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郑远涛 译
Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn's Clear
中国最有名的跨性别者大概是舞蹈家金星。她从男儿郎变成女儿身之后，重新穿起舞鞋，以自己热爱的新性别自由展翅。也许金星属于幸运的少数。只要略一回想，我们就会发现原来在成长期，自己身边从来不乏“娘娘腔”、“假小子”，他们也往往受尽奚落、嘲笑。同伴间的嘲笑是最无情的。性别偏离的孩子在嘲笑中成长，大多数人努力隐藏自己不合规范的一面，也有人依然故我，表现坚强。
sex（生理性别）是爹妈给的，gender（社会性别）却是在成长中逐渐塑成的。对sex和gender不一致的人抱有偏见或敌意，其实是内心优越感的流露，认定自己高他们一等；这种多数人对少数人的歧视普遍存在。所以，本文中的父母最担忧的不是孩子的气质或思想，而是担心他们被周围的人欺侮。美国虽然号称自由开放的国度，许多社区却极其保守，对同性恋者及跨性别者的仇视犯罪屡见不鲜。1999年奥斯卡获奖电影《男孩不哭》（Boys Don誸 Cry）就反映了一位女扮男装的少年被仇杀的真实故事。
性别，是像光谱一般丰富多彩的，非但男男女女有各种类型，而且没有哪一种特质固定属于男性或女性。也许只有当我们都能欣赏男人的妩媚与女子的豪迈时，跨性别的孩子才会真正安全，他们父母的焦虑也将不复存在。
Until recently, many children who did not 1)con-form to gender norms in their clothing or beha-vior and who identified intensely with the opposite sex were 2)steered to 3)psychoanalysis or behavior modification.
As 4)advocates 5)gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights, evidenced most recently by New York City’s decision to let people alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is taking place among schools and families. Children as young as five who display 6)predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals.
At the Park Day School in Oakland, Cali-fornia, teachers are taught a gender-neutral vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather than by gender. “We are careful not to create a situation where students are being 7)boxed in,” said Tom Little, the school’s director. “We allow them to move back and forth until something feels right.”
For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her son’s third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J., began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head to 8)emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mo-ther’s silky undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming9)agitated when asked to wear boys’ clothing.
10)En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an 11)epi-phany. “It just clicked in me. I said, “You really want to wear a dress, don’t you?’”
Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the 12)precarious nature of the day-to-day reality. “It’s hard to convey the 13)relentlessness of it,” she said. “Every social encounter, every time you go out to eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid’s self-esteem and protecting him from the hostile outside world.”
The prospect of 14)cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep philosophical divide among professionals over how best to 15)counsel families. Is it healthier for families to 16)follow the child’s lead, or to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound 17)vulne-rability of such youngsters, symbolized by 18)occurrences like the murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie, southeast of Oakland.
“Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable for their kidsÑwhether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how to protect them from the 19)savagery of other children,” said Dr. Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland.
Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather than a disorder. “These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to be themselves,” he said.
In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products of dysfunctional homes.
The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing20)fetus.
Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have male 21)anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most22)wind up as heterosexual women.
But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, disagrees with the “free to be” approach with young children and cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has treated about 500 23)preadolescent gender-variant children. In his studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20 percent continue to be 24)distressed about their gender and may ultimately change their sex.
Dr. Zucker tries to “help these kids be more content in their biological gender” until they are older and can determine their sexual identity- 25)accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex friendships and activities like 26)board games that move beyond strict gender roles.
Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the Children’s Hospital in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s, says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and “hypermasculine activities” like27)karate. She said she and her husband became “gender cops.”
“It was always, ”You’re not 28)kicking the ball hard enough,’she said.
Ms. Tuerk’s son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking has evolved since she was a young parent. “People are beginning to understand this seems to be something that happens,” she said. “But there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone.
