼說的意思是，性的重分配聽起來可能令人不舒服或不切實際，
但這個想法完全卻是對現代晚期性生活邏輯的全面回應，
重分配的追求，整個就是自由主義社會中反覆出現的模式特徵。
First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration.
首先，跟各種新自由主義要求放鬆管制一樣，
性革命創造出新的贏家和輸家，新的統制階級取代舊有群體，
高顏值、有財力和長於交際的人以新的方式奪得特權，而其他人則陷入新的孤獨和沮喪。
Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline.
其次，身處經濟和技術變革的兩性，在新局面裡似乎普遍無法與對方發生連結，
隨著彼此間社會、政治上的分歧日益擴大，導致近來婚姻、家庭，甚至性活動本身都在減少。
Third, because the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian, despite certain revisions attempted by feminists since the heyday of the Playboy philosophy — a message that frequency and variety in sexual experience is as close to a summum bonum as the human condition has to offer, that the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states. And this master narrative, inevitably, makes both the new inequalities and the decline of actual relationships that much more difficult to bear …
第三，雖然自《花花公子》哲學當道以來，女性主義即試圖修正其論述，
但文化中對性的主流觀點，本質上仍屬於海夫納式。
這種觀點認為：
人類社會條件下所應得的性生活狀態，在次數和多樣性上理當臻於至善；
竭盡所能的多元性欲望、性品味和角色不僅應該被認可，還應該予以培養；
貞操和禁慾揀好聽的說法叫做奇怪，講得難聽就是可悲的狀態。
這套主流說詞，勢必使新出現的不平等和實際關係的弱化變得令人更難忍受。
… which in turn encourages people, as ever under modernity, to place their hope for escape from the costs of one revolution in a further one yet to come, be it political, social or technological, which will supply if not the promised utopia at least some form of redress for the many people that progress has obviously left behind.
結果反而在現代性態勢下，鼓勵大眾把逃避一場革命的代價，託付期望在另一場將來不管是屬於政治、社會還是技術方面的革命。對很多在進步的腳程上顯然落後的人而言，未來的變革即使不能帶應許的理想國，至少也能提供某種形式的補償。
There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.
當然，還有另一種選擇，即回頭重拾保守主義來因應。
說白了就是經由恢復或調整一些舊觀念，
如一夫一妻制的美德、貞節、天長地久、及對禁欲的推崇，
以解決氾濫的孤獨、痛苦和不育。
But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions, rather than reverse them.
但對我們這樣的社會來說，此非順乎自然趨勢的反應。
我們尋求的解決之道，看似要擴大這一波革命而不是逆轉之前的行進方向。
In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.
就性解放和性不滿而言，它指的不太可能是那種對性慾望完全不切實際的重新構想，
也就是斯裡尼瓦桑等作者認為我們應該會追求的東西，
也不會是漢森的政治遊說所倡言之重分配，那麼正式的思想實驗。
But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind, the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robots will increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.
但我預計，有人會有意識地藉商業和技術之力（色情業中已經出現），
以滿足非自願獨身者的需求。
這批族群可能是危險而憤怒者，也或許只是沮喪絕望的人。
左翼份子對賣淫合法化及「性工作」納入除罪管理的訴求日益升溫，
這是他們心中暗許的結果。
自由意志派（和普通男性）對虛擬實境色情製品和性機器人的迷戀，會隨著這些技術的改善而增加。
到某個時間點上，不需要正式去討論性權這個概念，思維正常的人都會認同這種權利是存在的，
這樣一來，結合修訂後的法律、新技術和已演進的道德觀來實現這項權利，就顯得合理了。
Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.
性工作者和性機器人是否確實能帶來真正的滿足是另一回事。
但最終難免負起提供再分配的服務，縱使現在看來仍頗嚇人、厭女、或基進，
但感覺上似勢所難免。 |
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