一直以来，许多不按照性别规范来
穿着或行事、性别认同感与自身性别相反的孩子，都会被施以心理分析治疗或行为矫正。近年来，这种情况才开始有所转变。
倡导性别认同权的声音赢得了越来越多的支持，最近的一个例子是纽约市决定给与市民在出生证上修改性别的权利。在这股潮流的推动下，学校和家庭也出现了重要的变化。倾向于像异性一样穿着的儿童，逐渐得到越来越多的年轻家长、教育界人士和精神健康专家的支持，这些孩子里，年纪最小的只有5岁。
在美国加州奥克兰市的帕克日间学校，老师都学过如何用一套性别中立的词汇来说话，学校还督促他们让学生根据运动鞋的颜色，而不是性别来站队。“我们很用心创造一个让学生不感到拘束的环境，”学校的教导主任汤姆·利特尔说，“我们允许他们换位置，直到他们自己觉得妥当为止。”
对家庭来说，这可能是一个漫长的感情适应过程。儿子过完3岁生日后没多久，潘·B太太及其丈夫乔尔就踏上了一个没有地图的旅程。事情的起因是，他们的儿子J开始穿宽大的T恤，还在头上扎一条毛巾，把它当作平滑的长发。接着是穿上母亲的绸汗衫。读了半年的学前班，J开始在被要求穿上男孩服装时变得激动难平。
在与儿子去购物广场的路上，B太太蓦然省悟了。“我当时灵机一动，问他：‘你真的想穿裙子，对吗？’”
现年41岁、担任律师的B太太与丈夫咨询了心理医生的意见，随后顺从了儿子的选择。B太太观察到儿子表现出前所未有的安适感，便接受了他的自我定位。然而她也感觉到现实的叵测。“那种残酷是很难描述的，”她说，“每一次社交邂逅、每一次外出就餐、每一天，都需要为了既保护孩子的自尊，又保护他不受外界敌视而苦心求取平衡。”
学龄前儿童的易服现象，在专业学界引发了深刻的意见分歧：应该给家长怎样的建议才最妥当？是让家长顺从孩子的意愿，还是引导孩子先接受生理性别，等年纪稍长再做决定，以免遭受同伴的侮辱、孤立？哪一种做法更有益？
争议的双方都强调，他们为这些少年儿童置身社会时的极度脆弱性感到担忧。2002年，住在奥克兰市东南区、本名为“埃迪”的跨性别少年葛雯·阿罗侯被谋杀身亡，就是一个突出的事例。
“家长们现在来咨询的是，怎样才能让孩子们过上安全自在的生活—该不该允许他们在公众场所作异性打扮，如何保护他们不受其他孩子粗野的伤害。”在奥克兰市儿童医院暨研究中心工作的精神科医师赫伯特·施赖尔博士如是说。
近年，越来越多的心理学家开始认为性别偏离是自然发生的现象，并非心理失调，施赖尔博士是持这种观点的专家之一。他说：“这样的孩子逐渐更清楚地认识到做真实的自己意味着什么了。”
在以往好几代人中，所谓“娘娘腔”的男孩和“假小子”的女孩会被逼迫着顺从性别规范，当时相信这些行为很大程度上是家庭异常所造成的。
和性倾向类似，性别认同的生理基础仍然算得上是未解之谜，虽然许多研究者怀疑，它和胎儿成长时被暴露在怎样的激素下有关。
有研究指出，大多数在童年早期显现性别偏离倾向的男孩会成长为同性恋，四分之一成长为异性恋。只有极少一部分人成长为跨性别者。
至于在研究中较少涉及的性别偏离的女孩，她们声言对女儿身感到极度郁闷，并且会表达想拥有男性身体构造的欲望。不过迄今为止的研究指出，她们多数人会成长为异性恋女子。
然而，主持多伦多市上瘾与精神健康中心性别认同科的心理学家肯尼思·朱克博士，却不赞成鼓励少年儿童“自由而为”的做法，也反对在公众场所作异性打扮。过去30年间，朱克博士诊治过500名未到青春期便有性别偏离倾向的儿童。根据他的研究，80%的人摆脱了性别偏离的行为，而15%-20%的人继续受性别问题的困扰，有的可能会最终选择变性。
朱克博士努力“帮助这些孩子对自己的生理性别感到更安心”，以便等年纪稍长再决定认同哪一个性别。他说自己的方法是鼓励同性友谊，鼓励不涉及性别角色分工的游戏，比如下棋。
华盛顿儿童医院的护士兼心理治疗师凯瑟琳·图尔克说，今天的父母依然需要自己摸索如何对待性别偏离的子女。19世纪70年代时，她就是一个性别偏离的孩子的母亲。她追忆起治疗师如何督促她引导儿子接受精神分析，参加“极端男性化的活动”，如空手道。她说自己和丈夫当年成了“性别警察”。
她说：“医生老是说，你们给他的压力不够。”
图尔克太太的儿子现在30岁，是一名当了父亲的同性恋者。从初为人母的年轻女子一路走来，图尔克太太的思想已经有了转变。“大家现在逐渐明白这似乎是自然而然的事情了。”她说，“我们当年却一直觉得，可不能由着他那样啊。”
Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn's Clear
中国最有名的跨性别者大概是舞蹈家金星。她从男儿郎变成女儿身之后，重新穿起舞鞋，以自己热爱的新性别自由展翅。也许金星属于幸运的少数。只要略一回想，我们就会发现原来在成长期，自己身边从来不乏“娘娘腔”、“假小子”，他们也往往受尽奚落、嘲笑。同伴间的嘲笑是最无情的。性别偏离的孩子在嘲笑中成长，大多数人努力隐藏自己不合规范的一面，也有人依然故我，表现坚强。
sex（生理性别）是爹妈给的，gender（社会性别）却是在成长中逐渐塑成的。对sex和gender不一致的人抱有偏见或敌意，其实是内心优越感的流露，认定自己高他们一等；这种多数人对少数人的歧视普遍存在。所以，本文中的父母最担忧的不是孩子的气质或思想，而是担心他们被周围的人欺侮。美国虽然号称自由开放的国度，许多社区却极其保守，对同性恋者及跨性别者的仇视犯罪屡见不鲜。1999年奥斯卡获奖电影《男孩不哭》（Boys Don誸 Cry）就反映了一位女扮男装的少年被仇杀的真实故事。
性别，是像光谱一般丰富多彩的，非但男男女女有各种类型，而且没有哪一种特质固定属于男性或女性。也许只有当我们都能欣赏男人的妩媚与女子的豪迈时，跨性别的孩子才会真正安全，他们父母的焦虑也将不复存在。
Until recently, many children who did not 1)con-form to gender norms in their clothing or beha-vior and who identified intensely with the opposite sex were 2)steered to 3)psychoanalysis or behavior modification.
As 4)advocates 5)gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights, evidenced most recently by New York City’s decision to let people alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is taking place among schools and families. Children as young as five who display 6)predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals.
At the Park Day School in Oakland, Cali-fornia, teachers are taught a gender-neutral vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather than by gender. “We are careful not to create a situation where students are being 7)boxed in,” said Tom Little, the school’s director. “We allow them to move back and forth until something feels right.”
For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her son’s third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J., began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head to 8)emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mo-ther’s silky undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming9)agitated when asked to wear boys’ clothing.
10)En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an 11)epi-phany. “It just clicked in me. I said, “You really want to wear a dress, don’t you?’”
Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the 12)precarious nature of the day-to-day reality. “It’s hard to convey the 13)relentlessness of it,” she said. “Every social encounter, every time you go out to eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid’s self-esteem and protecting him from the hostile outside world.”
The prospect of 14)cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep philosophical divide among professionals over how best to 15)counsel families. Is it healthier for families to 16)follow the child’s lead, or to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound 17)vulne-rability of such youngsters, symbolized by 18)occurrences like the murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie, southeast of Oakland.
“Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable for their kidsÑwhether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how to protect them from the 19)savagery of other children,” said Dr. Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland.
Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather than a disorder. “These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to be themselves,” he said.
In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products of dysfunctional homes.
The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing20)fetus.
Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have male 21)anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most22)wind up as heterosexual women.
But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, disagrees with the “free to be” approach with young children and cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has treated about 500 23)preadolescent gender-variant children. In his studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20 percent continue to be 24)distressed about their gender and may ultimately change their sex.
Dr. Zucker tries to “help these kids be more content in their biological gender” until they are older and can determine their sexual identity- 25)accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex friendships and activities like 26)board games that move beyond strict gender roles.
Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the Children’s Hospital in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s, says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and “hypermasculine activities” like27)karate. She said she and her husband became “gender cops.”
“It was always, ”You’re not 28)kicking the ball hard enough,’she said.
Ms. Tuerk’s son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking has evolved since she was a young parent. “People are beginning to understand this seems to be something that happens,” she said. “But there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone.
一直以来，许多不按照性别规范来
穿着或行事、性别认同感与自身性别相反的孩子，都会被施以心理分析治疗或行为矫正。近年来，这种情况才开始有所转变。
倡导性别认同权的声音赢得了越来越多的支持，最近的一个例子是纽约市决定给与市民在出生证上修改性别的权利。在这股潮流的推动下，学校和家庭也出现了重要的变化。倾向于像异性一样穿着的儿童，逐渐得到越来越多的年轻家长、教育界人士和精神健康专家的支持，这些孩子里，年纪最小的只有5岁。
在美国加州奥克兰市的帕克日间学校，老师都学过如何用一套性别中立的词汇来说话，学校还督促他们让学生根据运动鞋的颜色，而不是性别来站队。“我们很用心创造一个让学生不感到拘束的环境，”学校的教导主任汤姆·利特尔说，“我们允许他们换位置，直到他们自己觉得妥当为止。”
对家庭来说，这可能是一个漫长的感情适应过程。儿子过完3岁生日后没多久，潘·B太太及其丈夫乔尔就踏上了一个没有地图的旅程。事情的起因是，他们的儿子J开始穿宽大的T恤，还在头上扎一条毛巾，把它当作平滑的长发。接着是穿上母亲的绸汗衫。读了半年的学前班，J开始在被要求穿上男孩服装时变得激动难平。
在与儿子去购物广场的路上，B太太蓦然省悟了。“我当时灵机一动，问他：‘你真的想穿裙子，对吗？’”
现年41岁、担任律师的B太太与丈夫咨询了心理医生的意见，随后顺从了儿子的选择。B太太观察到儿子表现出前所未有的安适感，便接受了他的自我定位。然而她也感觉到现实的叵测。“那种残酷是很难描述的，”她说，“每一次社交邂逅、每一次外出就餐、每一天，都需要为了既保护孩子的自尊，又保护他不受外界敌视而苦心求取平衡。”
学龄前儿童的易服现象，在专业学界引发了深刻的意见分歧：应该给家长怎样的建议才最妥当？是让家长顺从孩子的意愿，还是引导孩子先接受生理性别，等年纪稍长再做决定，以免遭受同伴的侮辱、孤立？哪一种做法更有益？
争议的双方都强调，他们为这些少年儿童置身社会时的极度脆弱性感到担忧。2002年，住在奥克兰市东南区、本名为“埃迪”的跨性别少年葛雯·阿罗侯被谋杀身亡，就是一个突出的事例。
“家长们现在来咨询的是，怎样才能让孩子们过上安全自在的生活—该不该允许他们在公众场所作异性打扮，如何保护他们不受其他孩子粗野的伤害。”在奥克兰市儿童医院暨研究中心工作的精神科医师赫伯特·施赖尔博士如是说。
近年，越来越多的心理学家开始认为性别偏离是自然发生的现象，并非心理失调，施赖尔博士是持这种观点的专家之一。他说：“这样的孩子逐渐更清楚地认识到做真实的自己意味着什么了。”
在以往好几代人中，所谓“娘娘腔”的男孩和“假小子”的女孩会被逼迫着顺从性别规范，当时相信这些行为很大程度上是家庭异常所造成的。
和性倾向类似，性别认同的生理基础仍然算得上是未解之谜，虽然许多研究者怀疑，它和胎儿成长时被暴露在怎样的激素下有关。
有研究指出，大多数在童年早期显现性别偏离倾向的男孩会成长为同性恋，四分之一成长为异性恋。只有极少一部分人成长为跨性别者。
至于在研究中较少涉及的性别偏离的女孩，她们声言对女儿身感到极度郁闷，并且会表达想拥有男性身体构造的欲望。不过迄今为止的研究指出，她们多数人会成长为异性恋女子。
然而，主持多伦多市上瘾与精神健康中心性别认同科的心理学家肯尼思·朱克博士，却不赞成鼓励少年儿童“自由而为”的做法，也反对在公众场所作异性打扮。过去30年间，朱克博士诊治过500名未到青春期便有性别偏离倾向的儿童。根据他的研究，80%的人摆脱了性别偏离的行为，而15%-20%的人继续受性别问题的困扰，有的可能会最终选择变性。
朱克博士努力“帮助这些孩子对自己的生理性别感到更安心”，以便等年纪稍长再决定认同哪一个性别。他说自己的方法是鼓励同性友谊，鼓励不涉及性别角色分工的游戏，比如下棋。
华盛顿儿童医院的护士兼心理治疗师凯瑟琳·图尔克说，今天的父母依然需要自己摸索如何对待性别偏离的子女。19世纪70年代时，她就是一个性别偏离的孩子的母亲。她追忆起治疗师如何督促她引导儿子接受精神分析，参加“极端男性化的活动”，如空手道。她说自己和丈夫当年成了“性别警察”。
她说：“医生老是说，你们给他的压力不够。”
图尔克太太的儿子现在30岁，是一名当了父亲的同性恋者。从初为人母的年轻女子一路走来，图尔克太太的思想已经有了转变。“大家现在逐渐明白这似乎是自然而然的事情了。”她说，“我们当年却一直觉得，可不能由着他那样啊。”